PLAYING INTO TRUMP’S HANDS: Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury.’
LIKE THE SONAR-ABSORBING COATINGS ON SUBMARINES: Sound-absorbing fur helps moths avoid bat predation. Cool.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE ELECTIONS: Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle.
JOHN LEO: Why This Is A Very Scary Time For Young Men.
When a recent Canadian study of about 30,000 students between 7th and 12th grade found that more boys than girls were victims of physical dating violence, the reaction was one of disbelief. Accusations of male sexual harassment were exploding from the university campuses to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, begetting the #MeToo movement.
The most memorable perpetrators of sexual assault against women committed heinous acts: some women had been drugged and raped; others had been fired after they rebuffed an overt sexual assault. But many other acts were considered by both men and women to be normal fun and flirtation. During the media frenzy, abuse against men was never even reported as a footnote as men—good and bad—were accused and labeled as sexual predators.
In the past 38 years, more than 270 studies, with an aggregate sample size of more than 440,000, have found that “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners” from teenage years on. Since studies of teen dating violence began in the eighties, researchers have found that female high school students are four times as likely as male high school students to be the sole abuser of the other sex (5.7% vs. 1.4%).
The best studies of dating violence differentiate by the severity of violence (according to the Conflicts Tactics Scale). For example, a study conducted by Caulfield and Riggs found that 19% of women vs. 7% of men slapped their female partner. However, when it came to kicking, biting or hitting their partner with a fist, 13% of women vs. 3% of men engaged in those more severe forms of violence. The more specific the questions are, the more both sexes acknowledge the women were between two and three times as likely to hit, kick, bite, or strike their partner with an object.
Among all populations, most violence was mutual. But when it was unilateral, it was more likely to have been initiated by the woman. For example, in a study of over 500 university students, women were three times as likely (9% vs. 3%) to have initiated unilateral violence.
Yet these studies have rarely made headlines.
Female privilege.
NOW THE IMMIGRATION COURTS ARE REALLY JAMMED: The backlog of immigration cases suddenly jumped to the highest level ever, 1,098,468 cases, according to data tracked by the Transactional Records Analysis Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. This news comes just as three large groups of new potential cases are making their way north from Central America via Mexico toward the southern U.S. border.
Don’t miss the neat map of the states that lets you click on one to get the number of immigration cases there. If you aren’t familiar with TRAC, you should be, especially if, like me, you can never get enough data about government operations and mis-operations.
I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Range Review: Ruger AR-556 in 450 Bushmaster.
WELL: Incoming Democrat Chairman: Dems Will Go ‘All-In’ On Russia, Impeach Kavanaugh For ‘Perjury.’
Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed plans for House Democrats to investigate and impeach Justice Brett Kavanaugh for alleged perjury and investigate and impeach President Donald Trump for alleged treasonous collusion with Russia.
In post-election chats with various callers while riding the Acela train from New York to Washington, Nadler gave advice to a newly elected representative and discussed potential 2020 Democratic presidential nominees with another. He also lamented identity politics and the thriving economy and worried about Democrats losing working-class voters while gaining elite former Republicans and suburban women.
Nadler was headed to DC for a two-day planning session with his staff and Judiciary Committee staff. “We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing,” he explained in a phone call with a friend. Nadler requested that the friend’s name be concealed on the grounds he is a private citizen.
The two discussed two routes for investigating new Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.
The Kamikaze Wing is in charge and they haven’t even been sworn in yet.
DEMOCRATS DON’T DO AS WELL AS HOPED/EXPECTED, GUESS WHO LINDA SARSOUR BLAMES: If you guessed, “the Joooz,” you win.
This illustrates a serious point about antiSemitism: it’s not “left” or “right,” it’s a conspiracy theory where you blame a phenomenon that you don’t like and don’t understand on Jews. Socialism or capitalism, sexual promiscuity or sexual repression, etc.; it doesn’t matter if it makes any sense, or if it’s directly contradictory to what you’re ideological opposites are blaming the Jews for. So just as you will see right-wing troglodytes blaming the Jews for enabling the left, you will find Linda Sarsour and company blaming Jews for disabling the left when it “underperforms.”
BAMN, BAMN, BAMN–THE ROOTS OF THE ANTIFA: I mentioned earlier today that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was approved by voters on this day in 2006, a decade after the almost-identical Proposition 209 in California. In both campaigns, major opposition came from a Trotskyite group (and I don’t use the word “Trotskyite” lightly here) called the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. Its members go by the acronym “BAMN,” and they are apparently an offshoot of the Revolutionary Workers Party. Knock me over with a feather if these guys aren’t wearing Antifa masks these days.
During the California campaign, we mostly laughed BAMN off. But in Michigan (and later in Arizona) there started to be real reason to fear for the safety of the initiative’s supporters, including its signature gatherers:
Just one among dozens of examples of [BAMN’s] willingness to use “any means necessary” was its attempt to intimidate the Michigan Board of Canvassers into refusing to certify MCRI for the ballot. BAMN brought in busloads of protesters who shouted down officials, jumped on chairs, and stomped their feet, flipping over a table in the process. As the director of elections for the Michigan Secretary of State put it, “Never before have I seen such absolutely incredible and unprofessional behavior from lawyers urging this disruption.”
BAMN’s co-chair and attorney saw things differently: “We cannot allow our opponents to determine what our tactics should be,” she said. “Our tactics win. That’s the bottom line.” They did not, however, win before the Board of Canvassers. Board members voted to certify the initiative for the ballot as the law required them to do. The following November, the voters approved it 58% to 42%.
I wasn’t there at the Board of Canvassers meeting, but I’ve seen the video. Alas, I couldn’t find it today (though I confess I didn’t look that hard). But I did find a more recent video of BAMN storming a meeting of the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Finding the second video is even better, since it vividly shows that the Board of Canvassers meeting was part of a pattern.
Oh yeah, and they filed the lawsuit that reached the Supreme Court too. BAMN is well funded.
BREAKING: Sessions Over.
JEFF SESSIONS HAS RESIGNED.
Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler is demanding an investigation, which is funny because just last year he was saying this:
The clown show begins!
YES, JOY BEHAR ACTUALLY SAID THIS: The Federalist’s Bre Payton has the sad details.
THIS DOESN’T SURPRISE ME: Ignoring Patient Input Tied to Diagnostic Error.
MICHIGAN VOTERS ADOPTED THE MICHIGAN CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE BY A WIDE MARGIN ON THIS DAY IN 2006: The Initiative was a clone of California’s Proposition 209. Like Proposition 209, it banned discrimination and preferential treatment based on race, color, sex, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education and public contracting.
Here’s the one of the most interesting aspects of it: In a party-line vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting en banc, held that such an initiative was unconstitutional. Michigan voters were not even allowed to require their state universities and agencies to refrain from discrimination intended to help minorities.
For an explanation of the arguments read The Parade of Horribles Lives: Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary.
Yes, the Supreme Court eventually reversed (over the dissent of two Justices).
Those who wonder why voters who don’t like Trump voted for him anyway should cogitate for while on the Sixth Circuit’s party-line vote in this case. (Note that one judge who was technically appointed by Bush was really a Clinton holdover appointee and voted with the other Democratic appointees.)
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NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Strange snafu misroutes domestic US Internet traffic through China Telecom. For two and a half years.
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: I Got A $1,300 Vampire Facial Like Kim Kardashian — & It Was So Intense.
I DUNNO, KIDS GET SPANKED LESS THAN EVER, AND ARE ALSO MORE EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE THAN EVER: Spanking Is Still Really Common and Still Really Bad for Kids. I have real doubts about the conventional wisdom here, notwithstanding “a consensus of scholars and doctors.”
NEED A FLU SHOT? Get It Now.
ROGER KIMBALL: The midterms delivered a feeble rivulet, not a blue wave.
IRA STOLL: Takeaways From The 2018 Midterm Elections.
SCIENCE: Most tonsillectomies performed on children no benefit to health. On the one hand, I believe that, but on the other hand, my sister had to move heaven and earth to get my nephew a much-needed tonsillectomy that, once performed, resolved his problems. There’s too much one-size-fits-all medicine out there.
BEN, I JUST WANT TO SAY ONE TO YOU. JUST ONE WORD: PLASTICS. Analyzing Lego Porn, the Fetish That Will Ruin Your Childhood.
The 21st century is not turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase.
HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: War and Ebola in eastern Congo.
SOME TRUTHS MUST NOT BE SPOKEN: Professor attacked for reporting that liberal administrators outnumber conservative ones.
HEADLINES FROM 1968: Officials: Ronald Reagan LSD probe bigger than you think, 14 nuke sailors snagged.
And/or Monty Python sketches from 1972:
I BET DEMOCRATS ARE WISHING that Obama Attorney General Eric Holder had not set a precedent that the AG may simply ignore subpoenas from the House of Representatives.
IT’S THE MORNING AFTER, SO I CAN’T BE ACCUSED OF VOTER SUPPRESSION: Elites, especially left-of-center elites, seem to care a whale of a lot more about the tiniest “interference” with what they regard as voting rights than they do about … well … any of our other rights. Granted, voting rights are important and vigilance is appropriate. But as I wrote a few weeks ago in my Statement in an Commission on Civil Rights report: “[I]f anything, elected officials may be accused of spending a disproportionate amount of time worrying about voting issues (and hence about their own re-election) to the detriment of issues that affect their constituents’ lives in more direct ways.” Ditto for denizens of governmental bureaucracies. (And it’s not that they hold self-governance in such high regard. If they did, they’d be concerned about the reach the bureaucratic state. But they like that leviathan. They think it’s a nice little anti-democratic monster.)
It would be nice if they were half as vigilant about economic liberties and free expression (which fewer and fewer seem to care about today).
DIVERSITY PROBLEM: 100 percent of UGA administrators, 67.9 percent of faculty donate to Dems.
YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: The blue wave ran into Trump’s red wall.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE ELECTIONS: Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: We Are Never, Ever, Ever, Campaigning Together and Much, Much More. “What a night. I slept in 20 minute increments most of the night/morning but I caught the most shocking part of the election live because it happened early: Fox News made a call that the Democrats won the House around 9pmET. WHY? How many people were still voting? At the very least the west coast voters were still going to the polls. At the time, the Democrats had only picked up 2 seats, can you imagine hearing that on your way to the polls if you live west of New York City? What a horrible, horrible decision FNC, shame on you. Rumor is the never-Trumpers run the news division at the network. Indeed.”
THE INSTA-WIFE: The Senate, Unfairness, and the Kavanaugh Effect.
WEIRD THAT FEMINISTS AREN’T MORE EXCITED ABOUT TENNESSEE’S FIRST WOMAN SENATOR: Marsha Blackburn wins Tennessee’s US Senate race: 4 takeaways on her historic victory.
Plus:
Tennessee Democrats fielded their best candidates for governor and U.S. Senate in a dozen years. And what did they get in return?
A blowout loss by nearly 20 percentage points in the race for governor and a not-quite-as-bad loss of around 10 points for U.S. Senate.
Not even Bredesen, the last Democrat to have any statewide office in Tennessee, could turn around the party’s statewide fortunes, particularly in rural counties.
Bredesen won many of these rural counties, particularly in Middle and West Tennessee, during his 2002 victory over Republican Van Hilleary. He won all of the state’s 95 counties in his 2006 re-election.
And yet this time, when it came to Bredesen’s race for U.S. Senate, Blackburn won many of these same counties with more than 70 percent of the vote.
As the piece notes, Bredesen was leading until Dianne Feinstein’s late hit set off the Kavanaugh craziness. Kavanaugh also probably cost Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Nelson their seats. Without that from Feinstein, the Dems might have taken the Senate.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Oh no. This will lead to yet another Taylor Swift song about a man disappointing her.”
CURRENT SENATE RESULTS: MAP. Although it doesn’t appear to reflect Bill Nelson’s concession in Florida, reported below.
THIS IS TOO BAD: Scott Walker loses bid for third term in Wisconsin. But a third term is hard to pull off.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE ELECTIONS: Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle.
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JOHN ELLIS: The Left Is Normalizing Hatred. “It’s frightening that it’s okay for women to write articles about how they hate men.”
I WOULD FAVOR A LAW INFORMING JURIES THAT THEY CAN ALWAYS REFUSE TO CONVICT IF THEY BELIEVE A CONVICTION WOULD BE UNJUST: Federal Judge Advocates Jury Nullification After Being Shocked by Overzealous Child Pornography Prosecution.
THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME:
● Shot: Beto O’Rourke wins on Election Day…even if he loses his race, Reuters says.
—Headline, Fox News, last night.
● Chaser: How [Wendy] Davis wins by losing.
—Headline, the Politico, June 22, 2014.
THERE IT IS! Blue check libs triggered by ‘Senate popular vote’ inequities (Whaaat?). “Ezra Klein made the ‘House popular vote’ hypothetical on Monday, and that approach is even more ridiculous when applied to the U.S. Senate.”
KEITH ELLISON WINS MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL RACE AMID ALLEGATIONS FROM AN EX-GIRLFRIEND THAT HE ONCE PHYSICALLY ABUSED HER.
Or as Jim Geraghty tweets, “ONCE AGAIN, KEITH ELLISON BEATS SOMEONE.”
Heh.™
THREE TERM DEMOCRATIC SENATOR BILL NELSON HAS CONCEDED THE RACE TO GOV. RICK SCOTT.
YOU HAD ONE JOB: Or perhaps I had one job. I seem to have made it insufficiently clear why it was very important we not lose the house.
Yes, yes, I know, “but we got the Senate.” Fine. It’s not a complete disaster.
OTOH this is how I see it:
The dems get two years to hide whatever inky stuff has been going one with the FBI/CIA. After another two years that swamp might be permanent.
Trump is by nature a deal maker. After the first two government shut downs, he’ll meet them halfway. This will wreck our economy and yep his presidency with it. As they did with Bush in 2006, they now have a chance to wreck the economy and have it blamed on the sitting president.
Border security? What border security? Moar Dem voters, citizenship being insignificant.
Seriously, yeah Judges. Not all is lost. But this is bad, very bad. We failed to beat the margin of fraud. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe Trump won in 16 because they seriously underestimated him.
Yeah, they threw a lot of money at this. But let’s be real, if they can win the House on promises to raise our taxes and throttle our energy production and, oh, yeah, impeach the president that finally got the economy going? We need to up our game, and somehow we need to clean up vote fraud. Which is now infinitely harder to do, since the loons got the power. No, I’m not giving up. But this is a heck of a corner we’ve got ourselves painted into.
I’m going to have two fingers of Devil’s Cut and go to bed. Tomorrow it’s back to the trenches.
REPUBLICAN DAN CRENSHAW, TARGET OF ‘SNL’ JOKE, WINS TEXAS HOUSE SEAT.
UPDATE: Crenshaw “just took the stage at his party in Houston and immediately addressed the SNL joke. ‘It’s been an interesting last 72 hours for us,’ he said. He said people have been asking if he was offended. ‘I’m from the SEAL team so we don’t really get offended,’” Emily Foxhall of the Houston Chronicle tweets.
IT’S DEJA WENDY ALL OVER AGAIN: Beto O’Rourke’s $69 Million Couldn’t Defeat Ted Cruz.
Flashback: Wendy Davis lost badly. Here’s how it happened.
Update: Beto O’Rourke’s loss to Ted Cruz is a heartwarming reminder that money can’t buy elections.
November 6, 2018
MY USA TODAY COLUMN ON THE ELECTIONS: Election results 2018: Forget the blue wave and behold the purple puddle.
HERE COME THE CRAZIES! Nancy Pelosi As Speaker, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Elijah Cummings In Leadership Roles.
FOX CALLS NORTH DAKOTA FOR REPUBLICAN KEVIN CRAMER, FOR ANOTHER GOP SENATE PICKUP. The Kavanaugh Effect seems to be kicking in, with Manchin (who supported Kavanaugh) winning, and Donnelly and Heitkamp who opposed Kavanaugh, going down.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Fox calls Texas for Cruz (ABC has already done so) and projects that the GOP will retain Senate control.
AN EASY WIN FOR BILL LEE IN TENNESSEE. I think he’ll be a good governor.
UPDATE: Fox calls New Jersey Senate race for Menendez, and Tennessee for Marsha Blackburn. Bredesen was the Dems’ best and only chance for winning that seat in Tennessee; they don’t have much of a bench.
WELL, SOON WE’LL KNOW SOMETHING. The bed-wetting phase is finally over.
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RESULTS COMING IN AT THE PJMedia Live Blog.
THE LEFT IS 100% RESULT-ORIENTED: The Left is preparing either to praise or vilify white women, depending on today’s results.
The Right has a steadfast fall guy, rightly or wrongly, in media bias. We’ve seen the Left, instead, try to reinvent excuses for the past two years. But it initially chose fake news, only to realize that Republicans would effectively hijack it. Then came Russia, followed by the laments of the electoral college.
Leading up to today, two narratives have emerged from the Left. First is the statistically probable one — namely that the blue wave is significantly contingent on suburban white women swinging left, in tandem with voter turnout. On the other side of the coin is the excuse: If Democrats lose, it’s because fragile, complicit white women couldn’t leave the kitchen long enough to vote against their husbands.
This isn’t a straw man. It’s their actual argument. Tamika Mallory, Women’s March organizer and Louis Farrakhan BFF, calls the demographic trend of white women voting for Republicans their ” Becky situation.”
“Dear white women: Here’s how to step up for women of color,” wrote Victoria Rodriguez at Mashable. (Spoiler alert: Vote “intersectional,” read: Democrat.)
Pod Save America warned the “47 percent of White Women who didn’t sell us out” to convince the 53 percent who voted for Trump to go blue.
Best yet, Jen Kirkman warned white women, “Vote like your husbands aren’t watching.” Because naturally, all white women still live in a kitchen in Victorian England. Or modern-day Iran.
And as for the white women who don’t follow the blue line? Ex-GOP strategist Cheri Jacobus says they are a part of his “rancid, racist base,” comprising solely of “uneducated white men ( and the women who make them their sandwiches).”
To be fair, the Insta-Wife makes an awesome sandwich. She sent me off with one for the plane last weekend.
WE’LL KNOW SHORTLY: Democrats poised to win governors races as ‘eight-year itch’ hits voters.
IT’S ONLY A PARTIAL FIX, NOT A CURE, BUT IT’S STILL GOOD NEWS: St. Louis doctors may have found fix for polio-like illness affecting kids across U.S.
His family eventually turned to Dr. Amy Moore, of Washington University in St. Louis. “My goal with the children with AFM was to restore hip stability, and then motion of the upper legs,” she said.
Brandon would receive what doctors say is a first-of-its-kind surgery that allowed him to walk again.
Moore says she’s the only doctor in the U.S. to perform nerve transfers on children’s lower extremities. “I used what they have. They were wiggling their toes, and so I was able to move a nerve that wiggles the toes to the hips.”
Surgeons at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are also seeing some success with nerve transfer surgery to help children after a bout with AFM.
Fourteen months ago, Moore performed the nerve transfer surgery on Brandon’s leg at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. According to Dr. Moore, children typically respond best to this type of surgery because their nerves grow back more quickly. She said nerve transfers are most successful within nine months of diagnosis.
During last week’s check-up, Brandon was walking again. “It’s been amazing,” he said. “Thanks to Miss Doctor Moore, I can go outside, play with my brothers, play football.” He said now he only uses his wheelchair to play basketball.
The cause of AFM is still unknown, but it seems to develop after a viral illness. According to the CDC, nearly 400 people have been diagnosed since 2014.
I don’t like it, and wish it would go away.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY, especially with an obscure L.A. Story reference.
IT’S 2018, AFTER ALL: William Shatner has made a Christmas album with Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop.
TO BE FAIR, IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MATH: Professor attacked for reporting that liberal administrators outnumber conservative ones.
While you’re waiting for the results, the PJM Live Blog is being regularly updated, and here is Monty Python’s classic election night sketch. I wonder what the numbers are like in Harpenden Southeast?
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Are you ready for a chip implant?
You walk into a grocery store and pick up eggs. No smartphone? No problem. You swipe your hand across a reader, and the amount is deducted from your bank account.
If that sounds far-fetched, you obviously haven’t been to Sweden recently, where thousands of people have reportedly had chips implanted in their bodies.
A company called Biohax has already “installed” around 4,000 chips in customers, inserted just below the thumb. They can use the implant to open secure doors, pay for tickets, and share emergency information with medical personnel. The chip is about the size of a Tylenol pill, and the procedure — which costs $180 — is similar to getting a tetanus shot.
As a famous cyborg once said, “DO NOT WANT.”
LEFTY YOUNG-ADULT INFOTAINMENT SITE VOX STAYS TRUE TO FORM: Essentially, back in 1845, Congress set up Election day on a Tuesday in November to accommodate a bunch of (white, male) farmers’ working, traveling, and religious practices.
BLAME MODERN LIFE FOR POLITICAL STRIFE:
Perceptions, false or otherwise, have an insidious habit of determining reality. In this case, Americans are convinced that they are locked in a political grudge match against a homogeneous tribe of outsiders.
As a result, Republicans and Democrats are increasingly unwilling to get married, be friends, or live beside one another. In 1960, only 5% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats disapproved of their child marrying outside their party. In 2014, 30% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats disapproved of inter-party marriage. Compare this to interracial marriage, a former taboo. According to Gallup, 87% of Americans now favor interracial marriage, up from 4% in 1958.
Along the same lines, 63% of Republicans and 49% of Democrats report being friends primarily with those sharing their political views. Another nationally representative study found that 20% of Democrats and 15% of Republicans believe that their country would be better off if large numbers of people in the other party died. We’ve traded one prejudice for another.
Read the whole thing.
HE CHOSE . . . POORLY: An Australian Man Has Died 8 Years After Eating a Garden Slug on a Dare.