Voter Registration Application Sent To Dallas Woman Who Died 29 Years Ago

A good article on the reality of politics and the maturity required to operate at the highest levels.

Byron York:

“…Two years and five months ago, on the day of the Indiana Republican primary that ended his presidential campaign, Ted Cruz unloaded on Donald Trump. It was more than an unloading — Cruz disgorged months of resentment against the man who defeated him and attacked his wife, his father, and his character. Trump was a “pathological liar,” Cruz told reporters, a “bully,” a “narcissist,” an “utterly amoral” man who acted from “a deep yawning cavern of insecurity.” Cruz took his anger at Trump to the Republican National Convention and beyond.

By Election Day 2016, Cruz had come to an uneasy support of his party’s presidential nominee. And then Trump won. So on Monday night, at the Toyota Center in Houston, there was Cruz, introducing Trump with fulsome praise.

“I’m proud to have worked with President Trump on the biggest tax cut in a generation,” Cruz said.

“I’m proud to have worked hand-in-hand with President Trump to repeal job-killing regulations.”

“I’m honored that President Trump is here endorsing and supporting my campaign,” Cruz declared, “and I look forward to campaigning alongside him in 2020 for his re-election as president of the United States.”

Was it hypocrisy? A lack of principles? Plenty of observers would be happy to charge Cruz with those sins and more. But that’s not what was going on. Say what you will about Cruz, and Trump, but there could be no greater tribute to the overwhelming power of voters in the American political system than what took place in Houston Monday.

The voters changed Cruz’s mind. He represents the voters of Texas, and wants to keep doing so, so he supports the president they support, regardless of the past. It doesn’t matter whether Cruz believes what he says deep down. What’s more important is his signal that he will do what the voters of Texas want.

Trump recognizes a fellow transactional politician when he sees one. Onstage in Houston, Trump gave a brief history of his relationship with Cruz that was the distilled essence of it’s-just-business politics.

“In just 15 days the people of Texas are going to re-elect a man who has become a really good friend of mine,” Trump said. “You know, we had our little difficulties.”

“But actually, if you remember, in the beginning, it was a love fest,” Trump continued, referring to the days in which Cruz chose to wrap his rival Trump in a “bear hug.”

Trump recalled that the press saw hypocrisy at work at the time. “Remember, they kept saying, ‘Well, when is it going to break up?’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll break up…’ And then we said, ‘You know, it’s time — that’s what has to happen.'”

“And it got nasty,” Trump said. “And then it ended.”

It would be hard to find a more concise telling of the story. In the end, it was just business.

Now, Trump said, he and Cruz get along famously. “Nobody has helped me more with your tax cuts, with your regulations, all of the things we’ve been doing with your military and your vets than Sen. Ted Cruz,” Trump told the crowd.

“He defended your jobs, he defended your borders,” Trump said of Cruz. “He defends your families, he defends your faith, and we are defending together, with a lot of other Republicans, your freedom.”

Earlier in the day, on the way to Texas, Trump rejected the nickname he gave Cruz during the campaign. “He’s not Lyin’ Ted anymore,” Trump said. “He’s Beautiful Ted. I call him Texas Ted.”

After a brief scare, Cruz seems to be in control of his re-election race. Cruz has led Democratic rival Beto O’Rourke in all 17 of the polls in the RealClearPolitics average of polls dating back to April. But in August, things got a little close, and the White House made plans for the president to visit Texas on Cruz’s behalf.

Lately, Cruz has been back up. In the last three surveys, by CNN, the New York Times, and Quinnipiac, Cruz has led O’Rourke by seven, eight, and nine points, respectively.

The man who came up with “Lyin’ Ted” turned his sights on O’Rourke Monday night. “Ted’s opponent in this race is a stone-cold phony named Robert Francis O’Rourke, sometimes referred to as ‘Beto,'” Trump told the crowd. “He pretends to be a moderate, but he’s actually a radical, open-borders left-winger.”

Does anyone think the phrase “stone-cold phony” might occasionally reappear in the campaign between now and election day, courtesy of the president?

Monday night’s rally marked another stage in the relationship between Trump and Cruz. They have been through a lot, openly loathed each other, and are now virtually composing love songs for each other. Who cares what they really think? The voters made it happen…”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-in-texas-trump-and-cruz-complete-the-transaction

Brendan Kirby:

1.) History favors the party out of the White House.

2.) President Donald Trump’s approval rating is low.

3.) Republicans are defending many more open seats.

4.) Democrats are winning the money race.

5.) The polls favor Democrats.

6.) Democrats have outperformed Republicans in special elections.

https://www.lifezette.com/2018/10/six-reasons-why-republicans-should-still-worry-about-midterms

Don’t get cocky, kid.

“…President Donald Trump’s approval rating has reached a new high, even as likely voters favor Democrats by 9 points to lead Congress, a new poll from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found.

The poll found that 47 percent of respondents approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 49 percent disapprove. That is the best he has done in the NBC/WSJ poll since taking office. And it represents a major jump in the president’s popularity; the same poll found him with a 39 percent approval rating six months ago. 

Although Democrats maintained a sizable lead among likely voters – 50 percent said they would prefer a Democrat-controlled Congress, and 41 percent would like to see the Republicans keep their majority – the poll found that Democrats’ advantage disappeared in the most competitive districts. In the hotly contested races, the party preference numbers are closer to even, the Journal reported…”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/10/22/nbc-wsj-poll/1726244002/

Cue the banshee cries that Trump causes hurricanes!

Paul Mirengoff:

“…Did you know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s former president, is on Twitter? It’s true.

On his Twitter account, Ahmadinejad describes himself as “Husband, Dad, Grandfather, University Professor, President, Mayor, Proud Iranian.” A better description would be “Jew hater, Holocaust denier, homophobe, serial human rights violator, and Death to America advocate.”

There’s a place on Twitter for a guy like that, but not for the Gay Patriot.

Is Ahmadinejad softening on America, though? This weekend, the following tweet appeared on his feed:

Watched highlights of the @UMichFootball and @MSU_Football great effort by both teams; as always a hard work ethic pays off.

‏But Ahmadinejad also tweeted favorably about the Black Panthers, a gang of thug revolutionaries from yesteryear. The “professor” wrote:

One of the main objectives of the #BlackPantherParty was feeding the hungry; which did not sit well with the #UnitedStatesGovernment.

Our government had nothing against feeding the hungry. What didn’t sit well was the Panthers’ murderous criminality and desire to overthrow the U.S. government through armed insurrection. No wonder Ahmadinejad has reached into the dustbin of history and praised the Black Panthers on Twitter (though an outfit like the Panthers would be quickly and violently suppressed in Ahmadinejad’s Iran).

“Death to America” still seems to be Ahmadinejad’s desire. But maybe he would exempt Michigan, or at least the Spartans and the Wolverines…”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/10/twitter-yes-to-ahmadinejad-no-to-the-gay-patriot.php

“Can a bureaucracy bankrupt a business for its unpopular beliefs?”

Julie Kelly:

“…Just as Democrats try to woo suburban moms ahead of next month’s election, along comes Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to remind us how much the Left hates us.

Sinema is running against her Republican House colleague, Rep. Martha McSally, for the open seat vacated by retiring Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. The 42-year-old unmarried bisexual atheist lawyer with a Ph.D. in Justice Studies has some interesting views on life, as you might imagine.

She once wrote that capitalism poses a danger to Americans; she was an anti-war activist in the early 2000s—one of her protest groups distributed flyers portraying U.S. soldiers as skeletons with automatic rifles; she summoned witches to one anti-war stunt; and she mocks her own (adopted) home state as a “meth lab of democracy” whose residents are “crazy.”

Not exactly a winning campaign message when you’re running in Arizona.

But it’s her 2006 profane comments ridiculing stay-at-home moms that now pose a major problem for her party, and could very well cost her the election. Then-state representative Sinema questioned the feminist cred of women who don’t work outside the home and instead chose to care for their families. “These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they’re choosing to live that life,” Sinema said during an interview with a Scottsdale magazine. “That’s bullshit. I mean, what the f— are we really talking about here?…”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/22/kyrsten-sinema-reminds-us-that-democrats-hate-housewives

This is a clear message to China

“…The U.S. sailed two guided-missile warships through the Strait of Taiwan Monday, in what Taipei’s ministry of defense described as a routine passage through international waters.

Officials in Beijing have yet to comment on passage of the American destroyer and cruiser, but in the past the Chinese government has taken a hard line against Navy vessels transiting the waterway separating mainland China from Taiwan.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has vowed to conquer it by force, if necessary…”

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/10/22/two-navy-warships-transit-taiwan-strait/

“…President Trump has repeatedly called out Google, Facebook and Twitter for liberal bias. Two weeks until the midterms, it would appear he may have had a point.

Employees of the tech giants have given a total of $2.4 million to House and Senate candidates, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Of that, only $176,000 – just eight percent – went to Republicans.

By comparison, in the last midterms in 2014, Google, Facebook and Twitter workers gave a total of $838,000 to congressional candidates, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Of that, $679,000 went to Democrats and $259,000 went to Republicans.

In July, President Trump accused Twitter of “shadow banning” prominent Republicans. “Not good,” he tweeted. He also accused Google in a series of tweets in August of playing up negative articles about him in search results…”

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-facebook-and-twitter-staffs-splurge-on-democrats-ahead-of-midterms

He’s the average American in exaggerated form—blunt, simple, willing to fight, mistrustful of intellectuals

David Gelernter:

“…Every big U.S. election is interesting, but the coming midterms are fascinating for a reason most commentators forget to mention: The Democrats have no issues. The economy is booming and America’s international position is strong. In foreign affairs, the U.S. has remembered in the nick of time what Machiavelli advised princes five centuries ago: Don’t seek to be loved, seek to be feared.

The contrast with the Obama years must be painful for any honest leftist. For future generations, the Kavanaugh fight will stand as a marker of the Democratic Party’s intellectual bankruptcy, the flashing red light on the dashboard that says “Empty.” The left is beaten.

This has happened before, in the 1980s and ’90s and early 2000s, but then the financial crisis arrived to save liberalism from certain destruction. Today leftists pray that Robert Mueller will put on his Superman outfit and save them again.

For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful…”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-reason-they-hate-trump-1540148467?mod=hp_opin_pos1&fbclid=IwAR3p2dY69CNP1LE7mhLlB78dsSAopIbmXix-2rzhE6m3mKXNViMHY_ziQSc

Angelo Codevilla:

“…Partisan “dirty tricks” are unremarkable. But when networks within government and those who occupy society’s commanding heights play them against persons trying to unseat them, they constitute cold civil war against the voters, even coups d’etat. What can possibly answer such acts? And then what?

These people, including longstanding officials of the FBI and CIA, are related to one another intellectually, morally, professionally, socially, financially, politically, maritally, and extramaritally. Their activities to stop the anti-establishment candidate, and president—in this case, Trump—have spanned the public and private realms, and involved contacts in Britain and Australia. They enjoy The Washington Post’s, The New York Times’, the Associated Press’s, CBS’, NBC’s, ABC’s, and CNN’s unquestioning megaphone effect to the rest of the media.

The Democratic Party’ opposition “research,” for which the wife of a senior FBI official was partly responsible, was cross-validated by the FBI and became the substance of a counterintelligence warrant for surveilling the Trump campaign. After Trump’s victory, the intelligence agencies’ agencies’ summits continued their political and socially partisan alliance as “resistance” against the elected President. Even before inauguration, the Times and the Post published what the highest intelligence officials said were the agencies’ conclusion (no evidence, just conclusions) based on highly classified information, that Trump had “colluded” with Russia to steal the election.

When the surveillance and the investigation turned up nothing, intelligence and Justice Department officials played peek-a-boo with snatches of classified information behind transparently bogus claims of national security, and tried to catch him in perjury traps and other “procedural violations.” With the Media’s help, they created headlines and hampered Trump from governing. Two years later, the agencies continue to fight Congress’s demand that the classified bases for the allegations be made public. . . . What matters a lot is that our ruling class does not deal and will never again deal with their opponents as fellow citizens. Theirs was a quintessentially revolutionary act, after which there is no stepping back…”

https://americanmind.org/essays/our-revolutions-logic

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An “academics only” approach to skill development has failed; it’s time to consider apprenticeship programs as well.

“…The 2016 election heightened the nation’s awareness of the economic woes of many American workers, especially blue-collar workers lacking a college degree. Wage stagnation, while worsened by the slow recovery from the Great Recession, is not a new trend. Men’s long-term earnings have stagnated with each passing cohort from those entering the workforce in 1967 to those entering in 1983. (Women’s earnings increased 59 percent over the period, but from a low base.) Another concern about declining opportunities in America is the erosion of middle-class jobs due to some still debated combination of outsourcing and automation.

Commentators and political factions blame these labor market problems on everything from bad trade deals, to declines in manufacturing jobs, to corporate greed, to outsourcing, to an uncompetitive tax and regulatory environment, to lax immigration policy. But there is another contributing factor that receives less attention: the weaknesses of secondary, postsecondary, and job-training systems in preparing students for well-paid jobs and rewarding careers.

U.S. researchers too often equate “skills” with years of schooling, completion of degrees, or scores on tests of math and verbal capabilities. In their well-known book, The Race Between Education and Technology, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz argue that increases in educational attainment have been too slow to yield healthy economic growth and reduce wage inequality. This view of skills is one driver of the expansion of higher education spending over recent decades. In 2014, the United States spent $27,900 per full-time equivalent student in postsecondary education, 81 percent more than the OECD average of $16,400…”

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/10/17/the-virtue-of-aprenticeship/

I think the disgrace that was the Kavanaugh hearings made many people take notice.

“…Nearly two thirds of registered voters showed a high level of interest in the election—the highest ever recorded in a midterm election since the Journal/NBC poll began asking the question in 2006.

“It’s a barnburner,” Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster who conducted the survey with Democrat Fred Yang, said of the surge of voter interest. “There’s a switch that’s been flipped…They are engaging in the campaign and the process.”…”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/interest-in-midterms-surges-boosting-trump-approval-rating-

1540126920

I have few policy agreements with Glenn Greenwald, but he is a man of character and integrity. We have much more in common than we have differences. This is true for most Americans.

Make no mistake the recent military events with Switzerland, talk of the end of Swiss neutrality and joining NATO, joint operations like that in the image below with Norway, all these things are an aggressive message to Russia that despite Russian belligerence, The US is a powerful and committed foe that occupies your western frontier and has many small nation-state allies in the region.