Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Election
2. Alaska
3. Lisa
4. Looters
5. Miscarriage
6. 65 Project
7. Peanut
1. Election. It has been a long time since I’ve seen such a welcome election outcome, 8 years, to be precise. Following the two soul-crushing O’Bama wins in 2008 and 2012, we mostly quit following returns in real time, opting to view the carnage the next morning, if for no other reason than it makes it easier to get a good night’s sleep Tuesday night.
- As of this writing, President Trump ended up with 312 Electoral Votes and the popular vote. He picked up at least three US Senate seats, giving him 52 – 54 in the Upper Chamber. As of this writing, Kar Lake (AZ) and Dave McCormick (PA) are still outstanding, with McCormick up and Lake behind, though closing. Three other very close races to unseat democrat incumbents in NV and WI went to the democrat, the third being an open seat in MI going to Debby Stabenow’s democrat replacement. There is the normal grumbling about democrats stealing all three seats. Republicans hold 216 House seats with 11 left to be decided, though democrats in NV, AZ and CA are furiously trying to change those outcomes as they delay counting votes.
- One of the oddities is the National Popular Vote State Compact, busily pushed by democrats for a decade or two. This is an agreement between the states that swing their Electoral Votes to the winner of the popular vote regardless of what the voters of the individual states actually do. Essentially, it is a way to lock in democrat national election wins on the backs of the coastal cities. Today, there are 209 EVs in these 18 states (DC, DE, HI, RI, VT, CO, CN, MD MA, MN, NJ, NM, OR, WA, CA, IL, NY). As Trump won the popular vote this time around, does that mean we get to add 209 to his 312 EV total, giving him 521 EVs? Somehow, I don’t think so, though the Popular Vote compact guys have been really quiet all week long. Note that State Compacts require Congressional approval. State compacts rewriting substantial portions of the US Constitution without going through the formal amendment process would be unconstitutional, I think.
- As of this writing, President Trump has around 72 million votes, in line with his performance in 2020. Kamala – Walz has around 68 million, a drop of 13 million from Biden’s total in 2020. Some are questioning where these 13 million voters went. I don’t think the voters were ever there, though the votes most certainly were. Additionally, NV, AZ and CA are still “counting”, which mainly means they are manipulating the count to see if they can flip the House majority for democrats and keep Kari Lake out of the US Senate. PA has reported all their votes counted, though incumbent Bob Casey is refusing to concede, hoping votes found by the USPS after the fact or Mark Elias’ lawfare will force the election into a recount where anything can happen. CA has only managed to count perhaps 60% of their outstanding votes. As an aside, CA managed to recall a pair of Soros Prosecutors, Gascon in LA and Price in Alameda County. CA also passed Prop 36, requiring punishment for shoplifting and drug offenses.
- One thing that appeared not to work this time around was democrat laser focus on abortion. It seemed that voters were not into all abortion all the time, which may open the door to an actual conversation about how to balance the demand for bodily autonomy (pro aborts) and human life (pro-life). Additionally, who gets to decide the rights of both the father and the kiddo in this discussion? Note that men don’t have bodily autonomy. That was removed when they were made subject for the draft (selective service). And everyone gave up their bodily autonomy during the COVID years, nobody more gleefully than the Karens of the brainwashed left, who demanded everyone sit down, shut up, take the vax, multiple boosters, and accede to all the COVID cosplay of masking, social distancing, closed schools, etc.
- Finaly election news is that Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) was on the ballot in 8 states and DC. It was summarily rejected almost everywhere. The only place it passed was in DC. Nationwide, pro-RCV campaigns spent over $157 million in support (or defense) of it, over 24 times the spending of the opposition.
2. Alaska. While the numbers are not final yet, it looks like Alaska tossed its RCV initiative adopted in 2020. Along with it, we also tossed a democrat, Mary Peltola elected to the US House courtesy of Sarah Palin and RCV twice in 2022. This wasn’t as confusing as it sounds, as Peltola was elected to serve the last few months of Don Young’s term in Aug and then elected to serve her own term in Nov. As with other parts of the nation, RCV was backed by massive amounts of out of state (Outside) money, nearly $7 to pass it in 2020 and over $14 million to defend it this year. Opposition spending was $1.1 million, a spending imbalance 21:1. We were carpet bombed with ads defending RCV. Peltola’s campaign also brought around $10 million, outraising challenger Nick Begich 5:1. $28 million of PAC money flowed into the state. Alaska ended up fourth nationally in terms of Super PAC spending this cycle. There are only so many traditional media stations and papers to go around, so much of the Peltola, PAC and RCV defense money flowed down ballot into ads and campaign mailers for democrats. In a normal year, this would have been sufficient to help them purchase a legislature. The oddity is that it didn’t happen. While both houses of the legislature now have “bipartisan majorities” there was no wholesale rejection of Republican candidates. In short, the media ad blitz didn’t work. This reprises the statewide primary in August in which it seemed that the public was ignoring the ad blitz. Most of the ads were as ugly as I have seen in years up here, uniformly negative, lying continuously about RCV and Begich. Those lies were rejected by the general public. We will know more Tuesday, when the state Division of Elections counts absentee ballots and does their (hopefully last) RCV sort. Turnout Election Day was relatively poor, though early voting set a record for most participating.
3. Lisa. The big loser in Alaska this election is our senior US Senator, one Lisa Murkowski. Lisa becomes the 53rd Senator, the last one on the list of whomever the new Majority Leader wants to get something on board to support a nomination or piece of legislation. As she is well up on the seniority list, she carries significant baggage in the form of anti-Trump animus. While Trump and Lisa do not get along, it is important to remember where this fight began, with Lisa’s public trashing of Trump following NBC’s release of the Billy Bush tapes as the October Surprise in 2016. Lisa took the tape as her excuse to refuse to endorse Trump, dragging newly installed junior US Senator from Alaska along with her. Sullivan was ripped nine ways from Sunday afterwards for playing along and has since recognized the error of his ways, working closely with Trump while in office. Lisa, not so much, managing to go along with Dianne Feinstein during the Kavanaugh festivities. Sullivan is up for reelection in two years. He, along with newly installed Representative from Alaska Nick Begich will be front and center working closely with Trump on Alaskan issues, mostly resource development. Lisa is up for reelection in four years, at the end of the Trump term. She will need to find a way to keep her mouth shut during that time, something I don’t think she is capable of doing. Remember that Trump is a counterpuncher, who will return fire early and often. He rarely throws the first punch. Lisa may be too dumb to keep her mouth shut. She may very well destroy her ability to win any statewide office over the next four years. We will see.
4. Looters. When you invite people into the nation, one of the things you ought to do is educate them on how we do business, something Harris – Biden pointedly refused to do when inviting 10 – 15 illegals across the border. Pinellas County Sherrif’s Office announced that 41 of 45 alleged looters rounded up on armed robbery, burglary, loitering, grand theft, vandalism, and trespassing charges in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton were illegals. There were another 196 caught in suspicious circumstances, questioned and then released. 163 of those were also illegal. Finally, there were 58 charged with scamming hurricane victims out of some $250 million for repairs they never did and likely never intended to do. No word how many of them were illegals.
5. Miscarriage. As part of their pro-Kamala electioneering, the Wash Post published a heart-rending tale about a woman arrested for a miscarriage. The arrest happened in NV, with the woman charged with manslaughter. It was widely shared on social media with a NYT columnist gleefully jumping onboard a day or so later. It turns out that the event happened in 2018, four years before Dobbs. Abortion is also legal in NV, before and after Dobbs, though there are some limits. The woman got pregnant with a baby that was not her boyfriend’s, where she was staying. She waited around until the third trimester, when the baby was viable. NV law bans abortion late in the pregnancy, so she took a variety of drugs to end the pregnancy, ending up triggering a miscarriage. She buried the baby in the backyard. She was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 30 months – 8 years in prison. The sentence was set aside due to incompetence of counsel. It was a really sad story, as the woman apparently refused to consider any other options than abortion for her child, which probably testifies to the success of Planned Parenthood in stomping alternatives into oblivion. Not quite the Handmaiden’s Tale story the Wash Post would want us all to read.
6. 65 Project. Yet another Soros-funded gem is the 65 Project, a legal conspiracy intended to deny Trump supporters and employees legal representation. The Project is named after the number of election lawsuits filed by the Trump side of the house following the 2020 election. It includes a number of luminaries on the democrat side including David Brock. Tom Daschle, a number of former democrat lawyers, jurists and officials. Their tactics are pretty blunt, filing Bar Association ethics complaints against any lawyer who mounts a legal challenge in an election that opposes an outcome favoring democrats. Given the leftist political leanings of the Bar Associations, a lot of these complaints have managed to get lawyers for Republicans disbarred, unable to practice in those states. They were so impressed with themselves that they ran ads in the swing states before the 2024 election threatening any lawyer who touched anything associated with the Trump campaign with professional and personal destruction. But when you traffic in bullying and extortion, sometimes the enemy responds. America First Legal filed a bar complaint against the director of the 65 Project in Utah, where he is licensed, accusing him of having no personal knowledge of any ethical problems of a lawyer he targeted with a bar complaint. In other words, he was simply making it up as he went, trusting the leftist state bar association to do his dirty work for him. The complaint accuses the director of “… engaging in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice by seeking to punish lawyers associated with a single client.” Also involved in this was Pelosi’s Jan 6 Committee. When you lift up a flat rock, you are sometimes amazed by what slithers out to escape the sunlight.
7. Peanut. One of the last kicks received by the flailing Kamala campaign was the 5-hour raid of an animal rescue operation in upstate NY by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation. The officers grabbed a trained squirrel and raccoon using rabies as their excuse and destroyed both animals. While in the home, they also threatened the wife with deportation just to demonstrate that they were little more than jack-booted thugs. Hot Air ran a piece by David Strom entitled Why Peanut the Squirrel Matters that describes what happened and why it is important. While the following is not the closing, it sums up nicely:
Yes, all those things matter. But the story of Peanut matters because it is a microcosm of what we are facing. A nameless, faceless, and merciless bureaucracy with no sense of proportion or empathy can, at a whim, upend people’s lives over what amounts to nothing. It can seize a beloved family pet, the mascot of an organization that does enormous good, just because some nanny-stater decides they don’t approve.
More later –
- AG