Tag: Clinton

8/9/18: Socialism falters, Chris Collins in trouble

Some Democrats are cheering the fall of Democratic Socialism.  In Tuesday’s primary, the candidates endorsed and supported by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped like flies.  Democrat voters went for the more middle of the left side of the road liberals who don’t openly talk about doubling taxes.  But while Democrats #walkaway from their energetic rising stars, that still leaves them with a November election platform of raising taxes and obstructing Trump.  We’ll see if that ends up being a winning combination.  The candidates on the left with the most success were ones backed by none other than Hillary Clinton.

Down goes Socialism, establishment Democrat party is back on top

Republican Chris Collins is in trouble for insider trading.  The New York representative called family members after the failure of a new drug being developed by a company where he served on the board.  The insider trading saved his son and others about $768,000 in losses.  Collins has vowed to fight.  Congress had passed strong anti-insider trading laws in 2012, but those were walked back the following year and quietly repealed by Obama.

Chris Collins hit for insider trading making his seat a target in November

Speaking of the midterms, Democrats are in trouble in the Senate.  But to take the House, they believe there are only 15 competitive races they have to win.  Of the 23 seats Dems need to retake the House for the first time since 2010, they believe they have 8 in the bag already.  Democrats are not running on much, except for independence from other Democrats and hatred for Trump.  In fact, it’s almost hard to tell who 2018 Democrat candidates despise more, Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump.  The American people meanwhile have to decide if they believe them.  Democrats have worked in lock step to obstruct any sort of government movement, so it is kind of weird for them to pretend to be independent now when an election rolls around.  The great economy and success of Trump’s agenda doesn’t help either.

Democrats confident in their strategy of having no agenda and opposing themselves

Need to Know 7/31/18

Republican candidate Austin Petersen had his Twitter account suspended for 12 hours after thousands of antifa communist Democrats are triggered by a Stalin gif he posted.  No, this isn’t the Babylon Bee.  Petersen posted the gif in response to one pundit’s ridiculous assertion that Petersen had paid the Russians off to hack Claire McCaskill’s email account.  Petersen is in an uphill battle in the Republican primary to take on McCaskill for her tenuously held Senate seat in Missouri.  He has caused a splash with his AR-15 and 3D gun printer giveaways through the campaign.

Communists triggered by Stalin gif

Is North Korea building new ballistic missiles?  That’s the claim by Washington Post citing unnamed US spies who decided to share classified intelligence with the news agency on the condition of anonymity.  Of course, we’ve seen so much fake news coming from unnamed sources through WaPo and others that there really can’t be too much stock put in this.  It would absolutely benefit Democrats in November to blunt the progress Trump has made with North Korea.  And it seems like a very big risk for people in our spy agencies to tell the Washington Post something so sensitive.  So for now, we’ll stick with the official story.

WaPo publishes classified intel on North Korea, claims anonymous sources

There was no collusion, and even if there was it’s not a crime.  That’s the latest from Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani.  Guiliani made the claim Monday on Fox & Friends.  Depending on the facts and circumstances, he’s correct.  If Trump didn’t commission hackers to break into the DNC’s servers or somehow cause them to break the law, then any other sort of collusion is meaningless.  Even if Trump arranged and met with the Russian attorney in Trump Tower, which he didn’t, it still wouldn’t be a violation of the law.  In fact, compared to hiring a British spy get paid dirt from Russian operatives and then giving that phony info to the FBI to start an investigation, even the worst allegations against Trump are trivial.

Considering Trump has never been the target of a criminal investigation having to do with Russia and considering Hillary Clinton colluded more than even the most wild allegations against Trump, I think it’s time to stop beating this dead horse and move on.

Trump didn’t collude, and even if he had it wasn’t a crime

Need to Know 7/27/18

It’s all about the GDP.  Markets are anxiously awaiting this morning’s GDP report, hoping for 4.2% quarterly growth.  If it happens, it’ll be a good indicator that the economy continues to rise at a rapid rate, even after the rapid growth from last year. It would also make the argument against Trump’s tax reform even weaker.

Wall Street awaits GDP report

Speaking of tax reform, Elizabeth Warren bumbled through an interview when she was asked what tax rate is too high.  The poor CNBC journalist tried to help her out.  “Do you feel…that it’s wrong for more than half of somebody’s marginal income to be taken?” “Is 50 percent obviously too high?” Finally, as Warren continued to indicate that 50 percent may actually be too low, John Harwood went for the moon. “…obviously ‘no, 90 percent, that’s ridiculous'”.  Warren finally capitulated.

Warren has the blessing of many Democrats to be the top 2020 DNC Presidential contender.  But they will have to figure out how to deal with her ignorance about what taxes do to families and how the economy works.  When Ocasio-Cortez ignorantly claimed that unemployment was low because people were working two jobs, Warren doubled down on the erroneous claim by saying it was actually because people were working as many as four jobs.  Hopefully she can get some help on the economic front.  When it comes to the economy, Trump is definitely winning.

Warren suggests hypothetical 50% tax rate is too low

On the legal side for Trump, it’s a mixed bag.  While rumors from unnamed sources about the Mueller investigation have turned out to be mostly blowing smoke, there’s a new one out today saying Mueller is going to be looking at Trump’s tweets to see if he obstructed justice.  That would be a stretch.  As Guiliani pointed out, people don’t generally obstruct justice in public for millions to see.  This appears to be grasping for straws.  They would have to prove that Trump was somehow giving instructions to witnesses or intimidating people through Twitter.  That would also mean Mueller would have to take Trump’s 3am Twitter persona more seriously than Peter Strzok’s texts to his mistress.

Even if Trump did try to obstruct justice on Twitter, the Bill Clinton precedent on obstruction would make it very hard to successfully argue for consequences.  Clinton secretly intimidated witnesses, instructed them to lie, matched up stories, then committed perjury himself.  The Senate failed to reach a two thirds majority and ended up acquitting him.

Mueller looking at Trump’s tweets?

Need to know 7/23/18

Iran, in trouble with their people and staring down the barrel of new US sanctions, began a tweet war with Trump over the “mother of all wars”.  Trump responded in all caps that Iran’s leaders would suffer consequences few others have.  In the end it’s likely all blowing smoke.  Iran doesn’t have nuclear capabilities and the US isn’t about to go invade another Middle Eastern country.  But the developments continue to show that despite the rhetoric and narrative, Trump has been tougher on Russia allies than Obama was.

Rouhani warns Trump about mother of all wars

Speaking of rhetoric on Russia, Trey Gowdy had a warning for Trump administration officials that they should steer Trump to take Russia more seriously or consider leaving their posts.  Gowdy has consistently chided the Trump administration for not being tough enough on Russia’s election interference, however he has also acknowledged the extreme prejudice shown by Obama’s intel apparatus. In addition to noting that James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan continue to show their anti-Trump bias in editorials, Gowdy recently took Inspector General Michael Horowitz to task over his failure to call out anti-Trump bias deeply rooted in the FBI.  Texts from Peter Strzok reveled that the Russia/Trump collusion investigation was an “insurance policy” to “stop Trump”.  But so far, nothing has actually tied Trump to Russia or proven collusion.

Anti-Trump bias in the FBI can’t be put aside

Speaking of bias, the FISA court warrant to spy on Carter Page and the Trump campaign has been released through a Freedom of Information Act request.  This extraordinary release marks the first time a secretive FISA warrant has been released.  It proves two things.  The first is that Hillary Clinton’s paid for political propaganda dossier played a major role in getting the warrant.  Second, that the secret warrant to spy on a US citizen during the Obama administration was obtained simply because there was suspicion that Russia was trying to recruit him.  It’s also important to know that the warrant was issued after Page was no longer with the Trump campaign. Spying on a US Citizen because there is a belief that a foreign power might try to recruit them is likely a violation of the 4th Amendment.

For some good reading, here is Andy McCarthy’s argument why suspicion that someone is being recruited by a foreign government is not good enough to secretly spy on a US Citizen.

If you want to read through the FISA Warrant, you can do that here.

What do Sacha Baron Cohen and James O’Keefe have in common?  Both used hidden cameras to expose the other side.  It’s interesting to see how many lend credence to what Cohen exposes compared to those who dismissed O’Keefe’s videos out of hand  because they felt he was using trickery or deceptive editing.  O’Keefe’s undercover operations exposed massive Democrat voter fraud and routine illegal activities being carried out by Planned Parenthood.  Cohen got a racist Georgia politician to drop his pants and shout the N word.  I wonder if the Left will dismiss Cohen so quickly.

Sacha Baron Cohen gets former GOP lawmaker to make racist jokes 

 

Need to know 7/22/18

“The administration has implemented an ‘Insider Threat Program’ in all government departments to urge federal employees to monitor their colleagues for possible unauthorized information disclosures. Administration employees suspected of leaking classified information are given lie-detector tests and subject to reviews of their telephone and e-mail records”

No, this isn’t Trump era policy.  This is a flashback to a 2013 USA Today article about an Obama crackdown on the press.  “This (The Obama administration) is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” – David E. Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times.

Flashback: Obama often blocks Press access to information

Even as Democrats publicly say that #walkaway is simply a ploy by Russian bots to weaken their party, the split between moderates and socialists is deepening.  Centrists are definitely showing concerns over the rise of Ocasio-Cortez, who seems to be the perfect representative for the politically ignorant millennial generation.

Centrist Dems arguing against far leftists 

Want some fun? The Russia/Trump connection was an “insurance policy” to “stop Trump” according to operatives in the FBI.  Their own tweets give this away.  But the Media Research council has highlighted this even better by putting together a compilation of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talking quite differently about Russia before the election.

“This election will not be rigged.”  “We want Russia to be strong.”

Confirmed: The Fix Was In

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that James Comey knew the Justice Department was protecting Hillary Clinton, drafted a letter exonerating her in early May, then gave immunity to her aides who subsequentially confessed to lying and destroying evidence.

A month later, after Comey wrote the exoneration letter, Loretta Lynch met with Bill Clinton privately where they “talked about wedding plans”. They didn’t. The fix was in. All they needed for the show was to have Hillary be interviewed by the FBI. Bill needed assurances that the Justice Department still had her back and that Comey had already chosen to exonerate her.

Five days later, Comey interviews Hillary Clinton, with her aides who had been granted immunity allowed in the room to serve as her lawyers.  Two days later, Comey goes public with his exoneration letter as though he had just come to that decision.

September 28, Comey tells Congress that he did not make his decision until after interviewing Hillary Clinton.  He states emphatically that he did not make the decision until after interviewing Hillary Clinton.

Here is the Washington Post timeline:

Early March – Comey receives information from Russian sources that the Justice Department is working to ensure Hillary Clinton won’t be prosecuted.  Loretta Lynch had also spoken to Comey and asked him to call the “investigation” a “matter” instead so as not to make it sound so bad.

(Sidebar: why would Russia know anything about the Justice Department’s relationship to Hillary Clinton?  Perhaps because of how the Uranium One deal was covered up?)

May 2 – Comey drafts the exoneration letter

May 3 – Paul Combetta, Clinton computer specialist, admits to lying to the the FBI about knowing the emails should have been preserved and deleting them anyway.  Combetta is given immunity because Comey, apparently, wanted to move up the line to get someone more important.  AFTER he had already written the exoneration letter.

May 5 – The media reports that there is little evidence Clinton committed a crime

May 16 – Comey sends the draft of his exoneration around to other members in the FBI.  This is before Cheryl Mills is interviewed.  Part of the deal to interview Cheryl Mills becomes immunity and the destruction of her laptop, which likely contained evidence.

June 27 – Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton meet privately on his jet.

July 2 – Hillary Clinton is interviewed by the FBI for 3 1/2 hours with her aides in the room serving as her lawyers.  The aides have immunity already.  They can confer and make sure they get their stories straight.

July 5 – Comey exonerates Hillary Clinton.

Anyone with any sense and understanding can clearly see the fix was in.  There was no way the Obama Justice Department was going to prosecute Hillary Clinton.  And Comey worked with the administration to make sure it never happened.  The investigation should be reopened, and prosecution of Comey, Lynch, the Clintons, Mills, Combetta, Abedeen, and Obama should be on the table for obstruction of justice and perjury.

The Russian Fiction

Obama complained for months about the Russians tampering with the US election to get Trump elected.  Apparently for all of Trump’s lack of political experience and his apparent intention to start World War III the first time he loses his temper, he is also somehow irresistible to the Russians.  It has nothing to do with Trump’s desire to sell the American uranium industry to the Russians, Hillary already did that.

For some unexplainable reason, Russia is willing to start a cyber war to install Trump.  So much so that they “hacked the election”.  They literally caused you to vote for Trump. The Russians worked intentionally to aide Trump.  I’m not even sure if we can call this America anymore or if we are just a puppet of Russia.  And of course, if Trump doesn’t denounce Russia and concede this sham election, he should be hung for treason, right?

Back to reality.

What does the media mean when they say Russia hacked the election?  Russia did not tamper with voting machines.  Russia did not funnel fake news to the mainstream media who then dutifully reported it.  In fact, the last major example we have of that was when the CIA told the President who told the media that Iraq had stockpiles of WMDs.  Russia did not get into your computer and use subliminal messages to make you feel like voting for Trump.  None of that happened.

In fact, it’s not clear that this was a Russian national effort.  Apparently the CIA has identified some Russian officials (unnamed) who might be involved.  But there’s another wrinkle.  The CIA might not even know what they are talking about.

The “hack” of the election wasn’t a hack of the election at all.  It was a hack of the DNC servers.  To be clear, no one invented the Podesta emails.  No one modified them.  Whoever the hackers are, whether Wikileaks who took responsibility for it or Russian officials according to the CIA, all they did was publish real, actual emails written by real, actual Democrat staffers.

According to the CIA, the hackers hit the GOP and DNC, but only released the DNC emails. The FBI disputes that, saying the GOP servers were never hacked.  If the GOP servers were never breached, that eliminates the CIA argument that the Russians were trying to hurt just the DNC.  In fact, the argument was flimsy to begin with.  It’s possible they hacked the GOP and just didn’t find anything incriminating.

So did Trump really win simply because Russia hacked the DNC?  Did people walk into the voting booth thinking to themselves “Gosh, I just can’t vote for a party that let’s their servers get hacked by the Russians”.  It seems like Hillary Clinton’s loss had a little bit more to do with what was on those emails.  Contained in the Podesta emails was evidence of media manipulation, CNN sending debate questions to Hillary ahead of time, racism within the party, Hillary’s health issues, and of all things proof that Team Hillary not only rigged the DNC primary, but also promoted Trump in the GOP primary because they thought they could beat him.

Just to make sure the reader caught that: Hillary Clinton and her team rigged both party’s primaries in 2016.

Problem emails didn’t just come from Wikileaks.  Team Hillary also got in trouble with the emails released by the FBI from her illegal server, and the undercover video of Scott Foval and others by Project Veritas.  Those two sources showed how the DNC bussed people across state lines to vote illegally, and even paid homeless people to go into Trump rallies and cause violence.  One would think the CIA might be interested in that.  At least one might think that had more to do with Hillary’s loss.

Calling on the Russians to hack and rig an election is nothing shockingly new.  Ted Kennedy did it in 1984 to try to get rid of Reagan. But the Russians didn’t decide the US election in 2016. If they are truly involved, all they did was shed light on the treacherous, terrible, racist, and illegal things the DNC was already doing to hack the election.

Maybe we should send them a thank you card.

Faithless Elector Calls on Fellow Electors to Abandon Trump
A Trump elector wrote a New York Times Op-ed today vowing to not cast a vote for Trump. Christopher Suprun is one of Trump’s 306 electors, chosen by Texas to represent the people of Texas in casting a vote for Trump on the 19th.  Despite being pledged to Trump by the voters, he has decided that he knows better than the voters who selected him. Some have estimated as many as 7 faithless electors this year who will choose an alternative to Trump.
 
This is nothing new. There have been some 157 faithless electors over the years. In 2004, an elector reportedly made an error when he wrote John Edwards rather than John Kerry. In 1872, 63 electors chose not to vote for Horace Greeley, who died after election day. In every election Nixon ran in, two wins and one loss, at least one elector defected.  
 
7 electors only represents about a sixth of the margin that put Trump over 270. Unless there is a major shift, Trump will still receive the 270 electoral votes needed to win. If there is a major shift, Congress will choose between Trump, Clinton, and anyone else who gets electoral votes.
 
The 7 electors who have so far declared that they will not choose Trump have indicated they will vote for John Kasich. Calling themselves the Hamilton Electors, if they can sway another 30 electors it could create an unprecedented situation.  Congress would then choose one of the top three candidates who received electoral votes.  It would be possible in that situation for Congress to choose John Kasich, making him the next President instead of Trump.
The chances of this happening are slim to none.  Even if enough faithless electors banded together to stop Trump, it’s highly unlikely that the Republican Party would either split their vote allowing Hillary Clinton an opening or go against the will of their own voters. Kasich’s own top adviser has poured cold water on the idea.
Faithless electors have never changed an election outcome.  29 states have laws against faithless electors, but the penalties are minimal fines and none have ever been enforced. What might make 2016 different is that Trump comes into the Presidency with historic unfavorable ratings, Christopher Suprun wrote about his dissenting vote in a New York Times Op-ed, making it very visible ahead of time, and some electors have received death threats. They have more to think about than they might in a normal election year.

Trump vs. The Media

On October 10 before a national debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump pulled off the prank of the century on the media.  Dogged by an old video of Trump saying horrible, demeaning things about women, he invited the press to a meeting to discuss it and apologize.

When they arrived, Trump had a panel set up.  He was there with four women from the Clintons’ past.  Juanita Broaddrick was a woman Bill Clinton had raped, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones were two women Clinton had sexually harassed and assaulted, and Kathy Shelton was a lawyer who had represented a child rape victim in a case Hillary Clinton cheated to win for the defendant.  The war between Trump and the media was on, and Trump was up 1-0.

In a recent Washington Post article, they recognized Trump’s constant victories over the media and lamented how they really don’t know what to do about it.  Obama went as far as to blame Trump’s victory on bars and restaurants that play Fox News.  In fact, their recent attempt to marginalize competing news sources by labeling them as “fake” has become a parody itself as more information is released by Wikileaks showing how the mainstream media sent the Clinton campaign debate questions ahead of time, let them edit articles, and apologized if they thought an article was too harsh on her.

voting-boothWhile the Washington Post was calling out the “fake” right wing media for making claims that 3 million illegal aliens hacked the election by voting illegally, the New York Times was claiming that Putin and the Russians hacked the election by distributing fake news, hacking DNC emails, and possibly even interfering with the voting booths themselves. You can now identify which way a fake news source leans just by looking at who they think stole 2016.  This works for everyone from CNN and NYT to Fox News and Breitbart.

How do the mainstreams fix this and get back on the path to being trusted and having political influence?  It might help if they sought a truce.  The media has a very adversarial relationship with Trump.  On July 23, the Huffington Post put out a piece about how to defeat Trump. Disgraced, yet highly respected journalist Dan Rather said the media must do what he did to Bush and be more biased to beat Trump. The media that ignored Joe Biden for 8 years now has 24 hour surveillance on Trump’s Twitter account just waiting for a gaffe to jump on.

When Trump saved 1,000 jobs at Carrier, the media congratulated themselves for finding a silver lining in something Trump had done.  Then of course they predictably changed their minds on the deal labeling it an empty PR stunt that encourages crony capitalism.  It’s funny how Obama hasn’t even left office yet and suddenly stimulus, crony capitalism, and picking winners and losers is a bad thing again.

For the mainstream media to win again, it would help if they weren’t so obviously biased. They have become so predictable that we almost wonder if Trump says some of the more crazy things he says on purpose.  A prime example came this past week when Trump tweeted that flag burners should maybe get a year in jail.  Predictably, the media went crazy.  Typically blind NPR went running back to the 1980s to criticize Trump for making the same unconstitutional error that George HW Bush made.  In the process they skipped 2005 when Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a bill to put flag burners in jail for a year.  This of course has us all curious if Trump knew about Clinton’s bill, or if he just got extremely lucky.

If the media wants to beat Trump, they need to stop trying.  They need to go back to what they learned in journalism school and seek fact rather than substantiation of their truth. They need to ask questions again. Skepticism is a lost art.  A little balance wouldn’t hurt either.  CNN may be making a game changing move in their attempts to bring Megyn Kelly on board.

If they keep trying to be the propaganda wing of the Democrat party, Trump is going to keep beating them.