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November 2022

Liz Peek: Silver linings to the GOP’s midterm shortfall

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3733409-silver-linings-to-the-gops-midterm-shortfall/

Are there any silver linings to the disappointing midterm elections for Republicans? Yes, at least three: President Biden wants to run again, Donald Trump has been dethroned and the GOP cannot be blamed for the recession that looms over 2023. Put together, the results might oddly have given the GOP better odds of winning in 2024 than if the much-anticipated “red wave” had materialized.

Does this sound absurdly Pollyannish? Maybe, but it is also true.

First, Biden seems to think the midterms were a positive referendum on his performance. In his follow-up press conference, he exulted that “we lost fewer seats in the House of Representatives than any Democratic President’s first midterm election in the last 40 years.”

He rattled off his many supposed accomplishments, including: “creating” 10 million new jobs, “taking on powerful interests to lower…energy bills” and making “historic investments” to encourage building new semiconductor factories. All that “while lowering the federal deficit in the two years by $1.7 trillion….No administration has ever cut the deficit that much.”

The report card is dishonest. But give Biden credit for convincing voters that the economy was actually in tatters when he took over (it was growing at 6 percent, thanks to large stimulus spending and because it was in great shape before COVID-19 hit), that he engineered a dramatic drop in the federal deficit (actually, he pumped it way up before by law it began to recede) and that he somehow drove oil companies to lower prices, while in fact he recklessly drew down our Strategic Petroleum Reserves.

Maricopa County’s Top Election Official Runs ‘Pro-Democracy’ PAC That Opposes ‘Election Deniers’ By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/14/maricopa-countys-top-election-official-runs-pro-democracy-pac-that-opposes-election-deniers/

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer started a “pro Democracy” political action committee (PAC) in 2021 to stop GOP candidates who believe the 2020 election was stolen, it has been revealed.

Richer, like Maricopa County Supervisor Chairman Bill Gates, is a Republican, and has been vocal in defending the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

The PAC, Pro Democracy Republicans of Arizona, declares on its website that Republican candidates should “accept and acknowledge” that former president Donald Trump lost the election.

The Arizona election wasn’t stolen. We Republicans simply had a presidential candidate who lost, while we had many other candidates who won. It’s time we Republicans accept and acknowledge that fact.

Candidates come and go. But our democratic institutions are long-lasting, and peaceful transitions of power are a hallmark of the United States. We should not abandon this history in favor of conspiracy theorists and demagoguery.

To that end, we are launching this PAC to support pro-democracy Arizona Republicans.

We hope you will join us. We will win some races. We will lose some races. But either way, we will be strengthening the processes that have long undergirded Arizona and the United States.

In November of 2021, Richer told the Arizona Mirror that the PAC’s “primarily focus” would be “on legislative and county races,” but that assertion does not track with the PAC’s financial activity.

According to Transparency USA, Pro Democracy Republicans of Arizona raised $88,443 in total contributions, and spent $69,761—most of it in the third quarter of 2022.

Bodies Politic By Madeleine Kearns

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/11/28/bodies-politic/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module

Confronting biological reality on the campaign trail

In May, John Fetterman was on his way to a Democratic-primary campaign event in Pennsylvania when it became clear to his wife that he needed urgent medical attention. Later, doctors confirmed that Fetterman had suffered a stroke — a life-threatening condition in which the blood supply to the brain is temporarily blocked or reduced.

According to the CDC, strokes can “cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability, or even death.” Annually, about 700,000 people in the United States have strokes. For any of them, it would be uncontroversial to recommend that they not pressure themselves with high-stakes performance in the months that follow. But Fetterman’s campaign and the entire Democratic apparatus — and perhaps the candidate himself — had a strong incentive to prioritize his political career instead.

Whether a person is fit to return to work after a stroke depends on both the degree of damage and the nature of the work. Given the objectively grave diagnosis, as well as the responsibility of the office of senator, it was reasonable for voters to demand necessary assurances. But Fetterman refused to release his medical records, instead offering a one-page doctor’s letter saying he “has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office.” He maintained a conspicuously low profile.

In early October, Fetterman gave an interview to NBC reporter Dasha Burns using closed captioning to compensate for his problems with auditory processing. Burns observed that during their small talk before the closed captioning was turned on, “it wasn’t clear that he could understand what we were saying.” For this, she was attacked by Fetterman’s wife as an “ableist.” The American Association of People with Disabilities likewise complained that coverage of the Burns interview was “riddled with ableism.” A disability activist, Charis Hill, told BuzzFeed News that “the way Burns handled that interview will only worsen attitudes and violence towards disabled people.”

The Center for Disability Rights defines “ableism” as “a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities and often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be ‘fixed’ in one form or another.” Insofar as disability-rights advocates focus their efforts on fighting unfair discrimination — for instance, how assisted suicide targets those with disabilities — this is a noble cause. But in the context of employment, not every disability can be adequately adjusted for in every situation.

When Election Day Lasts For A Month

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/14/when-election-day-lasts-for-a-month/

On Sunday, five days after “Election Day,” Americans still didn’t know which party will have a majority in the House while two states were waiting to find out who their next governors will be. Even the BBC has been wondering “when will we know who won.” Have the delays been caused by incompetence or malign forces? Surely both, but it’s the latter that has had the biggest impact.

Forty-two years ago, on the evening of Nov. 4, 1980, the day of the election, President Jimmy Carter conceded to his Republican challenger Ronald Reagan at 9:50 pm Eastern Standard Time. Eight years later – on Election Day – Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis called George H.W. Bush, the GOP’s candidate, and congratulated him on his win.

Hard to believe that many of us grew up going to bed on election night knowing not only who won the presidential election, but who came out on top of many other races, as well. But that’s changed. We no longer have an Election Day. We have Election Week, Election Month – and worse.

Blame Al Gore. The vice president for the man who ran a “permanent campaign” during eight years in the White House kicked off the “permanent election” in 2000 by retracting his concession to George W. Bush on the evening of Election Day. He then put the country through more than a month of turmoil, dragging out a challenge that went well beyond his right for a recount in Florida. His effort to count the votes until he had enough to win had to be ended by the U.S. Supreme Court.

We don’t know how many races, if any, the Democrats have stolen or are stealing in this year’s midterm elections. But they have a reputation for fixing elections. Think of 1960 and Mayor Richard Daley’s Chicago machine and John Kennedy’s tight win over Richard Nixon. Historian and Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Dallek, believed that Daley “probably stole Illinois from Nixon.”

Start with that history, then add to it the fact that Democrats are thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of their policy positions, blend in their taste for exercising raw political power, and the dish that’s produced is poisonous to fair elections.

Florida Counts Its Ballots in Hours, So Why Does Arizona Take Days? By Todd Carney

https://www.realclearflorida.com/articles/2022/11/14/florida_counts_its_ballots_in_hours_so_why_does_arizona_take_days_864565.html

As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. If that’s true, then it is insane to expect Arizona to produce election results in a timely manner and free of controversy. Three months ago, Arizona’s administration of voting in the state primary election created chaos. Arizona let America down then, but many hoped that the state’s leaders would learn from that mistake and produce better results in November. No such luck: Arizona’s administration of the general election shows that its failed leadership has not learned anything.

Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, finds itself at the center of the voting controversy. Its voting administration is divided up between the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the county recorder, and the secretary of state. The board handles the actual voting and counting of ballots, while the recorder’s office manages the registration and verification of voters. The secretary of state oversees voting in all Arizona counties.

On election day, 60 of Maricopa’s 223 voting locations faced problems with their voting machines. The machines would not accept votes, which may have caused some people to miss their chance to cast a ballot. Many felt that these problems disproportionately harmed Republicans because Republicans vote heavily in person on Election Day, while Democrats predominate in the use of mail-in voting.

In early returns on Election Night, the whole GOP statewide ticket started from a massive deficit, creating the illusion that these races were over. Days later, the vote counting continues, while Florida, a state with roughly three times as many people as Arizona, counted nearly all its ballots on Election Night. No matter who wins in Arizona, the losing side will likely feel cheated.

Everyone with a role in managing voting in Maricopa County contributed to this failure. Arizona’s secretary of state is Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is running for governor. Her office is overseeing the election that will determine whether she becomes the next governor. In 2018, Democrats wanted then Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp to resign during his run for governor, and he ultimately did so as counting continued after the election. Hobbs refused to resign, yet she showed up to work for only 19 days in the six months leading up to the election. Hobbs should have been more dedicated to the office she held or else resigned it, especially considering the state’s disastrous primary.

The Other Imaginary Red Wave Despite ceaseless warnings on the left, Election Day came and went without right-wing violence. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/the-other-imaginary-red-wave

Well, that was a dud. Not the abortive “red wave,” but the Democratic expectation (read: ill-disguised hope) that “election deniers” would disrupt polling places on Tuesday with violence and intimidation. In October, a national security bulletin had warned that poll workers were at physical risk from homegrown election terrorists. The Justice Department let it be known that it was monitoring threats against election employees. Illinois officials installed panic buttons and security locks in election offices. People using ballot drop-off boxes were said to be at risk of violent intimidation from crazed MAGA supporters. Michigan anticipated that right-wing poll watchers would disrupt ballot tabulation in Detroit. Election-deniers who had run for office and lost would allegedly refuse to concede defeat, putting “democracy,” in establishment parlance, at further risk. “We could be six days away from losing our rule of law,” warned historian Michael Beschloss, who wondered “whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.”

None of these predictions panned out. There was no electoral violence or intimidation. No one mobbed ballot boxes or election offices. As of this writing, political election-deniers who lost their races have accepted defeat.

We have been through this hysteria before. Predictions of right-wing violence are now a standard feature of Democratic rhetoric. In the lead-up to January 6, 2022 (the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot), the media, politicians, and the Biden national-security apparatus warned that “domestic violent extremists” were likely to strike again. Washington, D.C., was reportedly on edge in anticipation of the MAGA rebels. As it turned out, January 6, 2022, was notable only for the maudlin theatrics of newly patriotic Democrats, who softly sang “God Bless America” in a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps, as calm engulfed them.

During the previous year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued regular warnings about election-denying terrorism. The summer of 2021, August 2021, September 2021—all provoked a satisfying increase in alerts and in precautionary barricades and bollards. And still, the right-wing terrorists did not strike. However loathsome and despicable the mob violence of January 6, 2021, it has proved to be a one-off perpetrated by ill-informed hotheads who got lamentably carried away during one very particular historical moment. (The Paul Pelosi attack is one possible exception to this no-repetition rule.)

The “Stochastic Terror” Lie The Left’s latest gambit for suppressing speech is built on preposterous grounds. Christopher Rufo

https://www.city-journal.org/stochastic-terrorism-is-about-suppressing-free-speech

I browsed the news recently only to discover that, according to a popular science magazine, I was responsible for the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi, husband to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In an opinion piece for Scientific American, writer Bryn Nelson insinuated that my factual reporting on Drag Queen Story Hour was an example of “stochastic terrorism,” which he defines as “ideologically driven hate speech” that increases the likelihood of unpredictable acts of violence. On the night of the attack, Nelson argued, I had appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss my reporting, and, hours later, the alleged attacker, David DePape, radicalized by “QAnon” conspiracy theories about “Democratic, Satan-worshipping pedophiles,” broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.

This is a bizarre claim that, for a magazine supposedly dedicated to “science,” hardly meets a scientific standard of cause and effect. There is no evidence that DePape watched or was motivated by Tucker Carlson’s program; moreover, nothing in my reporting on Drag Queen Story Hour encourages violence or mentions Nancy Pelosi, QAnon, or Satan-worshipping pedophiles. My appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight and DePape’s attack against Paul Pelosi are, in reality, two unrelated incidents in a large and complex universe. And Nelson, a microbiologist specializing in human excrement, is full of it.

But Nelson isn’t trying to prove anything in a scientific sense. Under the concept of “stochastic terrorism,” logic, evidence, and causality are irrelevant. Any incident of violence can be politicized and attributed to any ideological opponent, regardless of facts.

The scheme works like this: left-wing media, activists, and officials designate a subject of discourse, such as Drag Queen Story Hour, off-limits; they treat any reporting on that subject as an expression of “hate speech”; and finally, if an incident of violence emerges that is related, even tangentially, to that subject, they assign guilt to their political opponents and call for the suppression of speech. The statistical concept of “stochasticity,” which means “randomly determined,” functions as a catch-all: the activists don’t have to prove causality—they simply assert it with a sophisticated turn of phrase and a vague appeal to probability.

MICHELLE OBAMA’S NEW BOOK

Some people I know, upset by Biden, keep floating the possibility of a run for the White House by former FLOTUS Michelle Obama. So I was interested in the fact that she has a new book.

Is it a stab at foreign policy, or national economics, or education, or homeland security and defense, or national culture, or race relations?

Nah! It’s about her mighty and inspirational struggles with menopause! Yikes!

Read all about! It gave me a hot flash!…..rsk

“Michelle Obama has never been one to hold back.

Ahead of the Nov. 15 release of her book The Light We Carry, the former first lady, 58, opened up to People about the ins and outs of aging, body image and how she’s dealing with menopause — including her experience with hormone replacement therapy.

“There is not a lot of conversation about menopause,” Obama explained. “I’m going through it, and I know all of my friends are going through it. And the information is sparse.”

“I’ve had to work with hormones, and that’s new information that we’re learning,” she added. “Before there were studies that said that hormones were bad. That’s all we heard. Now we’re finding out research is showing that those studies weren’t fully complete and that there are benefits to hormone replacement therapy. You’re trying to sort through the information and the studies and the misinformation. So I’m right there.”

Obama admits that she’s been spared from having major mood swings, a common side effect of menopause, and that her new fitness routine focuses more on flexibility than building muscle. And she’s OK with that.

“I find that I cannot push myself as hard as I used to. That doesn’t work out for me; that when I tear a muscle or pull something and then I’m out. The recovery time is not the same,” she said. “You wind up balancing between staying fit enough and being kind enough on your body to stay in the game.”

Tragically Trump Will Trump rest on his considerable laurels and ride out gracefully to Mar-a-Lago? Or will he choose the tragic hero path? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/13/tragically-trump/

“Yet for a variety of reasons, both personal and civic, their characters not only should not be altered, but could not be, even if the tragic hero wished to change, given his megalomania and absolutist views of the human experience. In the classical tragic sense, Trump likely will end in one of two fashions, both not particularly good: either spectacular but unacknowledged accomplishments followed by ostracism when he is out of office and no longer useful, or, less likely, a single term due to the eventual embarrassment of his beneficiaries, as if his utility is no longer worth the wages of his perceived crudity.”   —The Case for Trump (2019)

After the midterms, the Republican Party and half of the conservative movement are now furious with Donald Trump. Their writs are many—even though the party establishment shares much of the blame. More importantly still, American elections have radically shifted to mail-in/early/absentee voting rendering Election Day a minor event. The predictable result is that any close race undecided on Election Day in subsequent days usually is won by the Democrats. 

On the eve of the midterm, Trump gratuitously attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who was up for reelection, while all but announcing he would run for president. 

That preview could have waited until the elections had passed. The pizzazz may have galvanized some Trump-haters to go to the polls. It might even have alienated perhaps a few thousand DeSantis Republicans who were not thus inclined to vote for Trump-stamped candidates. 

Trump’s frantic fundraising efforts had amassed a huge sum in his PAC, geared to his future primary fights. But many felt he was far too parsimonious in spreading his largess to his own cash-strapped and outspent MAGA candidates. That stinginess might have helped contribute to their defeats in close House and Senate elections. 

Those earlier rumblings were only amplified after the unexpectedly anemic Republican midterm performance. Trump sent out a disjointed, almost unhinged letter damning DeSantis as disloyal, without gratitude (to Trump), mediocre, and overrated. 

The indictment was ill-timed to DeSantis’ landslide victory over Charlie Crist. DeSantis’ long Florida coattails fueled the only red tsunami of the entire evening. If Trump thought he would employ the battering-ram tactics of his first presidential debate of 2020, then he should remember they failed (in contrast to his effective second debate against Biden). And in reaction, DeSantis’ rope-a-dope silence is effectively designed to let Trump punch his way out and down to the low 30s in approval.

Trump further blamed some of the losses of his endorsed candidates on either their own shortcomings and lack of loyalty, or the bad advice from those who had persuaded him to back losers. New Hampshire U.S. Senate candidate Don Bolduc was deemed insufficiently denialist and so, according to Trump, was crushed in the New Hampshire race. 

Former First Lady Melania Trump, of all people, was reportedly to blame for convincing the ex-president to back Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race. 

Yet Oz turned out to be a tireless worker and a rookie but solid candidate. Still, he was easily outspent—and was fatally injured by the balloting blowback against the mediocre Trump-supported gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. The latter’s wipeout injured Oz and Republican congressional candidates once thought likely to win. 

Worse still, Trump highlighted his self-obsession over party concerns by weirdly celebrating the loss of fellow Republican senatorial candidate Joe O’Dea of Colorado. His RINO crime was spurning Trump’s support. Stranger still, Trump attacked popular Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin for supposedly having a “Chinese”-sounding name.

But these were sins of commission. There were also those of omission. Trump had not issued an ecumenical call to head to Georgia, to forget intramural squabbles, and to rally money and time on behalf of Herschel Walker—Trump’s own endorsed candidate. 

TikTok Time Is Running Out by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19111/tiktok-ban

The Biden administration rolled back its predecessor’s efforts to ban TikTok and is currently in negotiations with the company through the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). According to published reports, a draft agreement would require exclusive US storage for all TikTok data, monitoring of TikTok’s powerful content recommendation algorithms, and create an oversight board comprised of cyber-security experts. The terms of the draft agreement would not require ByteDance to sell TikTok, as the Trump administration previously demanded.

The danger of this approach is obvious – that the app and all the collected data remain under the ownership of a Chinese company which, according to Chinese law, is required to provide this data to the Communist government upon request, at any time.

The draft agreement, which has not been announced or made public, has not satisfied TikTok’s critics. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a longtime critic of TikTok, renewed his call earlier this month for the US government to ban the app from Apple’s and Google’s app stores over the national security risks posed by its ties to China.

[T]he app circulated false information about the COVID-19 virus during the pandemic and [technology experts] believe China could potentially do so again as part of broader propaganda efforts to influence public discourse within the US.

At a time when an invasion of Taiwan by Communist China looms ever larger, why worry about TikTok?

Targeted at American teens, TikTok is a mobile app for sharing short videos, owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance. After five short years on the market, it has more than one billion users worldwide. The app has lived under deep suspicion for much of that time, as American cyber-security and counter-intelligence experts have warned about its enormous reach and direct connections to the Chinese Communist Party.