Thom Tillis Takes NC Senate Seat, GOP Makes It A Rout

By William Teach November 5, 2014 – 7:51 am

Excellent news. North Carolina could have certainly done worse than Kay Hagan: we could have had a Chuck Schumer, Harry, Reid, or Al Franken. But, Kay was all about the Democrat Party and Obama’s agenda, rather than what was important to North Carolina. We’ll see if Thom Tillis puts NC first

(WRAL) Republican state House Speaker Thom Tillis has ousted U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a first-term Democrat, according to incomplete and unofficial returns.

Tillis’ margin of victory will be narrow, most likely less than 2 percentage points once all votes are counted, after a bitterly contested race that was the most expensive congressional race in the country. His victory helped give Republicans control of the U.S. Senate.

“My name is Thom Tillis, and I’m the next United States senator from the state of North Carolina,” Tillis said at 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, claiming victory before a crowd of cheering supporters in Charlotte.

I’m waiting for Democrats to complain about the vast amounts of money spent

At least $111.2 million has poured into the campaign, according to figures put together by the Center for Responsive Politics. The actual spending is certainly higher, as candidates have yet to fully disclose their efforts and some nonprofit groups fell into legal loopholes that allowed them to keep their efforts undisclosed.

Of course, what most media outlets fail to note is that Kay and outside support groups significantly outspent Tillis and the groups supporting him, to the tune of $22 million to his $8, $35 million from liberal outside groups to $10 million from the right.

The big question of the night is: did he win because of being a Republican and his policies, or did he, and the other Republicans, win because of opposition to Obama? There’s certainly a mixture of both.

Elsewhere in North Carolina, Renee Ellmers handily beat Clay Aiken 59-41.

The only Democratic congressional candidates celebrating victories Tuesday were those in races where the outcomes were foregone conclusions. Former state Rep. Alma Adams of Greensboro won the 12th Congressional District in the race to replace Mel Watt, U.S. Rep. David Price of Chapel Hill won re-election in the 4th Congressional District (that’s mine, darnit), and U.S. Rep. G. K. Butterfield of Wilson will continue representing the 1st Congressional District.

Ten Republicans and three Democrats will represent the state in the next Congress, as the state will see another district flip Republican: the 7th District, which has been represented by a Democrat for more than a century.

That would be David Rouzer, who took out Jonathan Barfield (D) 59-37.

Nationally

(CNN) A Republican tide ripped the Senate away from Democrats Tuesday, giving the GOP full control of Congress and the power to pin down President Barack Obama during his last two years in office.

The thumping win upends the balance of power between the White House and Capitol Hill only six years after Obama’s Democrats swept to power and marginalized Republicans in a rush to reform health care, Wall Street and pass a huge stimulus package.

Now, it’s Democrats who will take the back seat on Capitol Hill, relying mostly on the power of the filibuster to stymie Republicans and keep Obama’s legacy intact.

“For too long, this administration has tried to tell the American people what is good for them and then blame somebody else when their policies didn’t work out,” Mitch McConnell, who is expected to become the next Senate majority leader, said in a victory speech.

Democrats lost seats in Colorado, Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, West Virginia, to go with North Carolina. Louisiana is certainly going to a runoff, with Mary Landrieu leading Bill Cassidy 42-41, with Republican Ron Manness taking 14%, mucking it up. Virginia is so close, with Democrat Mark Warner leading Ed Gillespie (R) by just 12,000 votes. We’re still waiting for Alaska numbers. Sullivan (R) is leading Begich 49-45 with 73% of the votes in.

Two other Republican governors meanwhile won reelection and stirred buzz for their own 2016 White House prospects — John Kasich in swing state Ohio, and conservative Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin. In New Mexico, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, often mentioned as a possible GOP vice presidential pick, strolled to reelection.

Maryland — a traditionally Democratic state — elected Republican Larry Hogan as governor. And Illinois, Obama’s home state, ousted its Democratic governor.

Also, Massachusetts, which elected Charlie Baker over very leftist Democrat Martha Coakley. Republicans control the majority of governor’s mansions across the country. And don’t discount how big the win was for Scott Walker, which could very well position him for a 2016 White House run.

When we jump over the House, Republicans increased their hold by adding at least 12 seats to their majority, while only losing 1. Guess we won’t be seeing Nancy Pelosi with the gavel again.

“We’ve listened to the American people,” Boehner said. “We’ve kept our focus on the economy and jobs non-stop. I think the voters in America today are going to send a very clear message to the president and Democrats in Washington that the American people want us to focus on their priorities, not Washington’s priorities.”

Democrats yammered on about uterus’ and #WarOnWomen and so many other marginal issues and things that are very low on the priority scale for Americans.

Oh, and we will get treated to mopey Harry Reid as minority leader in the Senate. Bummer.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Six Ways You Can Totally Help Stop Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 4:25 pm

I debated whether to hold off till tomorrow to blog this hilarious Guardian missive, what with the elections being today, but, hey, it’s very amusing, and tomorrow will surely be about Democrat whines, nuttyness, moonbattery, and bat guano insanery (yeah, not a word. Bummer)

Six ways you can help stop climate change 

….so what is one small human being to do? Here, to get you started, are a few suggestions.

  1. Talk about climate change (um, haven’t they been doing that for 20+ years?)

  2. Take a look at your diet (they don’t want you to totally give up meat, just mostly. Hop to it, Warmists!)

  3. Reclaim the streets (this almost….almost, rises to the notion that Warmists need to give up their own fossil fueled addiction.)

  4. Change to LED lightbulbs (well, now, we don’t really have much of a choice, what with the Nanny State essentially “banning” them)

  5. Get involved with a community energy project (this really means being a nag)

  6. Lobby your MP (yup, be a nag)

This is one of the articles that gets somewhat close to “practice what you preach”. Of course, they could all do that and virtually nothing would change when it comes to the weather and climate.

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil fossil fueled machine, which is A-OK to drive if you are heading to the polls to vote D, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Lonely Conservative, with a post on wishing her luck in today’s election.

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Here We Go: Washington Post Upset That Senate Will Be Most Unrepresentative SInce WWII

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 12:34 pm

This comes to us from Patrick J. Egan in The Monkey Cage…hey, wait, wouldn’t that be considered racist if on a Conservative website?

Welcome to the most unrepresentative Senate election since World War II

With less than 24 hours to go before Election Day, confidence is growing that Republicans are poised to win enough of the battleground Senate races to take control of the upper chamber of Congress. In the aftermath, politicians and pundits will be assessing the Senate elections for signs of national sentiment about President Obama, the two parties and the policies they should pursue in Washington. (In fact, they’re already doing so.)

Regardless of the results, we should use caution in interpreting this year’s Senate elections as reflecting the views of the entire nation. Two aspects of the U.S. Constitution’s rules on Senate elections make it possible that the political leanings of the Senate seats up in any particular year will be unrepresentative of the nation as a whole.

Getting beyond the notion that this is simply moonbat whining about the Dems losing control of the Senate, Senators are not supposed to be representative of the nation as a whole. They were meant to represent their States. Period. That’s why the Framers of the Constitution set it up so that the State legislatures appointed Senators, rather than direct election. With the 17th Amendment, the power was put in directly in the hands of the people, and, let’s face it, Senators of both parties, no matter how much we might agree with them, fail in putting their States first over Party.

The first is by design: two Senate seats are allotted to each state, regardless of population. Americans living in Wyoming (the least populous state) have substantially more influence in the Senate than those living in heavyweight states such as California or Texas (which have 66 times and 45 times more people, respectively). Thus if one party draws its national strength from large-population states, in any given year it is more likely to face an unrepresentative number of tough Senate elections in smaller states. Currently, that party is the Democrats. The population of the median state won by Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election is about 5.5 million; the median state won by Mitt Romney has a population of 3.4 million.

Uh, not really. Refer back to Senators representing their States first and foremost. Second, yes, the idea was to make all states represented equally. Funny how liberals are upset about equality when it doesn’t help them, eh?

Then we get some whining about  the “election classes”, namely that one third of the Senate faces election every two years. And that’s just not fair to Democrats, you guys!

Democrats always say they love Democracy. Except when it interferes.

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Climate Change Is Totally Like The Sleeper Issue On The Ballot!

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 8:30 am

And Republicans are going to have to have a message soon or something!

The sleeper issue of 2014: Climate change

The midterms have shown that Republicans are going to need a coherent message on climate change — and soon

We have one: it’s called “No. We aren’t buying into your paranoid, ridiculous, Big Government taxing, redistributing, economy killing, Nanny state control fantasies.

Late Evening Note: there was supposed to be a WHOLE LOT more to this post, a few excerpts from that article, stuff about how “climate change” is a powerful line of attack or something, followed by this New Republic article which shows that it isn’t, with both ending up in wishful thinking for 2016. Not sure what happened. Sigh. I’m not going to rebuild it.

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Obama Is Really Bummed About This Whole Election Thing

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 7:27 am

Why? Because “everyone is shitting on him”

Can Obama Reboot?
Does he even want to?

Too answer those questions, no and no. He is who he is, and he seems to prefer fighting over governing. He likes to be president, not do president.

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.”

Certainly, most Democrats want nothing to do with him. He’s the idiot who killed the albatross. This is a situation of his own making.

“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.”

All the man has to do is look in the mirror, and see that the problems start with him. Right from the get go, he passed bad policy, and did all he could to foment partisan division.

Meanwhile, what should we look for tonight?

(The Hill) As a long campaign season draws to an end, Republicans are on the cusp of winning Senate control, while Democrats are girding for what could be a “bad, long night.”

“It seems like the late-breakers are not headed in the right direction,” admitted Democratic strategist Achim Bergmann, noting Iowa and Colorado in particular as troubling states for Democrats.

Recent nationwide polling has shown Republicans taking an advantage with young voters and eating into Democrats’ historical advantage with women. The party has invested more than $60 million in its turnout efforts to try to offset expected drop-offs in key Democratic constituencies, but Republicans have made commensurate investments in their own get-out-the-vote operations.

What’s more, President Obama’s approval rating stands at just 42 percent nationwide, according to the most recent Gallup average. That’s enough, Bergmann said, to make the mood in his office of Democratic operatives “very dark.”

Actually, it’s 41%, but, hey, why quibble over 1%?

Republicans are all but certain to win open, Democratic-held seats in West Virginia and Montana. They’re also favored in South Dakota, where former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) has regained a solid lead despite a late play from Democrats to make it competitive.

The GOP also has the edge in Arkansas, where Sen. Mark Pryor (D), despite running a strong campaign, looks likely to fall victim to an unfavorable climate and challenger Rep. Tom Cotton (R). Polling has largely given Republican Dan Sullivan a lead over Sen. Mark Begich (D) in Alaska, though operatives from both parties warn the state is notoriously tough to poll.

There’s a good chance the GOP will take either the Colorado seat away Mark Uterus, er, Udall, and/or the Iowa seat, as Joni Ernst surges. Mary Landrieu (D-La) will most likely lose, but will GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy garner enough votes to avoid a runoff? The Georgia Senate race may very well end up in a runoff, as well.

Of course, Democrats are already spinning the losses. There’s been lots of talking about “compromise” (drink everytime you hear that on the MSM today and through the week), reaching across the aisle, and all the things they weren’t worried about when they controlled the Senate. The filibuster will suddenly become an important way to Defend Democracy.

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After Months Of Avoiding Obama, Kay Hagan Gets Him To Cut A Radio Ad

By William Teach November 4, 2014 – 6:47 am

96% Obama rubber stamp Kay Hagan has done all she can to avoid Obama this election cycle. He has made zero appearances for her. She disappeared when Obama made an NC appearance earlier in the year. She hasn’t talked about him. She has distanced herself from him, all in an attempt to appear as a “moderate”. On the last days she finally brings Obama in

(Politico) President Barack Obama has cut a radio ad for North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s campaign, asking voters to “stand with” him in supporting the incumbent, who has tried to distance herself from the president for months.

“North Carolina, we need to send a message this election. If you want to make a difference, here is your chance: Vote for Democrats and Sen. Kay Hagan on Nov. 4. You know Kay Hagan has been tirelessly creating job opportunities here at home and supporting a higher minimum wage,” Obama says in the ad. “But Republicans have been cutting investments in education while protecting tax breaks for the wealthy, so let’s send them a message by voting for someone who shares our priorities. Voting is easy, so stand with me, President Obama, and take responsibility in moving North Carolina forward by voting for Kay Hagan on Nov. 4. A Senator you can count on.”

The ad (you can listen here) is playing on certain select radio stations, most likely the same ones she ran her ad blaming Thom Tillis for Trayvon Martin’s death.

https://twitter.com/WesleyLowery/status/529378600303489024

Yup, same ones.

The NC GOP has this

“In the United State Senate, Kay Hagan voted with President Obama 95 percent of the time. This year, she voted for his agenda 99 percent of the time. President Obama has said that his policies are on the ballot, and that a vote for liberals like Senator Hagan is a vote for his agenda. Now – after months of denials and tinny claims to be a ‘moderate’ or ‘independent’ – Senator Hagan has released an advertisement asking North Carolina voters to stand with President Obama by voting for her. In the final hours of the campaign, Senator Hagan has admitted the truth. She is a rubberstamp for President Obama, and if she is re-elected, she will remain a rubber-stamp for President Obama.”

Over to Breitbart

The Tillis campaign reiterated the content of the ad by stressing again that a vote for Hagan is a vote for Obama.

“After desperately attempting to run away from her record of rubber-stamping President Obama 96 percent of the time, Kay Hagan is ending her campaign by featuring Obama’s endorsement of her liberal partisanship and lack of independence,” Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin said in a statement.

“As Kay Hagan’s ad makes clear, a vote for her is a vote to continue President Obama’s failed policies. A vote for Thom Tillis is a vote to change direction and make America great again,” Keylin added.

The new ad comes a day before election day and amid reports that the controversial stimulus grant Hagan’s husband’s company received has been referred by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources for “further legal review.”

As for that report, none of the media in the Raleigh area are running it. Imagine that Hagan had an R next to her name, and wonder if the report would be covered. You bet it would.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Question: Is Led Zeppelin A Heavy Metal Band?

By William Teach November 3, 2014 – 7:56 pm

A coworker, much younger than me, started this debate with me earlier today. It’s an interesting question. Is Zeppelin really a heavy metal group? Consider: seemingly half their songs feature acoustic guitar. Many are sedate, more plain rock. When you compare them to the other early metal groups, like Deep Purple, and the group considered really the father of metal, Black Sabbath, they just do not seem to cut it.

Consider other early metal bands. The Scorpions (formed 1965). UFO (1969). Uriah Heep (69). Vanilla Fudge (67). Twisted Sister (1972, if you can believe it). Triumph (75). Saxon (76). Moterhead (75). Elf (67). So many others I could name. And, of course, Judas Priest (1969) and Iron Maiden (1975). There’s absolutely no doubt about their metal pedigrees, is there?

Now, would you call Jimmy Hendrix “heavy metal”? How about Cream? How about Blue Oyster Cult? Have you listened to their music other than their well known hits? Much like Rush, Yes, Pink Floyd, they seem much more of a Progressive Rock band. Which, in retrospect, is what Zeppelin seems like.

Buuuuuuuuut, let’s go back in the way back machine. At the time, despite lots of the acoustic and softer sounds, the people of the time considered Zeppelin heavy metal, because it was still a typically heavier sound than the sounds of the day. Much like they considered Cream and Hendrix.

It’s not because they used a lot of distortion for the guitars. The Who used distortion. So did the Stones and the Beatles. So did The Band. Creedence Clearwater Revival. No one mistakes them for a metal band, right? Kiss, though, is considered metal for the time, though I always thought them more of a straight rock group, or more of a hard rock group. Kinda like how AC/DC is more hard rock, than metal. At least to me.

Consider this, from a Princeton article

Heavy metal (often referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music[1] that developed in between 1968 and 1974 , largely in the United Kingdom and the United States.[2] With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are generally associated with masculinity and machismo.[3]

The first heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s Judas Priest helped spur the genre’s evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; Motörheadintroduced a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal such as Iron Maiden followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as “metalheads” or “headbangers“.

Extended solos? Check. Thick, massive sounds? At times, yeah, especially when you consider John Bonham on drums and John Paul Jones on bass. Loudness? Yup.

As a sidebar, I’m not sure about the masculinity and machismo, though, for all. Sure, it shows up, but lots are about love, from a metal POV. And other things. Consider Saxon’s Princess Of the Night. It’s about a train. Iron Maiden has used lots of Edgar Allen Poe, religious elements, and, hey, took the poem Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and made it an 8 minute song!

Anyhow, most of the Princeton article leads to Wikipedia, which has its uses, and notes

Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. Metal subgenres variously emphasize, alter, or omit one or more of these attributes. New York Times critic Jon Pareles writes, “In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force.”[6] The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, and a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist. Keyboard instruments are sometimes used to enhance the fullness of the sound.[7]

Does that fit Zeppelin to a tee? Except for the “less blues” thing. Really, lots of the early metal bands continued to use blues as a base. It really wasn’t till Ozzy Osbourne brought in Randy Rhodes, who truly brought classical into the songs, that metal exploded towards other forms. Though Richie Blackmore used some classic during his Rainbow and Deep Purple days. Dude is stone cold awesome on a classical guitar.

Finally, again, the people at the time considered Zeppelin a heavy metal band. And, they were definitely a good show. And virtually ever band after them should be thanking them (and their manager) for creating a situation where the bands get paid a good chunk of the door receipts and making a lot of money. But, that’s a different story.

What’s your take?

BTW, one thing I forgot, this turned into a rather larger conversation at work (we have a lot of downtime mid-morning), and one young whippersnapper mentioned that Zep had to be metal, because the Heavy Metal soundtrack featured Stevie Nicks and Devo. But, the problem with that, is that the movie was based on the magazine Heavy Metal, which was not about the music, but the gothic, graphic, erotic, fantasy/scifi themes. Don Felder had two awesome songs (he was a lead guitar player for The Eagles), not metal.

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 3, 2014 – 1:00 pm

…is an evil hot dog, which causes obesity which causes 20 feet of sea rise, cooked on an evil grill, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is American Clarion, with a post going inside the mind of a Democrat voter.

No theme this week, just clearing out the IAYS folder.

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NY Times Super Unhappy, says “Cancel The Midterms”

By William Teach November 3, 2014 – 12:39 pm

Why would David Schanzer and Jay Sullivan want to do this? (via Right Wing News)

Cancel The Midterms

By Tuesday night about 90 million Americans will have cast ballots in an election that’s almost certain to create greater partisan divisions, increase gridlock and render governance of our complex nation even more difficult. Ninety million sounds like a lot, but that means that less than 40 percent of the electorate will bother to vote, even though candidates, advocacy groups and shadowy “super PACs” will have spent more than $1 billion to air more than two million ads to influence the election.

There was a time when midterm elections made sense — at our nation’s founding, the Constitution represented a new form of republican government, and it was important for at least one body of Congress to be closely accountable to the people. But especially at a time when Americans’ confidence in the ability of their government to address pressing concerns is at a record low, two-year House terms no longer make any sense. We should get rid of federal midterm elections entirely.

There are few offices, at any level of government, with two-year terms. Here in Durham, we elect members of the school board and the county sheriff to terms that are double that length. Moreover, Twitter, ubiquitous video cameras, 24-hour cable news and a host of other technologies provide a level of hyper-accountability the framers could not possibly have imagined. In the modern age, we do not need an election every two years to communicate voters’ desires to their elected officials.

But the two-year cycle isn’t just unnecessary; it’s harmful to American politics.

Interesting. I wonder if they felt this way in 2006, when Democrats were on their way to a massive victory?

What this is about goes without saying,  but I will anyhow: Dems are passed off that they’re going to lose. They say they love democracy, but,  at the end of the day, they only like it when they win. If not,  things Must Be Stopped. And they wonder why Progressives are linked with fascism.

As far as weakening the President,  we’ll,  see,  there’s this thing called separation of powers. The president is not a king. Katie Maguire at RWN wrote

Excuse me, we live in a democracy. The exact reasons stated for us NOT to have midterms is why we should. If a president is not doing his job, or advancing agendas the American public isn’t interested in, we should be able to elect officials that can act our behalf to stop that president. This isn’t about a lack of respect, or god forbid the race card, by claiming midterm elections are “whiter”- this is about having rights and living in a free nation.

The 2 year cycle allows for consequences to elected officials.

Allahpundit has some deep observations on the subject.

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