In a couple of columns earlier this spring, I noted that the modern Democrat Party has willingly — gleefully, in fact — cast itself as the villain in this year’s election cycle. Everything about the Democrats’ actions sends up red flags to average Americans on this score. But I probably should have remembered, as I do now, the excellent line from the great Michael Walsh. Walsh, writing years ago at National Review under the pen name David Kahane, offered that the Democrats were a criminal organization masquerading as a political party. That was patently, incontrovertibly true when he wrote it. It’s obviously, unavoidably true now. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Should Trump Follow the WSJ’s Vice-Presidential Advice? You don’t need to go any further than the shambolic kangaroo-court trial going on in New York, in which Soros-funded District Attorney “Fat Alvin” Bragg is attempting to prosecute Donald Trump for activity that is not a crime in front of a left-wing activist judge, Juan Merchan, with clear, disqualifying conflicts — his daughter heads up a Chicago political fundraising firm that’s close to raising nine figures’ worth of campaign cash for Democrats like Adam Schiff. Fat Alvin’s case is being shepherded by a high Biden Justice Department official brought in as a ringer. Trump has been ordered not to make any of the above information known to the public, so now Republican political officials like Tommy Tuberville, J.D. Vance, and Mike Johnson are appearing at the courthouse to unload on Bragg, Merchan, and the Biden administration for the utter perversion of the legal system they’re unleashing on the public. And why? Power. The Democrats oppose efforts to stop illegal aliens from voting in our elections. Their defense is that those efforts are a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Well, if that’s true, then it would seem that no harm would come of trying to restrict the franchise to those who are eligible for it, no? No. They also oppose efforts to mandate that someone who shows up to vote present an official identification card, like a passport or a driver’s license. Their argument to oppose voter ID is that it unduly burdens black people. Asked about that argument, the vast majority of black people rightly respond that they’re insulted at the idea that they’re too bereft and stupid to obtain one. Everybody knows why Democrats oppose voter ID. It’s plain and obvious why. They aren’t fooling anyone — if they ever did. What’s interesting is that they don’t care whether their arguments are persuasive. Voter ID would make it harder to steal an election; therefore, they oppose it. Period. And then there’s Nevada. You’re aware that Donald Trump leads by as much as 13 points in the Silver State, are you not? Yep, it’s true: [T]he new poll of six swing states shows that among likely voters surveyed in Nevada, former President Trump leads President Joe Biden by 13 percentage points: 51% to 38%. That difference may hinge on favorability. Those with a “net unfavorable” view of Biden — somewhat or very unfavorable — is 64%. It rises to 70% net unfavorable among Nevada’s large nonpartisan population. Regarding Trump, Nevada registered voters have a 49% net unfavorable view, according to those who responded to the poll. Fifty-four percent of registered nonpartisan have a net unfavorable view — 16 percentage points lower than for Biden. If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third-party candidates are added to the mix, the difference stays approximately the same: Trump 14 points ahead of Biden if the vote were held today. RFK Jr. would get 12% of Nevada’s votes, according to the survey. If the numbers in that latest New York Times/Siena College poll hold — maybe they will, and maybe they won’t — there is nothing Team Biden can do to claim Nevada’s electoral votes. When 70 percent of the voters in a state hold an unfavorable view of an incumbent, that incumbent is screwed. But even more screwed in Nevada, thanks to Biden and his party, is election integrity. Democrats foisted a universal mail-in ballot regime in Nevada, and it’s worked quite well for them. They were able to win Nevada for Biden in 2020 and a pair of Senate seats they quite likely would not have won were a more conventional and accountable mode of electoral execution used there. Did you know that in Nevada, they’ll count those mail-in ballots even if they come in as late as four days after the election? Keeping the vote-counting going that long, with mail-in ballots harvested by partisan operatives — particularly in a place like Las Vegas, where much of the population is transitory — is about as obvious a recipe for disaster as it’s possible to have. The transitory population is a big deal here. When people are moving in and out of a state, particularly when it’s a lot of young, single people who tend to live in apartments, you’ll get a great deal of trash in the voter rolls — entries representing names of people who no longer live in a state or at an address. And Democrats never, ever clean the voter rolls. Bring in mail-in balloting — particularly if it’s universal mail-in balloting, wherein all the names on the voter rolls are sent ballots — and you’ll get scads of ballots mailed to a single apartment mailbox. If five people have lived at that apartment over the last 10 years, you could easily have four or five ballots arriving in the mail. All it takes is one operative working that complex, and you could have 100 or more bad ballots to gather up, fill out, and send in. Especially if they’ll be counted well after Election Day, because who knows how many fraudulent ballots might magically turn up in Democrat-run jurisdictions and simply added to the count? The Dems have an amazing track record of finding just enough of those ballots to eke out electoral victory. That’s why the Republican Party has, in a fit of political competence, gone to court in Nevada in an effort to at least force an end to perpetual vote-counting. Please forgive the horrendous facsimile of journalism in this AP story: The Republican National Committee on Friday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to prevent Nevada from counting mail ballots received after Election Day, as the state’s law currently permits. The law, passed by Democrats in 2021, permits the tallying of mail ballots received up to four days after Election Day, provided the envelopes are postmarked before the end of the day. The lawsuit says the provision also assumes that envelopes received three days after Election Day that don’t have a postmark indicating otherwise were posted in time. Republicans contend this violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that there be a single day for Election Day. “Nevada’s ballot receipt deadline clearly violates federal law and undermines election integrity in the state,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement. “Ballots received days after Election Day should not be counted.” The lawsuit comes after Republicans sued to overturn laws permitting the tallying of ballots received after Election Day in Mississippi and North Dakota, and it’s the 83rd election-related suit filed by the party six months before Election Day. That’s a sign of both the increased pace of election-related litigation and the party’s focus on fighting over election rules after former President Donald Trump installed loyalists who have parroted his false claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him. And then there is this laughable quote that the AP pulled out of Francisco Aguilar, the crook who serves as Nevada’s Democrat secretary of state: “I hope the RNC is putting as much time and energy into educating voters on how to participate in elections as they put into suing the state of Nevada.” The argument is that people who mail in their ballots should have as much time to make a decision as do people who vote on Election Day. Of course, there’s an easy answer for that — go vote on Election Day. Which somehow is beyond the power of the Democrats’ “voters” to do. We know that elections in places like Nevada are no longer tests of the public will but, rather, contests for who can fill out and turn in the most pieces of paper marked with their candidates’ names. When the Democrats insult you with references to “our democracy,” bear in mind that this bastardized sham of the franchise is what they’re referring to. They’re hell-bent on rigging the vote in Nevada. The problem is that their man in the White House has done such an awful job of running the country, including ruining the private economy and flooding the country — and particularly states like Nevada — with illegal aliens, that rigging the vote has gotten much, much harder. Perhaps the RNC will win the lawsuit and make it more difficult to harvest those fake ballots. Or perhaps it won’t even matter, because enough real, live Nevadans will show up to defeat Team Biden and its cabal of crooked ballot-harvesting operatives. We’ll see. But the more we see of these transparent attacks on electoral integrity, the harder it is for the Democrats to escape their well-deserved status as villains. Because this is a criminal organization masquerading as a political party. Walsh was spot on years ago, and he’s even more spot on today. The post Just How Sleazy Is the Democrat Party? Take a Look at Nevada. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Joe Biden is in big trouble. If the election were held today, he would undoubtedly lose. Donald Trump has been ahead in the polls consistently since October. That’s unprecedented for Trump across eight years of polling. In 2016 and 2020, he almost always trailed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Not anymore.  READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Critical Race Theory and Campus Antisemitism Quite remarkably, because of Trump’s strength in battleground/swing states, he merely needed to come within about 2 percent of Hillary and Biden in the overall popular vote and still win the Electoral College. But if Trump in 2024 manages to win the popular vote outright, then Joe Biden has no chance in the Electoral College. None, nada, niente. And according to the polls, Trump will do just that if the numbers remain consistent from the fall of 2023 to the fall of 2024 — right up to Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.  As of Tuesday, RealClearPolitics has Trump leading Biden by 1.2 percent in a head-to-head race and by 2.7 percent in a five-way race that includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is having major success getting on the ballot in state after state. As I’ve noted here, there’s debate over whether RFK Jr. hurts Trump more than Biden, but the numbers consistently show Trump increasing his overall vote margin when Kennedy is included in the race.  Of course, all this depends on whether the numbers remain in Trump’s favor through November. However, there’s a crucial indicator that they will remain in Trump’s favor — or, at least, in Biden’s disfavor. To that end, I want to share four important numbers tracked by RealClearPolitics that lately have registered a dismal new low for Biden. Last weekend, RCP showed a disastrous number for Joe Biden, namely, an approval rating of 39.2 percent. Yes, that means that Biden has fallen under 40 percent (when I last checked on Tuesday, it was 39.5 percent). I can’t overstate the significance of that dubious figure. As a presidential historian, I can tell you that since reliable polling began, when an incumbent president slips below 40 percent approval, especially in his fourth year — his reelection year — he’s in big trouble. I wrote a piece during the Obama era titled “The 40-Percent President,” in which I noted how I daily tracked President Barack Hussein Obama’s favorability rating, waiting for it to drop under 40 percent. Other than a few fleeting occasions, it almost never went under 40 percent. Joe Biden, however, is now under 40 percent. And, yet, here are the most significant numbers that spell Biden’s doom. It’s a set of four foreboding figures posted on RealClearPolitics last weekend. They’re the approval ratings of the most recent four presidents at this point in their fourth/reelection year: Biden 39.2 percent Trump 44.7 percent Obama 48.2 percent Bush 47.7 percent Look at those numbers. Or, if you’re Team Biden, read ’em and weep. In the case of George W. Bush and Obama, both incumbent presidents were reelected in their respective coming Novembers even with those approval numbers under 50 percent. Frankly, Obama’s approval was weak enough at several points in 2012 that many of us thought that Republican nominee Mitt Romney could beat him that November. But the Obama turnout, especially among black voters, was overwhelming, particularly against an underwhelming Romney turnout that was not energized by an enthusiastic Republican/conservative base. But, still, the point is this: Obama managed to get reelected even with that under–50 percent approval rating, as did Bush in 2004. By contrast, note Donald Trump’s approval rating at this point in his fourth year. It was 44.7 percent. And he lost. That brings us to Biden at 39.2 percent approval, way below Bush and Obama and even Trump in 2020. If that number holds, Joe Biden is toast in November. As in every election, turnout is key. Biden does not have an enthusiastic base, though he didn’t in 2020 either. The pivotal factor once again will be whether Donald Trump can drive to the polls more people who like him rather than revile him. That’s actually an open question. But, for now, those four figures for the most recent four presidents are quite foreboding for Joe Biden. The post Biden Is in Big Trouble: Four Foreboding Figures appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The polls sound harmonious, but only when the survey commissioned by the New York Times sang, “Joe Biden is loo-ooo–ooo-zing,” did some progressives begin to admit reality. READ MORE from Daniel J. Flynn: 10 Reasons Liberals Haven’t Closed the Happiness Gap This acknowledgment of the dire situation, rather than the situation itself, strikes many Democrats as the discordant note. At best the bad news seems bad form to arrive unaccompanied by a trigger warning; at worst, an invasion of the sacred safe space, a popping of the bubble. “I’m concerned,” The View’s Sunny Hostin admitted. Fareed Zakaria on CNN said Sunday, “As someone worried about the prospects of a second [Donald] Trump term, I think it’s best to be honest about reality.” The New York Times/Sienna poll shows Trump ahead in Arizona (+6), Georgia (+9), Nevada (+13), Pennsylvania (+3), and Wisconsin (+1) among likely voters. Biden edges Trump in Michigan (+1) in a head-to-head race. Left unspoken? Red states gained, and blue states lost, three Electoral College votes in reapportionment, so Republicans enjoy an advantage in the 2024 map over the 2020 map, and the dynamics of the Electoral College, because Democrats tend to run-up wide margins in populous deep-blue states such as California and New York, means a tie or even a loss by a percentage point or two in the popular vote means a Trump victory. “Everything that we’re throwing is spaghetti at a wall, and none of it is sticking,” an exasperated James Carville explained in online video, adding: “We’ve got to try to think of something different because what we’re doing is really, really not working.” They say loudest what they do not say at all. Alex Shephard of the New Republic dares shout it from the rooftops. The data that jumps out at Shephard shows how down-ballot Democrats poll better than the president. For instance, though Biden loses in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada, Democrat U.S. Senate candidates lead there. “Why these voters, who are open to voting for a Democrat, are not also rejecting the GOP’s extremist leader is perhaps puzzling to many on the left,” he writes. “But there’s one unmistakable conclusion: They really don’t like Biden. And that, in turn, ought to make the party think very seriously about whether he ought to remain atop the 2024 ticket.” Did you read that? A writer at a 110-year-old magazine founded by a trio of progressive-era heavyweights, and so left-wing that an agent of the Soviet Union once served as its publisher, wants Democrats to jettison Joe Biden. Presumably, he does not want to do this to give Republicans a cathartic victory but instead to give Democrats a fighting chance. Shephard writes that “not seriously considering this option would be a huge mistake for Democratic officials. The polling has been telling the same story about Biden for months now. Voters do not like him. They do not trust him. They think he is not fit to be president.” Shephard says what Zakaria and Carville think. Do they soon say what Shepherd says and they think? Mounting pressure, buttressed by data instilling the ominous effect on other Democrats of the president’s reverse coattails, seems the only way within the control of worried progressives to avoid the “iceberg ahead!” embodied by the candidate closest in age to the Titanic. Incumbent presidents occasionally face notable challenges, such as George H.W. Bush in 1992, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Gerald Ford in 1976. But, other than Lyndon Johnson, no president in the last century has entered the primary season running only to see another man nominated by his party. One guesses that cowardice, and delusions of the kind that experience a reality check only on Election Day, prevents Democrats from ditching the president. The ensuing free-for-all should they convince Biden to step-aside offers no guarantees. Does Kamala Harris offer a better shot of victory? Would embracing Gavin Newsom provoke cries of racism and sexism from the party’s minority base not interested in perpetually waiting their turn? Could relatively unknown and untested Gretchen Whitmer appear anything but small on a national stage next to as big a personality as Donald Trump? Clearly, a few Democrats favor the unknown unknowns to the known unknowns. The post Democrat Whispers Become Audible: Jettison Joe appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

President Joe Biden tried to buy reelection; what he got was inflation and perhaps stagflation. Entering office vulnerable electorally and economically, Biden pursued massive spending to shore up both. While he secured his Left, he undermined the economy. Ironically, the economic prosperity Biden tried to buy may cost him the reelection he sought to ensure. Beneath Biden’s 2020 victory lurked insecurity that rested on the historical, the ideological, and the economic. READ MORE from J.T. Young: Federalism Is Conservatives’ Secret Weapon Biden’s presidential win was far narrower than it appeared. Despite Biden winning over 7 million more votes than Donald Trump and by 51.3 percent to 46.9 percent, those extra 7 million votes came from California (5.1 million) and New York (1.9 million). He won six pivotal states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) by just under 312,000 votes; he won Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin by less than 77,000 votes: Had he lost them, Biden would have also lost the election. That it was close was not surprising. Biden’s double-digit lead in the polls, which RealClearPolitics’ average of national polling had at 10.3 percent as late as Oct. 11, was down to 7.2 percent in its last preelection calculation. Weakness in Biden’s support was nothing new: Going back to RCP’s last poll average during the Democrats’ nomination battle, fully one-third of Democrats were still backing Sanders (Biden led 60.8 percent to 32 percent). Earlier in 2020’s nomination contest, Biden had appeared all but dead before his campaign was resurrected in South Carolina. Going back to 2016, despite being vice president, Biden had been passed over by Barack Obama for Hillary Clinton. Going back further still, Biden had crashed and burned early in Democrats’ 2008 and 1988 nomination contests. That Biden would be electorally insecure — especially with the Democrats’ Left — isn’t surprising. He also had another reason for insecurity: the economy. The country was rocked by 2020’s pandemic lockdowns, and it was no mystery how weak economies treated presidents; his own victory was proof. If this wasn’t enough, he had only to look at previous defeated presidents — Herbert Hoover (1932), Gerald Ford (1976), Jimmy Carter (1980), George H.W. Bush (1992) — all of whom had economic downturns within a year of losing. His electoral position weaker and the economy still tenuous, Biden needed to shore up both. His solution has been to spend. Doing so would appease his Left and force enough federal largesse to avoid an economic downturn. Simply, Biden would buy loyalty and prosperity. So, Biden spent … and spent. Based on Congressional Budget Office figures for 2021–2023 and estimates for 2024, Biden will have spent $7.9 trillion above 2019’s spending level. He will have run $7.4 trillion in deficits, and federal debt will have reached $27.9 trillion, 99 percent of GDP. What Biden didn’t foresee was how fast — or how long — inflation would follow his spending. In January 2021, inflation (CPI-U) was 1.4 percent; by June, 5.4 percent; by December, 7 percent. Peaking at 9.1 percent in June 2022, it didn’t reach 3 percent until June 2023. It’s not gone below that and instead has increased each of the last three months — hitting 3.5 percent in the latest reading. The Federal Reserve responded to Biden’s inflation with 11 interest rate hikes, taking them from effectively 0 percent to a 20-year high of over 5.25–5.50 percent. Americans were trapped. To offset Biden-flation’s rising prices, they spent down savings. Their pandemic savings gone, they began borrowing. By last October, GAO reported U.S. credit card debt hitting a new record, surpassing $1 trillion. It hasn’t stopped. Now, high interest rates locking Americans out of mortgages (also making housing a further big inflation driver) mean high debt service too. With inflation and interest rates remaining high, Americans are squeezed. Against this vise, Biden’s administration has touted big-picture economic growth numbers — 2023’s 4.9 percent in Q3 and 3.4 percent in Q4. The hope was that overall economic growth could outrun continuing inflation and begin making headway against its three years’ cumulative price pressures. Then came last month’s report that GDP only grew 1.6 percent in 2024’s Q1 — the slowest growth since the economy shrank consecutively in 2022’s Q2 and Q1. Rather than relief, it signaled a stagflation moment: high inflation and low growth. The light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be a train. Biden used uncontrolled federal spending to buy reelection. It worked to appease the Left politically: Unlike 2016 and 2020, Sanders did not run. But economics has proven trickier than politics. Since Biden’s term began, inflation has undermined the economy Americans live, while its interest rate hikes have further raised their living costs. In response to America’s bottom-line problems, Biden’s administration can only offer topline statistics to explain away why Americans feel the crush they do. In pursuit of the macro, Biden lost sight of the micro. Ironically, in pursuit of the economy, he lost the electorate. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023. The post Biden Tried to Buy Reelection appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

“Biden Requests the Spielberg Magic,” editorial cartoon by Yogi Love for The American Spectator, May 14, 2024. The post Biden Requests the Spielberg Magic appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

from Banned Youtube Videos:  TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

by Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics: Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh spoke at a judicial conference for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Justice Kavanaugh said that unpopular rulings tend to become the fabric of constitutional law, pointing to the unpopular decision at the time in Brown v. Board […]