Blue cities bleed, more Democrats violating election laws, another Democratic congressional staffer exposed for carrying water for Red China, Elon Musk takes over and immediately starts cleaning house at Twitter, and more transexual lunacy. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
As polling continues to show crime is a top issue for voters, the number of homicides has skyrocketed nationwide.
In fact, homicide rates rose by an average of nearly 10% in 50 of the most populated U.S. cities between the third quarter of last year and the third quarter of this year — and are still rising — according to a new study.
WalletHub compared 50 of America’s largest cities based on per capita homicides for the third quarter (July through September) of each year since 2020, using locally published crime data to compile its findings.
According to WalletHub, these were the ten cities with the highest homicide cases per 100,000 residents from July through September:
St. Louis, Mo. (19.69)
Kansas City, Mo. (14.86)
Detroit, Mich. (13.24)
Baltimore, Md. (12.45)
New Orleans, La. (10.99)
Milwaukee, Wisc. (10.46)
Memphis, Tenn. (9.99)
Philadelphia, Pa. (9.36)
Norfolk, Va. (7.78)
Chicago, Ill. (7.71)
The top prosecutors in most of these cities are backed by progressive megadonor George Soros, a billionaire who’s spent the last several years injecting tens of millions of dollars into local district attorney races nationwide, backing candidates who support policies such as abolishing bail, defunding the police, and decriminalizing or deprioritizing certain offenses.
In St. Louis, for example, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner is one of the first prosecutors bankrolled by Soros’ financial network of organizations and affiliates, heavily funded by these sources in 2016 and again in 2020.
Amid high homicide figures, Gardner has declined more cases and issued fewer arrest warrants than her predecessor, charging fewer felonies and prosecuting thousands of fewer cases as a result. She has also deferred prison sentences for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies as part of her reform initiatives.
Gardner has said this is part of her “platform to reduce the number of cases unnecessarily charged in order to focus on the more difficult cases for trial.”
Last year, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared.
Her campaign website boasts that she’s “made jail and prison a last resort, reserved for those who pose a true public safety risk,” while limiting “the arrest and detention of people accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is another Soros-funded prosecutor.
Soros spent almost $1.7 million through the Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help Krasner in 2017, pouring more than five times as much money into the race as Krasner himself. Four years later, Krasner received a combined $1.259 million from Soros-funded groups for his reelection.
During his tenure, Krasner has cut the future years of incarceration by half and slashed the length of parole in probation supervision by nearly two-thirds compared to the previous DA. He has also made a priority of not prosecuting people who are illegally in possession of guns unless they hurt or kill people.
The top prosecutors in New Orleans, Milwaukee, Norfolk, and Chicago have also been backed by Soros-linked money. Many of the others are self-described progressive prosecutors.
According to some experts, progressive prosecutors pursuing soft-on-crime policies have contributed to the spike in homicides and other violent crime.
“Prosecutors in most major cities have failed the people they serve by refusing to prosecute criminals, including those charged with violent crimes,” Tristin Kilgallon, associate professor of pre-law and history at the University of Findlay, told WalletHub. “Countless violent crimes have been committed by those who have been released back into the streets due to recent ‘bail reform’ initiatives or by prosecutors who declined to pursue charges.”
“Texas Secretary of State Finds ‘Serious Breaches’ in Harris County 2020 Election Audit. Auditors found multiple chain of custody issues and violations of state and federal law requiring maintenance of records in the state’s largest county.”
Issues found by auditors relate primarily to the county’s extralegal “drive-thru” voting initiated by then-interim County Clerk Chris Hollins.
Auditors found that for at least 14 polling locations the county does not show chain of custody for the Mobile Ballot Boxes (MBB) and that there were multiple MBBs created for some voting locations. Auditors say the MBBs from the polling locations “were not the MBBs ultimately tabulated.” They also note that they have been able to locate some missing MBBs, but have not been given an explanation as to why the originals were not tabulated. Each MBB can hold 9,999 ballots.
Another issue found by auditors is that poll book and provisional voting data provided by the county do not match the number of cast vote records on some of the devices.
Ennis also noted that after upgrading voting systems the county does not appear to have retained “any equipment or computers that provide relevant reports or alternatively, can read the MBBs” from 2020 or recover the cast vote records stored in them as required by both state and federal election codes.
Why, it’s almost like the Democrats running Harris County wanted to commit election fraud…
Speaking of election fraud, Facebook has been fined $25 million for breaking Washington State election law.
According to court documents, King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North found Meta to be in violation of Washington’s political disclosure law 822 separate times between 2019 and 2021 and issued the maximum possible fine for each instance, which totaled up to $30,000 per violation.
Meta was also ordered to “come into full compliance” with the state’s election transparency laws within the next 30 days as well as pay the attorney’s fees for the case, which Ferguson has requested be tripled for a total of $10.5 million. The final total will be decided by North at a later date.
According to The Seattle Times, the state’s election transparency laws, which have been in place since 1972, require ad sellers to “disclose the names and addresses of political buys, the targets of such ads and, the total number of viewers of each ad.” The judge found that Meta had intentionally violated the standards.
Washington Democrat Attorney General Bob Ferguson said “that he had “one word for Facebook’s conduct in this case – arrogance.”
He told the Times, “It intentionally disregarded Washington’s election transparency laws,” Ferguson said. “But that wasn’t enough. Facebook argued in court that those laws should be declared unconstitutional. That’s breathtaking.”
When Pennsylvania Democrats insist that a candidate who suffered a life-threatening stroke in May is recovering well and “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” that candidate must look and sound fine to prove they’re telling the truth. Last night, in the lone debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, John Fetterman looked and sounded very, very far from fine. But you can judge for yourself by watching the whole debate here.
I expected Fetterman’s debate performance to be a Rorschach test, with Democrats insisting that he was fine and hand-waving away any problems, and Republicans pointing to every verbal misstep, pause, or oddly worded answer. But by the end of the hour, there was little debate, no pun intended. John Fetterman’s ability to hear, understand, process information, and speak appears to still be severely impacted by his stroke. Perhaps the worst moment of the night came when one of the moderators asked him about a statement he made in 2018 opposing fracking, and how he could square that past stance with his current claim that he always supported fracking. After a long pause, presumably from reading the moderator’s question from the monitor, Fetterman said, “I, I, I do support fracking and . . .” and then for a moment, Fetterman’s head shook, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. Then he picked up again: “I don’t . . . I don’t. I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.” With everyone watching likely mortified and embarrassed to watch Fetterman struggle to finish the sentence, the moderator mercifully moved on to the next question.
Elon Musk took over Twitter late Thursday and fired company CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, senior legal representative Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett.
Musk, the world’s richest man, acquired the social media giant through a $44 billion purchase. He reportedly had until Friday to complete the deal.
In a video tweet that went viral, Musk appeared at Twitter’s corporate offices Wednesday carrying a sink, implying that employees would need to accept that he was now in charge.
This is a good start, but all the people on the Safety and Trust Council need to be fired, and all accounts suspended or banned need to be restored.
Rishi Sunak is the new UK Prime Minister, and Nigel Farage is not impressed:
A House Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.
“Congressman Beyer was totally unaware of these activities prior to being contacted by the House Sergeant At Arms,” Aaron Fritschner, his deputy chief of staff, told National Review in a statement this morning. “As soon as he learned of them, he followed every directive he was given by security officials. The staffer in question is no longer employed by the office of Congressman Beyer.”
Fritschner added that Beyer, who has a hawkish record on China, was “deeply upset” upon learning about the activities of the now-former staffer, Barbara Hamlett.
Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, a Democrat, was found to exhibit such misconduct that comprise more than 100 incidents over a period of about two years.
The misconduct “encompassed repeated acts of dishonesty; the blatant and systematic disregard of due process, the law, court orders, and local rules; the disrespectful treatment of court staff and litigants; and the abuse of capias warrants and the court’s contempt power,” stated the court’s per curium opinion. “That misconduct warrants an indefinite suspension from the practice of law.”
I’ve long thought that, based on the fragmentary evidence we have (the huge debt load, the ghost cities, the known mismanagement and calculation problem of planned communist economies, etc.), the size of China’s economy is overstated by 40%. Now, according to the measurements of one pretty good proxy for economic activity, it appears that I was too trusting and optimistic about the size of China’s economy, in that it’s probably overstated by 60%.
Takeaways:
Building on the work (caveat: paywalled) of University of Chicago economist Luis R. Martinez, economist and YouTuber Joeri Schasfoort (guest lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) calculates that China’s economy is overstated by 60%.
Martinez’s original paper calculates the visible difference between official stated GDP growth in 184 different countries between 1992 and 2008, and compared those numbers to the visible nighttime light from satellite imagery, and mapped the correlation. You know that South Korea/North Korea image comparison? That, but for the entire world, and mapped over time.
“Autocratic countries typically reported a whopping 35% higher GDP growth numbers compared to nighttime lights growth. And for China specifically, Martinez states that, based on his analysis, China’s GDP growth between 1992 and 2008 was likely 4.9% per year, rather than its average reported growth of 6.3%.”
“This would mean that instead of soon becoming the second largest economy in the world, China’s economy is only about a third of the size of the mighty US economy. And it also means that predictions such as those made by billionaire investor Ray Dalio that China is soon to overtake the US as the world’s next superpower are way overblown.”
“For China specifically, Martinez states that, based on his analysis, China’s GDP growth between 1992 and 2008 was likely 4.9% per year, rather than its average reported growth of 6.3%.”
“Based on how much authoritarian countries overstate in GDP growth compared to night light growth, Martinez produced what he calls a GDP deflator. This GDP deflator is basically a number by which to reduce official GDP numbers each year based on how authoritarian a country is using his deflator. We extend Martinez’s analysis to the year 2021, and while between in 1992 and 2021, China reported a sky high GDP growth between 14% and 8%, Martinez’s analysis suggests that China actually only grew between 6% and 2%.”
Still impressive growth by world standards.
“You should take these adjusted numbers with a big grain of salt. But that being said, I do actually think that the adjusted numbers are closer to the truth than the official numbers.”
“China is quite unique in that the central government used to set GDP growth targets for provincial governors. And if any of you ever worked in a company with a growth target, you probably know that while they can be effective, they typically also produce a lot of unwanted side effects.”
“Research has already shown that China’s GDP growth targets led to both wasteful investment projects and, more importantly, to us manipulated GDP numbers. Similarly to Martinez’s study, another economist uncovered that in the years that Chinese provincial governments needed to be selected, there were huge differences between the reported GDP figures for that province and data that could not be manipulated such as electricity consumption.”
“When I myself looked into the nightlife data of a paper published in Nature and compared that to the World Bank GDP data, I found that indeed China has reported much higher GDP growth compared to nightlight growth. And for example, its more democratic also rapidly growing and larger neighbor India. So yeah, there is a lot of evidence that China is manipulating its GDP data just as much, if not more, than other autocratic countries.”
“And this is why, with the caveat that this is an extremely rough calculation, in my opinion, China’s GDP is likely 40% of its official figure.”
(Note: Normally I say “Watch the whole thing.” However, there’s some unrelated tragic news at the very end, so if you’re prone to I Haz A Sadz, you might want to stop at 13:08.)
According to auditor’s records, Harris County has not yet recovered more than $1 million paid for a since-canceled COVID-19 vaccine outreach contract tied to the felony indictments of County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s staff.
In addition, invoices indicate that the contractor paid more than half a million of the taxpayer funds to data firms assisting progressive candidates with campaigns and voter turnout.
In 2021, the county awarded an $11 million contract to Elevate Strategies, owned by highly-connected Democratic strategist Felicity Pereyra. Pereyra had previously worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and Commissioner Adrian Garcia’s (D- Pct. 2) campaign when he ran for mayor of Houston.
After revelations that Hidalgo’s staff had sought to alter experience requirements for potential vendors, and had instructed the purchasing department to disqualify the University of Texas Health Science Center, Hidalgo announced she would cancel the contract. But the public later learned that the county paid out $1.4 million to Pereyra’s firm after the date of cancellation.
During a March 2022 meeting of the Harris County commissioners court, First Assistant County Attorney Jay Aiyer told commissioners that Elevate Strategies had repaid about $200,000 and he expected another $1 million in repayment soon.
In response to queries from FOX26 political reporter Greg Groogan, the county attorney’s office responded that they had recovered $600,000, but refused to comply with an open records request and appealed to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office in an effort to keep the repayment amounts out of the public eye.
Attorney and former Houston mayoral candidate Bill King sought records from the county auditor, which showed that while the county had paid $1.425 million, Elevate Strategies has only returned $208,000.
Among invoices Elevate Strategies submitted to the county are expenditures of $538,057 for software and canvassers from known Democratic voter turnout groups Civis Analytics and NGP VAN EveryAction.
Founded by Dan Wagner, former chief analytics officer of Obama for America, Civis Analytics has worked to increase voter turnout for a variety of progressive candidates and organizations including Battleground Texas. The group touts data collection that can be compiled into individual voter records for use in political campaigns.
Likewise, NGP VAN’s website advertises the company as “the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations.”
Last year, Hidalgo defended the use of political campaigning groups, saying they had the tools to conduct the outreach. But Rice University professor and political analyst Mark Jones told The Texan there is not a great deal of overlap between the kinds of residents targeted.
“Those are companies focused exclusively on likely voters, which is not the same thing as a vulnerable population that would be the target of a COVID vaccine outreach campaign,” said Jones. “The Civis Analytics and NGP data sets are not designed to reach those targets. They are designed to reach people who are likely to turnout in the 2022 county judge election.”
Jones also noted that Elevate Strategies contract lists as a sub-contractor the Texas Organizing Project, which is another group that conducts canvassing and campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates, including Hidalgo.
Go that? Lina Hidalgo approved over $1 million in funding for a company who’s primary job is getting Democrats (including herself) elected, paid them money after the contract was cancelled, and when told to give the money back, the Democrat company kept more than $1 million, and then Hidalgo’s office tried to cover it up.
Hidalgo doesn’t just need to be voted out of office, she and her cronies need to be sent to prison for abusing taxpayer money by spending it for partisan political advantage.
A massive security breach of the Mexican government unveiled documents from the Mexico Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena). The leaked documents, published online by a group called Guacamaya, reveal that the Mexican military has been supplying cartels with weapons.
According to the leaked documents “On May 31, 2019, the military offered operators of the criminal group (Tejupilco drug cartel) 70 fragmentation grenades at a cost of 26,000 pesos (1300.29 USD) each; the criminal cell confirmed the purchase of eight of them, which were delivered to Atlacomulco, State of Mexico.”
The document then explained that not only were cartel members offered weapons, they were given classified information by military personnel that disclosed in full detail information on armed forces mobility and operations.
Following the May 31 document was an intelligence report made on June 10 of the same year that revealed that Sedena had full knowledge of the exchange and refused to act on it
The revelation comes just weeks after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and as millions of illegal aliens have poured across the southern border since President Joe Biden took office.
In light of the Biden administration’s inaction, some members of Texas’ congressional delegation say the time has come for Texas to declare an invasion on the southern border.
“Not only are the United Nations, the Biden Administration, and U.S. nonprofits supporting the invasion of our southern border, now the Mexican military is arming the Cartels smuggling migrants with hand grenades,” U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden told Texas Scorecard. “I fully support declaring the border crisis an invasion and closing our border with Mexico until this coordinated onslaught of migrants is under control.”
Maybe Mexico should get their own house in order before blaming American arms companies…
Here is a moderately in-depth look at China’s current generation of artillery, and how it stacks up to American artillery.
A lot of this is a fairly detailed order-of-battle breakdown of what and how many artillery pieces are assigned to each level of Chinese military organization, which I’m not going to try to summarize here. But here are some of the more interesting takeaways:
China’s artillery mix seems to be between Russia’s “more is more” giant units of towed artillery and America’s largely mobile, increasingly high tech approach.
There are different mixes of self-propelled artillery deployed to north Chinese units than south Chinese units. The north emphasizes larger systems, while the south features smaller, more mobile systems for more rugged terrain. (Remember, China got its ass kicked in the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979.)
Like the U.S., China supports infantry companies and battalions with mortars.
Towed artillery is on its way out of the PLA. They’re even using self-propelled artillery in light units that look like six-wheeled technicals, so they can shoot-and-scoot. These look like they could be pretty cost-effective.
Like the Russians, China has also gone heavy into unguided rockets.
“The Chinese have also adopted a modular pod-based rocket artillery similar to a larger HIMARS, capable of taking different sizes of GPS guided missiles.”
U.S. artillery tends to be longer-ranged than equivalent Chinese, especially when it comes to guided shells.
Old, big Soviet 152mm and 130mm weapons are being replaced with self-propelled 155mm platforms (PLZ-05, PCL-181).
The PHL-03 is an MLRS firing unguided rockets up to 300km.
The newer PJL-16 fires unguided 300mm, guided 370mm, and 750mm guided missiles using a pod system. The accuracy range on the guided munitions are reportedly 30m, as opposed to the HIMARS 8m.
China has a loading crane system for their advanced MLSR which is better than the Russian system (still loading each tube manually), but not as good as HIMARS self-loading pod system.
The high tech Chinese system isn’t as good as the best U.S. systems yet, but they seem to be catching up. However, I wonder how well they can continue to build high tech weapons guidance system under the new semiconductor sanctions. GPS is an old technology, so presumably China build guidance systems in their older fabs guided missiles using their own GPS-like BeiDou system. But the question is whether they can keep even the older fabs running without U.S. support and inputs, and if they can, how high a priority such munitions will be under the new constraints. There are only so many wafer starts to go around…
Always keeping in mind Instapundit’s “Don’t get cocky!” warning, there are a whole lot of signs that this year’s midterm is going to be another Republican wave election along the lines of 2010 or 2014.
Here are some signposts for the impending Red Tsunami:
Remember how Democrats crowed how Roe vs. Wade was going to doom Republican electoral chances? Yeah, not so much.
Republicans made massive gains with independent women in recent weeks as Democrats ramped up their messaging on abortion ahead of the midterm elections.
Forty-nine percent of voters plan to vote for the Republican nominee to represent their House district while 45 percent said they’d back their Democratic opponent, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday. Of particular note was a 32 point swing among independent women toward the GOP. In September’s iteration of the poll, Democrats boasted a 14 point lead among that demographic, but by October, Republicans held an 18 point advantage.
While Democratic officials and progressive commentators had suggested that the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade might lessen the expected electoral blow of the midterms, the swing toward the GOP among independent women — the group most heavily targeted by Democratic strategists — suggests that their focus on abortion might be to their own detriment.
In a TV segment last month, Republican operative Matt Gorman was rebuked by his fellow panelists for suggesting that abortion “is not in the top four of issues.”
Yamiche Alcindor of PBS and NBC insisted that on the campaign trail “abortion comes up 90 percent of the time” when she speaks with voters. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and former senator who lost her re-election bid in 2016, shouted over other guests to declare “I hope Matt keeps saying that everywhere he goes — that abortion isn’t really an issue here in this election. I think it is exactly what infuriates women when they hear that.”
According to a study conducted by AdImpact, Democrats spent 73 million on messaging ads about abortion in September, which is “about a third of all Democratic television ad spending,” per NPR.
Twenty-six percent of voters in the Times/Siena poll identified the economy as the most important issue facing the country today. That was followed by inflation (18 percent), other (9 percent), the state of democracy (8 percent), immigration and abortion (five percent apiece), and then political division (four percent).
Only 24 percent of voters said the country was on the right track, while 64 percent indicated the opposite. Democrats presently hold the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress, and President Joe Biden’s approval rating is nearly 20 points underwater.
So how do you explain a 32 point swing between two polls? A few possible answers: A.) Democrat’s loud, radical position on abortion is actually alienating independent women, B.) The crappy Biden economy is really starting to bite, or C.) Pollsters running biased polls to help Democrats simply stopped lying in order for their final electoral predictions to more closely match reality. Much as I’d like to believe A is the cause, I think C is the more likely culprit. Caveat: The sample was “792 likely voters nationwide,” which is a pretty damn small sample.
Democrats have no solutions to today’s crime surge.
Here’s how they shrug off the mayhem.
First: Deep denial.
Through Sept. 27, New Orleans suffered 208 homicides, up 44% versus that period in 2021 and 141% in 2019. The Crescent City has become America’s Murder Capital.
“I do not embrace that at all,” said Democratic Mayor La Toya Cantrell. “It isn’t based on what’s happening on the ground.” She later said that “our city is safer than it’s been in a long time.”
Crime books can be cooked: Curbing arrests can “erase” lawlessness by leaving it unrecorded. But there’s no faking a cadaver. Regardless, Cantrell scoffs at humiliating police data.
Then there’s the revolving door for violent criminals Soros-backed Democrat DAs have instituted:
100% gun control would not have stopped David Jakubonis who, last July 21, confronted Zeldin on the hustings, shoved a sharp keychain weapon beside the candidate’s neck, and said: “You’re done.”
Jakubonis was armed and threatened a congressman.
Regardless, he was free the next day before being arrested on federal charges.
Vincent Buccino savored pizza outside a Hell’s Kitchen eatery on Sept. 9.
An unprovoked attacker smashed a chair over his head and broke his arm.
The unidentified criminal remains at large.
Michael Palacios terrorized a Manhattan McDonald’s on Sept. 16. After harassing patrons, he yanked an ax from his backpack, menaced diners, and chopped up a table, chairs, and glass wall. He, too, was arrested and swiftly sprung without bail.
Palacios was arrested again on Oct. 11, for alleged graffiti and bicycle theft.
Once more, Palacios was freed without bail.
And if you dare to notice this, Democrats will call you a racist. “Democrats shout, ‘Racism!’ as often as people exhale.”
In July 2021, House Bill 1054 took effect in the Evergreen State after being passed by the Democratic state legislature and signed by the Democratic governor over the objections of [Chelan County sheriff Brian Burnett] and state law-enforcement associations.
Before they can pursue a vehicle, the new law requires that officers ensure that four conditions have been met: (1) An officer must have either a reasonable suspicion a driver is impaired due to drugs or alcohol, or probable cause to believe that he has committed certain kinds of violent crimes or sex crimes; (2) pursuit must be necessary to identify or apprehend the suspect; (3) the driver must be an imminent threat to the safety of others such that the risks of not pursuing him outweigh the risks of pursuit; and (4) a supervisor has authorized pursuit.
Burnett told National Review that these restrictions represent a threat to public safety. Anecdotally, that’s evidenced by Spitzer’s sojourn across the region and, statistically, it’s backed up by the data. Prior to HB 1054’s taking effect, the state recorded, on average, around 2,000 stolen vehicles per month. Since its passage, that figure has soared, reaching heights in excess of 4,000 per month.
“What we’re seeing on an average daily basis — whether it’s our jurisdiction or one of our neighboring jurisdictions — is there’s people that don’t stop for us all day long,” said Burnett. “It can be anything from a stolen vehicle, to somebody that we have probable cause on, or just a basic traffic stop, and, you know, next thing on it’s pedal to the metal and they’re off and running,” he continued.
Burnett and his fellow law-enforcement officials had foreseen these issues and lobbied against the bill, but he said lawmakers refused to take their concerns seriously.
“The response early on — because we have a Democratic-controlled Senate and House, and it’s a fairly large margin there — it was almost to the point of, I’ll call it arrogance,” remembered Burnett. The message the legislature sent to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs was: “We don’t need you, we don’t need your opinion,” he added. “We were begging them and telling them and giving them reasons why: ‘Please don’t do this, it’s bad, bad policy,’” he said, but they ignored the pleas, because their majorities (57–41 in the House and 28–21 in the Senate) empower them to impose their will without compromise. But public opinion will probably assert itself eventually, given that crime is surging in the state: Washington set records for homicides in 2020 and then again 2021.
Democrats have a long history, stretching back at least into the 1970s, of soft-on-crime policies costing them elections. And Soros DAs intent on “bail reform” have made them even softer on crime than they were in the nadir of the 1970s.
The 40,000-foot view is bad enough, but it’s the steady drumbeat of discouraging race-by-race poll results that now has Democrats bracing for a punishing midterm.
In the battle to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, Republicans have taken small leads in Wisconsin and Nevada, and Herschel Walker is still hanging around despite the October-surprise claims about his ex-girlfriend’s abortion. RealClearPolitics now puts Dr. Oz in the lead in Pennsylvania, after adjusting for historical polling errors, and projects a 52-48 GOP Senate majority.
In the House, counting “safe,” “likely” and “leans,” RealClearPolitics gives Republicans a 221-176 lead, with 38 more races considered toss-ups. In June, that outlet projected the GOP would gain 24.5 seats; now it forecasts a 27-seat pickup.
In reliably blue Oregon, a Republican is poised to take the governorship for the first time in 35 years. Michigan governor and lockdown enthusiast Gretchen Whitmer is up only now leading by just 5 points in the latest poll. Even the New York governor race has tightened up, with Quinnipiac putting Democrat Kathy Hochul up only 4 points — and independents breaking toward challenger Lee Zeldin 57% to 37%.
“I think we had three really good weeks in August that everybody patted themselves on the back,” an anonymous Democratic advisor to major donors tells Politico. “We were like, ‘Yeah, that should be enough to overcome two years of shitty everything’.” Now, he says, “It’s not looking great. The best we can hope for right now is a 50-50 Senate, but the House is long gone.”
Oddsmakers have similarly flipped red when it comes to the GOP’s chances of retaking the Senate, joining a longstanding bet that they’ll win control of the House.
Yes, Democrats “peaked” on election night in 2020 when they used massive voting fraud in a handful of districts to steal the election for Biden (along with a senate race or two) and then acted like they had a blowout mandate to impose social justice on the country.
The Democrat label is now toxic, and every time voters see Democrats speak, they seem to turn against them.
The Republican surge is animated by decisive debate victories on Friday in three key races: Georgia (Senate), Michigan (Governor), and Wisconsin (Governor). Georgia had been trending Democrat before the debate under the weight of Hershel Walker’s scandals, but likely no more.
Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan, seemed like a hopeless case, but now, on the strength of a decisive win in her debate with incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer the race seems winnable. The Republican Governor’s Association, after waiting to commit, now is pumping millions into her campaign. Responding to Dixon’s surge, former president Obama has announced plans to campaign against her in Michigan.
And, in Wisconsin, Republican Tim Michaels clearly defeated a largely passive and obviously aging Democratic governor Tony Evers.
Walker was supposed to lose the debate because, as a football hero, he’s not necessarily very articulate. Coming up against an experienced pastor, Senator Raphael Warnock’s chances seemed dim. But Walker surprised everyone with a strong performance. Whatever the issue he pivoted to bring it back to inflation and Joe Biden. Surprisingly, on abortion he indicated new flexibility and backed it in cases of rape or a danger to the life of the mother. But, above all he seemed to have mastered his new trade of politics and was able to spar with the best of them.
The most important debate will come next week in Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Oz and stroke-impaired John Fetterman on October 25th. Fetterman won’t release his medical records and recent on camera interviews indicate that he mispronounces words and cannot easily understand what he hears unless it is printed out in front of him.
Whatever his medical prognosis, he cannot recover from his radical positions on pardoning and releasing one in three Pennsylvania prison inmates and on defunding the police.
Other than the Oz-Fetterman race, we now lead in all contests for seats currently held by the Republicans. North Carolina is close but Ted Budd holds a consistent lead. And, despite a less than stellar debate performance, JD Vance is ahead in Ohio.
“Every debate has tanked the Democrat in the polls.”
Things are so bad that Democrats are shifting money from safe seats to really safe seats.
Some “safe seats” aren’t very safe anymore for suddenly vulnerable Democrats, and that has panicked PACs moving campaign dollars to protect previously invulnerable seats.
We’re down to the wire in Election 2022, and stuff just got real.
Today’s news takes us to deep blue Oregon, where onetime shoo-in Kurt Schrader just got the rug pulled out from under him by his own Democrat Party as he fights off Republican Amy Ryan Courser. According to AdImpact (as spotted by Josh Kraushaar), party ad spending for Schrader in the 5th district was shifted to the 6th to boost Andrea Salinas against Republican Mike Erickson. [As noted in the comments below, Jamie McLeod-Skinner defeated Rep. Kurt Schrader in the Democratic Primary. -LP]
Maybe you’re thinking this kind of thing happens all the time, and it does.
But it doesn’t often happen that Democrats appear to be writing off a district that Presidentish Joe Biden won in 2020 by nine points, to shore up a district that Biden won by 13 points.
If 10-and-up is the Democrats’ new firewall, they’re in bigger trouble than even I imagined. Complicating things even more for Oregon Democrats, gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek (looking to replace the outgoing and execrable Kate Brown) regularly polls behind Republican Christine Drazan.
Stephen Green notes that Oregon may be a special case because “Portland has served as Ground Zero for some of the craziest progressive ideas being put into terrible practice.” Wait, turning your city over to Antifa for endless riots isn’t popular with voters? Who knew?
You know who else thinks Democrats have gone to far pushing social justice? Would you believe the Lightbringer himself?
Former President Barack Obama slammed Democrats in a recent podcast, calling them “buzzkills” whose identity politics and cancel culture rhetoric force people to “walk on eggshells.”
Speaking with four of his former employees on the Pod Save America podcast, the former prez said that his fellow Democrats need to tone it down and understand that everyone makes mistakes, the Daily Mail reports.
“Sometimes Democrats are [buzzkills]. Sometimes people just want to not feel as if they are walking on eggshells, and they want some acknowledgment that life is messy and that all of us, at any given moment, can say things the wrong way, make mistakes,” he said, adding that Democrats should learn from he felt were his mistakes as president.
What does it say when the biggest beneficiary of white guilt and victimhood identity politics in political history says that Democrats have gone too far in that direction?
A sane party might be inclined to listen to him.
But the Democratic Party hasn’t been sane in a long, long time…
Democrats flee, lettuce wins, a flood of extra executives, and Musk gets out the hatchet. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
People leaving the Democratic Party describe it as cancer:
While Democrat voters have been leaving the party for years, their reasons have become more urgent.
“When people were feeling pushed away years ago, to the point where they were starting to walk away, there was more of a casual tone about it,” former liberal Democrat Brandon Straka, founder of #WalkAway told The Epoch Times.
“People were beginning to feel the effects of leftist, communism, Marxism infiltration into our society, our culture, and our politics.”
Straka founded #WalkAway in 2018 after making his personal decision to leave the party public while inviting others to join him. Since then, thousands of exiting Democrats made social media videos explaining why they were choosing to #WalkAway, giving Straka a window into the minds of these voters.
At that time, people were just noticing changes in the party, he said. They weren’t always identifying what it meant, but they knew they didn’t like how it felt, and quietly left.
“But now, it’s akin to cancer. Cancer doesn’t stop growing and spreading just because people don’t like it. And what’s happening with the left is no different,” Straka said. “Particularly with them getting rid of Trump, installing Biden, and the Democrats taking full control of the government. This is a cancer that’s rapidly growing and spreading now. And it’s becoming not just uncomfortable, but I think intolerable, for a lot of people.”
Drugs dealers openly selling on Broadway. Thinks to mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams, and the feckless actions of Soros-backed DA Alvin Bragg, Democrats have undone not only all the hard-won law-and-order gains of Rudy Giuliani’s broken windows police, but they’ve actually brought NYC back to the nadir of the crime-ridden New York of the 1970s. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is heading to his third high-profile defeat in five years. But he and Planned Parenthood have an ace of their sleeve: registering dead voters.
A Texas firearms dealer is suing the Biden administration for weaponizing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to shut down law-abiding gun retailers over paperwork errors discovered during audits.
President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice in June of 2021 to enforce “zero tolerance for willful violations of the law by federally licensed firearms dealers that put public safety at risk,” but after a 500 percent increase in federal firearm license revocations for retailers over the last year, it’s clear the Biden administration isn’t just going after gun sellers who intentionally violate the law.
Punishing minor slip-ups, the lawsuit argues, draws on a drastically different interpretation of the law than the definition federal courts have held based on the Gun Control Act of 1968.
The lawsuit, to which the federal government has 60 days to respond, also argues that the Biden administration’s new policy sets an unreasonably high standard that is not applied to any other industry.
That’s why Michael Cargill, owner of Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, chose to bring this case.
Those energy-hostile Democratic Party policies just keep paying dividends: “New England facing natural gas shortages, rolling blackouts this winter.”
The reality is that the normal flow of natural gas into the region is limited and has been unable to keep up with increasing demand levels over the past decade. That means that utility operators have to rely on liquid natural gas (LNG) imports to make up the difference during peak demand periods. During such times, LNG accounts for as much as one-third of the total natural gas used for heating and electricity.
But why is that? You won’t need an ace detective to figure that out. Utility companies in New York, Connecticut, and other New England states projected supply shortfalls more than a decade ago. Fortunately, New York and Pennsylvania sit on some of the richest natural gas resources in the country, found in the Marcellus shale deposits. The companies requested new, higher-volume pipelines to carry natural gas to meet the spiraling demands of New York City, particularly at the furthest end of the gas lines in Long Island. They also urged the development of local gas production to feed those lines. Similar situations were noted all across New England.
Instead of doing that, New York refused to approve new gas lines and passed a moratorium on natural gas drilling in the state. This brings us to the current situation where the same amount of natural gas is being used, but increasing amounts of it come in the form of LNG that has to be imported either from other regions of the country or from overseas. The energy crunch in Europe is eating up a lot of the available LNG, so there may not be enough for New England this winter.
A star reporter for ABC News has been missing since an April 27 FBI raid at his Arlington, Virginia apartment.
Emmy award winner James Gordon Meek – a deep-dive journalist who was also a former senior counterterrorism adviser and investigator for the House Homeland Security Committee, abruptly quit his job of 9 years and “fell off the face of the earth,” after the raid, one of his colleagues told Rolling Stone.
A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate accounts — are creating major headaches for corporate HR departments and for those managing invite-only LinkedIn groups.
Last week, KrebsOnSecurity examined a flood of inauthentic LinkedIn profiles all claiming Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) roles at various Fortune 500 companies, including Biogen, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Hewlett Packard.
Since then, the response from LinkedIn users and readers has made clear that these phony profiles are showing up en masse for virtually all executive roles — but particularly for jobs and industries that are adjacent to recent global events and news trends.
Does the Federal Reserve swapping some $6 billion worth of dollars for Swiss Francs with the Swiss National Bank mean a global financial crisis is coming? Boiling down his argument: A.) The Swiss National bank has a weekly dollar auction every Wednesday. 99%+ of the time, no one shows up for them. B.) Last Wednesday, 15 parties (meaning banks) showed up for them to the tune of some $6 billion. C.) The only reason they would do that is if they don’t trust their current repo counterparties, and D.) This is what happened when Flu Manchu hit and before the Subprime Meltdown in 2008. If it’s any consolation, they first started showing up for the latter in December of 2007, so you might have nine months to buy gold, ammunition and canned goods…
“According to the latest campaign finance reports, Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer has raised a record-setting $4.9 million dollars in support of her campaign for Harris County Judge, outraising Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo 4 to 1.”
Related: “Hidalgo Booed Exiting Meeting Where GOP Commissioners Continue Boycott of Tax Increase.”
Woke reporter: Are you just super excited to coach against another black coach? Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles: “We don’t see color…the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everyone else will as well.”
Thanks to the SuperGenius policies of the Biden Administration (plus a touch of bad weather), all three of the primary methods by which goods are transported around the nation are under near-term threat:
A union representing about 12,000 rail workers on Monday voted down a tentative contract that was brokered by the White House last month ahead of a possible rail strike.
This vote will force the two sides back to the negotiating table and creates the possibility of a nationwide strike. The potential work stoppage could paralyze the nation’s supply chain and transportation rail service later this fall as the U.S. enters peak holiday season.
Four unions have ratified contracts based on the agreement brokered by the White House, while seven have votes pending on the deal. The eleven unions represent about 115,000 rail workers.
The two largest rail unions — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Trainmen, or BLET, and the SMART Transportation Division, or SMART-TD, which make up roughly half of all rail workers — are set to finish voting in the middle of next month.
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the Teamsters, or BMWED, rejected the tentative contract due to frustration with compensation and working conditions, particularly a lack of paid sick days, BMWED President Tony Cardell said in a statement on Monday.
Long-Haul Trucking. Well, if you can’t ship via rail, at least you can ship in an 18-wheeler, right? The problem is that the overwhelming majority of 18-wheelers use diesel, and diesel is in short supply.
The crisis gripping the US diesel market is getting out of hand, as demand is surging while supplies remain at the lowest seasonal level for this time of year ever, according to government data released Wednesday.
According to the EIA, the US now has just 25 days of diesel supply, the lowest since 2008; and while inventories are record low, the four-week rolling average of distillates supplied – a proxy for demand – rose to its highest seasonal level since 2007.
In short, record low supply (courtesy of stifling regulations that have led to a historic shortage of refining capacity) meet record high demand. What comes next is, well, ugly (while weekly demand dipped slightly in the latest week, it’s still at highest point in two years amid higher trucking, farming and heating use).
The shortage of the fuel used for heating and trucking and – generally speaking – to keep commerce and freight running, has become a key worry for the Biden administration heading into winter, perhaps even bigger than the price of gas heading into the midterms (well, not really). As Bloomberg’s Javier Blas writes, “such low levels are alarming because diesel is the workhorse of the global economy. It powers trucks and vans, excavators, freight trains and ships. A shortage would mean higher costs for everything from trucking to farming to construction.”
National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Bloomberg TV Wednesday that that diesel inventories are “unacceptably low” and “all options are on the table” to build supplies and reduce retail prices.
But while the White House claims to be so very concerned about the coming diesel crisis, it is doing absolutely nothing besides draining the SPR which has zero impact on diesel production.
The historic diesel crunch comes just weeks ahead of the midterm elections and will almost certainly drive up prices for consumers who already view inflation and the economy as a top voting issue. Retail prices have been steadily climbing for more than two weeks. At $5.324 a gallon, they’re 50% higher than this time last year, according to AAA data.
For those who might naively suggest “Well, oil refineries should just produce more diesel and less gasoline,” it doesn’t work that way. Though they sit side-by-side in gas pumps, the two fuels come from different points in the fractional distillation column, with Naphtha and Kerosene between them. You can’t just turn a knob to make more of one and less of the other.
Drought closed a portion of the Mississippi River earlier this week, as the major waterway has been an absolute nightmare for tugboat captains to navigate.
A stretch of the Mississippi River just northeast of Memphis, near Hickman, Kentucky, was closed on Monday because water levels reached record low levels. This caused a logjam of vessels and barges. And it’s the third time a portion of the river has been shuttered in weeks.
We’ve reported dangerously low water levels have left farmers with a barge shortage as freight rates hyperinflate. Some farmers have piled up beans and other crops as logistical pipelines to transport farm goods from the Heartland by barge to export terminals in the US Gulf Coast are paralyzed due to extraordinary conditions on the Mississippi.
Ag blog Delta Farm Press’ senior staff writer Ginger Rowsey spoke with barge captain Eric Badeaux who said it usually takes him 1-2 days to move barges from Morris, Illinois, down the Illinois River to the Mississippi River and on to New Orleans. He’s got over four decades of navigating cargo on the waterways and said because of drought and obstacles, it now takes 8-10 days for the same distance.
“We had been on the boat two weeks and had not even made it to Memphis yet,” Badeaux said. At one point, Badeaux and his crew only traveled 60 miles in four days. They typically average 200 miles per day when heading south.
“In one day, we burned 2,367 gallons of diesel fuel, just sitting here fighting the current,” Badeaux said. “That comes out to about $10,000 in fuel for one day, and we barely moved. Multiply the fuel costs for all of the boats just sitting here, plus all the other costs involved in boat maintenance and you can see why transportation costs are through the roof. It’s disastrous.”
On a recent trip, Rowsey said that Badeaux pulled 20 barges of corn, soybeans, and coiled steel down the river, along with ten empty barges. He said the rapidly dropping water levels make the waterway risky to haul more barges. An average tow usually consists of 30-40 full barges.
There’s no guarantee that all three segments of transportation will hit crisis status at all, much less at the same time. A good bout of rain across the Midwest could ease Mississippi drought conditions. A last minute labor agreement could be reached, avoiding any strikes. And low diesel supplies don’t mean no diesel supplies.
But if all three do hit crisis proportions in late November or early December, it’s quite likely that the holidays will be far from happy…
Round Rock used to be a refugee from the leftwing madness controlling Austin. But as Austin grew, Austin leftism expanded out into the suburbs, and Williamson County got a lot more purple.
While parents weren’t looking, social justice and critical race theory snuck into Round Rock ISD.
A discussion of so-called “antiracism” is causing a stir in one of Texas’ most hotly contested school board races.
In 2020, incumbent Round Rock ISD school board vice president Tiffany Harrison moderated a taxpayer-financed book discussion. “How to Be an Antiracist” by Henry Rogers (who writes under the nom de plume Ibram Kendi) was the work under consideration.
The discussion focused on “collective guilt” where “no one is exempt” from the work of “antiracism.” From the speaker’s perspective, this is the natural conclusion when “everything in our world is racialized.”
The ultimate, destructive end to this ideology comes when you “push at all the nodes [of society] and pull them apart.”
Two current board members, Danielle Weston and Mary Bone, are conservative reformers. The other five (Tiffanie Harrison, Amber Feller, Amy Weir, Kevin R. Johnson, Sr., and Cory Vessa) are leftwing social justice advocates.
A conservative slate of candidates has stood up to run against the social justice warrior board members of RRISD. Calling themselves One Family Round Rock, they are:
John Keagy for Place 1. He’s running against left incumbent Kevin Johnson Sr., hard lefty candidate Estevan Jesus “Chuy” Zarate (who has a lot of signs out next to The Usual Suspects that actually mentions “Equity,” the codeword for hard left Social Justice), and Apple software engineer Yuriy Semchyshyn, running as a critic of the board. (Note: Because this is a special election, it appears below the other races on the ballot.)
Jill Farris for Place 4. She’s running against incumbent lefty Cory Vessa, hard lefty Alicia Markum (whose website mentions “equity”) and board critic Linda Avila.
Christie Slape for Place 5. She’s running against incumbent lefty Amy Weir, RRISD Assistant Principal Stefan Bryant (for whom I cannot find a campaign website) and Joshua Billingsley (who says he’s dropped out and is supporting Weir).
Don Zimmerman for Place 6. He’s running against incumbent social justice warrior queen bee Tiffanie Harrison.
Note that there’s no runoff for RRISD elections, so whoever manages to earn a plurality in a 3- or 4-candidate race wins.
All campaign on a variety of issues, including parental rights, opposing lockdowns, an emphasis on academic fundamentals, conducting a “forensic audit,” and opposition to the deeply suspicious hiring of superintendent Hafedh Azaiez despite several red flags. But all are also united in opposing wokeness, critical race theory, and transexual madness in Round Rock classrooms.
I had a chance to talk with most of the slate at a campaign event a few weeks ago. All agreed that Tiffanie Harrison was the biggest source of woke militancy on the board. Zimmerman, her opponent and the highest profile politician of all those running, calls Harrison “the tip of the spear” for wokeness in RRISD.
He and several others indicated that woke principals were the ones sneaking CRT, Black Lives Matter, and gay agenda materials into the classroom. “No one seems to be responsible for it. It just shows up.”
We know from San Francisco and elsewhere that woke social justice and transgenderism is deeply unpopular, and when parents speak up against it, they frequently win.
Early voting for the Texas general election starts Monday, October 24. Williamson County early voting locations can be found here, while Travis County early voting locations can be found here.
