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. 

News For The Hard Of Hearing

With meager resources at our disposal, The Curmudgeonly Punctilio dispatched its cub reporter, Bartholomew Yelverton Spebbington, to cover the White House press conference following the historic defeat of Democrats in the 2014 midterms.

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s penchant for arrogance and tone-deafness, prompted us to hire a world-famous sign language interpreter to assist our reporter in covering this story.

Julie Pace of AP began with the question, “You said during this election that while your name wasn’t on the ballot, your policies were. And despite the optimism that you’re expressing here, last night was a devastating night for your party. Given that, do you feel any responsibility to recalibrate your agenda for the next two years, and what changes do you need to make in your White House and in your dealings with Republicans in order to address the concerns that voters expressed with your administration?”

Jeff Mason with Reuters inquired, “In 2010, you called the results of the midterm election a ‘shellacking.’  What do you call this?  And can you give us an update on your feelings about the immigration executive order and the result in the aftermath of this election? Does the election affect your plans to release it?  Will it still—is it likely to come out before the lame duck session is over? And have you reduced its scope to just a couple million people?

NBC’s Chris Jansing was called on next and her question for TWMDCO was, “I want to follow up on a couple of things, and start with immigration. And are you concerned that if you sign an executive order on immigration before the end of the year, it will scuttle whatever chances there may be for there to be some sort of compromise on the issues that you talked about.  And I wonder that given this unhappy electorate, clearly, and they seem to be disappointed with both sides pretty much, why they punish the Democrats more than the Republicans by far?”

The next reporter chosen by The Insufferable Airhorn was Jonathan Karl of ABC.  Jon queried, “Mitch McConnell’s been the Republican leader for six years, as long as you’ve been president. But his office tells me that he’s only met with you one-on-one once or twice during that entire six-year period. So I’m wondering, as somebody who came to Washington promising to end the hyper-partisanship that was here long before you became president, but it’s gotten worse since you got here, was it a mistake for you to do so little to develop relationships with Republicans in Congress?”

Going down his prepared list of names to call on, Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg was next up.  Phil asked, “Another deadline coming up is on your negotiators by November 24th. Have to figure out if they’re going to reach a deal with Iran on a nuclear area—or nuclear agreement. I’m interested what your current perspective is on how those negotiations are going. Also, if it is your feeling that you have the power to implement any type of agreement that’s reached without any action from Congress. And then also just wanted to quickly touch on the AUMF that you mentioned earlier. Is that going to be more of a codification of the limits that you’ve put in place for the mission up to this point? Or what—what should we be looking for on that when you send it to the Hill?”

TWMDCO:  Blah, blah, blah, ba, blah, blah, blah.

Fox News’ Ed Henry opened up the fireworks with, “Thank you, Mr. President. I haven’t heard you—I haven’t heard you say a specific thing during this news conference that you would do differently. You’ve been asked it a few different ways.  I understand you’re going to reach out, but you’ve talked about doing that before. It’s almost like you’re doubling down on the same policies and approach you’ve had for six years.  And so, my question is, why not pull a page from the Clinton playbook and admit you have to make a much more dramatic shift in course for these last two years?”

“And on ISIS, there was a pretty dramatic setback in the last few days, with it appearing that the Syrian rebels were routed, there are some Gitmo detainees who have rejoined the battlefield, helping ISIS and other terror groups.  So my question is, are we winning?”

TWMDCO: Blah-de-blah-de-blah-blah-blah.  Let me answer the question.

ED HENRY: (inaudible) your leadership—there’s something about your leadership (inaudible).

TWMDCO:  Ed—what I—what I’d like to do is to hear from the Republicans to find out what it is that they would like to see happen. And what I’m committing to is making sure that I am open to working with them on the issues that—where they think that there’s going to be cooperation.

After some verbal gymnastics about Obamacare, Major Garrett of CBS, stirred the pot with this doozy, “Let me go back to immigration. Moments before you walked out here, sir, Mitch McConnell said, and I quote, that ‘if you, in fact, use your executive authority to legalize a certain number of millions of undocumented workers, it would poison the well,’ direct quote, and it would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

“Do you not believe that is the considered opinion of the new Republican majority in the House and the Senate? And do you also not believe what they have said in the aftermath of last night’s results; the verdict rendered by voters should stop you or should prevent you from taking this action because it was a subtext in many of the campaigns?”

“Let me ask you a couple of specifics. Republicans haven’t made a mystery about some of the things they intend to say…

TWMDCO:  Do I have to write all these down, Major?

(LAUGHTER)

GARRETT:  “No, you’re very well familiar with these. These will not be mysteries to you.  Keystone XL pipeline, they will send you legislation on that. They will ask you to repeal the medical device tax as a part of a funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act.  And they have said they would like to repatriate some maybe $2 trillion of offshore revenue at the corporate level by reforming the corporate tax code without touching the individual tax code. To use your words, Mr. President, are any of those three lines you cannot cross? And also deal with what you perceive to be Republican attitudes about immigration?”

TWMDCO:  Meh.

The final question of the 73-minute exercise in tedium went to Scott Horsley of NPR:  “You mentioned that where your policies actually were on the ballot, they often did better than members of your party?  Does that signal some shortcoming on your part or on the party’s part in framing this election and communicating to the American people what it is that Democrats stand for?

This is a president who believes that he doesn’t have to heed the verdict of the voters if it goes against him and his allies.  With that in mind our cub reporter, in concert with our world-famous sign language interpreter, asked this:

”If you heard the people who voted on Tuesday as well as the two-thirds who chose not to participate, can you please repeat what they said?"

A note from our attorneys: This transcript has been slightly modified to make a point.

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

Holder’s Men

At 4:19 PM today, The Hill reported The Department of Justice plans to send federal monitors to 18 states to watch for discrimination against voters.

Monitors will head to Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Powerline’s John Hinderaker wonders what the point is noting this must be Eric Holder’s homage to the Democrats’ “effort to keep alive the myth of voter suppression.” 

Hinderaker continues, “That pretense seems to be a key element in their strategy to keep African-American voters in the fold, notwithstanding that the Democrats’ policies are devastating to black voters’ interests. And I guess it must work.”

“So does that mean that New Black Panthers won’t be standing outside polling places with billy clubs this year? Just kidding. And, of course, Eric Holder has never done anything in a “fair and nonpartisan manner” in his six years as Attorney General,” wrote Hinderaker.

So get ready Philly.  Something tells me you’ll be thrilled to know these gentlemen care very deeply about your ability to exercise your right of franchise.

Well, you know what they say…low turnout leads to bad government.

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.

Ten Buck Friday: The Haunting Of Harry Reid And The Democrats

With four days to go before Election Day, there is a palpable hope that control of the Senate will change hands.  The Democrats have had control of the Senate since 2006—eight years of purgatory for the American people.

The obstacle to bipartisan cooperation, Harry Reid has “piles of bills waiting for attention that could help Americans with jobs and help move the economy forward.”  Blocking GOP proposal after proposal after proposal, Reid has deliberately avoided tough votes that would embarrass The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.

His strategy may have backfired.  Some are saying that not taking up GOP amendments gave embattled Democrats few chances to break with the president.  Their lockstep allegiance isn’t playing well and may portend a disastrous day at the ballot box.  Reid’s stifling hold on the Senate shaped the records they are defending this midterm.

Roll Call, which covers Capitol Hill, reported this week that “all of the most vulnerable Democrats voted with the president at least 96 percent of the time on the 120 votes on which he urged a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote.”  So, yeah, when The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer said his “policies are on the ballot, every single one of them,” you’d better believe they are.

Aaron Blake of The Washington Post cites the latest Harvard Institute of Politics poll which shows that Latinos, unmarried women and young people “have soured on the Democratic Party” and favor a GOP-controlled Senate.

Paraphrasing Dr. Charles Krauthammer, an anemic economy, governmental incompetence and the sense of national decline under this president and the minions in his party are the impetus for the current disenchantment.

Stuart Rothenberg opines that "President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row."

For the past nine weeks, a handful of conservative bloggers have taken part in a movement called Ten Buck Friday.  We highlighted a different senate race each week encouraging our readers to contribute $10 to the campaign coffers of Republican challengers to entrenched Democrats in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

In this, our final posting before Election Day next Tuesday, our message is to ask you to volunteer by making phone calls, talking with friends, family, co-workers and neighbors encouraging them to exercise their right of franchise by casting their ballot.  Low turnout leads to bad government.  Make sure your vote counts to prevent a theft-proof election.  Let’s make this midterm a haunting experience for Harry Reid and his messiah.

Please consider visiting the other bloggers who are participating in Ten Buck Friday: 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.

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: The Train Wreck's Arriving Right On Schedule

Graphic courtesy of Diogenes’ Middle Finger and modified with permission

Eleven days remain until Americans cast their ballots in the 2014 midterms.  Conservatives need to show up in record numbers if there is any chance to offset the stuffed ballots, rigged voting machines and illegal immigrants voting not only in early voting but on Election Day.

In 2010, voters gave the GOP historic victories and handed The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer a “shellacking” at the polls.  Most notable was the ouster of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House and Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin.

While I am loathe to quote a Democrat, this one from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sums up what Ten Buck Friday is all about:

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves—and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

When retiring Tom Harkin (D-IA) isn’t confident Democrats can hold the Senate the edge the GOP has in the polls seems promising, but the decades-long agenda of the political/judicial/bureaucratic Democrat infrastructure will continue to give elections to Democrats unless we fight them at the voting booth.

If control of the Senate can be wrested from the hands of Harry Reid, America may be able to secure enough breathing room to recover from the failed presidency of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer.

If Americans are truly dissatisfied with the direction of the country they simply must turn out at the polls.  Not bothering to vote because you are disgusted by politics guarantees the continued entrenchment of corrupt Democrats.  Rest assured they are counting on you staying home. 

Don’t kid yourself.  By staying home you are doubling the value of some diehard Democrat’s vote.  Is that what you want?

Get off your duff.  Talk with your friends, family, co-workers and scoop up five people on Election Day and go to the polls.  Stand guard over liberty and live in dignity.  We cannot afford to sit this election out.

Please consider contributing $10 to the candidate(s) listed below.

Contribute to Bill Cassidy (LA) here.

Contribute to Tom Cotton (AR) here.

Contribute to Joni Ernst (IA) here.

Contribute to Cory Gardner (CO) here.

Contribute to Thom Tillis (NC) here.

Please consider visiting the other bloggers who are participating in Ten Buck Friday:

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.

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.

The Return of Ten Buck Friday

Guest Ten Buck Friday post. (Man! Curmudgeon was really serious about getting away! from it all!) 

Week Six of a Nine Week Mission, to Seek new life for the Senate, to Boldly Beam Harry Reid back to the planet he came from! 

Focusing on the Senate races is it worth ten bucks a week to you (three gallons of gas?) to eliminate Reid's control and give the Senate responsible leadership again? 

 With that in mind, this week we look to the Senate seat in Alaska. Can you contribute just $10 to Senate candidate Dan Sullivan? Real Clear Politics has Sullivan up 4.8 and rates the race as a toss up. 

You can contribute to Dan Sullivan here. Good luck and Godspeed, ! (If you mark your contribution as "Ten Buck Friday", they'll see if the blogosphere can give them a little bump.)

Visit Our Fellow Ten Buck Friday bloggers: Adrienne's Corner, Fishersville Mike, For God, Family and Country, Laughing Conservative, Left Coast Rebel, Mind Numbed Robot, Polination, Proof Positive, Texas Conservative News, Theo Spark and Wyblog 

Twitter: #TenBuckFriday

Powerful Ad Running Against Mary Landrieu

H/T Mark Simone

Ten Buck Friday: Clearing The Decks

As recently as Wednesday of this week, The Hill  reported that dingbat Nancy Pelosi said voters weren’t responding to the GOP agenda.  She said, “We’ve out-mobilized them; we’ve out-recruited them; we’ve outraised them to a shameful extent. They’re desperate.”

She further opined, “Their days are numbered. I know that in two years, I know we’ll have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president. I’d like it to be in two months.”

Asked if she was conceding that Republicans would hold the House in November’s midterms, Pelosi insisted, “No, I’m not." 

Michael Barone begs to differ. “Republicans retain big leads to pick up three open seats in states carried by Mitt Romney—West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota. Republican nominees have moved ahead of three Democratic incumbents in Romney states (Alaska, Arkansas, and Louisiana) and in two target states carried by President Obama (Colorado and Iowa)."

"Only in North Carolina, which Romney narrowly carried, has the Republican not yet overtaken the incumbent Democrat Sen. Kay Hagan—and her edge is narrowing in the most recent polls."

If Barone’s pedigree as a political analyst isn’t convincing enough, he points to analysts at The Washington Post, The New York Times, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, The National Journal’s Charlie Cook, Stuart Rothenberg and the guy who’s analysis I put great faith in, Larry Sabato, who all agree.

Sabato contends, “Right now, Democrats are behind the eight-ball.  So many undecided contests are winnable for the GOP that the party would have to have a string of bad luck—combined with a truly exceptional Democratic get-out-the-vote program—to snatch defeat from the wide-open jaws of victory. Or Republicans would have to truly shoot themselves in the foot in at least one race, which has become a clear possibility over the last few weeks in Kansas.”

The Free At Last PAC uploaded a damning ad on YouTube™ which employs a powerful quote from Thomas Sowell to criticize Louisiana’s Democratic senator Mary Landrieu:  “Politicians are not trying to solve our problems.  They’re trying to solve their own problems of which getting elected and re-elected are No. 1 and No. 2.”

Elbert Guillory expounds on Sowell’s quote, “You’re not Mary’s cause and you’re certainly not her charity.  You are just a vote.  Nothing less and nothing more.  For her, you’re just a means to an end so that she remains in power.  While you scrounge to gather food stamps to buy Kool-Aid™, she sips champagne at cocktail parties.  While you dig through the couch for gas money, she flies around in private jets funded by taxpayer dollars.  Mary Landrieu knows she doesn’t have to do anything for our community because no matter what she does 95% of us will line up and vote for her every single time.  Since 1996 black unemployment has doubled and the poverty rate for blacks has skyrocketed.  Mary hasn’t helped us at all.  So on November 4th, let’s send her back home to her father’s house or to her mansion in Washington, D.C. or to wherever the heck she lives because one thing is for sure she does not live here.”

While Guillory is critical of Landrieu, the sentiments are certainly applicable to too many incumbents, especially of entrenched Democrats.

While speaking at Northwestern University on Thursday, The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer said, "I am not on the ballot this fall.  Michelle’s pretty happy about that.  But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot.  Every single one of them."

If ever there were a reason for Americans to be motivated to vote 31 days from today, those words from the president should be all the impetus they need.

Doyle McManus seems to think the November balloting is a “Seinfeld election” inferring its because “so much of the campaign seems to be about nothing.”  McManus writes for The Los Angeles Times.  It is a well-known fact that California has the largest state deficit in American history. Furthermore, California also has the dismal distinction of having the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate.  To this observer, McManus’ assertion that this election is about “nothing” is patently and egregiously absurd.

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.  Remember to call your friends and remind them to go to the polls, to volunteer.  We cannot afford to sit this election out. 

Contribute to Bill Cassidy (LA) here.

Contribute to Tom Cotton (AR) here.

Contribute to Joni Ernst (IA) here.

Contribute to Cory Gardner (CO) 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.