Mark Kelly Wastes No Time Revealing Himself to Be a Nightmare

Kelly was able to sneak into a full term by essentially hiding under Kyrsten Sinema’s skirts for the first two years, doing nothing to call attention to himself. Conservatives here knew that there was a gun-grabbing nightmare just waiting to bust out if he was given six years.

Well, his first move wasn’t against the Second Amendment; it was even creepier.

Mr. Green covered it yesterday in his weekly Insanity Wrap:

Red-pilled California activist Michael Shellenberger’s Public substack grabbed an exclusive on Monday about a weekend conference call concerning the SVB bailout. There, Kelly “asked representatives from the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) if they had a way to censor information on social media to prevent a run on the banks.”

Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie was also on the call and told Public, “I believe he couched it in a concern that foreign actors would be doing this but he didn’t suggest the censorship should be limited to foreigners or to things that were untrue.”

So the way Kelly sees it, Americans sharing facts are a danger. This guy ran as a moderate — and got away with it, too.

Moderately fascist, maybe?

Despite the fact that he’s an astronaut, Kelly never comes off as being terribly bright. Asking something that stupid on a call with that many people would certainly indicate that he doesn’t function at a high level outside of the International Space Station. And, as Massie pointed out, Kelly didn’t even bother to cover his intentions in any nuance.

Stephen mentions that no one really addressed Kelly’s question — most likely because they were so stunned by his audacity and/or stupidity. It would be nice to think that Kelly would learn something from that, but that’s probably not going to happen. Kelly is such an egomaniacal little jerk that he’ll more than likely be emboldened by this.

That means Gun Grabber Kelly is sure to show up sometime soon. That’s not going to work out for him here like he hopes it will. Arizona may have started bleeding purple lately (we’re still pretty red in the House), but this is still a gun state. A fairly bipartisan gun state, in fact. Most of my liberal friends here have guns.

Why Kelly decided to try and become an anti-2A crusader in Arizona is beyond me. He’s a carpetbagger here, he could have done the same thing in a blue gun-hating state.

Again, he’s not that bright. That’s what makes him dangerous.

The Untouchables

In the movie The Untouchables, written by David Mamet and directed by Brian De Palma, a streetwise Irish cop named Malone tries to educate a starry-eyed fed named Eliot Ness in the ways of Chicago justice when up against an implacable, deadly opponent like Al Capone. The scene has become justly famous for this line: ““He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT’S the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone.”

But for our purposes here, what even more important is the exchange between Sean Connery and Kevin Costner that immediately precedes it:

Ness: I want to get Capone! I don’t know how to get him.

Malone: [talking privately in a church] You said you wanted to know how to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying, what are you prepared to do?

Ness: Everything within the law.

Malone: And *then* what are you prepared to do? If you open the ball on these people Mr. Ness you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they won’t give up the fight, until one of you is dead.

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? In a battle between good and evil, with the law having gone over to the side of evil—as it had in the gangland Chicago of the 1920s and ’30s—what are the good guys prepared to do? With the country-as-founded now being shot out from underneath us on a near-daily basis, how do concerned citizens fight back?

The electoral system? Since the election of George W. Bush in 2000, there have been at least three presidential votes in which the losing side has contested the outcome; Bush’s hanging chads, Hillary Clinton’s baseless charge of “Russian collusion” against Donald Trump in 2016, and the chaos of 2020 that installed longtime hack politician Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in the Oval Office. Of these, the two most recent are best viewed in tandem. The Left was taken by surprise by Trump’s Electoral College victory (the only kind that counts) and, starting the day after the vote, launched its plan to make sure they’d never be robbed by what they thought was a fixed fight again.

Read this—“Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition” from something called the Electoral Integrity Project and weep:

Preventing-a-Disrupted-Presidential-Election-and

Some of their thoughts:

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Howie Carr: Newly liberated Twitter blows lid off Democrat tainting of 2020 election.

What was the biggest difference between the Democrats’ efforts to rig the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020? In 2020, they succeeded.

That’s the main takeaway from Elon Musk’s release Friday night of the internal Twitter documents about the biggest Democrat presidential-election scandal since… the last one, in 2016.

Musk conclusively proved that corporate management conspired with Democrats to suppress the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which revealed the breathtaking corruption of the entire Biden crime family.

To recap, in 2016 the DNC and Hillary Clinton concocted a fake scandal about Donald Trump and then peddled it to Democrats in the media, who hysterically promoted it for years knowing that it was 100 percent false.

In 2020, after the discovery of Hunter Biden’s X-rated laptop, the Democrats, knowing that everything on it was 100 percent true, peddled the fantastic tale that it was Russian disinformation.

And the same corrupt Democrats in the media, who four years earlier had promoted a bogus scandal about Republicans, now refused to cover a real, far worse scandal about Democrats.

As one person summed it up Friday night on the newly liberated Twitter:

“They stole the election. And they tried to make you think you were crazy for thinking you knew they stole the election.”

Now the Democrats are busted. Their new fallback alibi is that it’s really no big deal to steal an election, at least as long as they’re the ones stealing it.

Thank you, Elon Musk, for your courageous attempt to get the truth out. I don’t care how much money he’s got, what Musk has done could be hazardous to his health. So let me just state the obvious:

Elon Musk did not commit suicide

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Six Degrees from James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges With the Release of the Twitter Files.

Below is my column in the New York Post on the reemergence of James Baker, the former FBI general counsel, at the center of the Twitter suppression scandal.

Here is the column:

As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.

Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. (Baker would later testify at Sussmann’s trial). Baker’s name also appeared prominently in controversies related to the other Russian-related FBI allegations against Trump. He was effectively forced out due to his role and reportedly found himself under criminal investigation. He became a defender of the Russian investigations despite findings of biased and even criminal conduct. He was also a frequent target of Donald Trump on social media, including Twitter. Baker responded with public criticism of Trump for his “false narratives.”

After leaving the FBI, Twitter seemed eager to hire Baker as deputy general counsel. Ironically, Baker soon became involved in another alleged back channel with a presidential campaign. This time it was Twitter that maintained the non-public channels with the Biden campaign (and later the White House). Baker soon weighed in with the same signature bias that characterized the Russian investigations.

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post ran an explosive story about a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden that contained emails and records detailing a multimillion dollar influence peddling operation by the Biden family. Not only was Joe Biden’s son Hunter and brother James involved in deals with an array of dubious foreign figures, but Joe Biden was referenced as the possible recipient of funds from these deals.

The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling, nepotism, and other forms of corruption. Moreover, the campaign was not denying that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s and key emails could be confirmed from the other parties involved. However, at the request of the “Biden team” and Democratic operatives, Twitter moved to block the story. It even suspended those who tried to share the allegations with others, including the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was suspended for linking to the scandal.

Even inside Twitter, the move raised serious concerns over the company serving as a censor for the Biden campaign. Global Comms Brandon Borrman who asked if  the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users.

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BREAKING: Matt Taibbi Drops More Information on the ‘Twitter Files’ and Exposes an Attempted Cover-Up

Matt Taibbi, who authored the first release of the infamous “Twitter Files,” is back for round two. Or at least he’s back to provide a supplement to round one while round two is still being worked on.

According to Taibbi, James Baker, who was general counsel for Twitter and a former top-level FBI official, inserted himself into the disclosure in an attempt to “vet” the files that were ultimately released. Elon Musk was not notified of Baker playing middle-man.

As RedState reported, Baker was fired on Tuesday, and with Taibbi’s latest thread, we now know why. I normally try to not flood my articles with long strings of multiple tweets in a row, but it’s important to get all the information out there.

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Well, they were in on it, so it’s no surprising

BLUF
This is appalling. The “danger to democracy” that the mainstream media and the Democrats have been screeching about for months is not Republicans—it’s the dishonest American media itself.

The Real ‘Threat to Democracy’: Dems Colluded With Twitter to Affect the Outcome of the 2020 Election and the Media Doesn’t Care

It’s an absolute bombshell of a story—Twitter, the social media home of journalists and politicians, censored a damaging story about Joe Biden’s son in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election, clearly affecting the outcome. Friday night, Twitter owner Elon Musk released the smoking gun: files proving that Twitter engineers purposefully shut down any mention of the New York Post Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story despite knowing that it was actually true.

After years of decrying “Russian influence” in our elections, and lambasting Republicans for questioning election outcomes (despite new Democrat House leader Hakeem Jeffries being one of the great deniers of all time), you’d think the media would be issuing blanket coverage of this outrageous and undemocratic action by the social media bluebird.

Not so. As of 8:11 PM PST, over 5 hours after the news started breaking on Matt Taibbi’s Twitter account (an event which was publicized well in advance by Musk), the Usual Suspects in journalism could barely find the space in their pages to mention it. A rundown:

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HOW TWITTER HELPED ELECT JOE BIDEN

As Elon Musk promised, Twitter is releasing internal documents about how and why they suppressed information about Joe Biden’s corruption, as documented on his son’s laptop, in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign. Twitter apparently outsourced the task to liberal (but not crazy) commentator Matt Taibbi. You can follow Taibbi’s thread here.

I will have more to say when it is over, but here are some highlights as we go along.

The Biden campaign communicated directly with Twitter to get objectionable tweets censored

Remarkably, Twitter locked out the account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany because she referred to the (accurate) New York Post story about the laptop. A Trump staffer complained disgustedly:

Twitter officials suppressed the news but couldn’t come up with a coherent rationale for doing so

It is notable how many Twitter employees questioned whether there was any basis for suppressing the news about Biden:

One Democratic Congressman reached out to Twitter to express free speech-related concerns, but Twitter officials didn’t seem to get the point:

A guy named Szabo from NetChoice weighed in, explaining to Twitter the desirability of more censorship:

The thread continues. So far, I would say it tells us pretty much what we already knew. Liberal Twitter employees seized on a flimsy pretext to suppress a story that would hurt the Biden campaign in the closing days before the election. Taibbi comments that one striking feature is that the censorship was carried out without the involvement of Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, who later apologized for it. Perhaps the partisans at Twitter thought Dorsey may not be on board with their censorship.

It is also interesting to read the many replies by liberals who think that what Twitter did was A-OK. I they represent the majority of Democrats in believing that any information that helps Republicans or hurts Democrats should be suppressed.

The thread is ongoing, you can read it at the link. I will follow up later tonight or in the morning with any additional significant revelations.

Well, either they know they’ve lost, or the fix is already in. We shall see.

Gun-Control Groups Staying Out of Georgia Senate Runoff as NRA Spending Surges

Gun group spending ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff has been decidedly one-sided.

With the election only days away, none of the three major national gun-control groups–Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords, and Brady–are making much of an effort to influence the race’s outcome, Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show. The latest filings for Everytown for Gun Safety’s Super PAC show it has only spent $1500 for phone calls in support of incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock (D.). Neither Brady PAC nor Giffords PAC has submitted updated filings since the November general election. None of the gun-control groups’ websites refer to any new spending or advertising campaigns ahead of the final Senate race.

The lack of activity among the major gun control groups stands in stark contrast to the strategy taken by gun-rights advocates ahead of election day. The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund has poured more than $3 million into the race on television adsdigital adsmedia placement, mailers, and text messages in support of Herschel Walker (R.), the PAC’s filings show.

Timothy Lytton, a Georgia State University law professor who studies gun politics, told The Reload that the gap in reported spending could be the result of differing strategies.

“I think gun-rights groups are probably doing more to craft a media strategy,” he said. “That takes a lot more dollars. The gun-control groups are probably trying to mobilize more volunteer networks in terms of getting turnout.”

The runoff battle is the last key Senate race in which the NRA and all three major gun-control groups have endorsed a candidate–the NRA for Walker and the other three for Warnock. The race’s outcome will determine the extent of Democratic control in the Senate. If Walker wins, the Senate will remain a 50-50 split, and Vice President Kamala Harris (D.) will again be the tie-breaking vote for the Democrats’ razor-thin majority. If Warnock wins, Democrats will have gained a seat in the chamber in an unusually strong midterm performance for a party with an incumbent President in the White House. It will also lock in a key Georgia Senate seat under Democrat control for another six years.

Few polls have been conducted for the race, but those that have been released show a narrow lead for Senator Warnock. An AARP/Fabrizio Ward & Impact Research poll released last Tuesday found Warnock leading Herschel Walker 51 percent to 47 percent among all likely voters. That’s a gap within the poll’s margin of error, meaning voter turnout could be a decisive factor.

At the same, investments from gun groups may not be enough to sway the outcome of the race. The same poll found that among voters aged 50 and older, the demographic most likely to vote in the race, only four percent rated gun control/gun rights as their most important deciding issue. That puts it ahead of only climate change as the least cited issue among eleven possible choices. Just two percent of older voters who are not already committed to either candidate rated guns as their top issue.

Lytton agreed that guns have faded a bit as an important issue among the Georgia electorate. He chalked that up to the recent success of the gun-rights movement in getting measures like permitless carry passed in the state, diminishing the sense of urgency for pro-gun voters.

“Gun rights have been near the top of the state’s political agenda for well over a decade, and there have been a lot of legislative successes for gun-rights groups,” he said. “I think in some ways that has taken the wind out of their sails. One of the things that prompts turnout among gun-rights voters is the fear that their liberties are going to be restricted.”

With Republicans now in control of the House, and an extremely narrow Democratic majority a foregone conclusion in the Senate, the race’s outcome will likely have little bearing on the prospects of new gun legislation clearing Congress. However, an additional Democratic seat in the Senate would help tip the balance of power among committee members and boost President Biden’s ability to make key political and judicial appointments that could significantly affect gun policy.

Neither the NRA nor the three gun-control groups responded to a request for comment.

The election will take place on December 6.

Elon Musk Drops Bombshell: Twitter ‘Has Interfered in Elections’

Elon Musk has dropped a massive bombshell by confirming that Twitter “has interfered in elections.”

Musk made the explosive revelation as he prepares to release internal files from Twitter on the company’s censorship practices before he took over the social media platform in late October.

 

America’s Fourth World Vote System Is a Global Embarrassment.

The whole world is laughing.

“US election results: When will we know who won?” the BBC wondered.

AZCentral.com columnist Jon Gabriel wrote: “Friends in Hungary and Brazil asked how their entire nations can count votes in a few hours, while it takes Arizona a week or longer.”

As of early Friday afternoon, America’s voting system has devolved from a global beacon of democracy to an international punchline. A bright neon sign warns: “Don’t try this at home.”

Mechanical breakdowns, baffling “ballot dumps,” and inexplicable pauses in tabulation have buried the Arizona and Nevada senatorial and gubernatorial results in sand.

Alaska has soiled itself with a new, needless, and odious rank-choice-voting process. Rather than Tuesday’s top vote-getter winning the Senate seat, Republicans Lisa Murkowski, Kelly Tshibaka, Buzz Kelley, and Democrat Patricia Chesboro are mired in a glacial redistribution of each losing candidate’s votes to those ranked higher. This ballot buffoonery could continue for weeks.

In the U.S. House, 32 seats remain uncalled. Republicans have yet to secure their expected slim majority, thanks to dilatory vote counts and mail-in ballots that land more slowly than falling autumn leaves.

Who will be the next mayor of Los Angeles? At this writing, 64 hours after polls closed, nobody knows. Some 900,000 ballots await tabulation! In 10 California congressional contests, fewer than half of the ballots have been counted, per Politico. In the Sixth District, only 35 percent of ballots have been tabulated!

What America needs is a major cleanup of our self-humiliating voting system.

This should start by excising the cancer of early voting.

According to 2 U.S. Code § 7: “The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress.”

What part of that federal statute is unclear?

Pennsylvanians began voting on Sept. 16—39 days (!) before Democrat John Fetterman’s and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz’s sole debate on Oct. 25. For seven weeks and two days, people voted before they saw Fetterman’s performance and either were appalled at his diminished, post-stroke mental capacity, or admired him simply for showing up and standing there. No ballots should have been cast—for Fetterman or Oz—absent that information.

Alas, some 600,000 Pennsylvanians already had voted before they saw Fetterman barely able to express himself, which was exactly what devious Democrats had in mind. Surely, some of them wanted their ballots back — perhaps enough to have elected Oz on Tuesday.

Early voting began in Arizona on Oct. 12. That was 20 days before Libertarian Party nominee Marc Victor dropped out of the Senate race and endorsed Republican Blake Masters. Victor now has 43,542 votes. The early ones among them might have gone to Masters, which would propel him that much closer to victory.

In 2016, North Carolina sent voters absentee ballots on Sept. 9, a full 17 days before the first Hillary Clinton vs. Donald J. Trump debate that Sept. 26. Voting before even the first of three debates for President of the United States and leader of the free world is SICK.

Americans should coalesce around an election system worthy of this nation:

•Make Election Day a national holiday.

• Polls operate for 24 hours—midnight to midnight Eastern time—and open and shut simultaneously nationwide. Voters should not be swayed by results in states with earlier precinct closures.

•Voters must show photo ID.

•Voter rolls must be cleaned frequently and by the registration deadline: two weeks before Election Day.

• No more mass mail-in ballots

• Limit absentee ballots to the sick, infirm, and those who will be— Imagine!—absent on Election Day.

• Only adult U.S. citizens can vote. Zero ballots for foreign citizens.

These reforms would start to fix America’s unintentionally hilarious vote system.

Post-election landscape in Uvalde paints a picture of common sense

Emerging details from Uvalde are generally disturbing, heartbreaking, and angering all at once. First it was Matthew McConaughey’s vapid self-promotion using the massacre as clickbait, and now the very recent revelation that responding officers, equipped with body armor, whined about the possibility they might get “clapped” with one even saying, “I also don’t like standing right by the windows where we can get shot, bro.”

But in the midst of truly indescribable sadness, there is a rising phoenix. The people of Uvalde rebelled against the political class that births and fosters environments which only lead to tragedy and death, and overwhelmingly voted for Republicanism this past Tuesday. According to a report from Just the News, Uvalde constituents produced large margins for Republicans from the top-down:

According to official results, 60.18% of Uvalde County residents voted for Abbott compared to 32.18 who voted for O’Rourke.

They also voted for Republicans primarily across the board, also with similar margins of roughly 60% to 40%. They reelected Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick by 59.41%, Attorney General Ken Paxtom by 59.2%, Comptroller Glenn Hegar by 60.17%, Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller by 60.24%, and Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian by 59.46%.

For context, last year’s census found that 72.5% of the county are Hispanic, a demographic which has historically voted with the Democrat party. (Establishment media is now recognizing the utter failure of the left to serve even their most loyal voters.)

Yet, what I find most telling is this:

They also overwhelmingly voted for Republican state Senate candidate Robert Garza, by a vote of 58.9%, 17 points more than incumbent Democrat Roland Gutierrez – even after Gutierrez introduced legislation for the state to give Robb Elementary victims’ family members $300 million in damages.

I find this highly encouraging for two reasons:

The first being that it appears as though the Machiavellian maneuver to abuse and exploit the American people in order to buy Democrat votes is no longer working, and that’s an advantage the left continuously uses against us and our best interests. The two most prominent and recent examples that come to mind are the student loan transfer scheme which seemingly bought a large portion of the Gen Z voters that “carried” the midterms, as well as the draining of our strategic oil reserves to keep pump prices affordable enough without widespread outrage.

Secondly, the people of Uvalde did the best thing they could do for themselves and their heritage — they involved themselves in the civic process and elected representatives that espouse principles of self-protection and personal responsibility. There are officers of the law that actually uphold their oaths to defend the Constitution and the people, but given the fact that some cops will actually stand down as school children take bullets, it’s a zero-sum game, and we do not have the luxury to assume the responding officers will fulfill their duty.

What was meant for evil can be used for good, and the Uvalde citizenry is a beacon of hope to an America drowning under leftist ploys and tyranny.

27 Counties in Illinois Have Passed Referendums to Explore Seceding From State. Here’s Where

On Election Day in Illinois, ballots contained statewide questions ranging from whether or not to amend the state’s constitution, to who should be the next Governor of Illinois, to who should sit on the Illinois State Supreme Court.

But some local ballots contained questions about whether to leave the state altogether.

Tuesday, two Illinois counties and a portion of another passed non-binding referendums that would encourage their elected officials to engage in discussions about potentially severing ties with the state government.

The votes were hardly a new phenomenon. Instead, they join a growing list of Illinois counties seeking to express their displeasure with lawmakers.

Previously, at least 24 counties had passed so-called “separation referendums,” according to reporting by Illinois Public Media. The three new additions to that list, Brown, Hardin, and the northeastern portion of Madison County, would bring that number to 27, representing more than 25% of the state’s 102 counties.

According to IPM, 23 counties had previously passed separation referendums after the 2020 elections, including Clark, Clay, Crawford, Cumberland, Edwards, Effingham, Fayette, Jasper, Hancock, Jefferson, Johnson, Lawrence, Marion, Massac, Moultrie, Pope, Richland, Shelby, Wabash, Wayne and Whiteside.

Edgar County also passed a similar referendum in 2021, according to the group Red State Secession.

Most of those counties passed the non-binding referendums with large majorities, including 72% of voters in Bond County and 60.7% of voters in Christian County.

In this year’s election, the ballot questions, all of which had similar wording, appeared in Brown and Hardin counties, as well as a portion of Madison County.

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It’s long, but read the whole thing at your convenience

These Counties Experiencing Election Issues Have One Thing In Common

It suffices to say that Election Day didn’t go as planned for some polling places that experienced and are still experiencing ballot-counting issues. Despite the varying election-related difficulties, multiple jurisdictions share one foreseen commonality. There’s a common thread connecting five counties spread across several states that were in disarray on Election Day: federal “monitors.”

On the eve of the elections, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice announced Monday it would be dispatching such monitors to as many as 64 jurisdictions in almost half of U.S. states on Election Day to oversee federal election law “compliance.”

According to the DOJ’s watch list, Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, Texas’s Harris County, Arizona’s Maricopa County, and Pima County, and Nevada’s Washoe County all had the feds there “monitoring” polls. The nationwide deployment is a notable expansion. Nevada wasn’t on the DOJ’s roster two years ago during the presidential election cycle in 2020. Still, it was on the DOJ’s radar this time, and Pima County—Arizona’s second-most populous, which holds Tucscon—is among the new additions.

These five jurisdictions supposedly under in-person DOJ supervision throughout Tuesday suffered major muck-ups.

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And even if does pass, the FPC have already made clear they’re ready to file suit against it in Federal Court…so there.

Oregon’s Measure 114 not a done deal

Earlier this week, I wrote about how Measure 114’s passage did manage to have a silver lining. I still think there are some potential upsides available, but the best-case scenario would always be the measure not passing at all.

And, it seemed it had.

Only, it really hasn’t.

The people of Oregon may be awaiting the official outcome of their state’s race for governor, but they are also anticipating the results of a potentially drastic change in the state’s gun laws.

In addition to races like the one between gubernatorial candidates Tina Kotek and Christine Drazan, a bill known as the Reduction of Gun Violence Act is also on the ballot. As of Thursday morning, data on a state website showed that the Beaver State was nearly evenly split on the issue, with 50.86% in favor of the bill and 49.14% against it, a difference of 26,827 votes.

According to The Oregonian, those numbers have not been updated since Wednesday evening, when less than 80% of the votes had been counted. Additionally, Oregon’s vote-by-mail system allows ballots to continue to be received until November 15, so long as they were postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day. So far, The Associated Press has yet to make a call on the outcome of the vote.

As of this writing, only 88 percent of the vote is in with 50.7 in favor of passage and 49.3 against, with just under 24,000 votes separating the two positions.

Now, The Oregonian still projects Measure 114 will pass, and I tend to think it will as well. I doubt we’re going to see an 11th-hour landslide of votes shifting things in the other direction and defeating the bill.

Still, I jumped the gun writing about any silver lining when there’s still hope this bill may go down in defeat. I’m writing this to own that mistake because, well, I really do try to do just that.

If so, none of that matters. There will be no legal challenge and Oregonians can go right on with their lives without a care in the world.

That’s not particularly likely, unfortunately. Measure 114 will probably become law.

Then those legal challenges start.

All we’re seeing right now is a delay in counting these votes that is about on par with Arizona. The only reason they’re not getting more attention is that Oregon is such a heavily blue state that winners can be declared with a far lower percentage of the vote. The results in Oregon are pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Which brings us back to Measure 114, which is a scarily close vote. It may well end up going in the other direction. If so, I’ll be shocked, but happily so.

If it doesn’t, though, the days of Measure 114’s impact may well be minimal as I’m sure a legal challenge will be filed almost immediately. Whether it’s even allowed to go into effect is in doubt, as a matter of fact, yet even if it does, it’s only a matter of time before the courts issue an injunction, soon to be followed with an overturning ruling.

But that’s if it passes, and there’s still hope.

Two Days After Midterms, Slow Arizona Vote Count Exasperates Twitter: ‘School Children Can Count Faster’

Conservative Twitter users slammed Arizona election officials for not having finished the state’s vote count.

Nearly two days after polls closed in Arizona’s midterm elections, there are still many votes left uncounted. As such, the state’s two major races – the gubernatorial contest between Republican Kari Lake and her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs; and the Senate race between GOP nominee Blake Masters and Democrat Mark Kelly – have yet to be decided.

A local Fox affiliate attributed much of the delay to the “sheer size” of Maricopa County, Arizona, the county where most of the outstanding votes exist. In addition, the station reported how late-arriving mail-in ballots as well as verification of those ballots have contributed to the slow vote counting process.

The race between GOP candidate Kari Lake and Democrat Katie Hobbs is still undecided.

However, critics on Twitter insisted that Arizona election officials had no excuse for continuing to count this late, especially when massive states like Florida declared its election results only hours after the last polls closed.

Conservative columnist Tim Young tweeted, “Florida has the third largest population in America and had its votes counted in hours. Arizona is 14th… and still has only 70% counted… why?”

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Rob Romano

For all the talk from anti-gun groups about how they’ll face electoral consequences, all nine governors who previously signed constitutional carry bills and were up for reelection on Tuesday (AL, GA, IA, SD, NH, OH, OK, TN, TX) easily won their races.

Everytown said it “will hold [Gov DeWine], and the Ohio legislature, accountable for this blatant step backwards at the ballot box,” but he beat their 2021 Local Gun Sense Lawmaker of the Year 62-37 and the GOP seems to have gained seats in the legislature everytown.org/press/governor…

Everytown said they “will continue fighting to stop Iowa lawmakers from further weakening our gun laws and work to elect people who will actually protect our communities,” but the Gov was reelected and voters added a right to bear arms to the constitution. everytown.org/press/iowa-mom…

Everytown said they “will be holding our [Georgia] leaders accountable for the violence they’re enabling, we will make sure of it,” but the Governor beat their endorsed candidate 53-45. everytown.org/press/shameful…

Everytown said that they “won’t let Texas voters forget that their lawmakers chose gun extremists over public safety,” but Abbott beat their endorsed candidate 54-43 and the GOP expanded their majorities in the legislature. everytown.org/press/governor…

Everytown claimed that “57 percent said they would be less likely to vote for Gov. Noem if she signs this type of legislation.” She signed the  constitutional carry bill, and went on to be reelected 62-35. everytown.org/press/will-gov…

Tuesday Takeaways.

What, if anything, did the midterms tell us about the country — other than underwhelming Republicans could still take the House and Senate?

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, American elections radically changed to mail-in and early voting. They did so in a wild variety of state-by-state ways. Add ranked voting and a required majority margin to the mess and the result is that once cherished Election Day balloting becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Election Night also no longer exists. Returns are not counted for days. It is intolerable for a modern democracy to wait and wait for all sorts of different ballots both cast and counted under radically different and sometimes dubious conditions.

The Democrats — with overwhelming media and money advantages — have mastered these arts of massive and unprecedented early, mail-in, and absentee voting. Old-fashioned Republicans count on riling up their voters to show up on Election Day. But it is far easier to finesse and control the mail-in ballots than to “get out the vote.”

The country is divided in more ways than ever. America’s interior just gets redder and the bicoastal corridors bluer.

Exceptional Republican gubernatorial or senatorial candidates like Lee Zeldin, Tudor Dixon, and Tiffany Smiley in blue states like New York, Michigan, or Washington cannot win upsets against even so-so Democratic incumbents — even during a supposedly bad election cycle for Democrats, laboring under a president with a 40 percent approval rating.

Similarly, media-spawned leftist heartthrobs like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams can burn through hundreds of millions of dollars. But they still cannot unseat workmanlike Republican incumbents in Texas and Georgia.

Out-of-state immigration has only solidified these red-blue brand polarizations.

Over the last decade, millions of conservatives have fled California, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania to Florida and Texas.

The former states got bluer as New York governors like Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul said good riddance to fleeing conservatives — who were welcomed as refugees to red “free states.”

As voters self-select residences on ideological grounds and the deleterious effect of blue-states’ governance, the country is gravitating into two antithetical nations. Americans vote not so much for individual personalities as blocs of incompatible parties, causes, and ideologies.

Debates count for little anymore, especially after the disastrous performance of winners Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman and Hochul.

Democrats often limited or avoided them altogether. And the Republican charging and complaining that they did so meant little at all.

Democrats still voted for Democratic candidates, regardless of Fetterman’s clear cognitive inability to serve in the Senate and despite President Joe Biden’s failures, harm to the middle class, and unpopularity.

Most Republicans are similar party loyalists, but not quite to the same degree — at least if some feared supporting a hardcore Trump-endorsed candidate might give them grief among family and friends.

Winning or losing means revving up party bases, not running as much on a variety of issues. Biden’s vicious attacks on conservatives as semi-fascists and un-American worked. When he recklessly warned that democracy’s death was synonymous with Democrats losing, he further inflamed his base.

Biden also goaded young people to vote by temporarily lowering gas prices through draining the strategic petroleum reserve, offering amnesty for marijuana offenses, and canceling half a trillion dollars of student loan debt. He told young women that they would die without unlimited abortions. And most of that mud stuck.

In contrast, Republicans wrongly assumed all voters, red and blue, sensibly cared most about spiking inflation, unaffordable food and fuel, an open border, and a disastrous foreign policy.

Americans do worry, but also demand concrete solutions that they often did not hear from even insightful critics of Biden’s ruinous agendas.

Moreover, in the last days of the election, Biden and the media effectively smothered those existential issues by claiming the country was threatened by insurrectionists and pro-life fanatics. Stooping to claim the attacker of Paul Pelosi — a crazed, homeless, nudist, illegal alien — was the veritable tip of the supposed MAGA insurrectionary spear proved to be effective Harry-Reid-style, October-surprise demagoguery.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis likely emerges as the dominant force in conservative politics. His landslide win in Florida carried all down-ticket statewide candidates throughout Florida, which has become as utterly red as California has turned all blue.

Related: What Happened on Election Night? I Think I Have Some Answers

To the degree Republican gubernatorial candidates not supported by Trump easily won their races in states like Georgia and Ohio, they helped Trump-supported senatorial candidates. To the degree Trump-supported gubernatorial candidates lost badly such as in Pennsylvania, they hurt Trump-supported senatorial candidates.

Trump’s pre-election unexpected attack on DeSantis may have turned off a few thousand independents and Republicans from voting for Trump-affiliated candidates. And his pre-midterm boast that he would likely run for president may have scared — and energized — some last-minute, hard-core anti-Trumpers and Democrats to go out to vote.

Pollsters got it wrong — again. But this time once trustworthy conservative pollsters had little inkling that the simmering left-wing base was enthused by wild talk of abortion and insurrection. The real under-polled voters were not silent, wary Trump supporters, but this time around seething upscale women and college students.

Final takeaways?

Democratic opposition to a flawed and impaired Biden running again in 2024 will recede. Republican loyalty to the unpredictable Trump could fade.

VOTERS WEIGHED TWO VERY DIFFERENT GUN CONTROL BALLOT MEASURES

Two states this week posed gun law questions to their voters and received two quite different results at the polls– neither one very encouraging to the anti-gun crowd.

IOWA

Republicans carried the day by large margins almost exclusively– including Gov. Kim Reynolds besting her opponent by almost 20 points, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley picking up his eighth term, and all four Congressional seats going red including the one held by Democrat incumbent U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne’s. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that a pro-gun ballot initiative met with slam-dunk approval.

Iowa Constitutional Amendment 1 – Right to Keep and Bear Arms, with 95 percent of the votes tabulated by Wednesday night, earned 745,118 “yes” votes against just 398,881 “no” votes, a nearly 2:1 ratio.

As detailed by voter guides:

Shall the following amendment to the Constitution be adopted?

Summary: Provides that the right of the people of Iowa to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

Full Text: Article I of the Constitution of the State of Iowa is amended by adding the following new section: Right to keep and bear arms. Sec. 1A. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

 OREGON

In a state that houses such wildly progressive hubs as Portland and Eugene, any rational-thinking person would imagine that an anti-gun ballot initiative of almost any nature would gain an easy up-vote in the largely blue state. After all, Biden carried the state by 16 points just two years ago.

However, Measure 114, which crams 12 dense pages of gun control into a still ambiguous 68-word question, met with a very divided voter turnout.

The ballot question:

Requires permit to acquire firearms; police maintain permit/firearm database; criminally prohibits certain ammunition magazines

Result of ‘Yes’ Vote: ‘Yes’ vote requires background check, safety training, fee for permit to acquire firearms; state police maintain new permit/ firearm database; criminally prohibits certain magazines; exceptions.

Result of ‘No’ Vote: ‘No’ vote retains current law: seller/ transferor must request criminal background check; permit, safety course not required; no magazine capacity restrictions.

Despite the anti-gun group cheerleading for Measure 114 rushing to declare victory on the initiative, voters except for those in the Portland and Eugene metro clusters rejected the new host of restrictions. As of Wednesday night, the results showed Measure 114 winning the day in only four out of Oregon’s 36 counties with a total statewide tally breaking at 793,015 (50.8 percent) in favor vs. 767,077 (49.2 percent) against, with some 72 percent of votes counted. While the numbers are still tight as of the time of publication, a “yes” vote of such a slim margin is hardly a popular mandate for what may eventually be ruled an unconstitutional limit on Second Amendment rights.

Already, some Oregon sheriffs are vowing to refuse enforcement of the measure should it become law.

“Unfortunately, we are seeing the passage of Ballot Measure 114, which creates a required permitting system in order to purchase firearms AND bans gun magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds,” wrote Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan on Wednesday. “This is a terrible law for gunowners, crime victims, and public safety. I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits. This measure is poorly written and there is still a lot that needs to be sorted out regarding the permitting process, who has to do the training and what exactly does the training have to cover.”