Okay, the election wasn’t all we had hoped for.  I’ll admit I got caught up in the Red Wave hysteria, and perhaps our expectations were a bit too lofty for this day and age.  Instead of the Red Wave, we got more of a Purple Haze.  Tuesday night into Wednesday, I was a bit depressed, but now I’m beginning to put things into perspective.  You will recall that the predictions for House pickups by Republicans ranged from 20 to 50, and it looks like the result will be closer to 20.  I have to say “it looks like” because a number of States have turned Election Day into Election Season, where the voting starts in October, and the vote counting goes on nearly to December.  Maybe we should rename Autumn to correspond to election season.  Instead of Autumn, how about Chaos?  Corruption might be a better name.  More about that later.  In any case, although 20 seats is not what we wanted or expected, let’s look at the big picture.  Going into the election, Republicans held 212 seats.  As this is written, 14 seats have been added.  Of the remaining seats, 15 are considered likely or leaning Republican and 10 more are considered toss ups.  This puts the eventual total somewhere in the range of 230 Republican seats, or a 25 seat majority.  We all wanted more, but consider two things.  First, when the Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years in 1995, they held 232 seats, which was considered a major triumph.  Secondly, remember that our goal was to take the gavel out of Nancy Pelosi’s hands, and it looks like that’s been accomplished.  The Senate elections are something else again.  When I saw the predictions about New Hampshire possibly going Republican, my heart overruled my head, and I bought into them.  In almost every election, they tell us “New Hampshire is in play,” and invariably the Democrat wins, so that one didn’t bother me.  Pennsylvania, however, is a different story.  Pennsylvanians had to choose between a thoughtful, moderate heart surgeon and a man who has never held a real job, and whose only known accomplishments were that he once stuck a shotgun in the face of an innocent black man, and he later released murderers from prison.  How anyone could knowingly choose a brain damaged, skin-headed, dirty hoodie wearing gargoyle, with a nasty lump on his neck that looks like it’s going into business for itself, over Dr. Oz, is beyond me.  I think we must chalk Fetterman’s win up to two factors.  The first is the new Democrat recipe for electoral success.  Keep your candidate in the basement.  Don’t agree to any debates, or if you must debate, do it after half your base has already voted.  And rely on media corruption to hide your candidate’s flaws, and to amplify your campaign’s lies about your opponent.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden proved that the recipe works.  The second factor involves the Democrats’ transition from Election Day to Election Season.  Herein lies yet another example of Democrat hypocrisy.  The Constitution provides, in no uncertain terms, that the State legislatures shall prescribe “the times, places, and manner” of House elections.  It is this provision that empowers the Blue States to permit weeks of early voting, and the counting of mail ballots without proper signatures or dates, and to count ballots mailed days or weeks after election day.  Democrats like this aspect of federalism.  “Our State legislature approved it, so butt out.”  On the other hand, Democrats are simultaneously opposing the use of the same Constitutional provision for the principle that the State legislatures, and not the courts, are the sole arbiters of how Congressional districts are to be redrawn after each census.  That case will be heard by the Supreme Court in this term.  As this is written, control of the Senate is still in doubt, and in all likelihood will remain in doubt until a runoff election in Georgia on December 6 tells us if Herschel Walker or Rafael Warnock will win that seat.  Right now, Pennsylvania went Democrat, and it looks like Adam Laxalt will flip Nevada Republican.  That puts us at 49-49, with Arizona and Georgia still outstanding.  There were massive voting problems in Arizona, where many ballots in Maricopa County could not be read by the tabulating machines, and some voters were told they could not cast a new ballot because “they already voted” the ballots that could not be read.  Right now, Arizona, two days after election day, has counted 76% of the vote.  Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is about 13,000 votes behind Katie Hobbs, the Arizona official in charge of her own election.  If the votes actually get counted, Lake is confident she will win.  Senatorial candidate Blake Masters is further behind, and looks like a long shot.  If Democrats hold onto the Arizona Senate seat, and Laxalt wins in Nevada, then we will stand at 50 Republican and 49 Democrat, and all eyes turn to Georgia on December 6.  But wait, Clark County Nevada (that’s Las Vegas) just found 57,000 more ballots, yet to be counted.  Adam Laxalt says that, even if they go 63% for his opponent, he still will win.  Previously counted ballots in Clark County give the Democrat just over 51% of the votes in that county, but stay tuned.  This is one Hell of a way to conduct an election, and don’t even get me started on California, where the counting continues for weeks.  If the Blue States actually were interested in conducting fully transparent and fair elections, they could easily do so.  Take the example of Florida.  The weeks of chad counting and lawsuits in 2000, and the massive screwups in Palm Beach and Broward Counties four years ago have been fixed.  Florida counted 7.7 million ballots, including early votes and mailed votes, in five hours Tuesday night.  No losing candidate has complained that the system was unfair, and I’ve heard of no reports that voters claim they were denied the right to vote.  So it can be done.  The only reason it’s not done is that the Blue States don’t want to fix it.  They subscribe to Joseph Stalin’s electoral philosophy.  “Those who vote decide nothing.  Those who count the vote decide everything.”  Surely, we deserve better.

Next Tuesday is election day.  For months we’ve been hearing about a coming Red Wave, a Democrat resurgence after the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, then a Republican rebound.  Republicans need to gain 5 seats to control the House, and the Senate, now tied 50-50 requires but one net pickup to put control in Republican hands.  Predictions are literally all over the map.  They range from the ridiculous to the sublime.  For the ridiculous, this from Nancy Pelosi, “I cannot believe anybody would vote for these people[Republicans].” Pelosi claimed the GOP campaign was driven by “endless lying and endless money.”  This is a typical Democrat attempt to hide the truth.  Democrats are lying about the economy, inflation, energy production, and even the number of States.  Last week, Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden said there were 54 States, and Democrats are outspending Republicans in Senate campaigns at least 2 to 1.  But then again, with her power hanging by a thread, what do you expect from a pig but a grunt?  On the sublime front, Newt Gingrich predicts Republican pickups of 20 to 50 seats in the House, and a Republican Senate, where he predicts that Herschel Walker will win by 5-6%.  Even Democrats perceive a problem in Georgia.  The detestable Chuck Schumer recently was overheard telling Biden, “We are going downhill in Georgia.”  About 70% of voters consider the most important issues to be the economy, crime, and border security,  the same issues on which voters most trust Republicans.  In addition, voters are scared, with between 60% and 80% of those polled believing that we are already in a recession.  Those results don’t bode well for Democrats.  But typically, Democrats are in denial, and actually are suggesting that the problem isn’t that they’ve royally screwed the country up, but that the voters simply don’t understand that the real issues are abortion and saving our democracy from Donald Trump.  Seriously?   MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner (any relation to Claude?) says that if Republicans win in November, they will “figure out a way” to jail the entire January 6 Committee.  Now that I think of it, that’s not a bad idea.  MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says Democrats must fight to lower gas prices (that Biden raised) in order to save our democracy from “existential peril.”  Not because people can’t afford, gasoline, heat or food, but because the high prices encourage people to vote Republican.  Hayes said, “Oil companies, OPEC, and the Saudis,” aren’t eager to lower prices before an election where Democratic candidates are vulnerable.  “That’s why Saudi Arabia might want to suddenly announce a cut in oil production right before the midterms.”  You got it backwards Jackass.  If Republicans were in charge, and we produced our own energy, global oil prices would fall, which is the last thing Saudi Arabia and Russia want to see happen.  MSNBC’s Ryan Cooper says, the election results will determine whether there are any more real elections.  Apparently an election is “real” only when non-citizens vote,  unsigned ballots are counted weeks after election day, blatant fraud is ignored, and Democrats win.  Cooper complained that the real issues aren’t being reported, such as a global financial apocalypse (I guess he means the one Joe Biden and the Democrats created), and enormous cuts to Medicare and Social Security, cuts that no Republican proposes to make.  Cooper continued, “If Republicans win they will certainly attempt to end democracy as we know it.”  They only know it when they win.  They’re still harping on voter suppression, even though more people have voted than ever before.  Biden Spokes-liar Karin Jean-Pierre fielded that one explaining, “Just because voter turnout has increased, doesn’t mean there’s not suppression.”  Huh?  Cooper concluded, “I would not rule out actual attempted election theft.” Of course he wouldn’t rule it out, Cooper figures if Democrats can do it, why not Republicans?  As election day approaches Democrats have been required to pour money into races that were once considered safe Democrat seats.  In upstate New York, Democrat Sean Maloney (rhymes with baloney), who is part of the House leadership, finds himself vulnerable to his Republican opponent.  House seats that were considered safe, in Blue States like Rhode Island, Oregon, and Washington are now in play.  The seats in New York’s Hudson Valley are now tossups.  In a number of States, female Hispanic Republicans are running strong in areas now served by Democrats.  In the Senate race, Herschel Walker has pulled ahead of Warnock.  In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz has pulled even with Fetterman, and in some polls is ahead.  With Halloween now over, I can’t understand why any sane voter would vote for Fetterman, a Frankenstein look-alike who lacks the monster’s verbal abilities.  And it’s not about his stroke.  In fact, the stroke might be helping him.  If Fetterman was able to articulate his opinions, his radical policies would prove him unqualified for the job.  In Arizona, Democrat Mark Kelly is running neck and neck with Blake Masters, and Republican Kari Lake is running well ahead of her Democrat opponent.  New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan, who won six years ago by about 1,000 votes out of more than 700,000, is vulnerable this year.  In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt is running ahead of his incumbent opponent.  Even Patty Murray in Washington is in a competitive race.  Regardless of who you choose to believe, things look bleak for Democrats.  Rasmussen polling shows Republicans with a 7% lead in the generic ballot, which portends big gains for Republicans.  Republicans have a 16 point lead with independents.  Additionally, 27 percent of black voters and 45 percent of other minority groups said they would vote for the Republican candidate if the election were held today.  If this is correct, Democrats are cooked.  Lee Zeldin has a real chance to defeat Kathy Hochel in New York.  Even Woke wingnuts in Oregon have grown tired of rising crime and homeless camps on their streets, and a Republican may be elected Governor for the first time in 40 years.  Democrats find themselves on the wrong side of every issue.  Despite this, or maybe because of it, Democrats have decided to ignore the issues important to voters, and to rely on fear and threats.  They woke Biden up Wednesday night so he could insult half the country again by warning that, if Republicans win, our democracy is doomed.  His henchman Ron Klain then announced “this is your last warning.”  Our last warning or else what, Ron?  As I mentioned, the predictions are all over the map, so I’ll add my own.  I predict that Republicans will gain 42 seats in the House and a net +3 in the Senate, giving them a 53-47 majority.  Tuesday November 8th is almost here.  Election Day is my favorite holiday.  This one should be enjoyable.  Get your popcorn ready.

In 1866, Fyodor Dostoevsky published his masterpiece, Crime and Punishment.  The book essentially was a morality play.  The notion that punishment would follow the commission of a crime was not a new concept.  It was founded upon Judeo-Christian religious values.  After one has sinned, one must atone.  Those values were engrafted into our laws, and respect for the law was the underpinning of society.  Thomas Hobbes understood this in the 15th Century when, in Leviathan, he observed that men create governments and enact laws in order to preserve the fabric of society.  Without them, there exists no society, but instead a State of Nature, chaos, a war of every man against every man.  For hundreds of years, this was an accepted concept.  “The law’s the law.”  “Do the crime and you do the time.”  In the early 1930’s, the U.S. imposed production standards for motion pictures.  They could depict crime and criminals, but at the end, the law must triumph, and the guilty must be punished.  Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart all had good runs, but ultimately were done in by their comrades, or the government.  And when they weren’t killed, off they went to prison, to “pay their debt to society.”  That’s the way it was, and our leaders understood that that’s the way it had to be if society was to survive and prosper.  Thomas Hobbes said it best when he explained why Man must avoid the State of Nature.  “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  That’s not a pretty picture, but I fear it’s the world which we may be ushering in should we continue on the course we have been on these last few years.  We’ve lost our way.  We’ve abandoned any concept of morality, and thus the notion that some actions are acceptable, while others are unacceptable.  In arts, culture, communications and personal behavior, anything goes, up to and including criminal behavior.  It’s a conundrum.  The same Woke imbeciles who seek to steal your personal freedoms to speak your mind, and control your own affairs, seem willing to grant license to law-breaking rabble to do as they please.  As with all the paving stones on the road to Hell, these imbeciles believe they are well-intentioned.   They were fixing a non-existent problem, systemic racism.  I’ve explained this before, but in a nutshell, I live in a County where the Prosecutor, judges, police chiefs, jurors,  cops, and witnesses are predominantly “people of color.”  So, if criminal defendants are being railroaded by systemic racism, somebody has to explain to me how white supremecists got all these minority players go along with the plan.  Obviously, there is no plan, and no systemic racism.  If a particular criminal defendant was prejudiced by bias or some legal error, we have a court system which is ready and able to right that wrong.  That’s the work I do every day.  But that said, the Woke fantasyland view of the justice system encouraged us to defund the police, handcuff the police, cast the police as the criminals, no cash bail, and Woke prosecutors who refuse to enforce the laws on the books.  These misguided policies have led to the mess we now have.  Police officers reduced to observers of crime, reluctant to do their jobs for fear of losing their jobs, their property and their freedom.  City streets which have been abandoned to the mob.  Let’s focus on New York City.  The city that used to be The Big Apple, The City That Never Sleeps, and The Crossroads of the World is practically unrecognizable.  Subway ridership is down by almost half, while subway crime is up 60%.  If you don’t get robbed, killed, or mugged by a gang of women wearing skin-tight green jumpsuits, the extra added attraction is hoards of mentally deranged homeless people, who are liable to throw you under a train.  If you make it to your stop and ascend to street level, things do not improve.  The no bail system permits the same people to commit crimes all day, every day, and if arrested, be released right back onto the street to do it again.  There are stories of criminals with 40, 50, even more than 100 arrests continually exiting the revolving door.  And when these people get to trial, if they ever do, prosecutors are willing to downgrade serious, and violent crimes to minor offenses which keep the predators on the street.  Workers don’t want to return to the office.  Residents are reluctant to venture out.  More than 330,000 productive citizens have left New York City since 2020.  These are the people who did the work and paid the taxes.  How many restaurants and other businesses have closed as a result?  How many stores simply closed the doors because looters were permitted to steal, just a little at a time, until there was no business left?  And when the police won’t or can’t protect the poor unfortunates who remain, nothing is left but vigilante justice, which is no justice at all.  We’re not there yet, but we’re fast approaching Hobbes’ State of Nature.  Everything he predicted in 1651 appears before us.  No industry, no culture, no arts, letters or society.  Nothing left but the predators and their prey.  It’s all because Wokeism has set out to remake the world by collapsing our society.  When you convince people that they owe no debt to society, even if they commit crime, but that society owes them a living, no good can come of it.  There are signs that people have had enough Woke nonsense, and are ready to return to a world where actions have consequences.  On November 8, vote like your life depends on it, because it just might.  Don’t vote Democrat or Republican, vote for sanity.

We’re now just a couple of weeks from the mid-term elections, and all reports, even those from Fake-news media outlets, are not promising for Democrats.  Try as they might to make the upcoming elections all about abortion, the voters have other issues in mind.  Every poll shows that inflation and crime are the leading issues on the minds of voters this year.  To be sure, even on abortion policy, the Democrat official position – any abortion, any time, for any reason – is not in line with the majority of the public.  Legally flawed though it was, the Roe v. Wade decision was a reasonable compromise on an issue on which there will never be unanimity.  Simply put, most Americans favor some restrictions.  But I digress.  Getting back to the upcoming election, if voters go to the polls thinking about crime and inflation, the Democrats are in trouble.  Democrats seem to be their own worst enemies.  Threats to personal and family safety motivate voters like no other issue.  The judge I clerked for used to say, “The first duty of government is to keep people safe on the streets and in their homes.”  Democrat-ruled governments have failed to perform the first duty.  This makes no sense politically, but Democrats seem content to ignore the voters’ safety concerns.  They do so at their peril.  The Democrat response to inflation is similarly tone-deaf.  Prices on everything are soaring.  People are struggling to feed their families.  Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, obviously with the blessing of his handlers, has elected to try to convince voters all is well.  Don’t believe your lying eyes or your bank balance, things have never been better.  It won’t work.  At every turn, Joe Biden and reality are at odds.  Joe says the economy is “strong as Hell.”  Voters know they are in Hell.  The stock market is down 25%, interest rates have tripled, and we’re entering a recession.  Joe says there really is no inflation, or else it’s just 2%.  He’s either remembering when Trump was president, or else he’s just lying.  Democrat spending bills, which have resulted in the printing of trillions of dollars of borrowed money, have fueled inflation.  Democrats want to spend even more.  But by far, the most damaging aspect of inflation is focused on oil prices.  Oil was $60 a barrel under Trump.  It peaked at $127 in March, remained in the $120 range entering the Summer, and now is over $91, and is rising.  Biden has blamed Putin and the oil companies for the increase, but he and his Party are to blame.  Once again, Joe Biden and reality are perfect strangers.  Biden ran for president on a promise to close down the oil and gas industry.  Once elected, he cancelled oil leases, restricted fracking, banned exploration on federal lands, and pressured banks to stop lending money to the industry.  The first three actions were economically and politically stupid, the last is outright illegal.  Gas and other fuel prices exploded.  Gasoline in New Jersey topped $5 a gallon.  Heating fuel for this winter will be $5 or more.   People in the liberal Northeast will be forced to choose between food and heat, not a pretty picture for a Party which is promising only more of the same.  As if this all wasn’t bad enough, Joe Biden has been spanning the globe to beg tyrants in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to produce more of the oil we could easily produce ourselves to ease prices.  He’s also been drastically depleting our strategic petroleum reserve in a vain attempt to hold prices down until November 8, when Democrats can yell, “Surprise!  You’re screwed!”  The reserve is supposed to protect us from the actions of foreign countries, not from not from our own stupidity.  Biden’s strategy is political, and incredibly stupid, since all the oil we’ll ever need is under our feet.  The lap dog media keeps trying to help Biden, criticizing the Saudis for not helping out, but they’re just as delusional as Joe.  Why should the Saudis help us?  Oil is a global market.  Why should the Saudis increase their production to help a country that has reduced its own production, when they can profit from the rising prices Biden caused?  Plus, Biden is the guy who promised to destroy the oil industry, right?  And the Saudi economy is almost entirely based on the industry Biden promised to put out of business, right?  Plus, plus, Biden is again trying to make an agreement with the Iranians, who are sworn enemies of the Saudis, and he’s badmouthed the Saudis to the rest of the world.  Only a senile, crazy old bastard would expect the Saudis to forget everything and bail us out.  The truth is Democrats don’t care about you, your budget, your savings, how you’re going to get to work, or how you’re going to feed your family.  They care about only one thing – getting reelected.  They want to stay in power, but they’re caught between a rock and a crazy place.  Democrats are losing Hispanic voters, suburban women, and even support among black voters because they won’t lift a finger to stop crime, or improve the inflation or energy problems.  They must know that their positions on these issues are political poison, but if they crack down on crime, stop the profligate spending that’s fueling inflation, and encourage U.S. oil production, they risk losing their base – the Woke crazies, who actually are in favor of closing industries, rationing electricity, and curtailing all freedoms – “because if we don’t, we’ll all be dead in seven years.”  These are religious zealots, and zealot is the right word.  A zealot is a fanatical partisan, taking their name from a First Century Jewish sect in Judea.  The original Zealots all died by suicide.  Today’s Democrat positions are equally suicidal.  Joe Biden can’t appease both his nutty climate change obsessed base and the mass of voters who have been hurt by their policies.  Come November 8, he may be boiled in the oil he’s taken from Americans.

I don’t often recycle past F on F columns, but this year’s edition of Woke anti-Columbus Day nonsense has caused me to bring back a column on this issue from October 2017.  In a nutshell, I am sick and tired of hearing that we must replace Columbus Day with some phony holiday called Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  This made up holiday is a fraud. The latest New York proposal claims, “Indigenous People’s Day reimagines Columbus Day and changes a celebration of colonialism into an opportunity to reveal historical truths about the genocide and oppression of indigenous people in the Americas, to organize against current injustices and to celebrate indigenous resistance.”  Where to begin?  Most basically, Columbus Day is not now, nor has it ever been a celebration of colonialism.  All it ever was was a recognition that in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed West from Spain and landed in the New World, which he believed was the old world.  Let’s reveal some historical truths.  Columbus never enslaved anybody.  In fact, he befriended the Taino Indians, and never treated them as a conquered people.  Columbus then successfully petitioned the crown to issue a royal decree that “all the Indians of Hispaniola were to be left free, not subject to servitude, unmolested, and unharmed and allowed to live like freemen under law just like any other in the kingdom of Castile.”  Columbus also freed enslaved Tainos from their indigenous brothers, the Carib Indians, who did enslave them.  So much for oppression and slavery.  Simply put, the Columbus slurs are a leftist crock of bullshit.  Here’s the 2017 column.

[One more thing.  Indigenous Peoples’ Day?  Indigenous to what? Columbus explored the Caribbean.  He never set foot in what is now the United States.  Maybe they should celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Hispaniola.  We’ll remember Columbus.]