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Report from Louisiana: Does Edwards lose based on early voting?

Posted: October 7, 2019 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

ARNAUDVILLE LA – We are traveling this week and find ourselves in Arnaudville, LA, once again; we are about an hour to the west of Baton Rouge and twenty minutes or so north of Lafayette, in Cajun country.

Early voting has ended across the state for the gubernatorial election, as well as other local races, and The Hayride blog has some interesting predictions about John Bel Edwards: he loses.  Really, it’s a very dramatic headline: The Early Voting Numbers Signal John Bel Edwards’ Defeat.  Really?!  Is that premature?

Pundit Jeff Sadow believes Edwards may be in trouble:

Democrats have averaged 39.26 percent total turnout while Republicans have averaged 43.59 percent. In terms of early voting over this span, those means respectively are 8.47 and 10.14. Thus, the ratio for Democrats, is 4.65; for Republicans, it’s 4.35. This shows in recent history that of those who vote Democrats in comparison to Republicans disproportionately don’t vote early, with early votes making up 21.5 percent of their total while for the GOP its early voters comprise 23 percent of that total.

At the same time, the early voting average higher Republican turnout of 1.67 percent is 2.6 times smaller than the average gap in total turnout that favors Republicans by 4.33 percent. With early 10/12/19 voting encompassing 13.16 percent of Democrats and 16.91 percent of Republicans, the gap more than doubled to 3.75.

Using the historical ratios, this means trouble for Democrats. That would imply a 64.68 percent turnout for Democrats and 73.56 for Republicans. Such lofty numbers won’t happen because of the trend to substitute early for election day voting, for which these ratios don’t compensate. However, comparatively these do point to a significant GOP advantage.

I’ve been most worried that a Republican split between Ralph Abraham and Eddie Rispone would give Edwards an outright win but Sadow (who is smarter than me) does not appear concerned.

And for whatever it’s worth, early voting numbers have been record-breaking across the state, which seems to indicate that it is not just local races pulling people to the polls.

The primary is next weekend, October 12, which is also LSU-Florida game day which could contribute to some of the early voting numbers, but certainly not all. 

As I’ve said often, John Bel Edwards has killed economic growth in this state, and his pathetic attempt to buy teacher votes with a $1,000 annual pay raise is a joke. By the time taxes and insurance come out each month my raise might buy lunch one day at Chick-Fil-A.

At this point, I don’t care who defeats Edwards, just as long as somebody does.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and Her Circle at Melrose Plantation (LSU Press). Follow her on Instagram @patbecker 25 and Twitter @paustin110.

I Did Some Reporting on the Big Stuff (UPDATE)

Posted: October 5, 2019 by julietteochieng in Uncategorized
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Voice Dropping Knowledge in the Wilderness

by baldilocks

As we know, when a so-called whistle-blower initiated the uproar about President Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky it seemed to be a signal to Democrats that it was time to begin the impeachment process that most of them have longed for since Election Day in 2016.

President Trump declassified and released the transcript of the conversation, which refuted characterizations or “parodies” of it from major Democratic Party players like Rep. Adam Schiff. Nonetheless, the hue and cry of “Impeach the MotherFather” – to paraphrase Rep. Rashida Tlaib – was heard throughout the land. Why? Because surely it is illegal for a sitting POTUS to ask a foreign head of state to investigate to see if a crime has been committed in the latter’s country. Right?

The outrage got even more shrill when it was presumed that president Trump asked the same thing of Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help investigate the origins of the Russia hoax. (The presumption was in error. It turns out that the Australians reached out to us first on the matter.)

A day or so after this whirlwind started, one of my friends shared a link which pointed to the fact that the United States has a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with Ukraine and, a few seconds later, I discovered that we also have one with Australia – naturally, since Australia is part of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance — and with many other countries.

Of course, I shared this information with my 6000+ followers on Twitter and my 3000+ followers on Facebook. It took a while for other Trump supporters with larger followings to pick up on it, but some did.

I even shared the information with Hillary Clinton, for what it’s worth.

It’s fun to troll and to be telling truth at the same time.

The fact that it was her husband who signed the Ukraine MLAT into law back in 1998 was a bonus that I didn’t hesitate to point out to her.

By the way, other than my friend, I saw no other commentator point out the existence of these treaties before I did.

Just wanted to point that out.

Here’s what I’m doing now: reading John Solomon’s Ukraine papers on Scribd. I think it’s very important for each of us – every interested voter – to see what type of beast we are dealing with. And it’s a rough beast. I’ve been saying some variation of the following of late.

To me, this was instinctive, but, as it turns out, one Glenn Beck seems to have connected all the players in the Ukraine game using his signature blackboard. Well worth your time.

President Trump is poised to spill the gravy.

HECK I FORGOT: Like Hunter Biden, Paul Pelosi, Jr., the son of Speaker Pelosi sits/sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The video is a promo featuring the Speaker herself.

I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Somalia and a coming Africa boom

Posted: October 5, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
US Embassy in Somalia in 1992, from Wikipedia

While everyone was busy talking about impeachment, the re-establishment of the US Embassy in Somalia popped into my Facebook feed. It will probably garner no real headlines or much fanfare. It is really important, because it might mark a culmination of investment into Africa, and perhaps a turning point in how we view that continent.

Africa has been left behind by most of the industrialized world. Although it was critical for trading, it just never industrialized like North America, Europe or Asia has. It’s been left in the dark and had its share of crime, dictators and poor rule. This despite its critical location, abundance of resources and a people that have proven they can accomplish a lot when not held back by corruption and crime.

Africa, if done right, is important. China figured this out and is trying to buy up Africa through debt-diplomacy, hoping to secure a future for itself. The US has mainly viewed Africa as a place to practice killing terrorists. That isn’t a long term strategy though.

Since we’re already in Somalia, let’s have a long term plan. Somalia has a ton of advantages. It’s right near the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, a critical choke point for maritime trade. Somalia reaches to the equator and has a large expanse of ocean, which is preferable for launching satellites. Somalia has some pretty significant untapped oil reserves. It also has good beaches, game reserves and plenty of archaeological ruins that would attract tourism.

The United States should be taking our focus out of Syria, where we will only ever pour more money and get nothing, and into Somalia. Encouraging companies to invest in Somalia and using some of the revenue to rebuild the security a government needs to survive is a start. Building a Somali Navy that is dedicated to stopping piracy would prevent us from wasting US Navy ships on a relatively low-combat mission. Pushing academic institutions to invest in Somali education and archaeology will begin the process of building an educated society that won’t tolerate high levels of crime in the future.

Somalia, given a better start, should be a thriving long-term partner with the United States. Let’s hope we can treat them as such and walk down that path before China beats us to the punch.

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.

Impeachment as Sports talk radio, Sox don’t Bug me , WNBA Who cares, Pats over Chiefs? Great Finish in DC under the Fedora

Posted: October 4, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Watching all the impeachment talk from the MSM is an awful lot like listening to sports talk radio. It’s all about getting people riled up over nothing and the opinions expressed have nothing to do with the actual reality on the field. Or to put it another way, the media/left are like the radio talk show hosts whose primary purpose is to draw an audience to the station, Trump’s team is all about winning the actual game.

Speaking of sports talk radio, Everyone on it keeps going on about how the Red Sox are in trouble and how the signings of Sale, Eovaldi and Price will destroy us next year. I’m sorry but not only are the odds of all three of them getting hurt again rather small but frankly we’ve already won two World Series THIS DECADE! Tell this tale of woe to the kids who were born after 1995 and never knew the days of the curse as I did for 30+ years. Don’t expect me to get angry after two decades of glory.

Noticed that there is some trouble over the use of racial epithets concerning a WNBA playoff game. Actually I didn’t notice it but ESPN for some reason during lunch on thursday was talking about it. They also were lamenting that the WNBA gets less pay etc…

Tell you what WNBA when you start filling stadiums and cause people to be actually interested in the product you produce instead of being a wholly subsidized woke component of the NBA meant to keep SJW’s happy then you can start whining about money. Frankly I wouldn’t have even noticed your issues if it hadn’t been forced on me.

Was looking at the NFL power ranking and noticed that the Patriots are still ranked above the chiefs.

Not withstanding the great performance of the Pat’s defense, given the performance of New England’s offense vs the Chief’s coming back to win I’d a little shocked. If the chiefs do that again I can’t see NE being ranked above them on the power ranking, particularly since the Patriots are playing one of the worst teams in the league this week.

Had a chance to watch the 8th inning of the Brewers vs Washington game on youtube (was working so couldn’t watch it live) A hit batsman, a broken bat blooper a walk and a misplayed single, all against one of the best relievers in the game turned a certain Brewers victory into a Washington triumph, but even so the Brew Crew had a chance to tie the game because in baseball you always get your shot.

Don’t tell me games where you kneel down to run out a clock, or pull a goal tender or throw the bench out there for garbage time are better than that.

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