Tag: DNC

But CNN Persisted

CNN isn’t backing off their claim that Michael Cohen can prove Trump complicity with the Trump Tower meeting.  This is despite the fact that Lanny Davis has recanted and backed off of the claim.  We reported earlier after Davis’s under-reported interview with Anderson Cooper that he basically went back on every claim he had previously made.

Davis reiterated to the Washington Post that his own claims were bogus.  But CNN is persisting in reporting that Cohen is ready to dish dirt on Trump.  CNN seems to be going the Dan Rather route of “It’s not proven, but we believe it in our hearts”. Possible things Cohen might know about?  There’s the Trump Tower meeting and potential interference through the DNC server hack, although Lanny Davis has now denied both.  There’s also an old report from the UK Daily Mail back in May that Cohen demanded money from Qatar for Trump.  But so far this seems to be tabloid gossip.

Lanny Davis says Cohen dirt oversold.  CNN still buying it.

Democrats know impeachment is out of grasp and have stopped running on it.  The economy is too good, and their evidence is too bad to actually think they could get 75 Senators to vote for impeachment.  But Democrats are promising endless probes and investigations if they take control of the House.  According to Bloomberg, Democrats have a long laundry list of taxpayer funded probes to hit Trump with in order to obstruct his agenda.  Still, Trump has weathered investigations through the first two years of his Presidency while still accomplishing major agenda items.  Voters will need to decide in November whether they want massive obstruction in the House or continued progress on the economy.

Democrats abandon impeachment, go for obstruction instead

Speaking of Trump accomplishments, stocks are through the roof again as the US and Mexico get closer to closing a new NAFTA deal.  Trump blew up the old NAFTA deal in an effort to secure something better for the United States.  He has accomplished this and North American trade is back on.  The Mexico NAFTA agreement should also bring Canada back into the mix.  This is a big victory for Trump’s foreign trade policy.

NAFTA 2.0 with Mexico coming back online

DNC drifts further Left

After Bernie Sanders was robbed by the DNC in 2016, they are making some significant changes.  During the 2016 election, the DNC was basically put under the control of Hillary Clinton.  She had access to direct their funding, she was fed debate questions ahead of time, and she quickly gained control of DNC super delegates.  Super delegates are DNC operatives who are given convention votes along side the delegates the voters select.  In 2016 they helped turn the election away from populist socialist Bernie Sanders.

The DNC is now limiting the super delegates by preventing them from voting on a first ballot.  This means they will only be used if one candidate can’t secure the necessary delegates from the actual election process.  In a coming year of populist socialists like Sanders, Warren, and Ocasio-Cortez, the Left is now likely going to spit out a candidate from their more extremist side.  Older moderates like Joe Biden will have a tougher fight in the primary.

DNC curbs power of party super delegates

The Russian Collusion story ended up being a big disappointment for the DNC.  In fact, the handful of Russians indicted small crimes like identity theft did not match up to the hype heading into the Mueller investigation.  But what about Chinese collusion?

A new study has reported that the Communist country is funneling money into Leftist thinktanks to influence policy and elections.  United Front Work Department is a committee based in Communist China dedicated to influencing foreign countries to be favorable towards communism.  In addition to funding Democrat groups, they are also seeking to influence academia and may be violating US law.  The group is also looking to recruit students to help in their attempts to show communism in a favorable light in academia.

Communist China groups funding Leftist thinktanks and efforts in education

NASCAR racer Conor Daly has lost a sponsorship for his car after it was discovered that his father once used a racial slur in the 1980s.  I suppose I won’t spend much time speculating how many sports stars have fathers who said insensitive stuff 30+ years ago, but can we all agree that this is ridiculous?  People should be responsible for their own actions.  Lilly Diabetes was the sponsor.  They certainly have a right as a business to pull their sponsorship.  And we have a right to judge whether they were correct in their decision to punish Daly for the sins of his father.

Sponsor pulls out after discovery that NASCAR driver’s dad used racial slur 30 years ago

Breaking: Lanny Davis recants!

In a severely under-reported interview with Anderson Cooper Thursday night, attorney Lanny Davis recanted some serious allegations he had made against Trump.  Davis is representing Michael Cohen in his plea deal with New York prosecutors on bank and fraud charges.  Lanny Davis is a Clinton ally and has represented Bill Clinton.

Davis had said that Cohen would testify that Trump knew about the meeting between Don, Jr and a Russian attorney at Trump Tower.  He also suggested that Trump knew ahead of time about the Russian hack of the DNC server.  The Trump Tower meeting is nothing.  Even if Trump had known, the most that would demonstrate is that Trump lied about not knowing.  Foreknowledge about the DNC server hack would be significantly problematic for Trump because it could lead to actual Russian collusion charges.

It turns out neither claim was true.

Davis struggled to respond to Cooper’s questioning, saying that “the reporting of the story got mixed up”.  But then Davis admitted that Cohen had truthfully testified that “Trump was not aware (of the Trump Tower meeting) ahead of time”.  Cooper asked “Michael Cohen does not have information that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting?” Davis responded “No, he does not”.

When Cooper asked about the possibility that Trump knew about the DNC hack ahead of time, Davis tried to say that he had been tentative about that statement in the first place.  He then said “It’s not a certainty”.  It sounds as though Davis had been trying to get his client a better plea deal, but really had nothing to work with.

When it comes to Cohen coordinating the pay off of Stormy Daniels with the campaign, Davis faltered on that point as well.  When pressed by Cooper, he admitted “I can’t say if there is someone in the campaign who coordinated with Cohen.”

Throughout the interview, it almost seemed like Davis either hadn’t discussed the claims with Cohen before making them on TV, or that Cohen had fed him a bunch of baloney to try to get a better plea deal.  Davis ended up looking like a deer in the headlights in the Cooper interview.  But in the end, it’s clear that Cohen has nothing that would prove Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting or the DNC hack ahead of time.  The Cohen story appears to be over.  It appears that Cohen was reimbursed from his retainer rather than the campaign too, so there is nothing there.

Here is the interview:

Impeachment? The answer is still no

Michael Cohen is on his way to jail for a very long time.  But as his ship sinks, he and his attorney are grasping for straws to reduce that sentence.  Cohen has agreed to sing if it means a reduced sentence.  But Mueller already passed on a Cohen plea bargain.

But what if everything Cohen is saying is true?  Is Trump in trouble?  According to precedent, the answer is no.  Let’s start with John Edwards.  Friends and megadonors paid nearly $1 million to Edwards’ mistress to cover up his affair right before an election.  The DOJ brought the charge that those were reportable campaign contributions because they were made to benefit Edwards’ campaign and influence the election.  Edwards was acquitted.  The DOJ could not successfully make the argument that those amounts to pay off his mistress should have been reported.

President Obama found himself in hot water after failing to report $1.8 million in campaign donations made through normal channels and for keeping donations that were in excess of allowed limits.  His campaign paid a $350,000 fine, the largest in history, and moved on with life as though nothing happened.

Bill Clinton lied about an affair during a sexual harassment trial that suddenly fell into the scope of the White Water special counsel.  But he was under oath.  He actually committed perjury.  But nothing happened to him.

In Trump’s case, he paid Michael Cohen a retainer as an attorney to represent him and to deal with issues like paying off people he had an affair with.  Does that make Trump a Clinton grade slimeball?  Of course.  Who didn’t know that already?  But even the leftovers from Obama’s DOJ are going to have a hard time turning a $130,000 payment into something they couldn’t get with the million dollars spent on Edwards’ mistress.  Additionally, the liar and singer Michael Cohen, who stated in the past that Trump didn’t know about the payoffs, never had affairs, etc is going to have to provide hard evidence.  So far the Cohen tapes have disappointed in that area.

From our analysis, the only charge Cohen has made that could put Trump in serious trouble is that Trump knew about the DNC hack before it happened.  Even then, knowing about it is a far cry from causing it.  But that could get Trump into enough trouble that a Democrat run House could at least introduce impeachment charges.  They would never get 75 votes in the Senate.  But more importantly, we’d have to see more than the word of a man on his way to jail being advised by Bill Clinton’s personal attorney, Lanny Davis.  Cohen would need to produce a tape of Trump talking about the DNC hack along with timestamp proof that it was before the hack took place.

I’m pretty sure if that existed, we would have heard it by now.  But who knows, maybe it’ll be an October surprise.

Cuomo: America was never great

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is in hot water for countering Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan with one of his own: “America was never that great”.  I don’t know how far that’s going to get him with the majority of Americans, but it will play well with the radical Democratic Socialists on the Left.  Just yesterday Bernie Sanders said America is “fundamentally immoral and wrong”.  Andrew Cuomo’s brother and CNN commentator Chris Cuomo recently got himself in trouble suggesting that punching right-wingers was morally justifiable.

Democrat governor says America was never great

Economists are taking Elizabeth Warren to task over her far fetched Accountable Capitalism Act.  Warren, who opposes free market capitalism, came up with the idea of having corporations have to obtain a “Federal charter” to operate.  The license, in addition to the hoops they have to jump through to work in their state, would raise $1 billion in fee taxes.  Warren’s so-called “charter” would require corporate directors to consider not just their stakeholders, but also their employees and communities.

Of course, this is moronic.  Any well run company has to consider the well-being of their employees and communities or the free market will eliminate that company from competition.  In fact, that point was made by none other than BET co-founder Robert Johnson.  The Black Entertainment Television co-founder said “Most companies and most boards look at all of their stakeholders, not only their shareholders. They look at their employees, they look at the community where they reside and do business, they look at even the vendors that they do business with. So I think it’s a solution in search of a problem that’s absolutely not necessary,”

What Warren’s bill, along with the exemptions for friends of the ruling party that we have seen with previous Socialist overreaches, would create a new avenue for crony capitalism.  In other words, to get an exemption for your federal charter or to guarantee you have your charter maintained, you have to stay friendly with the party in power.  We saw the same thing with ACA where Obama’s biggest supporters received exemptions to various new labor rules.

Warren’s new socialist measure to control businesses gets a failing grade

Trump is implementing what Obama failed to do with his new Buy America push.  Trump is planning on using an executive order to create rules to ensure that federal agencies use American made goods and services for their projects.  There are questions about the legality of the executive order and sure to be legal challenges.  There are also issues of increased costs to the taxpayers if the government has to buy more expensive American goods.

Obama tried and failed to pass a buy American provision in 2009 and again in 2011.  He backed off of the provision in 2009 after American companies who sell overseas swayed him away from the influence of the US labor unions with fears of foreign retaliation.  When Obama flopped back to supporting Buy American, the Jobs Act of 2011 was squashed by the GOP.

Our opinion?  It was wrong when Obama tried it, it’s wrong now.  Free trade produces lower prices for consumers and taxpayers, and competition helps American producers to be efficient.  A better way to help American producers is to cut taxes and regulation so that they can compete on the high end of the global scale.  But Trump is doubly wrong by doing this as an executive order rather than through Congress.  Many Democrats support Buy American provisions.  Labor unions love it.  By going it alone, Trump will alienate conservative and free market GOP members, but I doubt he’ll receive any recognition from the left.  Democrats also supported protectionist tariffs, until Trump did it.  All around this is poor strategy and contrary to free market principles.

Trump to accomplish Obama agenda item with Buy American executive order

Both parties have one thing in common: they are running against Nancy Pelosi

Even if Democrats win the House in November, Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to be the next Speaker of the House.  The much anticipated Blue Wave set to hand Democrats control in November has had it’s share of roadbumps.  While Democrats cheer close races in red districts and claim moral victories when they lose, the Blue Wave theory definitely has it’s skeptics.  One reason for the skepticism might be how fast Democrats are running away from themselves.

Democrats breathed a sigh of relief as every candidate Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed last Tuesday lost.  Saturday saw another Democratic Socialist loss as Hawaii chose a so called “fiscal conservative” Democrat Ed Case over rabidly anti-Trump Democratic Socialist Doug Chin.  The battle to beat back the Democratic Socialists in the DNC seems on track.

But Democrats are also running against Nancy Pelosi.  In fact 49% of Democrats want Pelosi out of Democrat leadership.  79% of independents don’t want Pelosi running the party.  Many Democrat candidates for the House have also promised to replace Pelosi.

The Democrat blue wave relies on history and political theory.  History says the President usually loses the House in his first midterm.  Political theory says congressional elections are all local.  In other words, people care less about party than they do the individuals who are actually running.  At the same time, the Democrat party is struggling.  Their “abolish ICE” movement exposed their activist wing as idiotic.  But Pelosi has also failed to produce anything other than extreme hatred for Trump as a platform.  The best thing they’ve come up with is how important it is to raise taxes again.

There is no plan B.  Joe Crowley was destined to be Pelosi’s replacement, until he lost to an upstart Democratic Socialist in New York.  For the blue wave to work, Democrats will need to continue to keep it quiet that a Democrat House will be led by Nancy Pelosi or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Politifact bias check: Democrats and Nazis

Politifact has ruled on Don Jr’s claim that the Democrat platform was similar to the Nazi platform of 1930.  Their ruling?  Pants on fire.  How could it be anything else?  Politifact is frequently biased towards the Left.  In this case the result is no different and we give them an 80% bias rating in their analysis.  Let’s examine it.

First, for reference, here is our fact check of Donald Trump, Jr’s claim.  Unlike Politifact who skimmed the Nazi platform, we went point by point and showed the similarities.  Politifact started by restating Don’s claim incorrectly, then pointing out all the ways he was correct, and finally by splitting hairs and using technicalities to get to their rating.

What Donald Trump, Jr said: He didn’t say the Democrat platform was Hitler.  He didn’t say they were identical.  In fact, the points he made are really what Politifact should be looking into.  People keep calling the Republicans Nazis and saying that Trump only won because of Nazi support.  What quoted was this:

“You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the DNC (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar’ to a point where it’s actually scary. It’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told.”

What he also said was “I’ve been out hearing the left talking about all these things, fascism, Nazism on the right, and when you look at the actual history of how these things evolved, and when you actually look at that platform versus the platform of the modern left, you say wait a minute, those two are really heavily aligned and, frankly, contrary to the right.”

Here’s the actual interview.  Politifact links to it, but it’s worth watching because the context of his statement is that the Left are the ones out there calling Republicans Nazis, and it’s simply not what lines up with the facts.

Politifact then goes on to ironically quote an academic historian who says Democrats have absolutely nothing in common with the Nazi party.  This is at the top of the article, not halfway down where they admit there were many similarities.  But then they make their first huge error.

Politifact argues that Hitler did not run on the Nazi platform and that the platform was a compromise, not what Hitler wanted.  But he didn’t say the Democrats were Hitler.  He said their platform was like the early Nazi platform.  At this point Politifact is no longer factchecking what Donald Trump, Jr actually said.  They are now factchecking a caricature they have created based on their misunderstanding.

“Some points sound similar”

Here’s the funny part of the Politifact article.  They name six points in the Nazi platform that are, just as Donald Trump, Jr said, similar to the DNC platform.  We found more, but Politifact is charitable to the DNC.  In fact, they go on to say they feel that ending war profiteering, nationalizing certain corporations, ending land speculation, and oppression of media that is contrary to the state are not goals of the DNC.  But even if we leave Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of this, these were high priorities of the Obama administration.

In fact, many of the new regulations after the 2008 crash were to prevent land speculation, Obama nationalized portions of the auto industry, and Democrats have spent the last 60 years fighting against war profiteering. Dinesh D’Souza who made the film Don Jr went to see was pardoned by the Trump administration after Obama threw him in jail for a slap on the wrist campaign finance crime.

In Politifact’s summation, they admit that there are similarities.  They try to say that of the six similarities they will admit to, they are also in the Republican platform.  Although, according to their article only half of those six are similar to Republican platform points.  Then rather than ruling half true, partly true, or even mostly untrue, they slap a pants on fire rating.  We believe Donald Trump, Jr’s claim deserves a half true rating at the bare minimum.  When you throw in the diversity of DNC candidates who will affect future platforms, including rising star Ocasio-Cortez, this claim would be mostly true if it weren’t for the technicality that this next year’s platform hasn’t been written yet.

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?

Forget Russia, Let’s Talk About Germany

After Comey’s testimony, the Russia Trump collusion story has been downgraded to Birther level controversy.  Comey vindicated Trump, saying in fact that Trump was never even under investigation.  Comey has also said that Russia did not alter a single vote in the US election.  On the administration side, it seems as though the biggest issue is General Mike Flynn’s work with Russia and failure to disclose the payments he received. Yes Trump asked Comey to go easy on Flynn, but Trump also fired Flynn.

What did Russia do then?  Russia did not collude with the administration.  Russia did not change the votes.  They did not hack the electronic voting machines. Apparently it’s possible that Russia released Podesta’s emails, but the incriminating statements there came directly from Podesta and other DNC staffers.  At this point, it appears that Russia’s biggest sin was printing negative press and sometimes fake news about Hillary Clinton.

Russia did not print negative news about Hillary Clinton in order to elect Trump.  Unlike the Clinton’s campaign work to influence the GOP primary and make sure Trump won, Russia simply didn’t like Hillary Clinton.

Russia’s actions have been called an act of war.  Even some on the GOP side have called Russia’s actions an attempt to destroy our constitutional process and democracy.  Is this a valid accusation?  Does foreign media printing negative stories equate to election hacking?  Should we be sanctioning Russia because they printed negative stories about Hillary Clinton?

Let’s talk about Germany.  Harvard recently performed a study on various news outlets to see whether Trump was getting fair coverage.  The result is that Trump is getting more negative coverage than any of his predecessors.  Remember, negative press from foreign sources equals an act of war and destruction of our constitutional process.  So we should probably be concerned about Germany’s ARD news network’s 98% negative reporting rate on Trump.

Britain is another hacking nation that has declared war on the US through their media outlets.  Financial Times was negative about Trump 84% of the time, BBC 74% of the time.  When it comes to using media to influence US opinion, both Britain and Germany are just as guilty as Russia.

There’s one other problem worth mentioning.  The assault on the US and our constitutional processes is not being led by Russia or Germany.  It’s being led by the US. If unbalanced coverage and fake news equals everything the left and John McCain say it does, then we should be more concerned about CNN and NBC reporting negatively about Trump 93% of the time.  CBS was 91%, New York Times 87%, Washington Post 83%. Comey’s testimony discredited all of these US news outlets, forcing them to print retractions of fake news they had recently reported.

If the whole Russia thing boils down to their state media operations, I hope we can find a way to laugh at ourselves and move on with our lives. And to think, Obama kicked the Russian ambassadors out of our country over this.

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.