Before November, it was hoped that Lee Zeldin could defeat Governor Kathy Hochel.  That didn’t happen.  The hope had been that with Zeldin as Governor, something might be done about the conditions that have caused an exodus of industrious, higher income residents from that State for locales such as Florida, the Carolinas and western States.  The exodus was prompted by several factors, chief among them the crime in New York, the New York taxes, and the impediments to doing business in New York caused by oppressive regulations.  In 2021, some 3.57 million people moved out of New York.  The people leaving had incomes averaging $140,000.  Some 3.5 million of these people were replaced by lower income people.  Some of the 4 or 5 million illegal aliens let into the country by Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden come readily to mind.  In a nutshell, what’s happening in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and in other high-tax, high-crime Blue States is that hard-working, industrious residents are fleeing, to be replaced by less industrious, lower educated residents who are needier, and who require more financial support than their predecessors.  The exodus resulted in New York’s losing a seat in the House of Representatives.  While, on one level, that may be regarded as a positive development, it bodes ill for the future of New York State in general and New York City in particular.  It’s easy to blame the Wuhan plague for this problem, and that, of course, has contributed to the problem, but it’s not the sole cause.  It’s never been easy to live in this area.  The cost of living has always been higher in New York than in most other places in the country.  Add to that the constant traffic getting to and from the City, and it wouldn’t take much for many people to decide that life would be more pleasant elsewhere.  The attraction always was the fact that so many large corporations were based in New York, and the added attraction of the cultural advantages of Broadway, the restaurants, museums, etc.  The pandemic changed all that.  Many corporations which were paying exorbitant rents for office space discovered that they could do business with many employees working at home.  Why pay that overhead if you don’t have to?  Even with the pandemic behind us, many employees are reluctant to return to offices.  Some of them have grown too accustomed to working from home and don’t want to return to the daily grind.  But many of the companies have simply up and left the City for States that make it a lot easier to do business.  What this means is that the future for the commercial real estate market in New York, a market which thrived and provided so much of the City’s tax base looks bleak.  Add to this the exodus of makers, only to be replaced by more takers, and it’s hard to imagine where New York is going to get the revenue to keep the government going in the future.  New York’s budget is twice that of Florida, which has more residents.  This problem would be daunting enough if the powers that be in New York weren’t doing everything in their power to make conditions worse.  Crime is out of control.  People do not feel safe on the streets, even in neighborhoods once considered “safe.”  And it’s not, as New York Democrats have claimed, simply a Republican talking point, or merely an unfounded impression of danger.  Crime is up in almost every category.  And crime is up in almost every category principally because New York Democrats have decided that they won’t do anything to get crime under control.  The police are being prevented from doing their jobs, and are constantly hounded as extremists.  Even when they make an arrest, New York Democrats have instituted a “no cash bail” law that puts them right back on the street.  And Democrat prosecutors have decided not to enforce the laws on the books.  When people learn that they can rob, steal and commit violence without serious consequences, then what you get is more theft, robbery and violence.  Democrats who are actively trying to take guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens, but who will do nothing to take them away from criminals are simply compounding the problem.  And like the national Democrats, the New York Democrats are doing everything they can think of to make conditions even worse.  People don’t want to come into the City, and subway ridership is down 40%?  No problem, the Democrat “solution” is to impose commuter fess of $23 a day or more on cars coming into Manhattan, and raising the subway fares.  It’s madness.  If they would clean up the crime on the subways and elsewhere in the City, there would be more ridership.  If they would apprehend the fare-beaters (it’s been estimated that as many as 40% of those on the trains don’t pay the fares) then they wouldn’t have to raise them in the first place.  Moreover, since New York Democrats will need more and more revenue to feed their burgeoning welfare state, the last thing they intend to do is to reduce taxes and regulations to spur economic growth.  In short, they are headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.  The newly arrived poorly educated residents are best suited to work in the service economy.  However, with fewer workers in the City, and fewer companies to service, there are fewer service jobs to be done.  Hundreds of restaurants in the City have closed, never to be reopened.  In the event that the financial center based in New York ever moves off to someplace like Texas, New York City will collapse under its own weight, as the Wall Street people are paying the bulk of the taxes.  We had hoped that a Zeldin Administration might forestall this result, but to no avail.  And when the inevitable day arrives when the City is unable to support itself, the condition of the federal government will make it impossible for them to rely on money from Washington to bail them out.  The escape from New York will continue until New York officials smarten up and give people a reason to stay.

We are a nation of some 332 million people, 360 million if we count the illegals.  Given that mass of humanity, it’s remarkable to contemplate just how much one person has been able to affect the nation.  That person, of course, is Donald Trump.  Never has there been such a threat to the system.  No, not a threat to “our democracy,” whatever that means.  Not a threat to our national security, to law and order, or to any minority group, real or imagined.  Not a threat to democracy, but a threat to political orthodoxy, the corrupt system run by the elites of the deep State – the people who will permit us to have elections, just so long as we keep electing candidates who are willing to play their crooked game.  Candidates are allowed to promise big changes: for example, FDR’s New Deal; JFK’s New Frontier; LBJ’s Great Society; Il Duce Obama’s Hope and Change.  You can have all the catchy phrases you like to get elected, so long as, once you are elected you don’t change the status quo.  Translation – you don’t threaten to upset the plans of the elected crooks and the rich pricks who put the elected crooks in office.  The Deep State consists of the elected crooks, the formerly elected crooks who now are lobbyists making sure that the rich pricks get richer, and the insidious bureaucracy that infests every department of the government.  These are the people who run the government, regardless of what the current occupant of the White House says he wants.  The State Department is a perfect example.  Before Trump ran for president, he met with Henry Kissinger, and Kissinger’s advice was, “don’t listen to the State Department.”  It’s always been that way.  Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel after the State Department told him “you can’t do that.”  Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem over the objection of the State Department.  Every time Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden says he’s going to defend Taiwan, the State Department says, “No we’re not.”  The thing is, presidents come and go, but the Deep State is forever.  Then along came Trump in 2016.  At first, the Deep State wasn’t concerned.  Candidates make a lot of promises, and anyway, Trump was considered a joke.  Hillary would make quick work of Trump, then they could let the good times roll.  Only she didn’t.  And one man who actually did the things he had promised set the Establishment on fire, and caused it to show its ugly hand.  If Trump would have just played ball they might have left him alone, but he didn’t, and they couldn’t permit “an outsider” to beat them at their own game.  The “outsider” moniker is a bit misleading.  Donald Trump wasn’t an outsider, meaning someone not involved in the system.  He was one of the rich guys that the elected crooks, including Hillary, relied upon for finance.  That’s the main reason they hate him.  Think of it this way.  Ben Carson was an outsider, a true innocent, who tried to crack into the system, and you saw what happened to him.  But Trump was part of the system, or so they all assumed.  When it became clear to the Deep State that Trump actually intended to do what he promised to do, he had to be stopped.  And in order to stop Trump, the Deep State was willing to blatantly disregard the law, the Constitution, and any semblance of honesty or integrity.  Think about it.  The Democrats are willing to destroy the law, and the Constitution in order to stop Trump.  The CIA and the FBI spied on Trump before the election, and undermined him after he was elected.  The State Department released private phone calls Trump had with world leaders to embarrass him.  The military defied his orders.  The public relations staff of the Deep State, also known as the media, discarded any notion of impartial  journalism in order to hound Trump day and night.  More than 95% of media coverage of Trump was negative.  Democrats impeached Trump twice, over nothing, to try to stop him.  He faced a phony special counsel investigation for nearly two years over fake Russian collusion allegations that we now know (anyone who reads these pages knew it five years ago) were lies bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton.  And his own Party was even worse.  Republican leaders fought Trump every step of the way.  They blocked his proposals and fought his policies.  Yet despite being opposed by both Parties and the media, Trump lowered taxes, grew jobs, fixed the military, closed the border, pacified North Korea, Iran and China, fixed trade agreements, and had the economy soaring.  It took the Wuhan plague and two impeachments to slow him down, and they finally beat him in 2020.  But now, with the prospect of a Trump return, the Deep State is again in a panic.  Democrats have enlisted a new special counsel to try to indict and jail him.  Republicans are willing to lose the next presidential election if they can stop Trump.  Democrats are even willing to throw away their best hope of winning in 2024.  Everything Democrats have done for seven years has been designed to damage Donald Trump.  Because of seven years of bad press, mostly consisting of lies, the Trump name has been damaged beyond repair.  It’s not fair, but it’s done.  They have convinced half the electorate never to vote for Trump.  The only hope Democrats have in 2024 is to run against a crippled Donald Trump.  Yet they still consider him such a threat that they still want to destroy him so he can’t run again.  Such is the fear that their entire corrupt money-making machine may be disrupted by perhaps the one honest man who ever has been our president in recent times.  Even the Murdoch Fox, NY Post, Wall Street Journal machine is against him now.  This week, a Journal columnist actually wrote an article comparing Trump to FTX crypto-currency crook Sam Bankman.  Trump is a patriot who increased the wealth of the nation and every person in it.  Bankman is a thief who bankrupted his company, absconded with billions in clients’ funds, and is hiding out in the Bahamas.  The fact that the Justice Department has appointed a Special Counsel to go after Trump, while Bankman basks in the sun, is all you have to know about the system.  Personally, I think too much damage has been done, and that Trump’s time has passed.  I’m afraid we can’t afford a candidate in 2024 who starts with both hands tied behind his back.  It’s not fair, but it happens to be the reality.

A post mortem is something that’s dome after a death, so the title seemed appropriate. Well, my pared back expectations from last week were pared back some more by the interminable vote counting systems out West.  The electoral system roller coaster reached the top of the hill and hurtled down again, and what liked like a tolerable outcome went South, or was that West?  The Nevada Senate win became a loss, as they just kept finding more ballots in Clarke County.  Never saw that one before, right?  Then, in Arizona, they had to stop counting, shut off the video cameras, and wait for new ballots to be printed.  I guess Amazon finally delivered the printer toner that kept thousands of Arizonans from voting on election day.  But, nothing to see there.  Don’t want to be called an election denier.  As this is written, Republicans have reached 218 seats in the House, and will control that chamber.  I expected about 230 seats last week.  The final number now looks more like 222.  Somehow, there are California House districts where they still have been able to count only 60% of the votes.  How could this fiasco happen again after 2020?  H.L. Mencken once said, “The people get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.”  Well, we got it.  And we got it because, apparently, elected officials are content to let business as usual continue to be business as usual.  And if any of you had doubts whether the Deep State actually exists, this mess finally has put all doubts to rest.  We managed to believe all the Red Wave bullshit, and you can’t blame us, because we don’t know any better.  The alleged professionals in our Party, however, either did know better, or are so criminally inept that they just stood there and watched it happen.  It’s a given that Democrats clean up on early and mail ballots.  I say ballots instead of votes because it appears that Republicans only count votes, while Democrats count ballots.  So we knew from experience that a complete imbecilic non-entity like John Fetterman would wake up on election day already some 750,000 votes ahead of his opponent.  What did we do about this known fact?  Nothing.  And don’t give me the “Republicans are just an election day get out the vote Party” bullshit.  Clearly, that doesn’t work, so how many times do you need to get screwed before you try something else?  I am first among those who don’t like or want no-reason mail ballots or early voting, but it’s here, courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party’s Wuhan virus, and we either adapt or we go the way of all the other dinosaurs.  And speaking of dinosaurs, what’s the fallout in the Republican Party after it got caught with its pants down again?  Mitch McConnell was reelected Senate Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy will be the new Speaker, and Ronna McDaniel (daughter of Mitt Romney –  is it any wonder we’re in the shape we’re in?) apparently will continue as the Chair of the Party.  This trio, sometimes known as “the Mc Leaders,” is as ineffective a bunch of alleged leaders as I’ve ever seen.  Of the three, McConnell is the worst.  Mitch McConnell had a large fund of campaign money to be doled out, supposedly where it would do the most good for Republicans.  But that’s a joke.  Mitch doles it out only to the candidates he knows will continue him in power.  And what power?  The Minority Leader.  McConnell had a great chance to become Majority Leader this year, but instead, we will continue with the Detestable Chuck Schumer in that role.  And Mitch is just fine with that.  Mitch badmouthed the Senate candidates in August, not because they weren’t good candidates, but because some of them would not vote for him as Leader.  Mitch could have pumped money into the Arizona race to help Blake Masters, and could have sent more money to Adam Laxalt in Nevada, but he didn’t.  Instead, Mitch sent money to Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.  Murkowski, for the second time in six years, failed to win her own primary, but Mitch wouldn’t support the Republican who did win, in a State where, no matter what, one of the Republicans was going to be elected.  Mitch withheld money from General Bolduc in New Hampshire, then teased him with some, and finally cut him off in the final weeks.  Now, Mitch and the other Mc Leaders are busy trying to stamp out all traces of Republican populism (a/k/a Trumpism – more about that next week).  The reason is simple to understand.  The Party is not designed to give the people what they want, it’s designed to foster the status quo, so that deserving political hacks, who never held, and don’t want a real job can line their pockets.  Sure, they’ll make all the right sounds before election day, but the reality is, it really doesn’t matter how the elections come out.  You’re going to get the the government that the elites say you deserve, and you’re going to get it good and hard.  You may think the disaster at the border, fuel costs, inflation, and national security are important, but they don’t.  They’ve shown us what they think is important.  This week Republicans in the Senate joined Democrats to pass a bill protecting same-sex marriage, as unneeded and irrelevant a piece of legislation as there possibly can be.  Like it or not, The Supreme Court ruled it a right six years ago, so what are they protecting?  If this is all we’re going to get from these Mc Screwups, then it’s time for them to go.  Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  These Mc bastards somehow manage to screw us all of the time.  They don’t oppose bad candidates, they oppose populists who will throw them out.  We better wake up.

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.