Last Call For Our Good Friends In Tel Aviv

Reminder tonight, via Emily Hauser and as with 2012, the Israeli government is actively campaigning for the GOP in the 2014 midterm elections.  Haaretz's Barak Ravid:

It’s no secret that Netanyahu and his aides are praying for control of the U.S. Senate to fall to the Republicans, who already hold the majority of the House of Representatives. Based on recent U.S. polls, there’s a fairly good chance those prayers will be answered. However, Netanyahu won’t break open any champagne prematurely. He did that two years ago, before the presidential elections, only to see his favored candidate, Mitt Romney, lose to incumbent President Barack Obama. 

White House staffers don’t need the National Security Agency to guess what results Netanyahu would like to wake up to on Wednesday morning. They believe Netanyahu could integrate well in Congress as a Republican senator from Texas or North Carolina. They know that his envoy, Dermer, is investing most of his time lately meeting with Republican lawmakers, and they also remember that casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, Netanyahu’s patron and the publisher of his mouthpiece, Israel Hayom, shelled out $100 million to try to defeat Obama. 

Speaking of Dermer and Adelson, a few months ago U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with the leader of one of the major American Jewish organizations. When the latter asked Rice why she hadn’t met with Dermer. Rice responded, with her characteristic sarcasm, “He never asked to meet me.” 

“Besides, I understood that he’s too busy traveling to Sheldon Adelson’s events in Las Vegas.” 

Rice was referring to Dermer’s exceptional attendance as guest of honor at a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in March. That event served to prove to Obama’s aides that despite the “new leaf” Dermer had promised when he arrived in Washington only a few months earlier, he continued to dabble in American domestic politics as a sympathizer with the red, Republican side.

The fact that Israel is actively trying to affect US elections is no actual secret, but it's nice to remember that if both parties are the same, why does Bibi and his Likud Party want Obama out of the way so badly, to the tune of tens of millions and an ambassador at GOP fundraisers?

Not all the Obama Derangement Syndrome sufferers are in the US, or are even Americans.

Meanwhile In Louisville

Reminder: here in Kentucky there is no GOP racism towards African-Americans, there is no GOP War on Women, and both parties are the same.

Kentucky Republicans, who are trying to win control of the state legislature on Tuesday, may have underestimated Ashley Miller.

“I think they just said, ‘Oh she’s young, she’s brown, You don’t have to worry about her,’” said the 30-year-old nurse practitioner, who is running for state representative in the state’s 32nd district, in East Louisville. She would be the first black woman in the Kentucky legislature in 14 years; women currently make up only 18% of the assembly overall.

But Republicans seem worried indeed. In September, a website anonymously surfaced calling Miller “Trashley Miller,” singling out her job at Planned Parenthood for its connection to abortion. Miller is prochoice and and provides options counseling for pregnant women, among other services, but Planned Parenthood in Kentucky does not provide abortion services. It also pointed to her modeling career, which included appearing on the cover of a local rap group’s mix tape. The website referred to the group, Nappy Roots, as “a popular gangster RAP group,” a characterization that doesn’t match the group’s alternative image but seems to play on racial fears. (It’s unclear why rap was in all-caps.)

“There were several people in the community that felt like it was a dog whistle of sorts to remind the voters that I am a minority woman,” Miller said.

More recently, a supporter reached out to Miller, she told msnbc, to tell her she had gotten a robocall asking her if she would vote for Ashley Miller if she “knew that on my previous modeling Web site that I advertised to model lingerie in men’s homes for money.” Miller says that’s false. The call also attacked Miller’s Planned Parenthood affiliation.

You know when Republican say us black people need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make something of ourselves?

Miller was recruited by Mary Lou Marzian, a Democrat in the general assembly who first met her when Miller keynoted a Planned Parenthood event.

“She just blew me away,” Marzian told msnbc, saying Miller was “just poised intelligent, showed compassion for the women she served. I said, ‘This woman needs to run for office.’ Women just need to get other women out and recruited to run. A lot of women feel intimidated, we’re not smart enough, or we can’t do it. We wait to be asked. The men are never gonna ask you to run.”

All that was before Marzian knew how much Miller had overcome. Growing up in the West End of Louisville as the daughter of then-crack addicts, Miller’s family sometimes lacked electricity. “There was some times we didn’t have food,” Miller said. “There were times my dad would get food from a dumpster or would steal it from a local Thornton’s up the corner.”

Support from her grandmother, as well as competing in pageants and playing basketball, helped Miller find her way.

Supposedly this is exactly the kind of woman Republicans say we should be.  And this is how they're treated as a result.

So Where Do We Stand?

Heading into tomorrow, the final Senate predictions are on the table for the pundits:

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has the GOP chance at 74%, picking up 7.5 seats.

Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium pegs the GOP at 65%, with 6 seats.

NY Times' Leo model has the GOP chance at 70%, with 7 pickups.

WaPo's Election Lab gives the GOP a 96% chance, with 8 seats gained.

HuffPo's Pollster forecast has GOP Senate control at 77%, with 7 more seats.

Finally, Real Clear Politics has the GOP picking up 7 seats.

Most of the disagreement comes as to which party Greg Orman would caucus with, so there's some hedging on that.  Pollster says there's a 1 in 9 chance Orman would get to decide who controls the Senate, but don't overlook Angus King flipping parties either in Maine.

But all of the major poll models have the GOP gaining the Senate.  It's not a done deal (unless you believe WaPo) but the general consensus is that the proverbial Rubenesque diva is maintaining light vocal chord exercises for her final aria of the evening.

The thing is there's a thin line between the GOP getting seven seats, and the GOP getting five seats and the Dems keeping the Senate. Most likely there will be runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana anyhow, and should the independent Orman win as well, we may not know who controls the Senate until mid-December.  This is my gut feeling, that the GOP will pick up five seats, Orman will win, and Louisiana and Georgia go to runoffs.

As far as the House goes, well, TPM offers six races to watch.  General consensus there is that the GOP will pick up around the same number of seats they will in the Senate, so if it starts looking like the Republicans will gain 10 or more House seats, it's going to be a long night tomorrow in the Senate.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

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• Islamic State fighters claimed to have taken the Jahar natural gas field in Homs province in central Syria over the weekend, the second gas field seized in the last ten days.
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• Ten years ago tech futurists guessed at where Google, Microsoft, and Amazon would be now, and the predictions were mixed at best.