From Cain v. Sambides, decided yesterday by Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr.:
A pro se prisoner objects to a magistrate judge’s recommendation to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against a newspaper, an editor and a staff writer…. Mr. Cain alleges that the [defendants] published nine defamatory statements in a July 20, 2018 BDN article about his sentencing for stalking.
Mr. Cain … objects that, contrary to the Magistrate Judge’s determination, the article’s statement that he was from Maine “has caused … undue harm” because it has adversely affected how the BOP treats him and is therefore actionable under Maine defamation law. Mr. Cain says in his Complaint … that he “was not born in Maine, Never a citizen of Maine, nor am I a former Maine Man.” In his objection, he says that the BOP used the article’s assertion that he was from Maine and Texas to refuse to assign him to Nevada and instead to assign him to Fort Worth, Texas. Furthermore, he maintains that the BOP is going to release him in Maine when he finishes his prison term….
The allegedly false and defamatory statement is that Mr. Cain was “formerly of … Calais.” While Mr. Cain alleged that the Defendants’ statement caused the BOP to treat him in a way that he dislikes, this does not make the statement defamatory. {[T]he plain and ordinary meaning of this statement does not “tend[] … so to harm the reputation of [Mr. Cain] as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.”} Mr. Cain does not argue that being associated with the city of Calais or the state of Maine harmed his reputation, nor would this argument succeed. The mere statement that a person was “formerly of … Calais,” Maine is not pejorative, and many would properly take it as a compliment that they were formerly (or currently) association with the city of Calais and the state of Maine.
{The Court is extremely dubious about Mr. Cain’s charge that the BOP relied on the contents of a newspaper article to make penal decisions about him. However, the Court does not rest its affirmance on its skepticism of Mr. Cain’s assertion.}
Moreover, the statement as written is literally true. Mr. Cain acknowledges that he “sojurn[ed]” in Maine for work and that he stayed in a place rented for him by his employer. Contrary to Mr. Cain’s protests, the BDN article does not say or imply that Mr. Cain was born in Maine, that he was a citizen of Calais, Maine, or that he was or is a Maine man; it only says that he was “formerly of Calais,” a phrase consistent with his remaining in Calais for a period of time while he completed a construction job. Indeed, in its description of Mr. Cain’s status in Calais, Maine, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit used language similar to the BDN article. United States v. Cain (1st Cir. 2019) (“After a short courtship, Cain married L.H., a resident of Houlton, Maine, in August 2014. At the time, Cain was living in Calais, Maine, and working as a superintendent overseeing the construction of a local Walmart”). While living in Calais for the duration of his employment there, Mr. Cain could be properly be characterized as “of Calais” and after he left, as “formerly of Calais.”
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Animated Map: U.S. Presidential Voting History By State (1976-2016) Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 17:45
As Americans go to cast their votes, considerable uncertainty remains about which candidate will be elected president. However, history can provide some clues as to how voters may act.
While some states have consistently seen Democrat or Republican victories, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, other “swing states” have flipped between the two parties depending on the year.
In this graphic, we use data from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab to show U.S. presidential voting history by state since 1976.
Each State’s Winning Party
To calculate the winning ratio, we divided the votes for the state’s winning party by the total number of state votes. Here’s another look at the same data, visualized in a different way.
As the voting history shows, some states—such as Alaska, Oklahoma, and Wyoming—have consistently supported the Republican Party. On the other hand, Hawaii, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia have been Democrat strongholds for many decades.
The District of Columbia (D.C.) is a federal district, and is not part of any U.S. State. Its population is urban and has a large percentage of Black and college-educated citizens, all of which are groups that tend to identify as Democrat.
Swing states typically see a close contest between Democrats and Republicans. For example, Florida’s average margin of victory for presidential candidates has been just 2.6% since 1996, by far the lowest of any state. It’s often seen as a key battleground, and for good reason: the candidate who wins Florida has won every election since 1964.
Memorable Election Years
Within U.S. Presidential voting history, some election results stand out more than others. In 1984, President Reagan was re-elected in a landslide victory, winning 49 out of 50 states. The remarkable win has been credited to the economic recovery during Reagan’s first term, Reagan’s charisma, and voters’ opposition to the Democrat’s planned tax increases.
In 1992, self-made Texas billionaire Ross Perot ran as a third-party candidate. He captured almost 19% of the popular vote, the highest percentage of any third-party presidential candidate in over 80 years. While he gained support from those looking for a change from traditional party politics, Bill Clinton ultimately went on to win the election.
Most recently, the 2016 election took many people by surprise. Despite having a strong lead in the polls, Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump. A total of 30 states saw Republican victories, eager for change after eight years of Democrat leadership.
A Look Ahead
Is it possible to predict the 2020 presidential election? As the last election showed, polls are not a perfect measure. They represent a snapshot in time, may overrepresent certain population groups, and measure voter attitudes rather than behaviors, among other factors.
All saw Republican victories, but six out of nine states won by a margin of less than 5%. Trump and Biden’s success in these states may well determine the outcome of the 2020 election.
While there’s no crystal ball, swing states may offer the most insight as to where things are heading. Here are nine states that have been identified as battlegrounds, and how they voted in the 2016 election.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/38auHNQ Tyler Durden
Donald Trump and Joe Biden voters diverge wildly on whether to fund low-income housing programs, but both appear unified in opposing new housing being built near them.
That’s according to a survey put out last week by real estate company Redfin, which found that only 24 percent of Trump voters and 32 percent of Biden voters supported zoning policies that allowed denser housing in their neighborhood. That compares to 27 percent of all respondents who said they support denser housing in their neighborhood. The Redfin poll surveyed 3,000 U.S. residents over the second week of October.
“Housing is one of the few types of policies that does not fall neatly into liberal or conservative camps,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said in a statement on the company’s blog. “While many Americans across both major parties can agree that there’s a need for more housing—particularly affordable housing—both Democrats and Republicans are reluctant to see their own neighborhoods become more dense.”
Subsidizing housing proved much more popular with respondents of all political persuasions.
Nearly 75 percent of Biden voters said they’d support government incentives for low-income housing development compared to 49 percent of Trump supporters and 59 percent of all survey respondents. Some 66 percent of Biden supporters and half of Trump supporters supported government incentives to build housing of any kind. Subsidizing down payments on homes for working-class families was less popular, capturing support from only 61 percent of Biden voters and 43 percent of Trump voters.
The survey comes on the tail end of a presidential campaign that’s featured a surprising amount of discussion of housing and zoning policy.
Trump has frequently pitched himself as the defender of the “suburban lifestyle dream” against a would-be Biden administration that Trump says would abolish single-family zoning and force low-income housing (and the resulting urban dysfunction) into tidy, low-density communities.
That’s in contrast to his administration’s earlier, pre-election efforts to encourage local and state governments to deregulate their housing markets in order to allow for higher-density housing. White House budget proposals have consistently called for cutting or even eliminating federal housing and development grants, although none of those cuts have materialized.
Given the low bipartisan support for denser housing in the Redfin poll, it makes sense that Trump would see the preservation of suburban single-family zoning as a wedge issue to exploit.
Rather than appeal to the nation’s NIMBYs (“not in my backyard”), Biden has put forward a housing platform that’s surprisingly pro-deregulation in some aspects. The former vice president has endorsed legislation that would require states and localities to loosen zoning codes and repeal restrictions on new housing as a condition of receiving federal housing and transportation funding.
That’s an approach some free marketers have cheered on. In other ways, however, Biden is a typical regulate-and-spend progressive. He’s promised to beef up regulations on things like mortgage lending and housing appraisals, and massively boost federal spending on aid to homeowners and renters, and on low-income housing construction.
Whatever one thinks of the government housing spending, that money won’t go very far so long as the regulations that drive up the costs of new construction remain on the books. The per-unit costs of building new affordable housing in the high-cost, heavily regulated areas of California are already approaching $1 million.
While Biden voters are relatively less opposed to new housing development in their neighborhoods, their NIMBYism is more likely to have an impact. They’re more likely to live in deep blue, high-cost, amenity-rich cities and inner suburbs where there’s much more demand for higher density housing, and where regulation, therefore, stifles more housing development. Rural Republicans might like apartment buildings less, but it’s also less likely anyone would want to build one next to them even if it were allowed.
Previous polls have found higher baseline support for more neighborhood housing development, but a starker partisan divide on the issue.
A 2019 Cato Institute poll found that 59 percent of Americans support more housing in their neighborhood, including 67 percent of Democrats, 57 percent of independents, and 52 percent of Republicans. Another 2019 poll commissioned by the pro-housing development group California YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) found that 61 percent of that state’s voters supported more housing development in their neighborhood.
If the Redfin survey is to be believed, however, it suggests that combating the housing shortage in America’s most high-cost areas is an uphill battle that requires convincing a lot more voters of the merits of new housing construction.
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We’re living in a nation divided. You need only look at social media or the comments section of nearly any website to see the rage and animosity between people who hold opposing opinions. Violence has broken out in the streets of many of our cities and it’s all the media really wants to talk about.
Some people will call me naive, but I still believe in unity, the goodness of people, and the possibility of peace.
Even on the cusp of an election that many are saying is “the most important” of our lifetime, an election that many have vowed violence and destruction over the results, an election that has drawn battle lines right through our own neighborhoods, I believe that it doesn’t need to be this way.
I’m writing this piece before the election. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. This is my opinion regardless of which candidate is declared the winner and it is not based on politics. It’s based on my belief that Americans can still unite if we choose to do so.
People are giving politicians control over their relationships.
What I don’t understand is how people can allow politicians – people who are in it for power, not for you and me – to divide them from the people they once loved. How can you look at your son, daughter, parent, cousin, or friend and say, “You voted for X and therefore I no longer love you?” How can you put this politician and what he or she stands for ahead of your own people?
Do you think those politicians care about you enough to divide their own families? To disinvite someone to Christmas dinner? To “unfriend” somebody on social media and in real life? Of course not. All they want is your vote. They want your verbal support. They don’t give a tinker’s damn whether or not your family is destroyed because of them and their causes.
And yet, I see it all the time. I saw a woman proudly declaring she got her dying father to go vote against a candidate as if that was the most important way to spend her last few days with a loved one. It made me sick. When my father was dying, all I wanted was to hear his voice, hold his hand, listen to his stories, and tell him my own. He told me a dozen times on his last day, “You know I love you, right?”And I replied, “Yes, I know because you showed me every single day. I love you too.” Politics was the last thing on my mind. It would be the last thing on any rational human being’s mind at a time like that.
This is not a unique case, either. Families are fractured forever for people who don’t even know who they are, and people feel good about it.
There are still people who have their humanity.
There are still plenty of Americans who are in full possession of their humanity. They’ll feed a hungry person without asking where that person stands on Joe Biden. They’ll help a lost child at Walmart get reunited with her mother without wondering whether Mom is a Trump voter. They’ll help a person in a wheelchair get something off a high shelf at the store, and they’ll check on their elderly neighbor, all with no questions asked.
The United States of America is full of people like this. But they don’t make the headlines.
Nobody cares about small acts of service and kindness. They only want to see Molotov cocktails thrown through the windows of rich peoples’ homes or brutal crackdowns on rioters. That’s the hunger our media is feeding. That’s what people believe the real USA is all about right now. My friends outside the US are under the impression that the entire country is burning and we’re living through a 3-D movie-level apocalypse.
But it’s not like that everywhere. My 20-year-old daughter lives in an apartment building where her best friend is a 61-year-old lady. They have coffee together every day. They take walks weather and safety permitting. They don’t discuss politics – they discuss plants and the little patio gardens both of them are growing. They discuss their day and their family and the little odds and ends of life.
I’m friends with a group of women in which we have many widely different beliefs, both religious and political. We are a tight-knit group and we can discuss anything – including politics and religion – without hard feelings and then get right back to a conversation on home security or food preservation. That’s because we put our humanity and our similarities first, not some politicians that – I repeat – do not care about us personally.
This isn’t some utopian fantasy.
A UNITED States of America isn’t some silly utopian fantasy. It’s absolutely possible.
Before the advent of social media and an incredibly biased press, nobody used to throw the Thanksgiving turkey in the trash when they discovered they were hosting a table full of *insert other political party here* because that wasn’t made the center of our universe. Our children didn’t come home ready to snitch on us for having guns because they were indoctrinated at school that guns were bad, Marxism was good, and anyone who thought differently deserved at best scorn, and at worst legal punishment.
Dial things back 30 years or so and the country was not like this.
Sure, there have always been idealists and some of them have been violent in the past. I don’t think idealism is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a beautiful part of being young. I remember when I was 21 years old and wanted to change the world and make it better. Heck, I still want to change the world and make it better and I’m 51.
But the level to which this beautiful idealism has been perverted and used to further a dark agenda is itself criminal. The reason we have so many young people prepared to wreak violence and destruction in the name of their ideals is that they’ve been deeply manipulated. They’ve been manipulated by the school curriculum, by the teachers, by the professors at universities, by the media, and by social media – all of these purport things to be just and true with only a portion of the real story given. They play on empathy and forsake logic in order to activate young visionaries and to radicalize them. That’s right – these kids from good families who are out there behaving violently have been radicalized just as certainly as any child raised to be a Jihadist.
We have to take our kids back. We have to take our media back. We have to take our neighborhoods back. I’m not proposing violent revolution here. I’m talking about lemonade on the front steps, family dinners where real discussions take place, and educating our kids ourselves if the system cannot be trusted to do so without distorting their perspectives.
The solution lies with us.
I know I’m just an idealistic, middle-aged hippie chick, and that doesn’t always mesh with some of the most vocal parts of the prepper crowd. I know that I don’t have a tactical background or a bad-ass gun collection. I’m unlikely to lead anybody into battle.
But I have some strong beliefs about a different type of revolution. We can revolt against the media and the politicians and the string pullers by uniting.
Fixing this mess that our country is in starts small. It starts with families, neighbors, and communities. What YOU do matters. How YOU respond to the results of the election matters. How YOU react to those with whom you disagree matters.
Please understand that I’m not suggesting we don’t defend ourselves or that we allow others to ride roughshod over our safety and property rights. Not at all. We are all born with those inherent rights and I, like you, will do whatever I must to defend my loved ones.
But perhaps, regardless of who wins and who loses this election, we could try to do better than we did the last time around. We could try not to gloat if our “side” wins. We could try not to become enraged if our “side” loses. We could try to just treat our neighbors like our neighbors and get on with our lives. We could err on the side of kindness whenever it’s safe to do so. Remember that what you see on the news in the following days is not the entire country, but a few places that make for sensational coverage and high ratings.
Whoever is named the next president of the United States will play political games that are far above our pay grades. There are things you can control and things you cannot. If you’ve gone out and cast your vote, or if you’ve withheld your vote because you don’t stand behind either of the candidates, then you’ve done what you feel is right for the big circle. The rest of it is out of our hands.
Turn off the “news” and connect with the people around you. Look at your similarities, not your differences. Steer the conversation there when it goes astray and into controversial topics. Cement your friendships.
I hope that we can collectively take a deep breath and focus on our small circles. Because as things get worse in our country in terms of the economy, supply chain issues, and the unrest that is almost certain to occur, all we can do is focus our positive efforts on those closest to us.
This essay about how we can do better this election probably won’t be as widely spread as if I’d written something gloomy and terrifying, but I believe that all of our quiet voices calling for peace are important. Maybe share it with your friends if you, like me, want to see peace.
Let’s talk about common ground and our similarities. Not about politicians. How can we help keep Election Day peaceful in our necks of the woods?
I wish you all safety, kindness, and peace.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3mSvQNQ Tyler Durden
Election Day “Shocker”: Mueller Went After WikiLeaks & Roger Stone For DNC Hacks But Found ‘Lack Of Evidence’ Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 17:05
Much belatedly and amazingly a mere hours before election day Buzzfeed News published a bombshell report late Monday night based on the DOJ newly declassifying previously secret portions of the Mueller report (following a successful FOIA lawsuit to obtain them). It’s yet more smoking gun evidence proving long after the fact that core aspects of now deflated ‘Russiagate’ that American media spent years devoting wall-to-wall coverage to were deliberate manufactured falsehoods (shocker!), specifically as regards claims of early collaboration and “collusion” between Trump staffers, WikiLeaks, and the Russian government.
Unfortunately, like with the latest news that put the final nail in the coffin of the Steele dossier hoax, this too will fast be memory-holed given it’s now election day. We learn 18-months after the initial report’s redacted release that despite putting one of the most hyped central allegations facing Trump’s team and his past campaign adviser Roger Stone under a microscope, Mueller’s team of hundreds of FBI agents simply “did not have sufficient evidence” and thus never pursued charges, as the Buzzfeed report begins:
Prosecutors investigated Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Roger Stone for the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers as well as for possible campaign finance violations, but ultimately chose not to charge them, newly released portions of the Mueller Report reveal.
Although WikiLeaks published emails stolen from the DNC in July and October 2016 and Stone — a close associate to Donald Trump — appeared to know in advance the materials were coming, investigators “did not have sufficient evidence” to prove active participation in the hacks or knowledge that the electronic thefts were continuing. In addition, federal prosecutors could not establish that the hacked emails amounted to campaign contributions benefitting Trump’s election chances and furthermore felt their publication might have been protected by the First Amendment, making a successful prosecution tenuous.
Getty Images
Recall that throughout years it was an unquestioned article of faith communicated to the American public over the airwaves of MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and others that WikiLeaks essentially ran cover for Russia in a grand DNC email hack conspiracy designed to influence the 2016 presidential election while embarrassing Hillary. We were “assured” that this played a crucial role in Trump’s victory over Clinton.
The widespread unfounded allegations also served to permanently taint WikiLeaks as some kind of Moscow influence op, which also no doubt added pressure to UK attempts to apprehend Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which ended up happening.
The relevant newly unredacted section details that investigators “considered whether to charge WikiLeaks, Assange, or Stone as conspirators in the computer-intrusion conspiracy,” given WikiLeaks’ “role in disseminating the hacked materials, and the existence of some evidence that Stone played a role in coordinating” the publication of Clinton adviser John Podesta’s emails:
“While the Office cannot exclude the possibility of coordination between Stone and WikiLeaks or that additional evidence could come to light on that issue, the investigation did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove facts establishing such coordination beyond a reasonable doubt,” the newly released portion said.
Amazing. Hours before Election Day comes news that Mueller aggressively tried to prosecute Assange and Roger Stone for a conspiracy related to the 2016 DNC/Podesta emails, but ran into “factual…hurdles” which could not establish any conspiracy. Perfect time to memory-hole this pic.twitter.com/Q9Szys4MmL
“While the investigation developed evidence that the GRU’s hacking efforts in fact were continuing at least at the time of the July 2016 WikiLeaks dissemination,” a newly unredacted section of the report reads, prosecutors “did not develop sufficient admissible evidence that WikiLeaks knew of — or even was willfully blind to — that fact.”
For comparison of how the same page looked before Monday:
Phrases that are deeply inconvenient to longtime Russiagate peddlers appear in the newly released sections, such as “factual…hurdles” and “proof..lacking”. Speaking of these legal hurdles the report said bluntly:
Regardless, success [of criminal charges] would also depend upon evidence of WikiLeaks’s and Stone’s knowledge of ongoing or contemplated future computer intrusions – the proof that is currently lacking.
Likewise, prosecutors faced what they called factual hurdles in pursuing Stone for the hack. The report notes they lacked proof “beyond a reasonable doubt that Stone knew or believed that the computer intrusions were ongoing at the time he ostensibly encouraged or coordinated the publication of the Podesta emails.”
Wow a Russiagate conspiracy theory “did not have sufficient evidence”, for some reason that’s not a shocker https://t.co/12un24dN2R
Mueller wrote that the Justice Department“did not have admissible evidence,” for conspiracy convictions to stick. This definitive confirmation comes a whopping 18-months after the original redacted report’s release.
The DOJ tried to argue it could “compromise ongoing investigations” or possibly reveal sensitive law enforcement tactics or procedures in keeping the new information classified.
Or perhaps given they understood it would inevitably be released one day, why not release when it’s too late for the information to make a major impact? That is… now that the election is already upon us and with Americans having voted or made up their minds. But as a reminder, this is precisely how propaganda is supposed to work after all.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kUmCQV Tyler Durden
For a short period of time, America’s libertarian moment was a go-to topic for political pundits in a variety of publications. Since 2016, the role of libertarians in political discourse has tended to devolve away from a relevant political demographic into a weird scapegoat for the Left and Right.
From the left, pundits – assisted by a certain clique of Beltway-dwelling libertarians—have focused on an alleged “libertarian to alt-right pipeline.” Interestingly, a group that often mocked “conspiracy theorists” in the movement suddenly found Nazis behind every speech promoting political decentralization and social cooperation.
Meanwhile, a new generation of right thought leaders, including Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, identified libertarians and “Austrian economics” as a major driver in what they saw as a corporate takeover of American government. While both Carlson and Bannon deserve credit for helping normalize a noninterventionist foreign policy in the mainstream of Republican Party politics, their woefully misinformed attacked on Austrians actively undermines many of their own objectives. While it’s possible their choice of language was intended to target a certain group of billionaire libertarian benefactors, reading Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe would assist both of them in properly identifying their actual enemy: fiat money and central banking.
Still, while the libertarian electorate is not as popular a topic as it once was, it could actually be a very important demographic this year. In particular, there are three states where Gary Johnson voters could flip enough delegates to give one party an electoral college victory.
Nevada
The largest of these states is Nevada, with six electoral votes. Home of FreedomFest, a libertarian event and one of Donald Trump’s first official campaign events as a candidate in 2015, the state is dominated by the population centers of Las Vegas and Reno.
In 2016, Donald Trump lost the state to Hillary Clinton by around 2,700 votes. Gary Johnson surpassed the difference with 37,000 voters. As was the case for the Libertarian Party as a whole, Governor Johnson’s 3 percent advantage was historically high for America’s largest third party (Johnson came in with just shy of 11,000 votes in 2012).
What makes Nevada interesting is the state’s obvious reliance on the tourism industry. While much media attention has been paid to Joe Biden’s comments about fracking and its impact on Pennsylvania workers dependent upon that industry, less attention has been paid to how tourist-dependent economies may view stark differences in covid.
Nevada’s prolockdown Democratic governor has become increasingly unpopular with independents in the state. A recent poll showed 56 percent of independents disapproving of the response. Perhaps a sign of the political unpopularity of lockdowns is decreased turnout among Democratic voters. According to TargetSmart, Democrats had 42 percent of the turnout the day before the election in 2016. In 2020, that’s dropped by 2 percent. This is particularly telling given the Biden campaign’s focus on VBM (vote by mail), which pushed dependable Democratic votes earlier into the election cycle.
Meanwhile, Las Vegas’s Clark County has seen a 2 percent increase in independent voters. The question is, Are independent voters motivated more by an anti-Trump narrative or concerns about the potential of executive action on future covid lockdowns?
If so, this could be an unexpected Trump victory.
One additional variable that could lead to an extra messy election? Nevada is a state that went to a universal vote-by-mail model, with ballots sent to every registered voter. We’ve already seen the state’s turnout surpass 2016. This is assumed to be a major advantage for Democrats, but perhaps the true “silent majority” may be more complex than pundits assume.
New Hampshire
The most iconic libertarian state in the Union continues to be New Hampshire, which has largely remained a beacon of sanity relative to its fellow New England states during the age of covid. In 2016, some polls saw Hillary Clinton going into the election with as much as an 11 percent advantage, though Trump ended up losing by just above three thousand votes.
This year, polls have shown a consistently large lead for Joe Biden since May. Without any in-person early voting, there is little voter data that would point to a surprise outcome. Should the results play out as prognosticated, it perhaps highlights missed opportunities by the Trump administration to deliver on some of 2016’s more libertarian promises.
If Donald Trump ends up losing by fewer than New Hampshire’s four electoral votes, the defeat may be the direct result of the administration’s inability to end any of the various wars unpopular with voters. While the president has promised to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq in the near future and has paid lip service to a federal end to the war on marijuana, the lack of follow-through may have alienated many Live Free or Die state voters.
One of the major narratives of the 2016 campaign has been President Trump’s success with Hispanic voters. While the Left often makes the mistake of seeing Hispanic voters as a homogenous voting block, significant differences exist between Hispanic populations across the country. Miami’s Cubans vote very differently from Mexicans living in Texas.
That being said, organic Spanish-language content created by Trump supporters is the closest this election cycle has seen to the meme magic of 2016. If Trump is able to improve his performance with Hispanic voters, this is one state that could become interesting—and this has become reflected in the coinciding Senate race.
In 2016, Donald Trump lost to Hillary Clinton by just over 8 percent. The same year, Gary Johnson earned over 9 percent of voters. If we acknowledge the possibility that Jo Jorgenson lacks the same relationship with New Mexico voters that its former governor did, where might these 74,000+ voters land?
Like Nevada, New Mexico has a Democrat governor who has taken a strong government hand in the face of the coronavirus. While business owners have pushed back against some of the enforcement, the public as a whole has seemed to be more supportive of Governor Grisham’s actions.
The only potential lifeline to the Trump campaign may be the concerns about what Democrats could do to the fracking industry, which is a major economic driver in the state. Still, this looks like the least likely of the three to be in play.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3oWVliS Tyler Durden
WTI Extends Gains After Bigger Than Expected Crude Draw Tyler Durden
Tue, 11/03/2020 – 16:40
Oil prices extended their rebound gains today, back above $38, on the back of a weaker dollar and signs that OPEC+ may delay a planned output increase.
“They can’t afford to let prices slip beyond where they were here recently,” said Josh Graves, senior market strategist at RJ O’Brien & Associates LLC.
Meanwhile, “there’s still a lot of optimism that oil in the long-term will be OK, so traders are looking at buying any kind of significant dip in the market.”
This week’s inventory and production data will be heavily influenced by Hurricane Zeta which caused the shut-in of around 85% of Gulf crude production.
API
Crude -8.01mm (-600k exp)
Cushing +981k
Gasoline +2.45mm (-1.1mm exp)
Distillates -577k (-2.4mm exp)
After a surprise build last week, analysts expected a modest draw (Hurricane Zeta) but instead crude stocks plunged over 8mm barrels…
Source: Bloomberg
Demand is recovering “at a very slow speed,” according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo.
WTI was hovering just below $38 ahead of the API report and extended gains on
“Lockdowns and economies around the world seem to be getting into another wave of Covid-related stress,” said Stewart Glickman, energy equity analyst at CFRA Research. “If you get another wave that lasts through the winter season potentially, then that’s just another nail in the coffin for demand.”
The forward curves for both Brent and WTI showed some underlying strength beyond the rally in headline prices.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3evuK84 Tyler Durden
On the last days of the 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump was holding four and five rallies a day in battleground states, drawing thousands upon thousands of loyalists to every one.
Waiting for hours, sometimes in the cold, to cheer their champion on, these rallygoers love Trump as few presidents have been loved. This writer cannot recall a president and campaign that brought out so many and such massive crowds of admirers in its closing days.
And who are these cheering, chanting loyalists who have brought their children out with them to see and remember “the great Trump” — in the eyes of our dispossessed elites?
They are people who belong in a “basket of deplorables,” sneered Hillary Clinton: “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” bigots, and a sub-species of humanity that is “irredeemable.”
Today’s election is an us-versus-them choice unlike any other, for the issues in dispute are broader and deeper than ever before.
And those issues raise questions: No matter who wins, can this nation come together again? And if it cannot — a real possibility — what form will America take as it disintegrates?
Even as voters were mailing in ballots in the millions, stores in our great cities were being boarded up against rioters, looters and arsonists.
Suburban residents, fearful that the urban mobs may one day be coming for them, were stockpiling guns and ammunition.
How divided are we?
The New York Times “Sunday Review” devoted its entire section to Donald Trump, as seen from the eyes of its columnists. On the cover page of the Review ran the headline, “All 15 of our columnists explain what the past four years have cost America, and what’s at stake in this election.”
Each of the 15 trashed Trump from his or her perspective.
Since World War II, America has held elections where the country seemed at sword’s point. Not all were like 1960, where scholar Arthur Schlesinger Jr., felt compelled to write the book, “Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?”
Schlesinger felt he had to explain that despite the similarity of the candidates, both in their 40s, it made a difference who was elected.
Yet, even after the most divisive elections of the post-war era — 1952 and 1968 — the country pulled back together. President Dwight Eisenhower, from 1952 to 1956, and Richard Nixon, from 1968 to 1972, restored unity to the nation during their first terms by ending the Asian wars into which their predecessors had taken the nation.
New leadership ended the wars and brought the United States together.
The difference today?
Americans are not divided over war. One of Trump’s successes has been to keep us out of new wars, even if he has not yet extracted us from the wars he inherited.
Today, we are divided over ideology, morality, culture, race and history. We are divided over whether America is the great nation we were raised to revere and love or a nation born in great sins and crimes — such as the near annihilation of indigenous peoples and their cultures and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Black peoples from Africa.
Are we the nation of 1776 and 1789, or the nation of 1619, whose institutions are still infected with the “systemic racism” of our birth?
In this divided country, at times, Americans seem to detest each other.
Indeed, if the United States did not exist as one nation, would this diverse people ever agree to form a compact to come together, or would we seek to retain our separate identities?
In tearing down the statues of explorers such as Christopher Columbus or the Founding Fathers and their successor presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the contempt for the country these men helped to bring into being, and for what this country stands for today, is manifest.
A significant slice of America’s young believes that the nation to which they belong was detestable from its birth, and that the Western civilization from which it sprang is not worth saving.
In his farewell address, President Ronald Reagan spoke of the America where he was raised and which he cherished:
“The hope of human freedom — the quest for it, the achievement of it — is the American saga. And I’ve often recalled one group of early settlers making a treacherous crossing of the Atlantic on a small ship when their leader, a minister, noted that perhaps their venture would fail and they would become a byword, a footnote to history. But perhaps, too, with God’s help, they might also found a new world, a city upon a hill, a light unto the nations.”
How many Americans still believe what Reagan believed? How many yet see America as “a city upon a hill, a light unto the nations”?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kYMpY3 Tyler Durden
