BLUE WAVE? Senate Dems Continue to Lead Republicans in Fundraising.

Democrats are defending 25 seats total – including 10 in states President Trump won in 2016 — to just nine for Republicans. In all 10 of those Trump-state races, the incumbent outraised every Republican challenger. (Three Republicans surpassed Democrats after making sizable loans to their campaigns.) Still, every Democratic incumbent ended March with more cash on hand than their GOP challengers.

And even in the states where Republicans are defending seats, Democrats put up strong fundraising quarters that either matched or led their GOP counterparts. Nevada Rep. Jacky Rosen doubled Sen. Dean Heller’s first-quarter fundraising, taking in $2.6 million compared to just $1.1 million for the incumbent, though Heller still had more money in the bank.

“We can look across the map and see that Republican donors are not as engaged as Democratic donors are,” said Brad Todd, a GOP consultant advising several candidates. “It’s going to take more work to get the money we need to win the election because their donors are red hot and ours are waiting and seeing.”

As Glenn has written here on occasion: If you want to make a difference, spend less time online and more time volunteering for a local campaign.

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL ONLY BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE: The NRA just broke a 15-year fundraising record. “Most of the donations, $1.9 million of the $2.4 million total, came from small donors who gave less than $200.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Conservative student assaulted during ‘change my mind’ event. “‘Gun control advocates preach about non-violence,’ Bennett commented, ‘but it is far too common to see them either making threats verbally, or actually physically harming someone and their property. What will Kent State come to when dialogue can’t happen on campus because people are being assaulted?’”

It will come to the state that lefties clearly desire.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: H.W., Scott Adams, Mike Pompeo, and Much, Much More. “After a day of speculation that current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, whom Trump nominated to become secretary of State, would not make it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) put that speculation to rest.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz today.

FROM THE WELL DECK INTO THE DRINK: “Somewhere in the 5th Fleet area of operations” a USMC AAV-P7/A1 amphibious assault vehicle assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit exits the well deck of the USS Oak Hill (LSD 51). It’s a wet experience.

SMALL WARS JOURNAL: China’s Territorial Stratagem – Extending Military Range & Influence through Reclamation & Occupation of the Spratly Waters, South China Sea.

The South China Seas are strategically important, 30% of the worlds shipping trade filter through the region and there are 5 other countries (Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines & Brunei) that have claims to the area. (Vox, 2017)

The South China Sea is rich in natural resources. There are an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil, 109 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 10% of the world’s fisheries. (Vox, 2017)

Establishing territorial claims in the South China Sea will allow China to project political, economic and military power, influence freedom of navigation and harvest rich natural resources.

Taiwan first occupied an island in the Spratlys after World War II, and the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia followed suit, and all have built outposts and airstrips on their claimed territory. (CNN, 2016)

China has denied it would militarize the islands it has built, claiming use is for; navigational aids and weather stations. China has since turned the islands into navel and air force bases with hardened infrastructure.

China has looked at the farthest ranges of aircraft and communications equipment. From a strategic standpoint this allows China to reach beyond those limits and extend the range of their power and influence. In 2012, China claimed Scarborough shoal, located in the north of the South China Sea. If China manages to turn Scarborough shoal into a militarized island, it will assert influence over the entire South China Sea. (newsweek.com, 2017)

According to assistant professor, Richard Haydarian of De La Salle University in Manila; China is aiming to expand its military footprint which creates irreversible facts on the ground placing China in a position to use military force to defend its new territorial claims. Essentially China is telling everybody it is here to stay and not leaving.

China seems to have won this round without firing a shot.

LIFE IN WASHINGTON: Big banks love funding Heidi Heitkamp, and she loves subsidizing big banks.

CREEPING SHARIA: Maine Democrats vote to allow female genital mutilation. “By a final vote of 77-70, the House killed the FGM ban in a mostly party-line vote…Last week House Democrats passed a toothless bill that wouldn’t actually ban FGM.”

“EVEN”: Why even removing Trump from office won’t save American democracy.

It’s Vox, so it’s the usual laundry list of complaints which I highly recommend not reading. But I would add that American democracy works about as well as democracy works anywhere — it’s our republican features which are on life support.

MOST UNDERCOVERED SCANDAL OF THE YEAR: The Deepening House IT Scandal.

I ASSUME THIS WILL REQUIRE, NOT JUST PERMIT, FACEBOOK TO CENSOR CONSERVATIVES: “California Rep. Ro Khanna has been tapped by Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to write legislation defining Internet users’ rights to their data.”

A DEEP WELL: Aliens on ‘Super-Earth’ Planets May Be Trapped by Gravity.

To launch the equivalent of an Apollo moon mission, a rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That’s on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

“On more-massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive,” said study author Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany. “Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission or a Hubble Space Telescope.” [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

As researchers have discovered alien worlds around other stars, one class of exoplanets that popped up was the super-Earths, planets that can reach up to 10 times the mass of our own. A number of super-Earths apparently lie in the habitable zones of their stars, where temperatures can theoretically support liquid water on the planetary surface and thus, potentially, life as it is known on Earth.

To balance things out a bit, shouldn’t evolution on high-gravity planets result in smaller life-forms? And wouldn’t high-mass planets by definition have more resources to exploit for this kind of thing?

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:  The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, of which I am a member, will hold a briefing on hate crimes on Friday, May 11 at the Commission’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The briefing will include an open forum at which members of the public are invited to share their experiences and views. Those who are unable to attend the briefing or who wish to elaborate more fully upon their oral comments are invited to submit written comments to the Commission.

If you or a close family member has been the victim of a hate crime, or if you or a close family member has personal experience of an alleged hate crime that was later shown to be a hoax, please share your experience with us. How crimes get classified as hate crimes or not hate crimes is an important subject of interest to the Commission. If you or a close family member has been involved in a crime that was classified as a hate crime, but you believe should not have been (or a crime that was not classified as a hate crime, but you believe should have been), again, let us hear from you. Currently, the federal hate crimes statute covers race, color, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. If you or a close family member has been the victim of a violent bias crime on some other status basis that you believe should be covered by the law, let us know about that too.

We are also interested in hearing from law enforcement about which crimes are or are not reported to the FBI as hate crimes and how law enforcement officers are instructed to make that determination.

Details regarding the oral comment period are available here, and you may send written comments to . If you would like to communicate with me about Commission business, the prefix on my Commission address begins with gheriot. Don’t use the comment section here.

J.T. YOUNG: Trump’s Below the Surface Strength.

Generally seen as underwater, below the surface things are very different for Trump. President Trump elicits strong reactions from two-thirds of America’s electorate. Yet among the one-third in neither camp, the president is quietly doing quite well.

Rasmussen’s 4/16 daily tracking poll, the same polling closest to 2016’s popular vote, gave interesting insight into President Trump’s support. Overall, Trump’s job approval rating was 51 percent (48 percent disapproval). Among the hardcore, his strong support was 35 percent; his strong disapproval: 39 percent.

On the surface, these results are unexciting… until compared to 2016’s actual results. In 2016, Trump received just 46.1 percent of the popular vote. Rasmussen’s 4/16 results put him five percent ahead of what won him the presidency.

Also, Rasmussen’s 4/16 hardcore results closely mimic 2016 exit polling.

That’s an interesting comparison, and one you don’t get from the screaming “DOOM!” headlines. The question for the next few months however is whether that increased support from the middle third is enough to hold the House without Trump on the ballot.

Stay tuned…

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: 14 states hit record-low unemployment.

PRIVACY: Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook? Try Google. “Google gathers more personal data than Facebook does, by almost every measure—so why aren’t we talking about it?”

Who is this “we,” Kemosabe?

More:

If the concern is that companies might be collecting some personal data without our knowledge or explicit consent, Alphabet’s Google is a far bigger threat by many measures: the volume of information it gathers, the reach of its tracking and the time people spend on its sites and apps.

New regulations, particularly in Europe, are driving Google and others to disclose more and seek more permissions from users. And given the choice, many people might even be fine with the trade-off of personal data for services. Still, to date few of us realize the extent to which our data is being collected and used.

“There is a systemic problem and it’s not limited to Facebook,” says Arvind Narayanan, a computer scientist and assistant professor at Princeton University. The larger problem, he argues, is that the very business model of these companies is geared to privacy violation. We need to understand Google’s role in this.

Good stuff, but it’s behind the WSJ paywall. You might find a way around it here however.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Respect Unearned. “Washington’s self-righteous establishmentarians talk of professionalism when they act unprofessionally. They refer at length to their intellectual and professional pedigrees when they prove incompetent. And they cite their morality and ethics when they possess neither. And then, adding insult to injury, when the public expresses abhorrence at their behavior, they accuse critics of unprofessionalism, a lack of patriotism, or reckless demagoguery.”

BLUE ON BLUE: Cynthia Nixon Gains Ground on Andrew Cuomo in N.Y. Governor’s Race. “I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with celebrity in politics. It gives you a platform. But it’s what you do with that platform.”

I’M SORRY, BUT I’VE BEEN RELIABLY INFORMED THAT THE ONLY REASON FOR WANTING TAXES REPEALED IS THAT YOU HATE CHILDREN AND WANT THEM TO DIE: Group of Private College Seeks Repeal of Endowment Tax.

IN THE EMAIL FROM J. M. ANJEWIERDEN:  Black Holiday (The Black Chronicles Book 2).

Morgan has finally made it, earning an officer’s slot on S.T.E.V.E., the ancient flagship of the Takiyama Merchant House. She’s survived so much to get here, and isn’t about to let lingering nightmares over those events stop her now. That said, even the toughest mechanics need down time. Grudgingly taking some shore leave, Morgan goes to visit the estate of her friend Emily, Baroness Novan. What she doesn’t know is that the first steps towards interstellar war have already been taken by the homeworld she escaped, and important leaders – including Emily – are targeted for Assassination.

OF COURSE HE DOES:  Obama jets off to legitimize South Africa’s Zimbabwifying regime.

SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS:  Hardly a Stir When Starbucks Denied a Cop.

YEAH, EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATIC:  ‘Grease’ at 40: Problematic (And Why That’s a Good Thing).