Ana Kasparian's slow walk to becoming based

Good for Ana Kasparian for leaving the Kool Aid cult. She's on her way to becoming a conservative, though it will take time.

The Liz Cheney firing squad lie

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

The Nazis used this tactic during World War II.  Now the man the media accuse of being Hitler is having this tactic used against him, repeatedly. Thankfully, ineffectively. The mainstream media claimed yesterday Trump wanted to put Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, which is demonstrably false. Megyn Kelly takes the time to disprove the despicable lie. When you hear the full quote, it's obvious how big the lie is.

These are the same people who lied about Let's Go Brandon not calling 70 million+ Americans garbage. So ask yourself, "Who are closest to the Nazis in reality"? 

Well played, Thome Yorke, well played

Pardon the pun. Radiohead's Thome Yorke shuts down a pro-Palestinian heckler in the best possible way. Your protests do indeed have consequences, in this case unintended consequences.

Byron Donalds decimates with truth bombs

Probably a Mistake

This is probably a legitimate mistake, but it does not induce any level of confidence in the American electoral process:

State of the Race - Halloween edition

In the latest RCP average of polls in the swing states, Kamala Harris has pulled back ahead of Donald Trump in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Trump has opened his lead further in a few of the other states. For any new readers, I don't go by a straight lift of the RCP data, as not all polls are created equal. I filter out polls that do not share their poll population, or where the polled population is too low to consider statistically significant. I also filter out polls that are more than 10 days old (this week I am lowering that to 7 days). Any poll with a margin of error greater than 3.5% is not reliable in my opinion either. Likely voters are a must but pretty much every poll now is only looking at likely voters rather than registered voters or all adults.

All of that has to be taken into consideration, without even getting into the crosstabs of who was polled. Many pollsters still, oversample Democrats and it skews their results.

Here is what I am seeing as of today, but I have a caveat to apply to my findings:

Trump has from the above as well as safe states, enough electoral college votes to secure a victory, winning all of the swing states, and the electoral college by 312 to 226. But Pennsylvania is a must in this scenario and frankly, I don't implicitly trust their vote counts. The three rust belt states (PA, WI and MI) appear to be within the grasp of Harris at the moment. Trump's leads are thin (1.96%, 0.36% and  0.69% respectively). That makes a 'steal' more possible for the Democrats. I don't like it. And in fact if they were trying to create a plausible scenario for a surprise Kamala 'victory', from a RCP viewpoint they have succeeds.

But here are my caveats on my own results; (1) I have not looked at the crosstabs of any of the individual polls, and more importantly (2) these polls that do meet my statistical standards, are mostly all conservative leaning or neutral pollsters.  The latter point means that while Trump leads, the may truly be razor thin leads, making a stolen election possible.

Where the Democrats seem to be conceding are states that do not matter.  They appear to have written off Georgia and Arizona.  Trump needs those, Kamala does not. The Harris campaign also has apparently pulled a bunch of ad buys from North Carolina.  Trump needs the state, Kamala does not. Nevada, does not matter to either candidate in the current calculus. The Rust Belt is what matters. Kamala needs all 3, Trump only needs one to win.

Despite the polymarket betting that Trump has a 2 out of 3 chance of winning, despite Trump apparently leading in the national vote total, and despite him leading in enough (or conceivably all) the swing states, if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, she wins 270-268. That still makes this race a nail biter.