It’s Official: Dan Sullivan Wins Senate Race In Alaska

On Election Night incumbent Senator Mark Begich had 102,054 votes with 45.3% of the votes cast by Alaskans.  His challenger, Dan Sullivan, had secured 49% of the votes for a total of 110,203.

Begich, facing “daunting math” to overcome the deficit refused to concede the race.  Even the Alaska Public Radio Network declared his decision to stay in the race was based on an “implausible hypothetical resurgence.”

I was checking the Politico website just for kicks and giggles around 3:00 AM and noticed they had not yet changed the Alaska map to red signifying a “leans Republican” status (see screen capture).  I started a web search and violá, what did I find, but an Associated Press newswire at ABC News bearing the headline:  “Republican Dan Sullivan Wins Senate Race in Alaska”.  Welcome aboard Senator-elect Sullivan.

The Alaska seat was initially considered key to the Republicans' hopes of taking control of the US Senate, but that point became moot by the end of the evening when the GOP sweep snagged 52 seats for a majority in that chamber.  Add Alaska to that tally and it’s now 53.  After Louisiana’s December 6th runoff, the total will be 54 seats. 

Unless there's a mini-Chicago that went undiscovered by man until brave Sir Begich discovered it on an expedition, he has clearly lost this.
— AoSHQ Decision Desk (@AoSHQDD) November 12, 2014

Just about everyone has said @DanSullivan2014 has won in #Alaska. Meanwhile, Mark Begich is still waiting on the game-changing husky vote.
— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) November 13, 2014

UPDATE:  Welcome iOTWReport readers.  Big hugs to Cardigan for linking to this post. 

On The Phone With Barry: Valerie, Did Something Happen Last Night?

Today's Headlines

This isn't a mandate for Republicans, it's a restraining order on Democrats.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 5, 2014

AND THEN THERE'S THIS... 

Now Maybe America Can Get Back To Being America

Pure Joy: The Collapse Of American Liberalism May Now Be In Sight

Founded by John Harris in 2007, Politico is but one of the Leftist political narrative websites that permeate the Internet.  Three years ago Politico came under fire for its flagrant liberal bias and suffered a substantial loss of readership.

I rarely visit the site but was enticed by the headline “Can Obama Reboot” at Memeorandum. 

Glenn Thrush, Senior Staff Writer and Carrie Budoff Brown, Senior White House reporter, yearn to regale us with yet another fairy tale about their beloved messiah.  Along the way their wordsmithing blankets him with their sympathy and reveals their growing sorrow at the potential collapse of American liberalism as seen through the grumblings of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s inner circle.

Excerpts from the piece:

Barack Obama is antsy. His aides can see it when he alights from Air Force One from the all-too-occasional campaign trips he has taken this fall. There’s a sigh, an unhappy-camper body language when he finds himself back in the depressing slipstream of Ebola confabs and national-security-crisis-of-the-day meetings. The vibe, according to people in his orbit, is not so much of being checked out as of being fed up.   

“[I] do like campaigning…It’s fun,” Obama said on Thursday, speaking wistfully at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Michaud in Maine. But the Michaud event was the exception, not the rule. “There have been $2 billion in ads shitting on the president and no one to defend him,” a senior administration official told us. “He is very fired up to get this campaign behind him, to run through the tape.” 

Obama, for so long the man with the bright future, has hated being relegated to a sidelined pariah in the midterms—even if it is the inevitable lot of a second-termer with approval ratings hovering in the low 40s—according to a dozen current and former Obama advisers we spoke with in recent days. He both resents the narrative that he’s basically irrelevant and doesn’t much relish the fact that many of his longest-serving staffers, the remnant core of his once-buzzing and brash White House, are strapping themselves to ejector seats. More than anything, Obama’s loathing for Washington, an attitude that reads as ennui to outsiders, has hardened into a sullen resignation at being trapped in a broken system he failed to change, advisers told us. 

“I sense a certain fatalism there, and it’s disturbing,” says a former adviser on Obama’s campaign who, like many others we talked with for this story, requested anonymity. “There’s a sense that ‘I’ve tried everything, and look where it got me.’ People misread it as disengagement. It’s frustration. But who cares? It’s a bad mind-set.” Another Obama veteran adds, “The bully pulpit is gone, maybe forever.”

Harry Reid Squealing Like A Piggy

The Drudge Report had a blaring red headline on its website proclaiming “Joni Takes 7 Point Lead” and linked to The Des Moines Register bearing an almost identical headline.

News of Ernst’s sizeable lead over Democrat Bruce Braley has sent Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid squealing like a piggy in desperation—a kind of flop sweat you get when you realize you’re in peril.

Politico’s Burgess Everett (I refuse to link) reported that Reid held a conference call on Saturday with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Roll Call shared some of what Reid said during the call. 

“If we win Iowa, we’re going to do just fine,” Reid told the liberal activists. “Iowa is a key in what we do. You know, we’re doing really quite well now in New Hampshire. I think we’re going to win in North Carolina. I’m not going to go through all the races. Iowa is critical. There’s no other way to say it.” 

“What Joni Ernst would mean, coming to the United States Senate, is that Mitch McConnell would be the leader of the Senate, someone who agrees with her on virtually everything. Think what that would mean to our country.” 

Did Dingy Harry unwittingly give Minority Leader McConnell something to smile about?

With just two days left before America’s voice is heard, we are witnessing a complete unraveling of the progressive agenda.  Democrats across the board have put their loyalty to The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer above their duty to America and voters, it would appear, are ready to give Republicans control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

How You Can Help Make Election Day Theft-Proof

VerifiedVoting.org indicates that 34 states have a requirement that allows voters the ability to verify their vote on a paper record or ballot.

You’re going to invest time on November 4th to cast your vote.  Please take just a few more minutes to verify that the vote you cast is for the candidate/party you intended.  Take a lesson from Illinois State Representative candidate Jim Moynihan who cast his vote in early voting in Cook County.  He tried to cast a vote for himself but the machine he used cast the vote for his opponent.  The same thing happened in a number of races when he tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.

Moynihan notified an election judge at his polling place and demonstrated that it continued to cast a vote for the opposing candidate’s party.  He was eventually allowed to vote for Republican candidates and the machine was removed from service due to a “calibration error.”

Katie Pavlich notes, “This machine error was visible, what about the changes these machines are making to votes cast for Republicans that aren't visible? How many registered voters have had their votes and participation in the process stolen as a result of ‘faulty’ machines?”

Cook County is the cradle of corruption.  Democrats are terrified that control of the Senate will be wrested from their control.  The desperation includes dead people voting and liberal activists in Colorado who think it’s “truly awesome” to illegally fill out discarded ballots in favor of Democrats so votes “are put to good use.”  These are just a few egregious examples.  There are many, many more.

Voter fraud is something the Democrats deny, deny, deny.  Take a moment to look at the map below.  It indicates the red and blue counties following the 2012 presidential election.  If you go to the link it is interactive.  

If your polling place is in a blue county, you’ll want to make sure you have your vote audited.  Before you head out, check out this map that indicates the type of voting equipment your polling place will be utilizing. 

Far too many states use unreliable and insecure electronic voting machines.  Is yours one of them?

There’s an app for that.  It’s called the Election Protection Smartphone app.  You can download it here.  It allows you to confirm your registration status, look up your polling place, review key voting rules and regulations for your state, see what type of machine you’ll be voting on and allows you to contact Election Protection via phone or email to report a problem.

Finally, too many people don’t take the time to learn about candidates on the down ballot, specifically judges.  Judges become valuable tools for a certain political party.  Find out which judge is conservative and insure that the Constitution cannot be skirted in the manner in which it currently is.  Check the links below to find out which judicial candidate you should cast your vote for.  Don’t blow this part.

Arkansas Supreme Court, 2014

Idaho Supreme Court, 2014

Kentucky Supreme Court, 2014

Michigan Supreme Court, 2014

Minnesota Supreme Court, 2014

Montana Supreme Court, 2014

North Carolina Supreme Court, 2014

Ohio Supreme Court, 2014

Tennessee Supreme Court, 2014

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, 2014

Texas Supreme Court, 2014

Washington Supreme Court, 2014

UPDATE:  Welcome iOTWReport readers and a special thanks to Cardigan for linking to this post.

The Pariah Messiah

An amusing chain of events has conspired to give hope to Americans who have felt for six interminable years that “things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control.”

The gatekeepers of the political narrative have overwhelmingly demonstrated their liberal bias by their puny coverage of the bad political news for Democrats this year.

The Media Research Center found that “when Democrats were feeling good about their election prospects eight years ago, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC’s World News aired a combined 159 campaign stories (91 full reports and another 68 stories that mentioned the campaign). But during the same time period this year, those same newscasts have offered a paltry 25 stories (16 full reports and 9 mentions), a six-to-one disparity.”

The gates of mockery were opened on Sunday, October 19, 2014 when their messiah appeared at the Dr. Henry S. Wise High School in Prince Georges County, Maryland.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank noted: 

“Democrats left nothing to chance for President Obama’s first campaign rally of the 2014 election season Sunday evening. They arranged for him to speak in Prince George’s County, Md., which went 90 percent for Obama in 2012. They put him in the gymnasium of a middle school that shared a campus with Barack Obama Elementary School, which explains the ‘We Rock at Barack’ sweatshirts in the crowd. Some 90 percent of those in the audience were African American—a demographic that still supports Obama to the tune of 84 percent, vs. 30 percent of white Americans.” 

“The man Obama was stumping for—Maryland gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown—has a healthy lead over his Republican opponent in reliably Democratic Maryland and therefore had little worry about sharing a stage with Obama. Even so, they left the presidential seal off the lectern, and Obama remained hidden offstage while Brown addressed the crowd.” 

“Yet for all those precautions, Obama’s rare campaign appearance did not go as planned—and not only because a man heckled him for his refusal to block more deportations. With about five minutes to go in his 25-minute speech, about the time Obama said, ‘I’m just telling you what you already know,’ people began to trickle out. By the time he had finished, perhaps a few hundred had walked out on the president.”

Politico pool reporter Jennifer Epstein was dumbfounded:

After waiting a long time for a POTUS speech, don't you want to hear the whole thing? And not just take a phone pic or two and then leave?
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 19, 2014

Think it was probably trying to avoid bad traffic that the crowds streaming out of PG County Obama-Brown rally. Still, highly unusual.
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) October 19, 2014

Liberal-leaning editorial cartoonist, Jimmy Marguiles, drew a cartoon of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s toxicity depicting him walking into the Oval Office with a character dressed in a full HAZMAT suit labeled “2014 Democratic Candidates” ushering him inside saying, “The quarantine is just through Election Day.”

Adding insult to injury, MSNBC’s Hardball host, Chris Matthews said, “It’s like Obama’s got Ebola.”

Over the past few weeks we’ve heard TWMDCO proclaim, “I’m not on the ballot this fall, but make no mistake; these policies are on the ballot.  Every single one of them.”

That’s a remarkably unhelpful statement that launched clumsy attempts by Alaska’s Sen. Mark Begich, and senatorial candidates Natalie Tennant (D-WV), Michelle Nunn (D-GA) and Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-KY) to flee like scalded dogs from the question of whether they voted for their messiah in 2008 and 2012.

So, what TWMDCO said rings true.  Poll after poll after poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans vehemently disagree with his policies believing he has been galactically incompetent and his administration scandal-ridden.  Democrats across the board have been in robotic lock-step.  That’s just what they do.  So like the numbskulls in the Geico horror commercial, they’ve made bad choices.  They can now be found in a garage crammed full of chainsaws hiding from the leader of their party.

Republicans have opposed him and that is what should carry the day on November 4th.

Ten Buck Friday: Helping Harry Lose His Gavel

Graphic adapted from NCGOPVictory.org/TakeBackTheSenate

As of today, there are 18 days left before the nation goes to the ballot box.  The latest ABCNews/Washington Post poll shows the Democrat Party’s popularity is the weakest it has been in 30 years meaning they are “heading into the midterm election in trouble.”

Seventy-seven percent of Americans are worried about the economy’s future, and 57 percent say the country has been experiencing a long-term decline in living standards; a grim assessment for the party in power.

We’ve been hearing good news coming out of Iowa for Republican challenger Joni Ernst and The Denver Post is conceding polls are favoring Republican Cory Gardner at a key moment in the election season.

The DSCC has chosen to go dark in Kentucky realizing that Mitch McConnell is likely to hold his seat.  They’ve shifted their attention to Georgia’s open seat and are saturating Michelle Nunn’s campaign coffers.  They see a Nunn victory as a way to “stymie the growing odds of a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate.”

North Carolina is my home state and I’ve been sweating out the contentious battle between incumbent Kay Hagan and challenger Thom Tillis.  More than $6.5 million has been spent against Hagan and nearly $19 million opposing Tillis according to the Sunlight Foundation.

Hagan’s minions have repeatedly charged that Tillis "cut $500 million" from the state's education budget.  That charge is false.

Other attack ads have claimed Tillis "raised taxes on 80 percent of North Carolinians."  This is also fabricated.

Hagan’s campaign claims Tillis "supports a plan that would end Medicare as we know it and raise premiums."  Nope.  Not true.

Attack ads repeatedly maintained her challenger "supports a plan that could end up costing seniors $1,700 more every year for prescription medicine."  This claim refers to Paul Ryan's Medicare plan, on which Tillis has not taken a position.

Joel Gehrke at National Review believes that cracks are beginning to appear in Harry Reid’s North Carolina firewall.  “North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan’s admission that she skipped a hearing about the Islamic State to attend a campaign fundraiser threatens to waste the $42 million that Democrats have spent in this race to protect her candidacy and their Senate majority.”

Tillis hammered her for that during their last debate. Local press has also focused on how the Hagan family has benefited from government spending programs that the senator supported, such as the 2009 stimulus.

Ten Senate races are rated toss-ups by Real Clear Politics, where the ratings are based on poll averages. The GOP must get to 51 seats to control a Senate majority.

Current polling of the races the Ten Buck Friday bloggers have been watching:

Arkansas:  Tom Cotton leads by 3.6 points

Colorado:  Cory Gardner leads by 3.0 points

Georgia:  David Perdue leads by 1.2 points

Iowa:  Joni Ernst leads by 2.0 points

Kansas:  Tie

Louisiana:  Bill Cassidy leads by 5.3 points

North Carolina:  Thom Tillis trails by 1.4 points

Each Friday between now and November 4th we are asking our readers to consider contributing $10 to the campaign of the candidate(s) we have highlighted that week.  Make sure to mark your contribution “Ten Buck Friday” so the candidate(s) will know the conservative blogosphere is with them in standing guard over liberty.  

If you are unable to make a contribution, you can help the candidate(s) tremendously by encouraging friends, family, neighbors and/or co-workers to vote.  Volunteer your valuable time.  Put up a campaign sign in your yard.  Make sure you go to the polls.  We cannot afford to sit this election out. 

Contribute to Tom Cotton (AR) here.

Contribute to Cory Gardner (CO) here.

Contribute to Joni Ernst (IA) here.

Contribute to Bill Cassidy (LA) here.

Contribute to Thom Tillis (NC) here.

Please consider visiting the other bloggers who are participating in this movement:

Adrienne's Corner, Diogenes' Middle Finger, Fisherville Mike, For God, Family & Country,Laughing Conservative, Left Coast Rebel, Mind Numbed Robot, PoliNation, Proof Positive,  Texas Conservative News, Theo Spark and Wyblog.