Tag: Trump

Duped Again

Duped again. The Transgender Serving Openly in the Military policy was another “Obama Era” policy that never existed. After 8 years of Obama banning transgenders from serving openly, Sec. or Defense Ash Carter announced the ban would end…in 2017. Sec. of Defense Mattis, in July of 2017, extended the ban another couple months in order to finish researching the process.

I know how it can be confusing.  Since Trump’s announcement, a handful of transgender veterans have made the news.  Now retired and open, they have called Trump out for saying they are in any way unfit to serve.  I’d tend to agree with them.  So why did Trump continue the actual Obama era policy of the ban?

To be clear, when Trump tweeted that Transgenders would be banned from the military that was a reversal of declared policy, but not a reversal of actual implemented policy. For 8 years Obama maintained the ban on Transgenders in the military.

So why did Trump circumvent General Mattis’s process? Because the day before Trump’s tweet, the House defeated a measure that would prevent taxpayers from paying for gender reassignment surgery.  That was the trigger for Trump declaring the Obama era ban would continue.

Why Democrats Want Mueller Fired

There have been some interesting theories about why Special Investigator Robert Mueller was hired, why he has put together a legal team of Clinton donors, how fair he actually is, etc. I’d like to look at another theory, why Democrats want Mueller fired. While no Democrats have called for Mueller to be fired directly, it seems a little odd to me how the chips have fallen.

Consider this, on July 19 Trump gives an interview where he suggests that if Mueller starts investigating items outside of Russia that would be grounds for firing.  July 20 headline? Mueller expands probe to Trump business transactions. Citing unnamed officials, Bloomberg says Mueller is doing exactly what Trump said would get him fired. That’s a little too convenient for me.

Special prosecutors have a history of stepping out of bounds. Patrick Fitzgerald, already knowing it was Richard Armitage who leaked Valerie Plame’s name, put Scooter Libby in jail on trumped up obstruction charges so he could try to get to Dick Cheney. Kenneth Starr turned an investigation into a shady land deal into an impeachment trial for lying under oath about sex with an intern.  It’s very likely Democrats are hoping the Russia probe will turn into something similar. Or at least a back ally way to get their  white whale: Trump’s tax returns.

There is a lot of pressure on a special prosecutor to find something to justify their paycheck. Mueller’s team of Clinton donors also may have some incentive to find something. But getting fired could be just as good.

Mueller getting fired would still be a win for Democrats. I’m sure we can all imagine the headlines. Trump fired Comey on the recommendations of his Department of Justice. Comey had screwed up a couple investigations, based findings on the phony Russia dossier, been unclear about Trump not being under investigation, and after being fired Comey released classified info to the media to get Mueller hired in the first place.  But that didn’t stop the media from speculating about Comey’s firing being obstruction of justice.

Can you imagine the media field day if Trump fires Mueller? Every tin foil hat conspiracy theory cooked up by CNN and MSNBC over the last six months will be permanently believable even if never verified. Firing Mueller will permanently create the specter of the Nixonian President who got away with it.

For Democrats, that would be a much better result than if Mueller concluded his investigation empty handed.

Booker Claims Obamacare Failure is Trump’s Fault

Senator Cory Booker said that Trump letting Obamacare fail is “not just cynical, it’s actually sinister.”  I have some choice words for Mr. Booker.

Republicans didn’t write Obamacare.  They didn’t vote for it.  They only had one thing in common really with Democrats on Obamacare: none of them read it.

Trump didn’t sign Obamacare.  He didn’t write it.  He didn’t repeal it.  They couldn’t even replace a letter in the name.  Obamacare remains largely untouched by Republicans.  If it’s failing, that has nothing to do with Republicans or Trump.  Obamacare is failing because Democrats didn’t design it to survive.

We could argue about whether or not Obamacare’s failure was intentionally designed that way, or just a bi-product of bad legislation.  But the fact remains that Obamacare is going to fail.  Next year 45 counties will have no healthcare plans on their Obamacare marketplace.  1,138 counties will have one choice.

So what is Booker talking about?  How does he get to assign any blame to Trump on this? I guess you could argue because Trump isn’t bailing out the insurance companies. Obamacare had designed in it a failsafe bailout option for if (or when) it failed. The government would take billions of borrowed dollars and funnel them to the insurance companies to save Obamacare. Trump isn’t taking that option. I guess Booker thinks that not giving insurance companies massive bailouts is sinister. That would make sense if you’re on the side of the insurance companies.

Some have argued that by saying they were going to replace Obamacare, that is what has caused insurance companies to pull out. Well, that will be easy to test.  Now that the hapless McConnell has failed, the insurance companies should come charging back into the Obamacare marketplaces, right? Cause right now the best metaphor for some of these Obamacare marketplaces is a Venezuela grocery store. But if Booker actually thought that was going to happen, what would he be worried about?

Obamacare is going to fail. Not because Republicans had anything to do with it, they didn’t. Because when Democrats rushed to pass it without any input from Republicans, they gave America a bad deal. If they had any sense, they’d offer to help the GOP fix it.

5 Times Obama Didn’t Appoint a Special Prosecutor
I saw a meme recently mocking the Trump team for lawyering up. There’s a reason Obama and his team never needed to lawyer up. They had Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch as the attorney generals. Neither of them had any interest in looking at wrongdoing by the Obama administration. Even the thought of Obama hiring a special prosecutor to investigate himself is hilarious.
 
Here are five times Obama should have appointed a special prosecutor but didn’t:
 
1. Fast and furious – the gun running scandal where the US sold weapons to Mexican drug lords that were then lost and later used to kill US border agents. The murder of the border agents was initially used by the administration to call for greater gun control, until it was discovered where those guns came from.
 
2. The IRS targeting scandal – the IRS targeted right-leaning political groups by denying their applications and subjecting them to unreasonable questioning. Congress investigated, but no charges were ever filed by the Obama DOJ and the administration did not appoint a special prosecutor. The person responsible, Lois Lerner, never faced legal consequences.  Multiple calls for a special prosecutor were ignored by the Obama DOJ.
 
3. Benghazi – not only did the administration lie to the public, but Hillary Clinton violated the law when she distributed classified information about the Benghazi incident and destroyed classified information regarding the incident.
 
4. Hillary Clinton’s email server – despite the destruction of evidence, and Loretta Lynch completely invalidating the investigation by meeting with Bill Clinton on his private jet, a special prosecutor was not appointed. This is despite evidence that Obama knew about her server and that the Obama DOJ made unethical deals with Clinton attorneys to help destroy and hide evidence in the case.
 
5. The Iran Nuclear Deal payment – This was when Obama negotiated a poorly structured nuclear deal with Iran, and then sealed it with a huge cash payment delivered in the middle of the night. After the payment was discovered, the Obama administration claimed it was an old debt from a couple Iranian governments ago when we cancelled an arms shipment to them during their revolution.
 
Any of these were more salacious than the idea that Trump associates may have sought opposition research from the Russians. But none were investigated by any body with actual authority. None resulted in special counsels.
 
This also doesn’t include the smaller things, like the raid on the Gibson Guitar factory, Solyndra, or NSA spying on reporters.  And it doesn’t include the bigger things that came to light more recently such as Obama spying on Trump associates and unmasking them. I haven’t even touched on the leaks.
Trump fired James Comey.  Obama’s first year in office was a blood bath for Bush administration attorneys and officials.  The difference so far between Trump and Obama is that Obama had more scandals and fewer people in his government that had any interest in noticing.

What if Trump Jr got what he wanted?
Here’s a question that’s been nagging at my mind. Forget the the fact that Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and the Obama administration colluded with the Ukraine, UK, and Germany to smear Trump and spread false information to influence the election. Forget that this Russian attorney who met with Trump Jr. did it under false pretenses and didn’t give him any information.
Let’s say it was all worst case scenario. Trump Jr. meets with this Russian lawyer. The Russian lawyer actually works for the Russian government, she isn’t just loosely associated with them like she is with the company that did opposition research on Trump. This is the real deal. Let’s pretend she gives Trump Jr. actual hard proof that Hillary Clinton was taking illegal donations from Russia, which is what this attorney claimed she had.
Badger
In our imaginary scenario, Donald Trump, Jr. meets with a Russian attorney from the Russian government and she gives him hard evidence that Hillary Clinton has committed a crime.  Maybe he turns that over to the FBI, maybe he gives it to the media, maybe he just distributes it to his campaign, who knows.  Are we saying that it should be illegal for someone to receive evidence from a foreign source that an American is doing something illegal?  Is it treason to discover that an American has broken the law if that discovery comes from a foreign source?
As Democrats call for impeachment and label Trump Jr.’s actions treasonous, it’s worth asking what we are losing out on in all of this populist mayhem and political assassination.
For one, the Obamacare replacement has ground to a halt. Before you cheer (if you happen to be a Leftist and reading this), in no uncertain terms Obamacare has failed. Forget just premiums rising at exponential rates, next year there are 45 counties in America that will have zero healthcare plans on their Obamacare market exchanges. In other words, the Obamacare marketplace is going to look like a Venezuela marketplace for thousands next year.  3 million will have one option.  That’s what government run healthcare looks like for America.
However, the false narrative that Trump has been under investigation or that this Russian meeting means anything has stymied the Trump agenda.  In fact, Republicans have devolved in their “repeal and replace” mission so far that their plan is barely more than a namechange at this point.  From ACA to AHCA.  And they can’t even get 51 votes for that.
As the mob seeks to crucify Trump and his associates, the only winner is the news media. If you believe their own producers, Russia may be a “nothingburger” but it’s been “great for ratings”.

The Left is out of Reasons

I didn’t vote for Trump.  There are many things, including his hands off approach to healthcare reform, that I don’t like about him.  But I’m not blinded by hatred for Trump. As Hamburg burns outside of the G-20 summit, back home the Left is slowly devolving in their arguments against Trump.  What started as a juvenile exercise in aimless hate for Trump’s appearance, mixed with legitimate hate for his equal level of childishness and bad behavior, has now turned into a fake news gotcha fest.  Each “story” is more ridiculous and irrelevant than the last.

Maybe Democrats are also tired of Obamacare. Rather than filling up twitter with defenses of Obamacare, as it slowly churns towards repeal, Democrats are more concerned about trivial fake news.

Take for example the Poland handshake snub imagined around the world.  The Left was gleeful as the wife of Poland President Andrzej Duda initially didn’t shake Trump’s hand.  She shook Melania’s.  Not shown in CNN’s edited video of the event was Mrs. Duda shaking Trump’s hand twice.  President Duda himself took to twitter to mock CNN for their phony reporting.

Then there was the content of Trump’s speech in Poland.  Trump praised Poland for time and time again defeating Communism, Fascism, and terrorism.  He talked extensively about how the Nazis tried to wipe out Western civilization and Polish culture, but Poland resisted. The Left hated him for it. Vox posted an op-ed about how Trump’s speech was an “alt-right manifesto”.

The only problem was, it wasn’t.  Funny enough, his speech was anti-fascism. Apparently the leftist Antifa movement is also pro-fascism.

What alt-left Antifa fail to realize is that “western civilization” does not equal British descendants. Both the alt-left and alt-right misunderstand that term. When Trump talks about western civilization, he is talking about democracy, freedom, melting pot, all the things that Communism, Fascism, and terrorist religious extremism are not. When Trump talks about America being great, only the Left and the far Right (Ann Coulter types) think he is talking about white men.  America isn’t great because it makes white men great. America is great because everyone here at some time in their family history came from somewhere to America to be Americans.

Today, the Left struck again. The target this time was Ivanka Trump, part of the American delegation to the G-20, who sat in for President Trump briefly one time. Immediately there were calls for Trump to be removed, attacks on Ivanka for being completely unqualified to sit in his chair, and charges of unprofessionalism.  But the only people who actually care are former Obama officials and Trump critics. When asked about it, German PM Merkel said it was common for delegates to have someone from their delegation sit in if they are called out briefly. Nothing to see here.

Meanwhile, fakenews site Leftscoop.com went so far as to say Trump skipped “many of his G20 meetings today”. Of course, this isn’t true.  Even CNN said he briefly stepped out of one meeting.  Leftscoop suggested that the only reason we would even know this is because Russian media were able to sneak a shot of it.  Also not true.  But the fake story has stoked anger on the Left.

Maybe it’s just the Left being the Left. They are the most anti-women group in the country when it comes to a conservative woman holding any sort of power. But I suspect it’s something even deeper.  The Left is so ready to jump, protest, and lose their minds about even the most irrelevant fake news, it could just be that they are out of real things to be upset about. Maybe they’ll prove me wrong and find an real issue that is still worth their time and effort.

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.

Wall Street Cashes in on Paris Accord Withdrawal

It has been two days since Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Accord, and the temps are on the rise. This month is already predicted to be warmer than May, and next month will be even worse.

There are winners and losers from the US withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. As the ACLU pointed out, one big loser is racial justice and communities of color.  They are right. Major Wall Street players have found ways to cash in on global warming, including Disney. But you have to be able to pay if you want to play.

Disney’s “Blizzard Beach Water Park” is an installation that makes millions of dollars a year selling relief from the scorching temperatures. As corporate pollution causes the Earth to heat up and people to die, Disney has developed temporary measures to mitigate the heat for a price.  In addition to “Blizzard Beach Water Park”, which is ironically named after a type of snow storm that will soon be gone from our vocabulary, their other cooling establishment “Typhoon Lagoon” has a bit of a more appropriate name considering the coming climate apocalypse.

So is there a problem with corporate America cashing in on the inevitable end of the planet? There is when Disney decides to target poorer minorities with their pricing schemes.  Disney isn’t the only culprit.  Seeing the writing on the wall, Universal Studios has also sought to cash in on human suffering by building an unaffordable global warming relief establishment.  As if to mock the suffering and dying, Universal Studios has also themed their cooling apparatus and priced the lower classes of society out of admission. Dripping with irony and disgust towards their fellow man, Universal Studios has opted to name their private establishment “Volcano Bay”.  They laugh as the poor melt away.

What can be done when the President has already consigned us to doom by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord?  Government funding for pools and parks is abysmal. The government also has refused to provide poor Americans with their own personal pools, opting instead for communal pools in a limited number of neighborhoods.  Rural areas are sure to perish from the heat first.

It appears at this point that the only path to survival for poor minorities in the country is to impeach President Trump, and for Republicans to provide the funding necessary for poor minorities to have equal access to global warming relief.

Yes, There Is Evidence of Voter Fraud
Fake news alert. “No evidence of illegal alien voter fraud” = #fakenews.  Many media outlets have once again dumped any caveats or explanations and straight to the claim that there is absolutely no evidence that illegal aliens vote.  That’s not true.  If the question is whether there were enough to give Hillary the popular vote victory, the answer is there is not enough evidence at this point to state that dogmatically.  
However, there is plenty of evidence that a significantly large number of non-citizens vote, and that there are enough fraudulent and inaccurate registrations to go the distance.  Anything beyond those facts is partisan speculation.  Of this, both Trump and the main stream media are guilty.
 
According to a study by Old Dominion University and George Mason University, 6.4% of non-citizens in the US voted in the 2008 election, and 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterm. At the time that accounted for about 1.6 million votes from non-citizens.
 
In order to believe that there was no influence from non-citizen voters in 2016, we would have to assume that either the number of illegal aliens and resident aliens in the US dropped during Obama’s presidency, the rate at which they vote has dropped from 6.4% over the last 8 years despite court rulings striking down voter ID laws, or that more illegal aliens and resident aliens were inclined to vote FOR Donald Trump than they were for Mitt Romney or John McCain.
 
Hillary won the popular vote by about 2.8 million. Assuming the same stats on illegal aliens as in 2008, as many as 1.6 million of those votes could have been non-citizens.
 
On top of that, Pew noted that there are 1.8 million dead voters still registered and 2.75 million people registered in multiple states.  Their research showed that 24 million registrations in the US are invalid or inaccurate.  Project Veritas released undercover videos during the 2016 campaign where Democrat operative Scott Foval described their long practice of bussing voters across state lines to vote.
If the question is whether or not 3 million illegal aliens voted, there is no specific evidence to show that number.  Is 3 million outside the realm of speculation?  I guess you would have to ask if twice as many of the 20+ million illegal aliens and non-citizens living in the US were motivated to vote against Trump.
Is there evidence that there could have been enough non-citizens, dead people, and fraudulently registered voters to cover the popular vote difference?  The answer is yes.

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.