Archive for November, 2022

At least overconfidence won’t be a problem for the GOP in 2024 as it was after the two Red Wave elections–and other thoughts

Posted: November 13, 2022 by John Ruberry in congress, culture, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election. 

After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too. 

Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.

After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.

Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Election denial.

It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.

Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.

The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.

The new election playing field.

I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.

What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.

Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting. 

Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.

Tribalism.

If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.

Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!

Slow down there, cowboy.

Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”

And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign. 

Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.

There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

All Pathetic 96+ Loss League Final Report. LeBron Cheers

Posted: November 13, 2022 by datechguy in Dynasty, dynasty baseball, fun, gaming, online gaming
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Here is the final report on Our All Pathetic 96 loss league has finished it’s third season Here were the division results

AL EastWINSLOSSESPCTGB
2009 Cleveland Indians5149.510—–
1996 Detroit Tigers 5050.5001
1957 Washington Senators4753.4704
2010 Baltimore Orioles4060.40011
Cleveland won their division by winning the final two games of the season vs Detroit despite finishing the season with a negative runs for /against ratio (-2)
AL WestWINSLOSSESPCTGB
1970 Kansas City Royals5545.550—–
1997 Oakland A’s 5446.5401
2021 Texas Rangers5149.5104
2021 Pittsburgh Pirates4060.40015
Kansas City won their division on their final game of the season vs Oakland

If you like tight division races you LOVED the AL this season. Both races where three team affairs going into the 2nd to last series and both were decided in the final game with the two fighting teams with identical records. One note. The 1970 White Sox were supposed to be the 4th team in the AL West but a system error took place which would have required some teams game to be replayed. Rather than cancel games I took the only pathetic team from the base year (2021) available (Pittsburgh) and moved them to the AL West to substitute.

NL EastWINSLOSSESPCTGB
2009 Washington Nationals7030.700—–
2002 Milwaukee Brewers5446.54016
2019 Miami Marlins4555.45025
1969 Montreal Expos4357.43027
How dominant were the defending World Series champion 2009 Nationals? The only team they had a losing record against were the 2009 Cleveland Indians (1-3). They had a .750 winning percentage or better against 9 of the 15 other teams in the league. and with a +225 Runs for/against ratio
NL WestWINSLOSSESPCTGB
2012 Chicago Cubs5546.545—–
1982 Cincinnati Reds5447.5351
2015 Cincinnati Reds5050.5004 1/2
1993 San Diego Padres4258.42012 1/2
The Season was decided in a one game playoff which is why the Cubs and Reds have 101 games

The National league had both the tightest and the loosest division races. The 2002 Brewers record would have put them in 1st place in any other division yet they finished 16 games back which is farther behind than any last place team in any other division. The lack of a wild card due to a 16 team league hurt them. Meanwhile not only was the NL west a three team race with six to go but it finished in a dead heat with the 1982 Cincinnati Reds winning their final two to tie the cubs forcing a one game regular season playoff game that went 13 innings before Tony Campana doubled in the go ahead runs.

League Championship Series

The Playoffs in the NL started with no surprise. The National who had gone 7-1 vs the cubs in the regular season shut then out in game one. The Cubs took an early lead in game two but nats tied it up in the 4th and it remained tied till then 8th and then the floor fell out on the Nationals season with the Cubs taking the lead and never looking back. The only time they trailed in the rest of the series was a run in the top of the first in game 3 which they answered with ten of their own closing out the Nationals in 4 games

2012 Cubs 3 games 2009 Nationals 1

In the American League you had two teams who had both won their divisions and it was hard fought. the 2009 Indians took game one 4-2 but the 1970 Royals answered back with a 7-4 win in game two but fate took a hand in game three when trying to protect a 2-0 lead in the fifth right fielder Lou Piniella injured himself diving for a ball in right. He would leave the game so when the 9th inning game and the Royals had closed within 3 due to Bob Oliver’s HR he could only watch as his replacement Bill Sorrell grounded to first as the Indians won 7-5. With Piniella’s bat out of the lineup the Indians would win game four shutting out the Royals on four hits closing out a series that could easily have gone either way

2009 Indians 3 games 1979 Royals 1 game

World Series

The last Indians Cubs world series was close and exciting and this one didn’t disappoint. Cleveland opened with an 8-2 win at Wrigley but the Cubs answered right back routing the tribe 9-4. The series went back to Cleveland and Jacobs field proved friendly as the Indians took game three 6-1 and game four 6-3. The Cubs facing elimination came back to win game five 7-5 and force the series back to the friendly confines of the ivy. Cleveland took an early 6-1 lead but the Cubs came back to make it 6-4 and a nasty feeling of deja vu came upon the denizens of Lake Erie. The tribe added an insurance run in the 7th but the Cubs put a pair of runners on in the 8th bringing the tying run at bat with only one out against Chris Perez who relieved Kerry Wood with one on and one out. Perez rose to the occasion striking out David DeJesus and coaxing a grounder from Starlin Castro to finish the eighth and after waling Joe Mather on a borderline pitch to start the ninth held on striking out the final two batters to bring Joy to Cleveland and to Lebron as the Indians finally had a World Series again!

So ends out All pathetic league 3rd season. It will take a pause as we finish the 2nd season of our draft league (1970) and start to prepare for 1971. If you have any interest in joining that league or in a special one season all year draft league that we might see in Feb let me know in comments.

A Very Important Piece By Jazz Shaw and three important points

Posted: November 12, 2022 by datechguy in elections
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Big Julie: I'm rollin' the whole thousand.  And to change my luck, I'm going to use my own dice.
Nathan Detroit:  Your own dice?
Big Julie: I had 'em made especially in Chicago.
Nathan Detroit:  I do not wish to seem petty, but may I have a look at those dice?[examines dice] But these dice ain't got no spots on 'em.  They're blank.
Big Julie:  I had the spots removed for luck. But I remember where the spots formerly were.
Nathan Detroit: You are going to roll blank dice and remember where the spots were?
Big Julie: Detroit... do you doubt my memory?
Guys and Dolls 1955

It’s Axiomatic to note that anything written by Jazz Shaw is worth your time and your consideration and this entry at Hot Air is particularly worthwhile

Some day, perhaps even sometime this year if we’re lucky, when election officials in Arizona finally find someone capable of mastering preschool mathematics and they finish counting their ballots, we may know the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections. But that day is not today, my friends. They are somehow still flummoxed by the task of gathering up hundreds of thousands of ballots and feeding them into machines of dubious efficacy. Meanwhile, a different set of election supervisors appears to be ready to move forward with a hand count of nearly all of the ballots. Those officials are facing threats from state Democrats, however. The liberals have gone to court and obtained an order to forbid any such action, though the ruling seems to defy the state’s election laws.

Nothing says “Anyone who thinks we steal elections in Arizona is a conspiracy theorist” then taking four days to not count ballots then going to count to make sure making sure the ballots can’t be counted.by hand. He quotes an AP story on the event and comments further:

Why would Democrats be so uniformly opposed to a hand count? What is the downside of doing it? When the “official” count as tallied by the machines is finished, they can release those results immediately. But even if it takes weeks to complete the hand count, those numbers could then be matched against the machine tally.

In what universe is that a bad thing? If the counts match up (or come within a reasonable margin of error that wouldn’t change the outcome), then all is right with the world and the confidence of the voters will be enhanced. If the numbers are grossly different, then a serious problem will have been exposed and corrective measures can be taken prior to the next election. Even if it leads to the final result being changed, people will at least be able to walk away feeling that the election was fairly conducted and decided.

The answer to this question is a follow up quote from the famous musical Guys and Dolls when Nathan Detroit, armed with the money he won from Sky returns to roll against Big Julie again

Nathan Detriot:  Get on your feet, Big Jule.  I now have dough to roll you again.  But with real dice.
Harry the Horse: Nothin' doin' With honest dice Big Juliec can't make a pass to save his soul.

It’s no coincidence that Republicans won overwhelmingly in Florida and they were able to count 4 times the ballots Arizona has in only a single night. That such an obvious thing is considered “conspiracy” tells you a lot about what is going on.

Three critical thoughts:

  1. What has been going on in this country is exactly the type of thing Kari Lake has been talking about for months and the left has attacked her as a crank and worse from the moment the had the nomination.
  2. Can you think of the Bigger conflict of interest than Katie Hobbs being secretary of state in official charge of this/ It’s Big Julie and the blank dice in spades.
  3. As seemingly everyone with a keyboard seems to be piling on Donald Trump let me point out that if he had not fought back against this kind of fraud and pushed back to the shock of the establishment who have let it go on for years Kari Lake would be a voice crying out in the wilderness objecting to these obvious shenanigans without and the national press would at best ignore or at worst malign her without challenge or opposition.

Can the Navy get any older???

Posted: November 12, 2022 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

No, I’m NOT writing about the election results…plenty of other people are doing that.

Besides, the Navy gives me plenty to write about, and this week was no different. In its most recent sign that it can’t recruit enough Sailors, the Navy lifted the age limit on enlistment from 39 to 41. From Military.com:

The Navy, facing an increasingly tough recruiting environment, raised the maximum enlistment age by two years — from 39 to 41 — on Friday in an effort to allow more civilians to join its ranks. “Effective immediately,” recruiters will be able to enlist people who are as old as 41, provided that they don’t hit their 42nd birthday by the time they report to boot camp, a copy of the new policy, provided to Military.com by the Navy, explained. The policy also noted that some service communities like nuclear power, Navy SEALs and divers will continue to be able to set tougher restrictions for their members.

Military.com

Now, if joining the military at age 39 sounds a bit old to you…it is. I knew a few people that enlisted in their early twenties, but once you got past the age of 27…enlistment dropped dramatically. There were some officers that joined later, most of them doctors or other medical specialists, but there were not too many 30-somethings beating down the door to join the military, let alone join as a new Sailor and go to boot camp.

How much do I think this change will make a difference? Somewhere between “not at all” and “nothing.”

I did find a USNI article boasting about how the Navy was reaching out with new advertising to Generation Z. So, I watched their new ad.

Now, the videography is good. It’s a pretty tight commercial, well shot and with a good message, although it should have been titled “Never say never” instead of “Never.” So, how well is it doing?

Now, the Navy channel isn’t exactly something lots of people are going to follow for fun, but at least we can see the video is getting views. What is interesting is looking at the most popular videos on the channel as a whole.

Everything that is really popular is older. Like, significantly older. With the exception of a video made a few months back about a SWCC Sailor (well made video and a very cool story!), most of the videos just aren’t popular. I also tried finding Navy eSports videos on Twitch and other platforms, and their viewer level was…pretty low.

Which tells me one thing: all the money the Navy is pouring into advertising isn’t reaching the desired audience…or much of an audience at all. I’ll venture its because the Navy’s narrative is being told through its news stories, which consist of rampant suicide issues, a forced COVID vaccine, and the increasingly truthful notion that veterans are broken people. All of this turns off Generation Z, and really most young people in general, to the idea that they could have any sort of fruitful career in the Navy. Combine that with a strong job market, and you have the recipe for a recruiting disaster.

So, what is next? Well, forcing people to stay longer is already being discussed at USNI:

A ten-year service requirement would change the motivation of most ensigns who join the submarine force, allowing the community to recruit officers who intend to make the Navy a career. This undoubtedly would cause recruiting challenges, but naval aviation is able every year to recruit hundreds of ensigns who are committing ten years of their lives. Some of the recruitment challenges can be ameliorated by the additional benefits that would come from extending the minimum service requirement.
- From USNI

There is so much wrong with this idea that it would take another article to explain, but I’ll go with the obvious: when a generation of kids are watching their parents hop between jobs to make increasingly more money, why would they be incentivized to lock into a long contract with the Navy? And, when this approach and others like it don’t work, the military will increasingly force people to the paths it needs, which it has done in the past.

Until the actual issues are addressed concerning the Navy’s mission and how it treats its people, it will continue to not inspire young people to join, and will increasingly become more draconian in its retention approach.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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