Out for a Walk
Tightening Prospect for Midterms
Fred Barnes is an old hand at politics. He sees a tightening midterm election.
“…Strategists treat the “generic ballot” as a magic number. It asks which party you intend to vote for. At one point, Republicans were minus-18. That’s landslide time. Now they’re minus-3 or tied with Democrats.
Republicans have underpolled on this question for decades. This leads to a twist. If they’re at minus-7 or better, they’ll probably lose fewer than 23 seats and relegate Democrats to the minority for two more years. That’s what GOP savants say, anyway.
Ah, but there’s more. Republican intensity—how hyped up they are about the election—has gotten stronger than the anger of all those agitated Democratic resisters. That’s a pretty amazing development. So is the emergence of the 89-90 percent of Republicans who say they’re fine with Trump, according to a GOP survey of likely voters.
Issues? The double whammy of a surging economy and huge tax cut are bound to boost Republicans. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is sticking to her story that the tax bill merely sprinkled crumbs around the country, but no one else is…”
Old Man
Batavia, New York. Elba Farm Security Administration farm labor camp. An old man who has lived all of his life near Broadway, New York City, and who was taken off relief and sent to the Elba FSA camp to work in the harvest. He said, “There is so much suffering in the world today that mine doesn’t seem so much, and I’m doing my best to help bring in Uncle Sam’s crops.”
Tenaya Canyon
Navarro on Trudeau
The interview with White House Trade Director Peter Navarro on the contretemps with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau is a good example of the president’s style of negotiating and I think a masterpiece of the “Art of the Deal.” It sends a message to Trudeau, but more importantly, it sends a message to Kim Jong Un, who is set to meet the president next Tuesday. The message to Un is: look what happened to one of our closest partners when he crossed the U.S. in negotiations. To view the clip click on the link.
National Archives or “Select” National Archives?
An interesting article on missing Obama Administration records.
Thomas Lipscomb:
“…the Obama administration itself engaged in the wholesale destruction and ‘loss’ of tens of thousands of government records covered under the act as well as the intentional evasion of the government records recording system by engaging in private email exchanges. So far, former President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Lynch and several EPA officials have been named as offenders. The IRS suffered record ‘losses’ as well. Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy called it ‘an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws.’…”
Leaks, Leaks Everywhere
Jonathan Turley on Former FBI Assistant Director McCabe and McCabe’s exposure to criminal charges for leaking.
“…An old expression holds that it is unlucky to be “third on a match.” It comes from the Crimean War and World War I, when a sniper would spot a match being passed between soldiers and have time to shoot the third soldier in the sequence. Of course, there was no guarantee that it would take two lights to get a clear shot. In this case, McCabe has watched two prior figures go down on the same match. This is precisely why leaking, like smoking, is so hazardous in trench warfare…”
Trump Maintains Popularity
The response from President Trump to a CNN reporter during the president’s press conference following the G7 is why the president maintains relatively high popularity. Click the link to view.
“Who are you with, out of curiosity?” Trump asked.
“CNN,” the reporter responded.
“I figured,” Trump said. “Fake News CNN. The worst. But I could tell by the question. I had no idea you were CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you were with. You were CNN.”
Trump told the reporter that his relationship with the G7 leaders is “great” and assigned it a rating of a ’10’ on a scale of 0 to 10.
“So you can tell that to your fake friends at CNN,” Trump told the reporter.
G7 Message – The Days of Taking Advantage of the U.S. Are Over
The media just can’t help themselves. The reporting is all negative. Trump alienated our allies. Trump is the worst. Trump is dumb. Trump is having mental problems. The world hates the U.S. now. The old world order is over. Trump disrespected U.S. media. You name it, the fake news has reported it, and it’s all a disaster.
I think the meeting went fine. Trump told our allies the days of taking advantage of the U.S. are over. They can play fair on trade, or they can take a hike. The U.S. annual GDP is larger than all the other G7 countries combined. We have run huge trade deficits with most of the countries present. Trump is exactly right that the U.S. will prevail in any economic trade war with any or all of the G7 countries.
Service Station Operator in Seminole, Oklahoma.
Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration, August 1939.
Biscuits
More on the Media’s Blue Wave
Polling and national sentiment do not seem to support a huge blue wave in the upcoming election. Momentum seems to be with Trump, and is based on his successes with the economy, foreign policy, judges, and thumbing his nose at the media and elite society. I think the giant fizzle that is the Mueller investigation also supports Trump.
“…The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 70% of Likely Republican Voters say they are more likely to vote this year than they have been in past election years. That compares to 64% of Democrats and 51% of voters not affiliated with either major political party.
Among all Likely Voters, 62% say they are more likely to vote this year. Only six percent (6%) say they are less likely to do so, while 30% say they are just as likely to vote this November as in any other year.
By comparison, in July 2014, 57% said they were more likely to vote that November compared to past elections. Enthusiasm was higher two years ago during the presidential campaign, with 67% who said they were more likely to vote…”
Big Money Heading to Red States?
Joel Kotkin:
“…Yet as they consolidate control, California Democrats must face some profound contradictions, as the Marxists would say. The gentry—tech oligarchs, real estate speculators, and venture capitalists—stand comfortably with the left on symbolic race, gender, and environmental issues. But these party bankrollers could be hard-pressed if they face the prospect of higher taxes to pay for a state single-payer health-care system, massive housing subsidies, and Governor Brown’s choo-choo, not to mention the state’s ever-soaring pension costs. As Amazon is learning in Seattle, progressive politicos have figured out where to find the biggest piles of cash. Aggressive taxation of tech companies is already becoming a trend in Silicon Valley.
A stronger, motivated grass-roots Left could constitute the greatest immediate challenge to Governor Newsom. Many Californians, particularly millennials and minorities, face a lack of high-wage jobs, soaring rents, and essentially insurmountable barriers to homeownership. A majority of Californians, according to some surveys, express dissatisfaction with the state’s bifurcated economy. The disappearance of upward mobility makes these voters susceptible to embracing such things as rent control, higher minimum wages, free college, and free health care. They will support ever higher taxes on businesses and on generally white, affluent Californians. The call for new spending will become more problematic once the state comes back to earth from its Silicon Valley and real-estate inflation highs, which for now keep the operating budget in the black.
At some point, Newsom and the Democratic nomenklatura will have to deal with pervasive conditions of diminished opportunity, racial polarization, and fiscal weakness. When these realities eventually impinge, the state’s progressive rulers may find themselves on the defensive, and—if confronted with a plausible opposition—vulnerable, at long last…”
Get Woke, Go Broke
This could not happen to a more deserving “comedian.”
“…More than a dozen sponsors for Samantha Bee’s late-night show Full Frontal did not run advertisements on Wednesday’s episode, a week after the TBS host called White House advisor Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt.”
Unlike last week’s episode which saw ad spots from national brands like Taco Bell, Apple, Haagen Dazs, and Jim Beam, Wednesday’s Full Frontal featured promos in large part from other programs on TBS and TNT, Variety reports.
Sponsors State Farm and Autotrader suspended their advertisements on the weekly show last week.
An embattled Bee returned to her Turner cable network show on Wednesday to deliver an angry apology, that was long on one-liners and short on remorse for Ivanka Trump…”
Deep Stater Busted for Lying
The leaking in the Trump Administration has been terrible. No matter which side of the aisle you are on, the leaking is a detriment to the government. I don’t like to see people charged with crimes, but it appears this man was in a position of authority and responsibility and decided to take it upon himself to release secret information to the press. What bad judgement. I do not have much sympathy for him.
California Next?
“…The best hope for a failed state such as Illinois is to let the state go bankrupt.
The State of Illinois incurred deficits reaching nearly $15 billion in 2017, and those deficits are projected to double to $30 billion in 2018. Illinois has also accumulated hundreds of billions in unfunded liabilities in public sector pension and health-care plans. This has exposed local jurisdictions to the risk of default or bankruptcy. In response, Illinois has issued large bailouts, further weakening the finances of the state’s government. The courts have exacerbated this problem by ruling the Illinois Constitution mandates state bailouts for public sector pension and health plans.
Fiscal rules in Illinois have been ineffective in constraining deficits and debt. Illinois, like 48 other states, has a balanced budget provision in its state constitution. But, in recent years, the state legislature has failed to pass a budget at all — let alone one that would balance revenues and expenditures.
In April 2018, a constitutional amendment to cap the rate of growth in spending at the rate of growth in the state economy was introduced in Illinois’ legislature. A majority of Illinois state legislators have yet to show support for such a fiscal rule…”
Scorching Analysis of Samantha Bee
I am not a big fan of Kevin Williamson, but he writes some funny stuff every now and then. Here’s a snippet on Samantha Bee.
Kevin D. Williamson:
“…Samantha Bee on her worst day, like Samantha Bee on her best day, is a reminder of one of the most underappreciated facts of public life in the 21st century: Mass democracy has no intellectual content. It is, as David French and others have noted, simply an extension of high-school cafeteria-table politics: status-jockeying and status-monkeying 24/7/365.25 and not much else. It doesn’t do much for the country, but it beats working for a living. Keep that in mind the next time you find yourself muttering “Hell, yeah!” when your favorite multimillionaire cable-news rodeo clown lays the rhetorical smackdown on one of his multimillionaire Central Park West neighbors two buildings over while you’re stuck in traffic commuting home to the suburbs from downtown wherever…”
Hummingbird
State Electoral College?
An interesting analysis. I think I would support this idea in a referendum.
“…Californians don’t “keep voting for this”. California is a huge state. Many residents consistently vote down intrusive regulations and excessive taxation. Unfortunately those voters face two gigantic problems. The first problem is that the interests of Californians who live in rural and suburban areas (which make up the majority of California’s geography) greatly rival the interests of those who live in urban centers. The second problem is that 80% of Californians live in urban centers – most notably Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
A look at the voting map from Tuesday’s primaries shows the problem in full detail.
Democrat Gavin Newsom pulled a “Hillary” and secured most of the coastal dwellers. Everyone else chose the Republican candidate…”
NFL — What’s That?
The Eagles tried to politically embarrass the president. The president kicked their butts up and down the street. If there is one thing the president knows, it’s how to manipulate politics and the media.
Daniel Henninger:
“…Donald Trump is a showman, who has been playing the media like a Stradivarius his whole life. Now he’s got Twitter , his own loud calliope.
In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.
The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.
Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?
The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t…”