Enough!

After two nights of having to see the Democrat candidates debate, I feel entitled to some time off.  Since we are at the week of the 4th of July, I'm taking some time off.  It will probably take me a while to recover from watching that clown show.

I may still post on occasion during the next ten days, but my plan is to try to stay off line until after the holiday weekend.

So to everyone, Happy 4th of July

The Second Night of the Democrat Debate

Night two of the Democrat debate brought crazy to a new height.  Every single candidate on the stage announced that he or she supported free government healthcare for illegal aliens.  Joe Biden even proclaimed that by giving free healthcare to more than then million illegals, we would bring the cost of the total healthcare system down.  It was an amazing low point for a debate that had a bunch of policy low points.

Think about it.  The cost of health insurance for the average American is about $6000 per year.  On top of that, nearly everyone pays a deductible and co-pays at the doctor which run many thousands more per year.  Let's assume that the cost of health insurance for the illegals is less than average, just $4000 per year.  That makes the annual cost of health insurance alone for the illegals almost $50 billion per year which the American tax payer will have to pay.  Then there's the co-pay and deductible which we will also have to pay as part of the free healthcare for illegals.  That brings the total cost to something like eighty to one hundred billion dollars every year.  And Biden says that will bring down the cost of the whole system.  Is he mad?

This was one of those moments when Biden seemed to think he could say anything and no one would realize he was wrong.  Biden, it seems, got used to being Obama's vice president and having essentially no one in the media ever challenge what he said.  That isn't how things are right now, however.

Another moment like this for Biden came when the subject of his strong opposition to school desegregation in the 1970s was brought up.  At that time, Biden was the principal sponsor of legislation to try to remove the use of bussing to take children to different schools in order to accomplish integration.  That's a fact; it's not some cheap accusation.  Indeed, Biden worked closely on this bill with those segregationist southern Democrat senators he praised a few weeks ago.  Almost no one mentioned his support of segregation in the coverage back then.  It allowed Kamala Harris to make a big splash last night at Biden's expense.  And his response was to say that he didn't have a racist bone in his body.  Given that the accuser is another Democrat, that just won't work for Biden.  He's going to have to own up to his past or just look like a liar and a fool (even more so than usual.)

Biden wasn't alone, though, in looking bad.  Eric Swalwell managed to come across as totally rude by constantly trying to scream his way into the discussion.  And speaking of screaming, Bernie Sanders seemed incapable of ever lowering the decibel level.  He also actually admitted that middle class voters would have to pay much higher taxes if his "Medicare for All" plan were adopted.  Many of the other candidates approved of that plan, though, so the line that only the wealthy would pay higher taxes has just been breached.  My guess is that this will get very little coverage right now, but you can be sure that the Trump campaign locked this away in the vault for use later to fight socialized medicine.

My take on the debate is that the two front runners, Biden and Sanders, did little to help themselves moving forward, and Biden actually shot himself in the foot repeatedly.  We will have to see how the polls reflect this in a few weeks.  Remember 2016 when Carly Fiorina was a star in the first GOP debates.  She moved up in the polls for about three weeks and then her support fizzled.  Last night's performances will matter, but one wonders for how long.  The Democrat convention is still more than a year away.

The First Debate

The first debate among the Democrats is over.  Here are a few thoughts:

1.  The worst moment of the night award goes to Beto O'Rourke.  He was asked one of the first questions of the night.  He ignored the question and started speaking.  After two sentences, he broke into Spanish for the next 30 seconds or so.  Then he switched back to English but still never answered the question.  It was a stupid display of O'Rourke filibustering an easy question about the economy.  In one answer, Beto managed to throw away any credibility he had left.

2.  The big winner of the night for me was quite a surprise.  It was former congressman Delany who seemed to have a message that was more common sense than ideology.  It set him apart from most of the rest.  It will be interesting to see if it helps him in the polls.

3.  Elizabeth Warren seemed to get more opportunity to answer questions than the others.  She was peddling outrage and anger and far, far left solutions.  Here's an example.  Warren pointed out that insurance companies made $23 billion in profits last year.  That sounds like a lot until you realize that healthcare expenditures in the USA totaled about a bit more than 3 trillion dollars.  That puts the profits of the insurance companies at something less than 1% of healthcare expenditures.  The numbers are very big but the profit percentage is very small.  It's roughly the same as saying that a company that built and sold a house for $100,000 made a profit of $800.  It's just not something which ought to be giving rise to such angry outbursts on Warren's part.

4.  Bill DeBlasio was effective on occasion repeating the usual NYC style talking points.  Of course, anyone who has seen him and his actual government in New York City knows that the guy is a total loser.

5.  Senator Booker did himself no good.  Ditto Amy Klobuchar.  They were their usual selves, and neither seemed to rise to the occasion. 

6.  Perhaps the worst thing about the debate, however, is that tomorrow there will be another one.  Can't we get time off for good behavior.  

Tomorrow Is A Big Day

Tomorrow is the last day of the current term of the Supreme Court.  That means that we should get decisions in the final five cases pending before the Court this term.  At 10 tomorrow morning, we will learn whether or not the Supreme Court will buy into the nonsense that it was somehow improper for the Secretary of Commerce to decide to ask those answering the census about their citizenship status as has been done in the census since 1810.  The left has done its best to make it seem as if this is some sort of a racist move by the government to continue to ask the citizenship question, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to fall for that nonsense. 

The funny thing about all this is that the Democrats oppose asking the question because they claim it will reduce the number of illegals who will respond to the census.  By law, however, the census bureau is barred from releasing any data on individuals obtained in the census.  Only aggregate numbers can be disclosed.  What that means is that by raising the level of hysteria about what the census takers will do with the data they obtain, the Democrats are actually suppressing the number of illegals who will respond when census time comes around.  If the Dems had just kept their mouths shut, essentially no one would have avoided the census takers.  Now that the Dems have been screaming about this for the last year, there will certainly be many who will refuse to answer out of fear.  That fear will be there whether or not the citizenship question is included.

It's Here -- Tonight We Have Dem Debate 1 -- Yawn

Today's the big day for the Democrats.  Ten of them will get to debate tonight in front of a TV audience of questionable size.  Will that audience be bigger than the 15 million or so who watched the first large size debate among Republicans in 2016?  That would be amazing, particularly since the participants are so boring.  My prediction is that the audience will be no more than 6 million people.  I also bet that the number watching will fall off as the snooze fest plays out.  Unless one of the candidates breaks out into song or some group of them do a well choreographed dance routine, what is there to watch?  These people all seem to agree on a very far left agenda for the country.  What will they debate?  Will it come down to whether the top income tax bracket should go up to 80% or 82%?

Maybe something of interest will come out of this, but that will be a true surprise. 

The Dems Seem to Have Missed Something Important

Tonight's news is that Robert Mueller is going to testify before Congress after he was served with a subpoena.  The media is going crazy with speculation about what he will say.  That seems nuts for two reasons:

1.  Mueller issued a lengthy report and has already said that he has nothing to add to the report.

2.  Since Mueller didn't indict the President or recommend that he be indicted, Mueller is barred by DOJ rules from discussing what he found out about the President.  Those rules are designed to prevent the prosecutors from blackening the name of someone if there isn't evidence to support an indictment.  These are rules that have been in place for decades; they're nothing new.

Why bring Mueller in to refuse to answer?  It seems like another one of those idiotic moves that the Democrats keep making. 

This Just In From Fantasy Land

Politico has an article our today discussing how the leaders of the Democrat party are worried that the debates among the presidential candidates this week could devolve into a brawl that turns off voters.  Supposedly, these leaders are worried about the Democrats having a repeat of 2016.

That's just bizarre.  In 2016, it was the Republicans who had knock down fights at the debates.  The Democrats had only Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders for nearly the entire time, and they didn't differ much on anything.  The Democrats in 2016 stayed far away from any sort of personal attacks on each other.

But what would anyone expect when they put 20 people wanting to be president on a stage (ok, 10 at a time).  These candidates will be trying to build themselves up while they tear down the competition.  That's how politics works.

Target #1 for most of these folks will be Biden.  He's an easy target given the things he's said and done in the past.  The over/under on the number of times Biden's praise of old segregationist Democrats is mentioned is 5.  Right now, I would take the over.

The next target will be Sanders.  I think there will be shots both at his age and his always angry demeanor.

Then there's Warren.  I think one of the other candidates may try to get her to explode in one of her angry outbursts that illustrate just how negative and angry she always is.

Buttigieg may get a shot for the mess in South Bend and his mishandling of it, but his rise in the polls seems to have ended and started to reverse, so Mayor Pete may get ignored the way Beto O'Rourke will likely be ignored.  There's no need to waste ammo on the walking wounded and near dead.

 

Substance -- Just The Wrong Substance

A few months back, Elizabeth Warren was thought to be dead in the race for the Democrat nomination.  After all, she had gone through her phony Native American fiasco and not even handled that disaster well.  She was running behind Biden, Sanders, O'Rourke, Booker and Harris in the polls and it wasn't even close.  Lately, however, Liz has shown signs of life.  Her campaign has focused on making substantive proposals.  She wants to tax everything that moves or doesn't.  She not only wants a much higher income tax, but she also wants a wealth tax and higher payroll taxes (that hit everyone.)  She's in favor of free healthcare (free, that is, aside from all those taxes), forgiveness of student loans (paid for with more taxes), and free this and free that.  The far left base of the Democrats really like these ideas.  Warren has moved into a strong third place in the polls and in some she has passed Sanders.  A poll of members of super-left Moveon.org put her far in the lead with Sanders second and Biden only third.  This poll shows the strength of her far left ideas among-- not surprisingly -- the far left.

So will this be enough to get Warren the nomination?  I doubt it.  Warren still has little strength among the biggest bloc of Democrat voters:  African Americans.  She also has little appeal to those who are not already true believers in the ultra-progressive mantras that her campaign translates into proposals for more spending and taxes.  Still, where I would have given her zero chance of winning the nomination a few months back, I think she is now at 5-10%.  That is a big recovery; she has risen from the dead a la John McCain in 2008.  Still, it's worth remembering what happened to McCain in 2008.  Even were Warren to get the nomination, she still will not win the general.  Her ideas are just too radical for the average American voter.

Bernie's Dream Machine

Bernie Sanders is formally proposing that all student debt be excused.  That would wipe away about 1.5 trillion dollars of debt.  He also wants to make public colleges free moving forward.

Well "Hooray and Hallelujah!"  All those people who paid for their educations with their own funds are just out of luck; only the borrowers get their debts excused.  Those who borrowed in the past and then paid back most or all of the debt also get little or no relief, while those who defaulted will get their loans excused.  Nothing like rewarding sloth and profligacy.  And what's going to happen to all those private universities that will now be so much more expensive in relative terms.  Oh, it won't affect high profile places like the Ivy League school; their reputations will keep them going as havens for the wealthy.  Second and third class private schools, though, will surely suffer.  Who is going to want to go to a place like NYU and pay enormous amounts when SUNY or UCONN will be free?

And then there's the question of why just universities?  Education is something that people need, so Bernie wants it to be free.  But people need housing too.  Why isn't he calling for all mortgage debt to be excused.  It's a bigger sum; the mortgage debt in the country is about 15 trillion dollars.  Still, if we can handle 1.5 trillion for school loans, we can surely handle the higher amount for mortgage debt.

And let's not forget those pesky credit card bills.  They too should be forgiven.  Indeed, why should anyone ever pay anything back.  Let's forgive it all.

Bernie Sanders doesn't have a clue about how our economy actually works.  He lives in a fantasy world with an ever present dream machine to churns out new and bigger delusions for him to discuss.

It would be nice if no one in the USA had to work for a living.  It would be nice if everything were free.  But that is not how the world works; indeed, the world simply cannot work that way.  Most Americans realize this; why can't Bernie Sanders get this?  It would be easy to just say he is getting senile, but Bernie has been pushing these delusions for the last 50 years.  Basically, he's just nuts.

What World Are They Living In?

Bloomberg News is out with an article this afternoon that claims that President Trump just suffered a triple "fail" with Mexico, Iran and Immigration.  According to the article, since Trump announced what action he would be taking, he failed because he didn't go ahead with those actions.  It makes me wonder what world the Bloomberg writers are inhabiting.

Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico unless is took steps to close the flow of illegals to our border.  Mexico immediately agreed to put 6000 more people on its border with Guatemala and to refuse entry to those who do not have proper travel documents.  That move will stop the caravans and the other massive flows of people from Central America who have been pouring over our southern border.  The Mexicans agreed to even more, but this move alone was enough for the President to hold back on his imposition of tariffs.  That's a success; it's not a "fail".  And let's also add that just today, CNN (of all places) is reporting that Mexico has put 15,000 police and troops on the Mexican side of the border with the USA in order to stop illegals from crossing.  SUCCESS!!!

Iran attacked an unmanned US drone.  The USA prepared to launch a military strike n retaliation which must be approved by the President.  Just before the launch, Trump decided not to use the military in the response.  Instead, there was a cyber attack and the imposition of new sanctions on Iran.  That avoided a possible war with Iran.  Only a crazy leftist at Bloomberg could call that a "fail".  Would he prefer that we were at war with Iran?

On immigration, Trump authorized a step up in immigration enforcement against those with outstanding deportation orders.  He held off for two weeks at the request of the Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, to give Congress one last chance to act.  That's not a fail under any definition of the word.  Wouldn't it be great if the Democrats actually agreed to make the needed changes to the rules for asylum requests  together with an increase in funding for the detention centers in exchange for some other item regarding immigration that they want like some sort of DACA fix?  That would be a win for the American people, not a fail for Trump.

It doesn't matter what Trump does, however, for the sufferers of Trump derangement syndrome -- which includes most of the media.

Trump Camps???

Today's latest blast from the left is to call the detention centers at the border for those seeking asylum "Trump Camps".  The story, as you know, is that conditions are just horrible at these facilities, but there is precious little evidence that this is true.  There is no doubt, however, that the facilities are overcrowded.  That is mainly because Congress refuses to pass spending bills to provide better care for those in the facilities.  And who is blocking that money?  That's right, it's the Democrats in the House.  They won't even allow a vote on funding for humanitarian purposes for those at the detention centers.

What all this means is that the Democrats are first creating a problem that they could easily solve and then criticizing the President when he doesn't take action EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE DEMOCRATS WHO ARE BLOCKING THAT ACTION.  How hardhearted are these Democrats that they can foist suffering on people just to get a political advantage.

No Matter What Trump Does

President Trump was going to have ICE launch a nationwide campaign to enforce court deportation orders.  These are orders issued by a court after a hearing which determine that a person is to be deported.  The response from the media and the Democrats was outrage.  Trump was cruel and heartless to enforce the law or so they announced.  Then over the weekend, Trump delayed the enforcement measures at the request of Democrat Nancy Pelosi and gave Congress two weeks to pass legislation to clear up the law regarding asylum.  The response from the media and the Democrats was outrage.  Some thought it was cruel and heartless to leave the threat of deportation hanging over these people (who had already been ordered deported).  Others didn't like the way that Trump made his decision; it was haphazard or so they said.

Last week President Trump was going to respond to the Iranian shooting down of a US drone with an attack on three sites in Iran involved in that attack on our drone.  Before plans for that attack became known, the media and the Democrats were screaming that Trump and his advisers were warmongers who want to get us into a war with Iran.  Some jumped up and down yelling that Trump didn't have the authority to start a war without Congress.  (That, of course, is false since all Trump would be doing is ordering a retaliation for a strike by Iran on the USA's drone.)  Then it leaked that although the attack had been ready to go, Trump had called it off at the last minute.  The media and the Democrats were outraged.  How could Trump behave in such an inconsistent way?  Trump's erratic moves will get us into war with Iran was the new storyline.  The Dems also complained that Trump's weakness in not responding to the Iranians would embolden the Iranians and make a war more likely.  Then it was revealed that America had launched a cyber attack on the Iranian units that had been part of shooting down the drone.  The cyber attack gave rise to outrage by the media and the Democrats.  Trump was again a warmonger who was trying to start a war with Iran.

The changes in position were dizzying.  No matter what the President does, the media and the Democrats are always outraged.  In many ways it reminded me of the Obama's first term when any disagreement with Obama's policies, no matter for what reason, was always denounced by the media and the Dems as "racism".  That charge wore out its welcome for all except the strident base of the Democrat party.  The current outrage over anything the President does will suffer the same fate (if that hasn't happened already.)

Like Clockwork

The Left's narrative of the day is that the USA is holding children at the border in deplorable conditions of filth, disease and hunger.  There's a big article about this in the NY Times.  The Sunday shows asked both President Trump and vice president Pence about it.  Even Hillary Clinton is tweeting about it (and a Sunday morning tweet from Hillary is a big deal since she's usually hung over on Sundays.)  The charges are also all over social media.  The charges, of course, are timed to coincide with what was scheduled to be the start of the ICE move to deport people against whom orders of deportation had been issued by a court.

There's a big problem with this storyline, however.  IT"S NOT TRUE.

There are no pictures of the supposed filth, hunger or disease.  If conditions are like those mentioned in the NY Times, you can be sure someone would have smuggled out a picture or a reporter would have gotten in to take such a picture.

None of the Democrat presidential candidates or even current members of Congress have gone to the facilities where this supposed "horror" is taking place.  If I were the campaign manager for Seth Moulton or Kirsten Gillibrand or some other non-entity running for president, I would send the candidate ASAP to the border facility to demand entry for an impromptu inspection.  Imagine the publicity that Gillibrand could get by exposing the actual horrible conditions to the nation; except, of course, there isn't anything to expose.

None of this has been pointed out in the past.  We have constant stories about "children in cages" in which the media shows pictures from the Obama years when kids were, indeed, put in cyclone fence enclosures that looked like cages.  Nothing was said about rampant disease, filth and hunger, however.  This is not the sort of story that could possibly be kept under wraps.

I hope that DHS or whoever is in charge of the facilities in question invites camera crews into the facilities to film the actual conditions.  No doubt the Democrats will go to court to seek to enjoin such coverage on the grounds that it is an invasion of the privacy of the detainees or something like that.

These lies have to stop.

If There Were Any Doubt, It's Gone

E. Jean Carroll who is trying to sell her new book by charging that Donald Trump raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York some 25 years ago tells a rather unbelievable story.  I've discussed that previously in prior posts.  Now, however, Carroll has thrown away whatever little bit of credibility she might have had.  She went on CNN and was asked if she would bring rape charges against the President.  Her answer was NO.  Then Carroll was asked why.  In response Carroll said that it would be "disrespectful" to the women who were being raped "around the clock" at the detention centers at the border.  No, really, that is what she said.

Think about it.  Carroll is claiming that ICE or the Border Patrol are busy raping the women in the detention centers or else standing by while other detainees are systematically raping these women.  That's not just a lie; it's a damnable lie.  There is no evidence of any problem with rape in these detention centers.  Indeed, you can be sure that if there were such a problem, the "immigrant rights" organizations or the Democrats in Congress would be screaming about the inhumane treatment of these poor women.  It hasn't happened.  Further, there have been countless investigations and visits to these centers, and no one claims that there is a rape problem for the women there.

But it is actually worse.  How can it be disrespectful to other women for a woman who was raped to seek justice for that act?  That's the rough equivalent of someone saying that a murderer who is part of the MS-13 gang shouldn't be prosecuted for that crime because it would be disrespectful to others who are being murdered by other gang members.  The only rational response is "Huh?"

E Jean Carroll seems like a crazy old woman with a fragile grasp on reality.  Her story is just fiction designed to sell her book.

It's Not The Same No Matter What The Media Says

Joe Biden is running for president and Barack Obama has NOT endorsed his candidacy even though Old Joe was Obama's VP for eight years.  It's a major embarrassment for Biden, and he has tried to downplay it by claiming he asked Obama NOT to endorse him.  What a joke!  No one would ever believe Biden's claim.  The last politician that asked an important national figure NOT to endorse him was, well, there's never been such a politician.

Because this is such a major embarrassment for Biden, the mainstream media is busy trying to protect him.  As a result, they asked President Trump if he would "automatically endorse" vice president Mike Pence should he run for president in 2020.  Not surprisingly, Trump said that was too far off into the future to answer but then gave a long bit of praise to Pence.  Next the media started asking Pence if Trump's answer bothered him.  Again, not surprisingly, Pence said that he had the highest respect for the President and that he was happy to be running with him again in 2020.

We're now going to hear that Biden isn't endorsed by Obama, but that it's no big deal because Trump won't endorse Pence for 2024.  It's not the same thing, though.  In fact, it's a silly argument.  Biden is actually running for president NOW.  Pence isn't.  Biden is actually looking for endorsements for president NOW.  Pence isn't.  Obama is someone who should be making an endorsement NOW.  Trump isn't.

Well, Nancy?

At the request of Nancy Pelosi, President Trump put off for two weeks the planned action by ICE to round up people who have existing orders of deportation issued against them.  These are people who have already had their day in court and lost; they were ordered deported after a full hearing. 

So Pelosi got her postponement.  Will the Democrats now be willing to move on immigration?  Will they agree to fix the problems with the law regarding asylum requests that have caused the tidal wave of illegals at the southern border?  Will they agree to fund the wall?  Will they agree to modify the law so as to provide for a merit based system for granting immigration requests?  Will they agree to a plan to protect the DACA recipients who are likely to lose their protected status once there is a final decision from the Supreme Court?  These are issues on which a compromise could be reached by people acting in good faith in an hour.  Until now, the Democrats have been unwilling to accept any compromise since that could deliver a "victory" to President Trump.  For the Democrats, depriving Trump of a political success is more important than solving the crisis at the border.

If the Democrats negotiate in good faith, it will be a victory for America.  If they still refuse to negotiate, then it will make clear that nothing will change.  The Democrats are playing politics and don't care about the problems faced by the American people.

Bizarre Response

There's a conference in Bahrain at the moment discussing the economic needs of the Palestinians.  For years, we've heard that the poor economic conditions in Gaza and on the West Bank have led to the ongoing terrorism sprouting from these people.  In Gaza, conditions are poor, but, in reality, on the West Bank, that is not true.  Most people in Egypt, Syria, Iraq or Jordan would gladly exchange their economic situation for that of the Palestinians in the West Bank.  Nevertheless, there is much room for improvement.  That is why one logically would think that the Palestinian Authority that governs much of the West Bank would happily participate in the conference.  As is usual with the Palestinians, however, thinking logically about the conference is a mistake.

The Palestinians are boycotting the conference.  Here's what President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had to say: 

“As for the Manama workshop in Bahrain, we said that we will not attend this workshop. The reason is that the economic situation should not be discussed before the political one,  As long as there is no political [solution], we do not deal with any economic [solution]"

The conference in Bahrain was organized by the United States as part of the peace plan being proposed by the Trump administration for Israel and the Palestinians.  The rest of the plan has not yet been unveiled, but President Abbas has already rejected it.  That's right; Abbas won't talk about economic development for his people unless there's a political solution and he rejects the American proposal for a political solution before he even knows what it contains.

You could call this a bizarre response from the Palestinians, but it is actually just business as usual.  The USA, you see, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  From that moment forward, Abbas has rejected every move the USA has made.  He just stomps his foot and shouts NO to every action.  That may work for the average two-year-old, but for a head of a country, it really isn't a good strategy for success.  

The key here is that Abbas doesn't seem to understand Trump.  He thinks he is still dealing with Obama.  When Obama was in office, the Palestinians relied on Obama to always react to issues between the Palestinians and the Israelis by putting more pressure on Israel to make concessions.  It didn't work, but it did poison the US-Israel relationship.  Trump, on the other hand, has decided to recognize reality rather than fiction in the region.  Jerusalem has been Israel's capital since 1948.  Trump recognized that fact.  Israel has possession of the Golan Heights since 1967 when it took that land from Syria after the Syrians launched an attack on Israel.  Trump recognized that fact.  Trump isn't putting pressure on Israel to make concessions that will not be reciprocated by the Palestinians.  It's a terrible disappointment for Abbas; for there to be any movement towards peace, Abbas would actually have to compromise.  

What this switch in the US attitude toward the conflict means is simple.  If Abbas rejects the peace plan and won't even attend a meeting designed to help the Palestinian economy, Trump won't waste the time trying to make a deal here where none is possible.  Abbas will kill chances for any deal.

The Racism of the Left

Today, all the Democrat candidates are in South Carolina trying to win over the black community.  Over 60% of the voters in the Democrat primary in that state are African American.  That means that a candidate with heavy black support is almost guaranteed a win in the state which conducts one of the first four contests in 2020.

The funny thing about the South Carolina primary is that the only Democrat with a history of opposing civil rights is leading that pack even with black voters.  Old Joe Biden was an ardent opponent of school bussing to achieve integration when he first got to the Senate in the 1970s.  Biden worked closely with the block of southern Democrats who had been the principal opposition to the civil rights laws a few years earlier to try to block bussing.  Indeed, when Biden said the other day that he didn't have a racist bone in his body, it made me wonder how he was able to stand without a skeleton.

So why is so little made of Biden's history of racism?  The answer, of course, is that Biden was the vice president chosen by president Obama, so he got a pass on his past.  But Obama isn't on the ticket anymore.  The Democrats have to come to grips with the fact that their frontrunner has a history of racism.  Even Biden's gaffes reveal the way he actually thinks.  It wasn't all that long ago that Biden said that you couldn't work in a 7-11 unless you had an Indian accent.  Racial stereotype?  Sure.

I wonder if the voters in South Carolina and elsewhere will wake up to Biden's actual history.  If they do, he is toast.

Mass Family Deportations Starting Sunday

If you read the mainstream media, you won't be surprised by the title of this post.  The media is telling us in horror that President Trump has ICE about to start "mass family deportations".  Of course, as usual, this is Fake News.  It's true that people are going to be deported, but this is a far cry from "mass family deportations."

The actual fact is that ICE is going to start a program to round up and deport some of the hundreds of thousands of people her in the USA who have already been ordered deported by a court.  Once someone gets into the country away from the border, they are entitled to a hearing before they can be deported.  Over the years, there have been a huge number of the hearings, and many people have been found to be here illegally and ordered deported.  Frequently, those people who are ordered deported go into hiding for a while and then relocate and go on as if there had been no court order.  The number in this category is something close to a million people.  ICE is now going to do its best to carry out the orders of the courts that require these deportations.

It's called the rule of law.  It means that when a court orders that something (like a deportation) is supposed to happen, the government has to follow that ruling.  This is not the heartless racist act of a quasi-Nazi ICE.  It is the US federal government following the law.

Hopefully, ICE will be able to find these folks quickly and deport them.  They had due process.  They lost in court.  Now that result must be enforced.

Sure, That Happened, Right

The big news on Twitter right now is that some writer named E Jean Carroll claims that she was raped in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s by none other than Donald Trump.  Seriously, that's her claim.  And seriously, writer E. Jean Carroll just happens to have a book coming out in a few weeks that she is promoting with this story.

I know that in these days of MeToo, we are supposed to give women the benefit of the doubt with regard to stories like these, but this is ridiculous.  Carroll says she was raped in a store dressing room by this guy she didn't know and that she kept quiet about it for 25 years.  She knew who her supposed assailant was.  She didn't report the crime.  If she has any experience in New York department stores, she know that the dressing rooms have surveillance cameras which could easily back up her story if true. She didn't report the crime.  Over the years, she's heard that Trump paid off women like Stormy Daniels who says she did or did not have sex with Trump.  But she didn't ask Trump for some easy money.  Trump became President of the United States, but Carroll stayed quiet.  Now that she wants to sell a book, Carroll is here with her story.  The only thing missing is that she hasn't YET hired Michael Avenatti as her attorney.

I'm sorry; I don't believe a word of this story.  Is Trump a womanizer?  It certainly seems like it.  Is Trump a rapist?  There's nothing to indicate that to be the case aside from this woman's newly disclosed story of what supposedly happened 25 years ago, a time for which there is no real way to verify anything.

No doubt, the media will follow this story for the next few weeks.  We could go to war with Iran, and the media would still be focused on Carroll and her tall tale. 

It's a sad commentary on our civilization.

UPDATE:  We now hear that Carroll also claims that she was assaulted by the former head of CBS, Les Moonves.  This seems to me to be further proof that there's something wrong with Carroll.  I mean it is one thing to have a run in with a famous man in New York.  It's something far more unusual for that man to sexually assault you especially if you are in your mid 50's and -- to be honest -- not particularly attractive.  Is it possible?  Sure, strange things do happen.  But how likely is it that two very wealthy and powerful men just happen to bump into the same 50 something year old woman by chance and then proceed to sexually assault her, both within a few years.  That sounds more like the woman's fantasy life than something that actually happened, especially if the woman never mentioned it for 25 years until it was time to promote a book she had written.

Ms. Lewandowski

The big news that came out of the closed door congressional hearing at which former White House communications person Hope Hicks testified is that committee chair Jerry Nadler is truly out of it.  Nadler repeatedly called Hicks "Ms. Lewandowski".  Apparently Nadler confused Hope Hicks and Cory Lewandowski who was the campaign manager for Trump early in the 2016 campaign.  That's not an easy thing to do, but Nadler managed to make that mistake repeatedly, even after Ms Hicks corrected him.

Beyond the proof the Nadler is not just over-the-hill but way, way, way over-the-hill, little came from the hearing.  The White House objected to any questions asking Hicks about communications with the President or many of her White House duties as privileged.  These attorneys directed Hicks not to answer.  Beyond that, Hicks didn't remember much.

It was just another waste of time by the Democrats in the House.  After all, what did they expect to get from Hicks, particularly since she had already spoken at length to investigators in the Mueller probe. 

Can't the Democrats move on from the Russia collusion nonsense and at least try to accomplish something positive for the American people?


 

What Do Iran Events Mean?

According to media reports, the USA was about to strike Iran in retaliation for the shooting down of our drone over international waters when President Trump called the strike off.  What does this mean?  After all, Trump had just approved the strike and now was changing his mind, or so the reports say.  What is going on?

It seems to me that there's more here than is being reported.  Remember, the people involved in this decision are only those at the pinnacle of our national security apparatus.  The President, vice president Pence, the Secretary of State, the Acting Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor and a few of their staff make up that group.  These are not people likely to leak to the media within minutes of the decision being made.  Rather, these are people who may be using the media to get out a message that they want Iran to hear.  That message to the mullahs is simple:  the USA could and almost just did launch a major retaliation against Iran, one which would do great damage to Iran's facilities.  The USA pulled back at the last instant from doing so.  Don't let something like shooting down the drone or attacking tankers happen again.  Next time there won't be a last minute reprieve.

Look, it may be that the President just had a change of heart since he clearly doesn't want a war with Iran.  That would not surprise me except for the immediate leak of the story and the lack of any apparent push back from the White House on that story.  Notice that the story also making the rounds that the USA warned Iran yesterday that a strike was coming was immediately denied as false by the White House.  There has been no real response to the story about calling off the raid.  It makes it seem that the White House wants that story out there.

Think of it this way:  if the USA had actually struck Iran, people would likely have died.  Iran might have felt compelled to strike back.  We could be at war right now.  If, instead, we launch a flight of many planes and then call them back, all that it cost was some jet fuel.  There's no casualties, no war but still a message to the Iranians.

Clearly, the only people who know for sure what is the meaning of these events are the few people who were gathered in the Situation Room of the White House yesterday.  It will take a while before the rest of us get the complete story.

The Evil Travel Ban

How many times have you read that President Trump has banned all entry into the USA by Muslims?  It's a blatant lie, but one that continues to be repeated.  There is a ban on entry into the USA by people from six countries, four of which have Muslim majorities.  Something close to 90% of the world's Muslims, however, do not live in these countries and are unaffected by the ban.  In fact, the only places hit by the ban are those where there are major problems trying to determine if a person there is a terrorist.

The merits of the ban were shown again yesterday when the FBI arrested a Syrian refugee in Pittsburgh who was allegedly plotting to commit a terror attack on a local church.  This refugee was admitted in 2016 by Obama.  He had no background information from Syria, so the USA let him in without knowing whether or not he is a terrorist.  Well now we know; the guy is a terrorist.

Isn't it better that we kept a few people out of our country if that meant that tens or hundreds of people weren't attacked by terrorists?

The Campaign Opening Special

President Trump formally opened his campaign for re-election the other night in Orlando.  Every article I saw in the mainstream media mentioned that the President was campaigning in Florida and then mentioned a Quinipiac poll of that state which showed Biden leading Trump 50 to 41.  The Q poll was taken of registered voters between June 12 and June 17.  Today, a poll was released by St. Petersburg Polls, a Florida organization, that was taken of likely voters between June 15 and June 16.  The St. Petersburg Poll showed the race a tie. 

These results should not surprise anyone.  Every time the Quinipiac organization polls anything having to do with President Trump, he always comes out worse in these Q polls than in comparable surveys.  Even so, the idea that the Q poll found Biden 9 points ahead and the other poll found a tie seems to be a rather extreme variance. 

My guess is that Q rushed out its poll after doing what it could to make certain that Biden had a big lead.  It was just a bit of Fake News designed to try to discourage Trump voters.

Today in the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 today that a forty foot tall cross on state land in Maryland at a memorial to World War I dead  does NOT violate the First Amendment of the Constitution and need not be taken down.  There were many separate opinions written by the justices.  The best that can be said about the teaching of the case is that it makes clear that just because something is a religious symbol on public land, it does not violate the establishment clause of the Constitution.  Indeed, the majority opinion grants such monuments a presumption that they do not establish a religion if they have been in place for a long time without objection.

The opinions are not very helpful in establishing a test for the future.  The 7-2 vote, however, makes clear that the Supreme Court is not going to accept the stance of the militant anti-religionists that any reference to religion must be kept of public facilities.

So Is Old Joe A Racist?

The bulk of the Democrat presidential candidates took the day off from calling Republicans racist.  Yesterday, they were calling Joe Biden, the Democrat front runner a racist.  In a fund raising session, Biden had pointed out how he had worked well with two Democrat senators who were prominent opponents of civil rights legislation and desegregation.  That was it; Biden had crossed the line and become a racist.  Cory Booker and Kamala Harris demanded Biden apologize for his shameful and hurtful rhetoric.  Imagine cooperating with a fellow senator to get something done!  How outrageous (or at least that is how the attack goes.)  It was idiotic to say the least.

The funny thing, though, is that Biden actually fought school desegregation in Delaware in the 1970s.  People like Booker and Harris don't talk about that because it shows how Democrats didn't support the black community then.  Indeed, using actual history might hurt the Democrat cause with that community.  So they attack Biden for a silly remark.

The Suicide of New York

The state of New York just decided to commit suicide in slow motion.  Most people don't even know about it; it hasn't gotten much media attention in New York City or across the state.  Still, the legislature enacted new laws that require all electricity generation to come from carbon free sources by 2040.  There's other drastic restrictions on carbon emissions, but it's the electric power limitations that are the most significant.  And remember, New York also won't allow construction of any new nuclear power plants even though they are free of carbon emissions.  It looks like all of New York is to be powered by hydroelectric power, solar and wind energy.  That is something which cannot be done.  There is no additional hydro power to develop.  Solar and wind are not yet efficient enough to generate the power needed for New York, and there are many times at night when there's no wind.  That means there's no solar and no wind energy.  The reality is that this new law is basically requiring New York to purchase its electricity from other states or countries.  That will lead to much, much higher prices for electricity and that will kill businesses across the state.

Just look at the natural gas industry.  Natural gas has resulted in a major reduction in carbon emissions as gas powered plants replace coal powered ones.  That change has made the USA the only large industrial nation to actually be on track to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (even though we withdrew from that agreement.)  New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia lie over the Marcellus Shale which is the biggest natural gas deposit in the world.  New York banned drilling using fracking which is the only way to get the gas from the shale.  Pennsylvania, on the other hand, promoted drilling.  As a result, PA gained roughly 350,000 jobs and huge income gains for the land owners in some of the poorest area of that state.  New York got nothing.  New York also stopped construction of new gas pipelines across the state.  As a result, the gas utilities will no longer accept new customers.  New homes are being built using either electric or oil as a heating method.  Both of those are not a free from emissions as gas, but NY gets to talk about how it is cutting down on natural gas.  It costs much more to heat the average home in NY than it does in PA even though the climate is basically the same. 

As the date for emission free electric generation approaches, it will not make sense to update the existing plants and certainly will be idiotic for a company to build any new power plants.  New York will just make the cost of living in the state higher and higher.  It's slow motion suicide.

The Trump Announcement Rally in Orlando

I watched the President formally announce his re-election campaign to the huge crowd assembled in Orlando tonight and was struck by just how different the two Americas really are.  Think about it.  Most of the Democrat base is angry and truly hates Trump.  They don't care what he does or what he says, because they just know it is bad and wrong.  According to the left, Trump is a racist; yet at his rally, the President was busy praising the lowest unemployment ever among minorities and the highest income levels ever for African Americans.  That's the opposite of racist, but it doesn't matter to the angry Democrat base.  The Democrat base says Trump only cares about the wealthy.  Of course, at the rally Trump was taking pride in the fact that the biggest percentage gains in income across the country are coming to the bottom half of the income ladder.  Indeed, the President didn't mention this, but the highest ten percent of the country by income levels also happen to be one of the strongest supporters of the Democrats.  So why would Republicans support them?

I think that the President demonstrated his strongest advantage tonight.  He was positive and he presented a positive vision of the future for the USA.  Optimism is what wins elections.  Anger and hatred don't; yet, that seems to be what most of the Democrat candidates are peddling.  We have prosperity and Trump promises to deliver more.  The Democrats promise higher taxes, some free stuff but a much more stagnant economy.  They may sell the idea of bringing down the wealthy, but I believe most people would rather have a leader trying to move them up rather than bringing others down. 


 

The Coverage of the Supreme Court is Normally Just Wrong

I never cease to amazed by how the mainstream media covers decisions of the Supreme Court.  Indeed, I often wonder if the reporters even bother to read the decisions before writing their articles.  Here are two examples:

Yesterday, the court ruled 7-2 that it does not violate the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution if an American has to answer for crimes committed under federal law and state law even if these crimes arise out of the same facts.  It's not a particularly unexpected outcome; federal and state laws are normally considered separately and there's no good reason why that would change when it comes to double jeopardy.  But what did the media report?  Most of the stories were about how the decision would prevent Paul Manafort from being fully pardoned by president Trump because he could still be prosecuted for crimes under New York law.  Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, in the decision had anything to do with Manafort, pardons or the President.  It didn't matter, for reporters, the key thing was to tie the result to Trump and to use it to repeat the claim that Trump was about to pardon Manafort.  It's like using the weather report to discuss the political situation in the UK. 

There was also another decision yesterday in which the Supreme Court sent a case back to the Court of Appeals to reconsider the decision in light of a different decision issued by the Supreme Court some months ago.  This too is not unusual.  Both cases dealt with claims of Gerrymandering.  Since the Supreme Court already issued one decision on the subject and it came after the Court of Appeals' decision, SCOTUS decided to give the lower court a chance to reconsider its decision in light of the Supreme Court's ruling.  That's a rather pedestrian result.  So how does the media play this one?  According to the media, the Supreme Court handed a defeat to the GOP in Virginia (the case was about the Virginia legislature.)  There may be a minor effect on the next election, but that will depend on what the Court of Appeals does.  If it decides to stay its prior order until it has reconsidered it, then it won't be the GOP that suffers, but rather the Democrats.  No one can say how that will turn out, but the point of what the Supreme Court did is not to help or hurt one party or the other.  The reporters just don't seem to get that.

Pete Shows His True Self

Pete Buttigieg had his 15 minutes of fame in the Democrat race for 2020.  Now he is revealing his true self and his mini-surge is going to end soon.  Consider this:

Mayor Pete (as he likes to call himself) said in an interview today that he thinks that President Trump created the problems at the borders in order to help himself politically.  Pete says that Trump has no desire to solve this issue but would rather use it in the campaign.  He wasn't kidding when he said this.

Think about it.  During the 2012 campaign, there was a heated debate between Obama and Romney about the problems at the border.  All during Obama's second term, (and even before that) there were constant debates about how to handle the border crisis.  Most important, Donald Trump began his campaign on day one talking about the need to deal with the ongoing crisis at the border.  How many times during the campaign did Trump announce that he would build a wall on the border?  1000?  It sure seems like that.  But Pete Buttigieg says that Trump only created the problem recently in order to help with his re-election.  That's not just a lie, but it's an obvious lie that anyone who paid even a minor amount of attention in 2016 knows is false.  Only the most ardent haters of the President would even consider listening to this without laughing.  But that is who Mayor Pete turns out to be.

Pete Buttigieg, for all his calm demeanor, turns out to be nothing more than the smoothe gay version of the far left anti-Trump wind-up dolls that the Democrats have as their candidates this year.  He has no honesty.  He has no insight.  There's no reason for him to be president.

 

The Groundswell

If you follow the mainstream media, you would think that the only issue of importance in America is the possible impeachment of President Trump.  We went for two plus years during which it was Russia, Russia, and more Russia and this was to be the basis for the end of the Trump presidency.  it was silly, but it was the non-stop narrative put forward by the media and the Democrats.  Then we got the Mueller Report as well as the conclusions of the Senate and House committees.  There was no collusion.  The only campaign involved with the Russians was the Clinton campaign that paid $13 million to have its agents buy false info from the Russians and compile it into the phony Trump Dossier.  That should have ended talk of impeachment, but it didn't.  The media is still talking about it non-stop.  The Democrats are still busy calling for it.  Roughly half of the Democrats' presidential candidates for 2020 are calling for impeachment.  There's no evidence of any basis for impeachment, but they're still pushing for it.

All of this gives rise to a basic question:  is the a groundswell of support for impeachment among the American public?  Over the weekend, there were rallies organized in more than 150 locations across the country calling for impeachment.  That's a huge effort.  The turnout, however, was so huge.  On average, these rallies drew about 20 people each.  That's 3000 people nationwide.  By contrast, the Trump rally scheduled for tomorrow in Florida already has 150,000 people who have requested tickets for admission to a venue that only holds 25,000 or so.  It's not fair to compare the specific numbers, but these attendance figures do tell us that essentially no one across the country is supporting impeachment while enormous numbers of people support the President.

The Democrats and the media are wasting their time and the time of the American people with all the talk of impeachment.  We know it.  Even worse, the media and the Democrats know it.  And yet they persist.  It seems as if the Democrats have nothing to offer the country but Trump hatred and crazy socialist schemes which would destroy the economy.  There's no groundswell for impeachment.  Quite the contrary, the reaction from the public is just a big yawn.

If the proof is put forward regarding the spying by the Dems on the Trump campaign and people like Clapper, Brennan and Comey get indicted, one has to wonder how the public will react to all of that.

Putting It All In Perspective

There's a new maxim that we all need to adopt.  It's just three words:  "the polls stink."  We all lived through the 2016 polling disaster.  According to the polls, Hillary Clinton won that election easily.  The pundits and the experts agreed.  Only the voters disagreed.  The polls were just wrong, way wrong.

I was reminded of this again this morning when I looked at the latest polling in South Carolina testing the Democrat field for 2020.  It's a long way until the South Carolina primary, but the two polls were just taken and ought to agree.  They don't.  The CBS poll and the poll by the Post and Courier (a South Carolina paper) put out results in which the average difference between the numbers for the top four candidates is 8 points.  For example, Bernie Sanders gets 18% and second place in the CBS poll but only 9% and fourth place in the Post and Courier poll.  Each of the top four candidates in these polls have results for which the other poll is outside the margin of error.  That means that one or the other poll (or both) are pure junk.

I really don't care much about these polls.  They're early and meaningless.  I do care, however, about the fact that the polls are wrong but are still getting published.  You should be too.  Just remember, THE POLLS STINK.

As I Was Saying

The other day, a friend of mine berated me for writing about the head to head match polls from last March that showed Biden leading Trump.  "They're old polls," he told me.  No one but a poll junkie like me would be interested in them, or so he told me.  I responded that I wasn't writing about the polls themselves, but rather about the media frenzy covering them despite the fact that they were, indeed, old polls that mean nothing.  So this morning, I heard the CBS News World Roundup, the major morning CBS Radio News report while I was driving.  What was the top story?  If you said these same old polls, you would be correct.  That's right, the top story was that the Trump campaign had fired some people from its polling unit for leaking these polls.  That was a minor one sentence story, by CBS then went on for about a minute rehashing what the polls from last March supposedly show.  There was no news there, only narrative for CBS to explain to its audience that Trump is losing. 

So tell me, is this story about old polls more important than all the other news out there?

Sin Electricidad en Buenos Aires

For a time today, power was out in nearly the entire nations of Argentina and Uruguay as well as southern sections of Paraguay.  That's an outage affecting about 40 million people.  The blackout was blamed on the failure of a section of the grid in Argentina which cascaded into a much bigger area going down.  There are protective measures which should have stopped the original blackout from getting larger, but they didn't work.  It's unclear if they are not installed in Argentina or if they just didn't work.  The electrical system in Argentina is in a state of disrepair as a result of the government deciding that power costs would be kept extremely low for all Argentines.  As a result, there were no funds to upgrade or even to properly maintain the power grid.  It's another mess made by the imposition of Socialism into the Argentine economy.  People got low cost power for a while, but now they have unreliable power which could easily cripple the nation's economy in the years to come.

Just A Small Polling Note

There were a batch of polls released today regarding the 2020 presidential election.  It's not worth rehashing these polls.  It is, however, worth pointing out one little bit of information.  Kirsten Gillibrand got less than 1% support overall in the Fox poll.  Senator Gillibrand emphasizes her gender and her support for women in her campaign.  Even so, the only support Gillibrand got from 1000 registered voters came from a few men.  Not a single one of the women polled selected Gillibrand as her favorite candidate.

It may well be time for Gillibrand to drop out of the race.  If, after three months of campaigning, she can't get even one woman to support her, it sure seems like the time to throw in the towel.

Two Big Weeks For The Supreme Court

The current term of the Supreme Court ends in two weeks.  That means that most or all of the pending cases will be decided this week or next.  The big two subjects pending before the Court are the composition of the 2020 Census and the proper scope of review of claims of Gerrymandering of legislative districts.  There are also a bunch of other cases that could have big impacts.

The Census question is simple:  should the government be allowed to ask respondents in 2020 if they are citizens of the USA.  Because there is no question that such a question could be asked, the focus of the case before the Court is whether or not the Secretary of Commerce followed the correct procedures in deciding to add this question.  It seems pretty clear that both sides expect the Court to allow the question to be asked.  Indeed, those fighting against the question have tried to delay the decision by claiming that they found "new" evidence that has to be added to the record.  Even the trial judge who sided with these people, however, called the supposed "new" evidence secondary at best.  There's unlikely to be a delay.  Remember, the citizenship question was part of every census from 1820 to 2000.  Don't be surprised when it is approved.

The case regarding legislative districts centers on claims of partisan Gerrymandering.  Can a state legislature draw district lines to favor one party over another?  If so, are there limits on that practice?  How does the Voting Rights Act which requires that districts be drawn so that there are "minority-majority" districts, that is districts in which minority voters constitute the majority, affect all this?  The Supreme Court could decide that setting legislative districts is a political decision which is left to the states absent a federal law on point (which regard to congressional districts.)  The Court could also go the other way and rule that anything more than a minor amount of political considerations in the districts is too much.  The real problem for the Court is that there's no easy way to set a standard for this sort of issue.  It cannot be that every ten years when districts are redefined after the census a court will have to rule on the propriety of the new districts.  If there are to be limits set, those limits have to be clear and capable of being applied by the legislature.  The Supreme Court will not want to undertake the role of being the constant arbiter of redistricting propriety.

Did They Go to Law School?

It's an old story, but there's new info today about the Mueller team and its claim that the Russians hacked the computers of the Democratic National Committee.  Remember, Mueller had 12 Russians indicted for supposedly carrying out this hack.  The amazing thing, however, is that no one from the federal government, not the FBI, not team Mueller, not the CIA and not the NSA ever got to see the DNC computer systems.  All that happened is that the DNC said its computer had been hacked and then the DNC hired a consultant named Crowdstrike to review the situation.  Crowdstrike supposedly concluded that it was the Russians who carried out the purported hack.  Of course, this is just based upon the claims of Crowdstrike rather than upon a review of the actual evidence.

The big news today is that in a court filing, the Mueller team concede that all it saw was PART of a report written by Crowdstrike.  That's right, the DNC only gave the government a redacted version of the report.  The FBI only got to see something like 80% of the report.

There's no way that any competent court would ever allow this evidence to even be seen by the jury.  It's pure hearsay.  The actual evidence, namely the computer itself, could have been reviewed by the FBI, but the bureau chose to accept limitations put in place by the DNC and only to look at a redacted version of the report. 

Every time I think that the shoddy work that was done by Team Mueller and the FBI can't get worse, I am shocked to find that it can get worse and it does.

Seriously? March?

There's a big story today about leaked polls from last March that showed Biden leading Trump according to internal polls from the Trump campaign.  All I can say is "ho hum."

Why is this news?  The polls were taken before the Mueller Report cleared Trump of colluding with the Russians and resulted in there being no obstruction charges either.  The polls were taken before Joe Biden began his flip flop on the way to the White House.  That's before Biden decided that he now thinks federal funding of abortion is a good thing and before Biden decided to do an about face on whether or not China is a serious competitor of the USA.  It's before Trump got Mexico to help stop illegal immigration by closing off its border with Guatemala to those without entry visas.  In other words, before conditions got to where they are today.

Indeed, the polls in question were taken before Old Joe even officially entered the race.  Most well known candidates poll their very best right before entering the race.  They get the positives without all the negatives that get brought up in the campaign.

In short, these polls don't mean anything.  The reporters all know that.  So why is this story making such a splash?  It shouldn't.

Media Lies on Iran

Why does the mainstream media think that it has to try to undermine everything that President Trump says or does?  I just heard CBS News report that the President is still "trying to claim" that Iran is responsible for the attacks on the two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman a few days ago.  The CBS reporter then said that the rest of the world did not agree.  The reporter made it sound like only the Trump Administration is blaming Iran.

This is a lie.  Here's the statement put out by the UK Foreign Office:  “It is almost certain that a branch of the Iranian military – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – attacked the two tankers on 13 June. No other state or non-state actor could plausibly have been responsible.”

Then there's the video shot of the Iranian boats removing a limpet mine from the side of one of the tankers, the kidnapping of the crew of one of the tankers, the attack on a US drone in the area by the Iranians and the statements of the crew of the two ships.  These all support that Iran is responsible.

And CBS is wrong when it claims that countries (other than Iran) say that the Iranians were not involved.  At most other nations just say that they can't tell who carried out the attack.

So we have an attack by Iran.  The USA blames the Iranians and presents evidence to support that view.  The UK accepts the conclusion.  No country other than Iran itself says that anyone other than Iran is responsible.  But CBS News tries to paint the picture that President Trump is wrongfully claiming Iran to be to blame while other countries disagree.  CBS should be ashamed that it feels it necessary to lie just so that it can support its anti-Trump narrative.

Did a Straw Poll Break Kamala's Back?

I didn't want to let the latest poll of Democrat primary voters in California pass by without comment.  It's just another typical poll with Old Joe Biden in the lead, but not by much.  Normally, it would be a non-event except for what the poll says about the campaign of Kamala Harris.  Harris, of course, is a Democrat senator from California.  That means that the people who know her best are the Democrats in that state, and they don't seem to be too happy with her.  The latest poll puts Kamala Harris in fourth place; she doesn't even get enough support to pass the 15% minimum needed in order to get any delegates.

It's really early in the process, and that makes it worse for Harris.  Right now, her name recognition and California residence ought to be enough for her to be atop the rankings or at least close to the top.  Being in fourth place is a terrible showing.  The people who know her best want someone else, it seems.

Things can obviously change, but it's hard to see how Harris will ever be a successful candidate if her home state won't even support her.

What Are The Odds?

The Democrats' debates are coming up shortly.  Since MSNBC/NBC is providing the moderators, there's a real question which subjects will get covered.  Most likely Donna Brazille or her successor is busy feeding the topics or perhaps even the questions themselves to the favored candidates.  In order to help those Democrats who don't get the list ahead of time, here's a list of subjects together with the odds of their being raised:

1.  Confronting the Chinese about their theft of intellectual property and their use of unfair trade practices.  -- Odds of it being raised:  2%

2.  Stopping the flow of illegal aliens (ok, they can call them undocumented immigrants) into the USA. -- Odds of it being raised:  1%  Note:  this is not the same as discussions condemning any efforts made by President Trump in this area.

3.  Considering the highly negative effect that raising taxes would have on the economy. -- Odd: 0.00001%

4.  Condemnation of white supremacy and the extremely tiny group of people who actually follow this hateful ideology.  Odds:  80%

5.  Discussion of the emoluments clause of the Constitution and whether or not it gets violated if a foreigner stays at a property owned by the Trump Organization.  Odds: 50%

6.  Whether it is appropriate for the President of the United States to use Twitter if that President's name starts with the letter "T".  Odds: 95%

7.  Whether or not Obamacare has flaws.  Odds 20%

8.  Whether or not a single payer, government run healthcare plan should be adopted.  Odds 75%

9.  Whether or not a single payer, government run healthcare plan would work.  Odds 2%

10.  Whether or not the USA can afford a single payer, government run healthcare plan.  Odds 9%

11.  Whether Barack Obama ought to get full credit for the defeat of ISIS and President Trump get no credit for the same thing.  50%

 

No One Wants To See Castro

Last night, Fox News ran a town hall meeting with Democrat presidential candidate Castro.  No one watched.  It actually lost in the ratings to Ari Melber on MSNBC.  That's like losing the Oscar for best actor to PeeWee Herman.  It's just about as low as you can go.

I know that the media wants to give the impression that they cover every candidate.  Still, Julian Castro?  Will Fox News next have a Q & A with Seth Moulton or Bill DeBlasio?  Why not just show a test pattern.  At least that would be more interesting.

 

Thirty-Three Million Dollars? Oberlin Can Afford It

Oberlin College in Ohio has an endowment of just under 900 million dollars.  The college is going to need those funds to pay the $33 million that an Ohio jury just awarded a local bakery for the participation in a bogus attack by Oberlin administrators on the bakery.  A few years ago, some African Americans were apprehended by the bakery staff for shoplifting inside the store.  The shoplifters first claimed that they had been targets of racial discrimination, but they quickly changed their story and admitted that they had been shoplifting and that the staff actually treated them with respect.  It didn't matter.  The social justice warriors at the very liberal campus sprang into action and organize protests outside the bakery.  Then the Oberlin administration got into the act.  It promoted and prolonged the protests which resulted in severe damage to the bakery.  Even after the bakery owners told the college that the shoplifters admitted that there had been no racial discrimination directed towards them, the college administration continued promoting the protests and attacks on the bakery.  The bakery sued Oberlin for the acts undertaken by its administration, and the jury has now spoken.

This is a wonderful outcome.  The far left social justice warriors who permeate college campuses need to understand that society as a whole will not kowtow to them the way that the universities do.  It's fine to use free speech, but attacks are unacceptable.  Even more important, these leftists have to learn that while they are free to say what they want, spreading obvious lies about their target may well cost them in a court of law.

The Useful Idiots

In the 1920s, Lenin, the leader of the Soviet Union had a term for the many far left Western apologists for his regime.  He called these people (mostly journalists who wrote stories praising the USSR) "useful idiots".  In other words, these fools didn't know what they were talking about, but they were very useful to the propaganda operations of the Soviet state.

Useful Idiot is the perfect term to describe the reaction of much of the left to yesterday's attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman near Iran.  This response took two forms:

1.  The first whopper is that the story was a lie.  It was created by the Trump administration to justify going to war against Iran.  For a while yesterday, "gulf of Tonkin" was even trending on Twitter as far left useful idiots compared the Iranian attack (which they said was a lie) to the North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer Turner Joy in 1964 which was used as a basis for the first air strikes on the North Vietnamese (and which they also said was a lie.)  Variants of this idiotic story were that Mike Pompeo and John Bolton had created the attack without telling President Trump in order to fool him into going to war against Iran.  It's the kind of conspiracy theory that no one should give any attention, but it got major play yesterday.

2.  The second story is that the attacks only happened because the USA has put sanctions on Iran.  This one is at least closer to the truth.  Sure, the Iranians lashed out at Western interests yesterday with these attacks.  If President Trump hadn't withdrawn the USA from the flawed JCPOA signed by Obama the Iranians wouldn't have attacked.  After all, that agreement guaranteed them nuclear weapons in just another 5 years.  Iran would gladly wait five years for nukes particularly as it got more cash from America.  Instead, Trump said "no nukes" and he put pressure on the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program.  Iranian nuclear weapons would be the end of the world as we know it.  Those weapons in the hands of a regime that believes global destruction will be followed by paradise are nuclear weapons that will be used.  We have never had nukes in the hands of a suicidal regime in the past.  We can't have them in such hands now.

The damage done by the useful idiots is that the Iranians read the media and watch social platforms just the same as we do.  The Ayatollah may believe that these useful idiots will apply enough pressure on President Trump to convince him to give in or at least go slow in responding to such attacks.  That would be misreading Trump, but it doesn't matter.  We don't want Iran to move towards war, but that is exactly what the useful idiots are pushing in their ignorance.

It's time for national unity in the face of the Iranian threat.  The media and the Democrats will never line up behind President Trump.  The American people, however, ought to do so.

Consider This Carefully

For the last 24 hours, the media and the Democrats have been going crazy criticizing Preisdent Trump for saying that he would listen to a foreign government that was supplying him with "dirt" on a political opponent.  The media and the Democrats are all pretending to be horrified by this answer, even though in 2016 it was the Democrats who did just what Trump is now saying he would do.  After all, the Clinton campaign and the DNC both paid people to gather dirt on Donald Trump from the Russians.  Then Clinton and the DNC went through all sorts of ruses to come up with a means of trying to keep that consultation with the Russians a secret. 

But let's put this question of hearing "dirt" from a foreign country into proper context.  It's October 10, 2020.  The country is in the home stretch of a seemingly endless presidential election that pits Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Bernie Sanders.  The President is in the Oval Office and he gets a call from president Xi of China on what is said to be an urgent matter.  President Trump takes the call.  Through a translator, the Chinese leader says the following:  "Mr. President, I have some extremely urgent information for you.  My intelligence service informs me and has proof that your opponent, Bernie Sanders, worked as an agent for the intelligence operation of the old Soviet Union, the KGB, during the 1980's.  We have documentary proof that Sanders was an agent for your enemy at that time and we also have evidence that the Russian government of Vladimir Putin has that evidence as well.  As I'm sure you recognize, this evidence that Sanders was a Soviet agent will give Putin the ability to control Sanders if he is in the White House.  I am telling you this as a sign of good faith in the relations between our two countries.

So here's the question:  what should President Trump do in that situation?  He now has evidence that his opponent in the election committed treason by spying for the Soviet Union.

There's a variety of answers. 

1.  According to the mainstream media and the Democrats, the President shouldn't even discuss Sanders with a foreign power.  To do so would be immoral and unethical, according to these people. 

2.  President Trump's answer is different.  He would listen and if he thought it appropriate, he would alert the FBI.

But if you boil it all down, is there actually any American who would want our president to refuse to accept intelligence about someone who might become president just because it is coming from a foreign power?  In 2016, if there actually were some Russian who provided evidence that Hillary Clinton had received a payoff of millions of dollars in exchange for approving the sale of a big chunk of America's uranium reserves to the Russians, shouldn't the American people get to hear that?  Without a doubt, the answer to that question is a resounding YES.

An Afterthought? I Don't Think So

If you look at the mainstream media right now, the biggest story of the day is being treated mostly as an afterthought.  It's truly bizarre.  I'm speaking, of course, of the attacks on two different tankers in the waters near the Strait of Hormuz that lie between Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Two tankers were hit with torpedoes or with surface fire (depending on the report one reads.)  They were left burning and were both abandoned by their crews.  It is unclear if either will sink.  The attack took place as the Japanese prime minister is in Teheran meeting with the Iranian leadership.  That's important because both ships had cargoes related to Japan (although even that is not clear from reports.)

So who attacked these ships?  Was it the Iranians who have the ability to launch such an attack?  They are the likeliest suspects.  Was it some terrorist group seeking to get the USA and Iran into a war?  That might make sense, but no terrorist group has the capability to launch this sort of simultaneous attack on two different ships.  Was it the Saudis in a false flag operation designed to make it look like an Iranian attack?  Again, that is possible if one is a true conspiracy theorist, but it is also highly unlikely.  There's no way that the Saudis could pull off such an operation in secret without the world finding out.  Some crazies will no doubt blame the USA, but that's beyond crazy.  We have to wait for evidence, but right now, we have to assume that it was the Iranians.

If it turns out that Iranian forces attacked two ships, including one American flagged ship, in the Gulf, what will the reaction from President Trump be?  My prediction is that the response will not be one that the Iranians will like.  It also will be one that will send oil prices soaring in the short term and which could lead to a major war in the Middle East.

But the media is treating this as an afterthought.  Why? 

The Pact with Poland

President Trump met with the head of the Polish government today at the White House.  The two leaders announced that roughly 1000 additional American troops will be sent to Poland.  The Poles will also be buying F-35 jets from the USA.  This is good news.  It cements the US alliance with Poland.  It also provides a large order for the American companies involved in the manufacture of the F0-35.  So what has the immediate response been from the mainstream media and the Democrats?  They''re outraged; they think the agreement is terrible.  That should be no surprise, anything the President does or says is terrible for that group.  Nevertheless, it's important to consider their main criticism:  America should not be sending more troops abroad.  Obviously, today's agreement must have taken the Dems and their media allies by surprise.  After all, they are complaining about sending more US troops abroad when that will not actually be happening.  The additional troops going to Poland will be coming from US bases in Germany.  We won't have any more troops abroad than we do now.  The Polish government is going to support the cost of these troops in part, so it will actually cost the USA less to have the troops in Poland than it cost to keep them in Germany.

It would be nice if just one time the media decided to get the facts before starting to complain about the details of a news story.

Can Hate Speech Win?

In the Democrat presidential campaign, the candidate who is doing the best in recent weeks is Elizabeth Warren.  It seems that in the midst of all the other mistakes being made by her fellow candidates, Warren's dishonest claims to having Native American heritage and her cashing in on that phony claim is receding into distant memory.  Instead, Warren's harsh rhetoric directed towards anyone who is successful in American society is bearing fruit.  Warren is pushing the politics of envy and rage.  There's no idea of shared sacrifice for the good of the country with Warren. No, Liz pushes the notion that anyone who has been successful has to be punished with extremely high taxes and social handicaps.  Warren's angry vision is a land where all are equal:  equally poor, equally limited in their freedoms, and equally miserable.  Warren talks about government programs to give free stuff to people (which, you can be certain, will not be free.)  Paying for the program, however, will require the enactment of confiscatory taxes.  Warren wants to strip the wealth of those who have been successful and use it mostly to make the government bigger and to give it more control over the lives of everyday people.  Warren is the primary purveyor of hatred toward the successful.

In the latest poll out today, Warren is now running second to Biden in Nevada.  That's the first poll in many months in which the top two candidates are not Biden and Sanders.  Just a few months back, Warren was lying wounded by the side of the road as people laughed at her phony claims of being and Indian.

It makes me wonder if Warren's version of hate speech will carry the day among the Democrats.  Certainly, there are enough angry Democrats to provide a big level of support if Warren can corral all of them.  It will be quite funny if the party that spends hours condemning everything as hate speech selects a candidate who is a primary purveyor of hate speech on the political scene.