The Never Ending Fantasy

If you read the news today, you will find in many outlets a story about how the "whistle blower" fears for his life.  Think about that.  None of these news outlets know the name of the whistle blower.  Supposedly, no one knows his or her name.  Congress supposedly doesn't know the identity of the whistle blower.  Only the lawyer who works for the general counsel of the CIA knows that identity.  That's right, only one person knows who it is.  So why is this whistle blower nervous?  Does he or she expect to see random killings of all the CIA employees who worked in the White House at any time over the last two years?  That's silly.

What this means is one of two things:

1.  The story is a total fantasy which the Democrats leaked or the media concocted to paint a sympathetic picture of the whistle blower and to make the President look like a bully.  I think this is the most likely truth.

2.  The whistle blower has been working with congressional Democrats for a long time to put together his or her complaint, so his or her identity is widely known on Capitol Hill by people who can't seem to keep a secret if their lives depend on it.  Fearing for his or her life might then be sensible for the whistle blower.  After all, what better way to frame Trump than to have the mysterious whistle blower killed?

the Ukrainians Speak

Here's what Reuters is reporting:

"Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov is calling for an investigation into the son of 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden in order to assess whether Hunter Biden’s role in a Ukrainian gas company complied with the nation’s laws.

Azarov made the call in an interview with Reuters following a week in which revelations about President Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prompted a formal impeachment inquiry in the House."

Notice that the man being interviewed was prime minister from 2010 to 2014.  He's not involved with the current government and he wasn't involved with the government when Joe Biden forced the firing of the State Prosecutor in order to protect his son Hunter.  Asarov is just someone who understands the Ukrainian government and how it functions after leading it for four years.  And he thinks Biden and his actions need to be investigated in the Ukraine.

See if you hear about this anywhere else.  The mainstream media seems to be burying it.

So What Now?

It seems as if there is nothing happening in Washington other than the impeachment nonsense and the politics surrounding that.

Think about it.  Haven't we heard that there are negotiations to finalize some sort of gun control legislation in Congress.  That seems to have died.  By pushing the impeachment investigation, the Dems have really made certain that there will be no further conversations with the President on this topic.

And how about the USMCA?  This is the trade agreement between the USA, Canada and Mexico that is to replace NAFTA.  It will provide major benefits for American businesses and consumers as well as creating around a half a million new jobs.  Nancy Pelosi, however, won't let the House vote on the deal.  They're all too preoccupied with impeachment now, and they don't want President Trump to have a "win" with the treaty.  It's sad.  It seems like they don't care about what benefits the American people, only about what benefits their party.

There also seems to be no progress being made on improving infrastructure, lowering drug prices and a host of other items that could be the subject of agreement if the Dems would just actually discuss ways to fix problems instead of trying to hang the problems on Trump and the Republicans.

What's going to happen now?  Is there any chance things will change before 2021?  It would be good for America for the Dems to start acting like legislators.  I surely doubt it will happen though.

The Meaning of Biden's Corruption

The current news is focused on President Trump, but the center is actually the corruption of Old Joe Biden when he was vice president.  Because Biden is a Democrat, the media pays his misdeeds very little attention, but it is worth noting that there are three things that Biden did for which there is just no explanation other than corruption.

The first deals with Biden's son Hunter.  Hunter has led a troubled life.  In short order, he was discharged from the military for drug use, had an affair with his sister-in-law which then led to his divorce, broke up with the sister-in-law and married another woman who he had known for less than two weeks.  He also got involved with big business.  Hunter formed a hedge fund investing in energy companies in partnership with the son of former Secretary of State John Kerry and the son of notorious mobster criminal.  This threesome managed to get an investment from a company owned by China.  The investment totaled 1.5 billion dollars.  Of course, none of the three partners had any experience in this or any other sort of hedge fund.  Why did China put 1.5 billion dollars into their hands?  The Chinese are not known to invest with other hedge funds, so why did China pick these novices as the recipients of such a huge investment.

The answer may lie in the fact that then vice president Biden flew with his son Hunter to Beijing on Air Force Two for the meeting where Hunter Biden finalized the investment by the Chinese.  No doubt, China thought it was buying influence with Joe Biden by investing such a huge amount with his son.  Surely, Joe Biden knew what was happening and he was fine with the Chinese buying his good will.

The second also deals with Hunter.  The private Ukrainian company Burisma hired Hunter to be a director.  The company is mainly in the natural gas business.  When put on the board of directors, Hunter had no experience as a direct of any other company.  He had no experience in the natural gas industry.  He also did not speak Ukrainian.  All he had was his connection to his father.  For this, Hunter got paid roughly $600,000 per year. 

But it gets worse.  Burisma was being investigated by the Ukrainian State Prosecutor.  Biden was put in charge of Ukrainian - American relations by then president Obama.  Biden has boasted that he got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired by threatening the then president of the Ukraine that American aid would be cut off unless the prosecutor were fired in the next six hours.  The Ukrainians yielded and the prosecutor was fired.  In other words, Biden used his office to protect his son and insure his continued lucrative job with Burisma.

The third deals with Biden's brother.  In 2010, Obama had put Biden in charge of dealing with Iraqi reconstruction and other things.  Biden's brother suddenly was named executive vice president of a large construction company even though he had no experience in construction or in senior management of a corporation.  In a "coincidence", just about a month after Old Joe's brother got the job, the construction company got a contract for 1.5 billion dollars from the federal government to rebuild housing in Iraq.  No doubt Old Joe says there was no connection, but does he really expect people to believe that?

Here's the problem.  If there were only one instance like this, it could be called a strange coincidence.  Two of these are essentially impossible to be just a coincidence with no corruption.  But three of them?  This is clear proof that Old Joe Biden is corrupt and used his office to send millions of bucks to his family members.  This is beyond dispute.

At the moment, the Democrats and the media are going berserk and seeking to impeach the President for a phone call where he said nothing improper.  They want to read an implication into Trump's words that supposedly threatened the president of Ukraine even though nothing of the sort was said and the Ukrainian president confirms that he felt no pressure.  It would be impeachment without any wrongdoing.  On the other hand, we have Biden for whom there is clear evidence of wrongdoing, namely corrupt behavior.  The Dems and the media don't even want to talk about this.  That's crazy.

Biden's corruption means he cannot be president or even the Democrat nominee.  The Dems/media won't discuss this in public, but the conclusion is one that cannot be avoided.

This is the Best????

It's worth quoting from the Washington Post's description of the "scandal" that is causing a rush to impeachment by the House Democrats.  The Post is perhaps the biggest cheerleader that the Democrats have in major media and it describes the matter as an "investigation focused mainly on the explosive accusation that Trump urged Ukraine's president to dig up dirt about a political rival.... In addition to Trump's call, a whistleblower complaint claimed that unidentified White House officials tried to keep the conversation a secret within the government.

Just look at that description.  We've all seen the record of the phone call.  Despite the "accusation", the actual facts show that Trump didn't urge the Ukrainian president to do anything of the sort, and president Zelezny has confirmed this.  And even the Washington Post says that the supposed effort to keep the conversation secret was done by unidentified officials.  It can't even bring itself to tie this supposed effort to the President.  And, of course, we know on top of this that the only person saying that there was a coverup is the whistleblower himself who apparently was unaware the the White House procedures for handling of transcripts of all calls with foreign leaders had changed.

So What Do We Know?

After all the swirling news stories of the last week, what do we know about the communication between President Trump and President Zelezny of Ukraine and how the controversy is being handled?

1.  We know that Trump and Zelezny spoke in late July right after Zelezny's party won control of the Ukrainian legislature in elections in that country.

2.  We know that during the conversation, Trump made no threat to withhold aid from the USA to Ukraine.  In fact, that aid wasn't even mentioned except that Trump said that he thought that the European countries like Germany weren't doing enough to help the Ukrainians.

3.  We know that Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to help look into any Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 hacking of the DNC.

4.  We know that the conversation was pleasant.  Trump didn't push or threaten or cajole.  Trump made no demands. 

5.  We know that President Zelezny has stated publically that he felt no pressure from Trump in that call.

6.  We know that the two men discussed the Ukrainian state prosecutor.  Zelezny said that he was appointing a new person to that post who would be very strong in fighting corruption.  President Trump applauded that appointment.

7.  We know that President Trump mentioned Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and their activities in Ukraine.

8. We know that a self styled whistle blower sent a complaint to the Inspector General in which he claimed the following: s) he had no first hand knowledge about the complaint; he only knew what others (unnamed) had told hime. b) he claimed that Trump had pressured the Ukrainian leader to provide assistance to Trump in the 2020 campaign -- something we know is untrue; and c) he claimed that the transcript of the phone call was put on a special server to keep it confidential, a coverup of sorts -- something that turns out to have been standard operating procedure for all communications with foreign leaders since two such conversations were leaked early in the Trump Adminsitration.

9.  We also know that the whistle blower is a CIA agent who was working temporarily in the White House.

10.  We know that the IG sent the complaint to the acting Director of National Intelligence.  The DNI didn't turn the complaint over to Congress immediately because it was not about an intelligence matter for which such a turn over is legally mandated.  Instead the DNI sent the complaint to the Justice Department where the criminal division did a review and determined that no crimes were shown by the complaint.  The DNI was not directed by anyone to withhold the complaint from Congress; he made that determination on his own.

11.  That's about all there is to it except for this:  since the story about this complaint first broke, there have been a whole host of media reports detailing all sorts of misinformation about what happened.  In response to those media reports, the Democrats in the House decided to start an impeachment inquiry.  When the actual transcript and complaint were made available the next day and they showed nothing untoward had happened, the Democrats just kept going.  Today, we even got to the point where Democrat Adam Schiff just made up phony items that he falsely claimed were in the transcript.  When he was called on it, he suddenly claimed that he was doing a parody.  What he really meant was that he was lying.

I really don't think that most Americans are going to accept this incredible show of idiocy and anti-constitutional behavior by the Democrats.  Sure, they don't like Trump.  So what!  Trump was elected President whether they like it or not.  This attempt to try to use the Constitution to subvert American democracy is going to be rejected by the average American. 

Shifty Schiff Caught Lying at Hearing

In the highlight of the hearings today, Adam Schiff was caught lying to the public.  The congressman made a statement in which he "repeated" some of the things that President Trump said to the president of the Ukraine according to the transcript.  There were repeated threats to the Ukrainian.  That was followed by another congressman who noted that he had been getting text messages and email pointing out that Schiff was wrong and that there was nothing like that in the transcript of the phone conversation.  This congressman called out Schiff for lying.  It was done in nice, congressional language, but the message was clear:  Schiff was lying to the public about what was in the transcript.

At that point, Schiff acknowledged that what he had said was indeed NOT in the transcript.  Schiff said that his quoting of the transcript was meant "as PARODY".  Yeah, Schiff was just joking; it was all parody.  Schiff actually said that.  He was just joking.

Think about that.  Schiff admits that what he said was not true but then claims it was just a joke.  Really?  Schiff accused the President of what he called criminal behavior, but, hey, it was just a joke. 

It's amazing that this guy Schiff is still in Congress.  I know he comes from a district where an ocopus could win if he were the Democrat nominee, but still, it's embarrassing to see this buffoon in Congress.  Remember, Schiff is the guy who told us for a year and a half that he had seen detailed evidence that made clear that President Trump had colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election.  Of course, after the Mueller Report said there was no collusion, Schiff never produced that supposed evidence.  Will Schiff now tell us that his charges that the President colluded were "just a parody".

The truth is that Schiff was lying; he wasn't joking.  The further truth, though, is that Schiff himself is a joke.  Sadly, that joke's on the American people.

The Whistleblower Blew It

We now have the complaint filed by the "whistle blower" regarding President Trump and Ukraine.  After reading the complaint, two things are clear:

1.  The whistle blower didn't get his fact correct.  He goes on at length about how President Trump "pressured" the president of Ukraine to leave the State Prosecutor in office.  This prosecutor is the equivalent of the Attorney General in the USA.  He had made some statements last spring about involvement by Ukrainians in working with the DNC in trying to win the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton.  Supposedly, President Trump wanted him kept in his office despite the change in government in Ukraine after recent elections.  Almost half of the whistle blower complaint deals with this prosecutor.  But there's a major problem:  the transcript of the phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president doesn't mention this guy.  There's nothing there.  The whistle blower admits in his submission that he doesn't have first hand knowledge.  The fact is that his complain is just wrong.  The whole business about the State Prosecutor just didn't happen.

The whistle blower also says that Trump "pressured" the Ukrainian leader.  That too has a major problem:  it didn't happen.  The transcript is of a rather amiable call.  No pressure.  No threats.  No quid pro quo.  There is a request by Trump for the Ukrainian to complete an investigation into the allegations of Ukrainian involvement in 2016 with the Democrats.  That's an ongoing investigation in the USA as well, and there's nothing wrong with the head of the US government asking for assistance from a foreign country in such an investigation.

It's also important to note that yesterday, the Ukrainian president himself said that he was NOT pressured.  It was just a normal friendly call.

Put all this together and it's rather clear that the whistle blower blew it.

2.  We know that the criminal division of the DOJ reviewed this complaint within days of its being filed.  Those career justice department personnel concluded that nothing criminal had happened even if the whistle blower was completely accurate in what he said (which he obviously wasn't).  This fact was strangely omitted from all of the reporting in the mainstream media about this complaint.  All we were told is that the acting DNI had not sent it to Congress.  The media never reported that the acting DNI decided that the items alleged were properly to go to the Department of Justice and that he sent it on.  Once again, the media was creating facts that didn't actually exist.  After reading the complaint, it's pretty clear why the DNI concluded this.  

Not Like The Old Days

There's an article in The Atlantic discussing how humanity is at the point where it will face a major rise in the level of the oceans unless we take drastic action in the next decade.  Should we fail to take action, the author says that the oceans as we know them will cease to exist.

It's strange, but the article reminds me of the old film "Atlantic City".  Burt Lancaster plays an old small time crook who consistently sees things and says that they're not like they were in the old days.  The climax of that arc of comments comes near the end of the film when he looks at the Atlantic Ocean from the boardwalk and comments, "Ah, the ocean.  It's not like it was in the old days."

The statement in the movie was ludicrous.  So too, the statement in this article is ridiculous.

I've lost count.  This is the umpteenth warning of dire peril from the weather or the climate or some other human activity that I heard.  In the 1970's scientists warned us of global cooling; and ice age was coming.  In the 1960s, the warning was against over population.  Humanity would starve as the population grew.  We would see widespread famine and the collapse of world civilization by 1980.  In the 1980s, we were all going to die from an inevitable nuclear war unless we had a nuclear freeze.  In the 1990s, global warming took over as the predominant apocalyptic vision. 

None of these end of the world fantasies has occurred.  The predictions of the end of the world keep coming, however. 

Humanity would do well to remember that we are just tiny beings on a huge planet.  All the people in the world could be fit into New York City, thereby leaving the rest of the planet unpopulated. 

Remember this:  In 1970, that favorite of the environmentalist left, Richard Nixon, started the federal government down the road to cleaning up the country.  In the next twenty years, air pollution was reduced in dramatic fashion.  Water pollution was greatly reduced.  The environment was greatly improved.  Rather than focus on the main sources of pollution, however, the environmental left decided to go with global warming.  That theory has been shown to be faulty, but the environmentalists ignore the proof.  They operate like the flat earth society.  They believe so it must be true.

One thing I can guarantee.  In 100 years, very, very few people alive today will still be living on earth.  The oceans will still be here though.

The Call Between Trump and the Ukrainian President

The transcript/memorandum of the phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President has been released.  If you want to read the entire thing, here's the link 

It's not very long.  It's not very detailed.  There's no pressuring by Trump of the Ukrainian leader.  In fact, the Ukrainian president says that he is trying to clean up Ukrainian politics and to end corruption.  He's appointing a new prosecutor who won't be biased or corrupt and who will look fairly into the company (of which Hunter Biden is a director).  In the words of Ukrainian president Zelezny, he's "trying to restore honesty" to the situation.

There's certainly no quid pro quo like the various media and Democrats have claimed.  All that upset about Trump holding up aid and then using that to pressure the Ukrainians turns out to be a total lie.  The military aid isn't mentioned except that Trump talks about how much more the USA is planning to do with Ukraine.  Trump also suggests to the Ukrainian leader that he speak to Angela Merkel and other Europeans to try to get them to help Ukraine more.  The Ukrainian president says he is already doing that.

They also discuss the replacement of the American ambassador to Ukraine.  President Zelezny of Ukraine thanks President Trump for recalling her.  He points out that the US ambassador was a fan of his predecessor and did not get along with the new leader.  He says that a new ambassador will greatly improve relations.  In other words, the idea that Trump canned the US ambassador because she was preventing an investigation into Biden is just wrong.  The Ukrainian president wanted someone new.

I haven't bothered to read the commentary on this transcript yet.  It's such a nothing burger that we're likely to get nothing but spin.

The only thing that has been confirmed by the transcript is that President Trump properly described the call for the last week.  He said that he had mentioned the prosecutor and that Biden had gotten him fired.  Trump also said that it would be helpful if the Ukrainians were to investigate to find out the truth of what happened.  That's it.

No matter how this gets spun, there is nothing wrong with what Trump did.  He asked a foreign leader to investigate what happened in that leader's own country.  The foreign leader agreed that it would be good to investigate and said that had already appointed someone new as a prosecutor who, he hoped, could restore honesty to the situation.

That's it.  No more.  And yet, this is the conversation that has Democrats and media people calling for impeachment.  One crazy even wants Trump executed for treason.  Gimme a break.

I wonder what will come next.  Will Pelosi launch a committee to investigate if Trump should be impeached for eating two scoops of ice cream for dessert rather than only one?

What Changed? Why Now?

For many months, Nancy Pelosi resisted calls for the impeachment of President Trump, but yesterday afternoon she went all in for it.  It was a very strange move because it seems so irrational.  Pelosi didn't wait for the actual facts.  The White House had already announced that the transcript of the call between Trump and the president of Ukraine would be released today.  Since this is the supposed source of the impeachable offense, one would think that Pelosi would wait a day before going for impeachment.  Think how silly she will look if the call is totally innocent.  So what changed from the last six months?  Why now?

The answer may surprise many.  It may be that the Democrats are panicking about the polls.  In the last week three polls on Trump's job performance have been released.  One showed him with a positive approval margin of 8%.  That was Rasmussen which always shows Trump better than the others.  Still, Rasmussen normally showed Trump in a range of -5% to +1%, so the recent polls are a major improvement.  A second polling organization, Emerson, showed Trump with a margin of +1%.  That too is a significant development.  The third poll came from Quinipiac.  These Q polls are habitually bad for Trump.  If you look at the last year of poll results, the very worst ones for Trump consistently come from Quinipiac.  The latest Q poll shows Trump with a job approval of only 40%.  That may sound bad, but it is significantly better than the previous Q polls.  Quinipiac may arrange its results so that things always look rosy for the Democrats, but there is still a strong trend in favor of Trump and the Republicans.

There's also the start of the Biden collapse.  There is no way that Biden can explain what his son Hunter did with Joe Biden's aid in China and Ukraine.  Biden can't even explain his own actions in that regard.  Little mention is made of China as of yet in media reports, but consider this.  Hunter Biden was ejected from the military because of his drug use.  He then started dating his brother's wife while he was still married.  He has no business experience or training to speak of.  In short, he's not a good guy, or at least he doesn't present as such.  So what did the Chinese government do?  Hunter organized an investment fund that he ran.  China invested a billion dollars in that fund.  Now let's be clear, the Chinese don't give a billion dollars to a random guy with no experience so that he can invest for them.  China has plenty of smart and talented people who could handle such investments.  No, China made a huge investment in winning the favor of then Vice President Biden.  Remember, the fees earned by Hunter Biden on this Chinese investment should have been around $15 million per year.  Hunter Biden was suddenly mega-rich.  And how did Hunter manage to finalize this deal?  Easy, he flew to Beijing with his father on the official vice presidential plane.  Biden used his office to smooth the way for his son's wealth.  Old Joe knows full well what happened here.  He knew that the Chinese were buying his influence by setting his son up.  He has never commented on this.  His silence is not surprising.

But back to Biden and Ukraine.  Hunter Biden got hired to be on the board of a large Ukrainian company.  As director he got paid $60,000 per month.  That's $720,000 per year.  The company in question is private and is owned by a mega rich Ukrainian oligarch.  Hunter Biden had no business experience.  Hunter Biden had no knowledge of the natural gas business which was the main focus of this company.  Indeed, Biden had no knowledge of any field where the company operated.  But he got three quarters of a million dollars per year to be a director.  Talented and experienced individuals who are outside directors of  large US companies get paid about one third of what Hunter got even though Hunter had no skills or experience.  It's a hell of an entry level job.

There's no question that the job for Hunter was a way to try to buy the influence of Old Joe Biden and the vice presidency.  So when Old Joe proudly tells us that he used a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine as a level to force the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who just happened to be investigating Hunter's company, it would be silly in the extreme to ignore the obvious corruption.

Old Joe Biden can't explain this away.  His campaign is finished.  Elizabeth Warren is now moving into the front runner position.  That scares the Democrats beyond belief.  Warren may be able to sell her anti-capitalist plans to the far left base of the Democrats.  She doesn't have the aura that Old Joe Biden has with minority voters though through his years with Obama.  She's a path to electoral defeat for the Dems.

That panic has led them to try to take down Trump with this crazy move towards impeachment.

No One Cares

At 5:00 this afternoon, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would start impeachment proceedings regarding President Trump.  Pelosi and House Democrats didn't wait to find out the facts regarding Trump's communications with the president of Ukraine.  Instead, they are acting on the basis of news reports about supposed pressure by Trump on the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden.  It doesn't matter that the president of Ukraine now says he was not pressured in any way.  Nor does it matter that President Trump says he didn't pressure the Ukrainian.  Indeed, the transcript of the conversation is about to be released, something should make clear exactly what happened, but the Democrats can't wait for that.

About a week ago, there was a frenzy about the Democrats starting impeachment proceedings against Justice Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court.  That frenzy disappeared when the word got out that the supposed "victim" of Justice Kavanaugh didn't remember any untoward or improper action by Kavanaugh.  It was just another of those bogus bits of Fake News.

When the transcript of the Trump phone conversation is released tomorrow, we will see if there is any basis at all to the new impeachment push.

It's worth noting what the public thinks of all this.  In that regard, I would point to two different things.  First, after the announcement from Pelosi, the futures for the stock market stayed steady and then climbed up by something less than 0.2%.  That's the equivalent of a yawn from the market.  It means that investors don't expect anything to come from all the drama that the Democrats are generating.

Second, there was an online poll taken by the Drudge Report.  About a quarter of a million votes have been cast, and as of now only 5% of those responding think that the President will be impeached and removed from office.

The short answer is no one seems to care about the nonsense that the Dems are using as the basis for their impeachment hysteria.

Hopefully, this nonsense is going to lead to a major backlash against the Dems in 2020. 

Why wait

The Dems are all in on impeachment and they haven’t bothered to learn what happened. The transcript is coming out tomorrow and yet they still won’t wait.

How could America ever trust them to do the right thing?

Mass Insanity -- Really

If you read today's news, you will find a host of reports about how the Democrats in the House are moving towards the impeachment of President Trump over his conversation with the president of Ukraine.  It's insane.  I mean that literally; it's totally insane.

Think about it.

We don't know what the President told the Ukrainian leader.  Neither do the folks in Congress.

We don't know what else, if anything, Trump did regarding Ukraine.  Neither do the Democrats in Congress.

We don't know why the Ukrainians fired a state prosecutor who was investigating a company that happened to have Joe Biden's son as a director.  We do know, though, that Biden, while he was vice president, told the then president of Ukraine that if the prosecutor wasn't fired immediately, Biden would cancel one billion dollars of US aid to Ukraine.  It certainly looks like Biden was using US aid to help his son and the company his son worked for.

We also know that Biden's son was discharged from the military for cocaine use and not all that long afterwards got hired as a director of a company owned by an extremely rich Ukrainian oligarch.  Hunter Biden got paid between $50,000 and $60,000 per month to be a director of that company, and Hunter Biden had no training or experience to qualify him for that job.  All he had was his father's position.  This was the company that was being investigated by the prosecutor fired at Joe Biden's behest.

Even so, the Dems are rushing towards impeachment.  On what basis, you may ask.

They know that the media reports that there is a supposed whistleblower who wrote a complaint about what the President said to the leader of Ukraine on a phone call.  We also know that the so called whistleblower is a long time Democrat operative.  And we can add in that we know that the whistleblower didn't hear the phone call or see the transcript of it.  He's operating on the basis of what someone else (identity unknown) supposedly told him.  Basically, that's it.

How could rational people move to impeachment on the basis of media reports describing a complaint no one has seen particularly since the complain was written by someone with suspect motives who also has no first hand knowledge of the actual events?

It truly is insane.

Where? Who? Why?

Today's climate icon of the moment Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg denounced the world for all the people dying due to climate change.  She says her childhood has been taken from her as a result.

Maybe I missed it.  So maybe someone can tell me this:

1.  Where are people dying due to climate change?

2.  Who are the people dying due to climate change?

3.  Why are these people dying due to climate change?  What is causing it?  How is a less than one degree rise in average global temperature leading to death? 

Think about it for a moment.  In most of the world, it is substantially warmer in Summer than it is in Winter.  Do we see many deaths from the higher temperatures in the Summer?

Don't tell us that people caught in storms like hurricanes are the ones dying due to climate change.  There's many fewer people dying due to storms of that sort than was the case 100 years ago.  Hey, about 100 years ago, something like 6500 people died in and around Galveston, Texas alone due to a hurricane.

Don't tell us that people who died during a heat wave here or there are victims of climate change.  Again, there have been heat waves as long as there has been a planet here.

So, someone try to answer these questions in an intelligent way.  It sure won't be Greta who does that.  She just gets angry and shouts.

It's Sad To Watch Children Being Used

Greta Thunberg was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.  That's great for Greta, but sad for the world.

For those who don't know, Greta is the Swedish teen who is busy launching strikes by school children to combat global warming and other impending climate disasters.  But here's the problem:  as of today, there is still no empirical evidence that there truly is any global warming due to the activities of humans.

The theory is that higher levels of carbon dioxide and other gases are acting to promote a greenhouse effect which raises global temperatures. 

And what do we actually know?  Here are the facts, not the theories:

1.  Two thousand years ago, during the days of the Roman Empire, the world was warmer than it is today.  Obviously, this is based upon scattered data, since there was no systematic weather observation in those day.  There seems to be no major objection, however, to the conclusion that based upon available data, Earth was warmer at that time.

2.  One thousand years ago, when the Vikings were plundering their way across
Western and Northern Europe, Earth was warmer than it is today.  Again, this is based upon sparse data, but some things cannot be argued.  For example, during these years, there were many vineyards in modern day Sweden and Norway.  There were permanent farming settlements in Greenland.  There were also other farms and other settlement in regions which today are just too cold to allow agriculture.

3.  About 600 years ago, the Earth cooled and we entered a mini-Ice Age.  This was the time when the plague spread across Europe.  There was starvation and disaster as the weather got colder and crops frequently failed.  All those vineyards in Scandanavia and settlements in Greenland and elsewhere across Northern Europe were abandoned.

4.  The cooler weather remained in place until the start of the 19th century.  Interestingly enough, this cooler weather on Earth corresponded to a period of lower sunspot activity on the Sun.

5.  Starting around 1815, the climate started to warm back up.  This warming had nothing to do with any greenhouse effect or anything that people did.  It is agreed by even the most strident global warming supporter that until some time after World War II, there was not enough carbon (or other) emissions to affect the climate.

6.  During the period from 1900 to 1940, the warming observed was about the same as happened during 1960 to 2010.  The first period was not man-made. 

7.  Between 20 and 30 years ago, Congress funded measurement devices to get supremely accurate temperature data for Earth's atmosphere and its surface.  The satellite system that measured the atmospheric temperatures found no warming trend whatsoever between 2000 and 2017 (the period for which the data has been released.)  The surface measurements from the special system set up in the USA found that between 2005 (when the measurements started) until 2018, ther was no warming trend at all.  This is limited to just the USA, but that is a pretty big chunk of the Earth.

8.  The global warming movement is based upon computer generated models that predict a warming trend.  Those models failed to predict the climate accurately for the period after 2000.  The failure was statistically significant.  In other words, the actual data showed that the computer models are wrong.

So what does all this mean?  Simply put, the climate has varied over time since long before there were any carbon emissions by humans.  In just the last 2000 years, the climate has cooled and then warmed on a global scale.  There is no data that supports the theory that any current warming is different from the variations seen during the last 2000 years.  In fact, the theories that the global warming supporters use on which to base their arguments that emissions from human activity is causing warming have been disproven by the data.

Instead of redoubling the efforts to learn what, if anything, is affecting Earth's climate, the global warming enthusiasts are trying to use children to pressure people with fear of impending doom.  They should (and probably do) know better.  It is just appalling, however, to think that an entire generation of children is being terrorized by something that doesn't seem to be happening.

Shut Down DC?

Supposedly, there's going to be a major effort to block traffic during this morning's rush hour in Washington.  It is being done to protest "inaction" on climate change.  How bizarre.

There are a few things to consider here.

First, in the last twenty years, the only large economy which has made significant progress reducing carbon dioxide emissions is the USA.  That change has continued and accelerated over that time.  Despite the ranting from the enviro-crazies, President Trump's being in office has done nothing to slow the reduction of emissions.  Indeed, the single biggest contributor to the reduction in emissions has been the expanded use of fracking which the environmental left wants to ban.  Only through fracking have we been able to replace the use of coal for power generation with the use of natural gas.  That move alone has resulted in a major cut in emissions.  As US production of natural gas increases and exports of liquified natural gas grow quickly, other countries will also be able to switch from coal to natural gas.  Right now, fracking is the biggest hope of cutting emissions worldwide.

Second, by blocking traffic, the protesters will lead to major traffic tie ups that will generate a huge extra amount of carbon emissions.  It's the old "killing for peace" conundrum.  It's also wholly irrational.

Third, there really is no need for any of this.  As of today, there is no valid scientific evidence that earth is experiencing man-made global warming.  None of the models on which the theory is based have proven valid when tested against the data.

Howdy Modi

There's a big event in Houston today named "Howdy Modi".  It's a joint appearance by India's prime minister Modi and President Trump before a huge crowd of about 50,000 people.  The vast majority are from the Houston area's large Indian ex-pat community.  It's a remarkable event if you think about it.  It's also a good sign of the now close friendship between the USA and India.

All that being said, I wonder who came up with the name for this.  My problem is that it reminds me of that old children's TV show Howdy Doody that ran for 15 years.  It just seems disrespectful of the Indian Prime Minister, even though I know it isn't meant that way.  Most likely the group running the event never even heard of the old TV show.

Explain This

The latest confusion about Ukraine and President Trump is getting worse.  We still don't have the details and supposedly, Congress doesn't have them either.  The so-called whistle blower (who happens to be a Democrat operative) wrote a letter that hasn't been released.  We do know, however, that this whistle blower didn't hear Trump say anything; he just reported what someone else told him.  In court, that would be called hearsay, and it is not admissible because it is inherently unreliable.  Today, we get an added morsel although no one seems to know where it came from.  Now, some media outlets are saying that President Trump "froze" aid to Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Joe Biden's son.  There's no evidence of that happening, but lack of evidence doesn't seem to matter to Dems who are after President Trump.  Just look at the Russia collusion investigation if you need proof of that; there was no evidence of collusion, but for over two years we were told both that some never disclosed evidence existed and that Trump was obviously guilty.  Neither was true.  But back to today's media view on Trump and Ukraine.  CNN is once again in the forefront of fake news.  In the same article where CNN announces - without any evidence - that Trump froze aid to Ukraine in order to get it to investigate Biden's son, CNN also announces that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or his son in Ukraine.  There is actual video of Biden proudly telling a group that he threatened the Ukrainian government that he would cut off American aid unless the prosecutor investigating his son was fired immediately.  So Biden actually admits doing what CNN calls wrong doing when Trump is supposed to have done it.  CNN says though that there's no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden.

I truly hate CNN for its complete distortion of journalism.  They don't report facts at CNN; they just make up Fake News.

Ending Delusions

There are some rather common delusions that have affected our country with regard to the 2020 presidential campaign.  It's worth pointing those out.

1.  Old Joe Biden is the "front runner" for the Dem nomination.  This is delusional thinking.  Biden's position has been deteriorating as videos of him forgetting things like where he is or what he just said surface.  Then there's those rambling answers to easy questions where Old Joe doesn't even seem to try to respond to the question.  More and more, these events will stop seeming like stylistic issues and begin looking like really bad characteristics for someone to have if he has his finger on the nuclear button.  It may take time to develop completely, but Biden's campagin is going to implode.

2.  Elizabeth Warren will be stopped because of her past lies about being part native American.  By now, Warren is well known for her false assertions that she is part Cherokee.  That's the point; the issue is well known.  Other than perhaps a few thousand native Americans, there are unlikely to be many people who will base their votes on lies Warren told in the past.  Remember, Trump undoubtedly told lies in the past as well.

What will stop Warren are her extreme far left positions.  She wants to stop fracking and oil drilling on federal land and off shore.  This move would raise energy prices in dramatic fashion, make the USA dependent again on oil from the Middle East and kill literally millions of American jobs.  That's not going to win Warren any votes from anyone other than the environmental extremists who will already be voting 100% Democrat.  Warren's tax plans are also going to be killers for her candidacy.  For the last few months, Warren has refused to admit that to carry out her plans like medicare for all, free college, and the like, there will be a massive tax increase on middle class Americans.  The wealthy just don't have enough to fund these programs through increased taxation.  Then there's Warren's plans to break up all the banks and the tech companies and the like.  It's almost as if Warren is plotting a way to try to start a depression.  That won't be popular with voters once explained.

3.  Bernie Sanders is not going to win either.  There just aren't enough voters who want and angry old man as their leader.

4.  President Trump is not going to implode as the campaign progresses.  Trump has already withstood a three year onslaught of the most horrific nature.  He's not going to stumble now.  Those who believe to the contrary are delusional.

The Collapse Begins

The "big" story that President Trump made certain requests of the Ukrainian president about investigating Joe Biden's son is starting to fall apart.

Here's a tweet from Brit Hume commenting on a CNN article on the subject:

Here’s a “new revelation” in this article: the whistleblower complaint is based on hearsay. From the article: “The whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN.”

Consider what this means. The whistleblower didn't hear the President say anything. Most likely, he was told by someone else that Trump said this or that. In other words, the story is unreliable.

It's starting to look like the Kavanaugh "revelations" by the NY Times a week ago which all fell apart when the fact emerged that the supposed "victim" didn't support the claims and even said she had no memory of any of it.

Old Joe Relies On The Media???

Old Joe Biden was asked about his involvement with getting Ukraine to stop investigating his son's company while Old Joe was vice president.  His response was that no responsible outlet had found anything there worth reporting and he wasn't going to talk about it.  So Old Joe refused to comment because his media allies won't run the story.

That's an amazing position to take especially since there is video of Old Joe proudly telling a group that he had threatened the Ukrainian government that unless the prosecutor who was investigating his son's company was fired in the next six hours, he would have $1 billion in aid from the USA to Ukraine halted.  The prosecutor was then fired.  So Old Joe himself told that story.

In many ways, all this nonsense about the supposed whistleblower who heard President Trump ask Ukraine to investigate Biden's son's activities will work to get the true story of Old Joe's use of the office of vice president for the personal gain of his family out to the American people.  After all, the NY Times and Washington Post may not want to cover items embarrassing to Old Joe (like illegal use of his office while VP) but they have to explain the whole thing if they try to go after Trump on that point.  Trump, however, did nothing wrong.  Biden, on the other hand, committed a criminal act if he threatened the Ukrainians with American government action in order to benefit his own son.

Where Did It Go?

Less than a week ago, nearly all the major Democrat presidential candidates were "horrified" by the "new" allegations against Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh and they called for his impeachment.  This was all based upon an article in the New York Times.  We had all hysteria, all the time from the Times and the Democrats.

Then, it became clear that the woman who was the supposed victim of Kavanaugh's actions had no memory of any such events.  NO MEMORY OF IT!!  It also turned out that the "source" for the story regarding what Kavanaugh supposedly did was none other than a former lawyer for the Clintons who happens to be enmeshed in the Democrat party.  Indeed, the story became so shaky that the NY Times was forced to issue a correction that was tantamount to a retraction.  In short, the whole story fell apart.

None of the Democrat candidates withdrew their calls for Kavanaugh's impeachment even after the story fell apart.  They didn't even apologize for attacking Kavanaugh on the basis of an obviously baseless story.  I wouldn't expect anything different from the Dems.

The media, however, is another story.  None of the mainstream media is covering the fact that after the story collapsed none of the Dems withdrew calls for impeachment.  None of the mainstream media is asking the Dems why they haven't apologized.  In fact, none of the mainstream media really covered the collapse of the Kavanaugh story.

So where did the story go?

Did You Know?

After reading a bunch of mainstream media articles in the last three days, I "learned" a bunch of important "facts" that I didn't know previously.  The "facts" are generally stated by people the media calls "experts".  Here are a few of the biggies.

1.  Iran doesn't want war with the USA.  When Iranian drones hit Saudi oil facilities and knocked out half of the Saudi oil production, it was just the Iranian leaders "playing chess" in order to try to improve their negotiating position.

2.  President Trump has "revealed" that his threats to take action against Iran are nothing more than "words" since the USA has not yet done anything other than talk in response to the Iranian actions.  Apparently, the additional sanctions imposed by the USA on Iran don't count as anything more than words.

3.  President Trump is a warmonger who wants war with Iran.  That's strange since Trump, we are told (see #2 above) has taken no warlike actions and has done nothing but talk.

4.  Israeli's prime minister Netanyahu has been pushing very hard to get a war started between the USA and Iran.  That's strange since Netanyahu has been occupied full time with the aftermath of the Israeli election and would seemingly have no time to devote to starting wars.

5.  The exit of John Bolton from his position as National Security Advisor makes it almost certain that there will be no military resolution to the Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia.


It does seem strange that the mainstream media presents all this stuff as if it were fact.  In truth, most of this is best described as fantasies written by reporters.

Losing the Laughter

It's a sad day for the 2020 presidential campaign.  Bill DeBlasio (the current mayor of New York City) has called it a day and left the race.  That's too bad.  DeBlasio's pitiful attempts were a constant source of laughter.  His campaign reminded me of one of those sad clowns who used to populate the circus.  No matter what DeBlasio did, it turned out poorly.

In usual form, DeBlasio left the campaign with a new howler.  He announced that his campaign had made a difference and that even though he was leaving the race, he would continue to push for important changes in the country.  It's so cute that DeBlasio thinks he made a difference.  This is a guy who more than 90% of the time polled at ZERO and the rest of the time got 1% support.  What difference did he make?  Of course, DeBlasio has no answer to that.

In other poll news today, we have another of those very embarrassing state polls.  This time the state is New Jersey.  Senator Booker is running fourth there with only 8%.  It is true that 8% is just about the highest poll number Booker has gotten during the entire campaign, but this is his home state of New Jersey.  These results should tell Booker that it is time to stop the nonsense.

Are You In Favor?

Are you in favor of the following:

1.  Abolishing all private insurance plans and replacing them with government run health care?

2.  Making air travel much more expensive by at least a factor of four?

3.  Reducing the availability of beef across America?

4.  Stopping production of coal, natural gas and oil in the USA?

5.  Raising taxes on everyone making at least $25,000 per year? 

6,  Raising taxes on companies to levels at least twice the rates in America's biggest competitors, thereby driving jobs out of the USA and to those other countries?

7.  Opening the borders of the USA to everyone?

8.  Providing welfare support payments to everyone whether here legally or not.

9.  Allowing abortions of babies at the time of birth.

10. Confiscation of firearms legally purchased and owned by average Americans.

11.  Allowing Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons?

12.  Allowing China to steal American designs and ideas without any consequences?

13.  Releasing all "non-violent" criminals from prison; that includes all drug smugglers, manufacturers, and dealers.  It also includes embezzlers, con artists, kidnappers, etc.

If you are in favor of all this, congratulations, you qualify as a 2020 Democrat.  These are not strange interpretations of the position of the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates.  These are their actual positions.  And there's more bizarre stuff where this all came from.

This Just In

The NY Times is now saying that the so called "whistleblower" we have heard about in relation to some phone conversation in which President Trump made a (gasp) promise to a foreign leader actually wasn't just concerned with that conversation.  There were multiple incidents about which the whistleblower was concerned (or so says the Times.)

What all this means is that the media
1.  Doesn't know when this happened.
2.  Doesn't know who was involved.
3.  Doesn't know what was said.
4.  Doesn't know what happened.
5.  Doesn't know who the supposed "whistle blower" is.
6.  Is still certain this is a big story very bad for President Trump.

I predict that the Whistle Blower will turn out to be Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

A "Whistleblower"??????

The media is all excited because supposedly there is a whistleblower from the intelligence agencies who heard President Trump make a "promise" to a foreign leader during a phone call.  According to reports, the so called whistleblower felt the need to report this promise to Congress, although he didn't do that.  Instead, he supposedly told a different official who has not passed the message on to Congress.  The media coverage has focused on Trump's supposed unreliability in the usage of classified information.

Let's stop here.  We don't know the identity of the whistleblower.  We don't know the identity of the foreign leader to whom Trump supposedly spoke.  We don't know the nature of the promise.  We have no idea if classified information was actually involved.  And to top it all off, Trump is the one person in the USA who has the absolute power to use classified information as he sees fit.  He can disclose it and thereby declassify it at any time.  So we have a shaky story based upon innuendo rather than fact, and it is about Trump supposedly doing something that he has the absolute right to do.

So why is the media having a fit?  The answer is simple:  it's another way to hit out at Trump.

It would be nice if the so called "reporters" would wait to learn at least SOME facts before they pronounce this a major story.  It just isn't ever going to happen, though, at least not with President Trump being involved.

Iran's Foreign Minister Threatens USA with "All Out War"

The Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif announced yesterday that the USA would face all out war with Iran were it to retaliate for the Iranian attack on the Saudi oil facilities.  How can that be?  Why would Iran threaten the USA?

The answer is rather simple.  Iran must have a pretty good idea that President Trump is not about to launch a retaliatory attack.  That makes is an easy choice to threaten all out war if there is an attack.  Iran can crow about how it faced down the "Great Satan" with little risk since Iran already thinks it knows the outcome.

The real question though is what will it take for the President to order retaliation?  And when that happens, how big will the counter strike be?  Hopefully, this won't be a small blow when it happens.  (Of course, it would be best if the Iranians stopped their provocations, but seriously, that's unlikely.)

The Israeli Election And CNN

Israelis went to the polls yesterday and voted.  As of now, the results appear to be inconclusive.  The most likely outcome seems to be that there will be a government of national unity formed that will be an alliance between Likud and Blue and White, the two biggest parties.  It's really too early to say though.

One thing that is not too early to discuss is the bizarre coverage of the Israeli results by CNN.  I happened to be at a rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike yesterday evening where CNN was on the TV.  For about ten minutes, the CNN host and various "experts" discussed the Israeli results that were coming in.  The entire ten minutes were devoted about 5% to how the Israelis had voted and about 95% to what the results in Israel say about President Trump.  I'm not exaggerating; CNN covered the election results in another country based upon what those results say about our President.  There's no question that the relationship with the USA is an important issue for Israelis.  Nevertheless, that wasn't the major issue in the Israeli election.  All of the main parties want close ties with the USA.  All of them took similar stances regarding Trump.  CNN's coverage was just making things up as it went along.  Even for CNN it was shockingly poor coverage.  Actually, it wasn't coverage so much as rambling fiction.

Two Important Polls

There are two new polls out today that actually are important.

The first poll is the Emerson poll of the California Democrat presidential primary.  Biden and Sanders are tied for the lead, but that's not what is important.  What's important is that Kamala Harris is in fifth place with only 6% of the vote.  That puts her behind Biden, Sanders, Warren and Andrew Yang.  Remember, Harris is a senator from California.  That means that 94% of her home state Democrats want someone else to be the nominee.  If there ever was a good indicator that her campaign has failed, this is it.  Harris should really give up now.

The second poll is the NBC poll of the New York Democrat presidential primary.  Here, too, the important point is not who is in the lead (Biden).  No, the important point is that New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio is behind at least 13 other Democrats.  He gets less than one half of one percent support which rounds to zero.  It's amazing that in a poll that sampled Democrats, more than half of whom come from New York City, DeBlasio can't even get to 1% support.  This is not just an indicator that he should drop out of the race.  It is a wholesale repudiation of DeBlasio and a strong indicator that he should not run for re-election in 2021.  Bill should be mortified with these results.

Moving Towards War?

There's a story this morning that the Iranians have seized another oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz.  This time the pretext is that the tanker was smuggling diesel fuel.  That's strange since the tanker didn't originate in Iran, was not going to Iran, and never entered Iranian territorial waters.  Okay, it's not strange; it's just a pretextual lie.  Also yesterday, President Trump said the USA was "locked and loaded" to respond to the attack on the Saudi oil facilities.

So what does this mean?  Will there be an American response to the attack on the Saudis?  If so, how will Iran and its allies respond.  We could have a one and done moment where the US hits some targets and things then quiet down.  Things like that sadly happens all the time in the Middle East.  Alternatively, we could have a US response followed by an Iranian escalation and another US response all leading to war.

Iran has threatened that it will launch missile attacks on American ships and bases throughout the region.  Imagine what would happen if, God forbid, the Iranians hit one of our ships with a missile and killed many sailors or even sank the vessel.  It would be horrible.  But, we could easily be going there.

I get people who tell me that I am too leery of a war with Iran.  Look at all that has happened in the region, and we have never gotten to war, or so I am told.  I don't buy it.  Iran thinks that the only thing that will protect it is to have nuclear weapons.  The USA believes with good reason that it cannot live with a nuclear Iran.  The only "settlement" ever achieved came when Obama threw in the towel and agreed to a pact that let the Iranians get nukes in ten years (when he conveniently would no longer be president).  That wasn't going to work then, and it isn't going to work now.

The reality is that we are closer to war with Iran than we have been since the day the American hostages were released by Iran in 1981.

The New Kavanaugh Story UPDATE

So here's the best part of the NY Times big article that raises another charge about sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh over 30 years ago when he was at Yale.  The Times ran the story as if it were the biggest bombshell imaginable.  The story, however, omitted one very important detail:  the supposed "victim" of Kavanaugh's acts says she has absolutely no memory of anything like that ever happening.  Get it?  The big Times story is contradicted by the supposed victim!

I can't stand the media that feels it has to attack a conservative with bogus stories rather than sticking to something close to the facts.

Yesterday - Reid It And Weep

Yesterday, President Trump tweeted about MSNBC's weekend host Joy Reid.  It wasn't a complimentary tweet, to say the least.  It got me wondering why Trump was making this attack on Reid just now.

The simple answer is that I'm just not sure.

Many months ago, old nasty anti-gay statements by Reid were disclosed.  First she said that her social media accounts were hacked so that the old tweets were newly inserted.  When that was proven false, Reid sor of apologized for the old statements.  Old anti-Semitic statements by Reid were also uncovered and we went through another version of her non-apology apology.

Since the uncovering of Reid's old bigoted statements, the really hasn't been much from her that merited attention.  It's mysterious why Trump is raising Reid's profile by discussing her.

Of course, maybe he knew what she had on her show this week end.  Reid had on one of the editors of Time magazine who denounced Joe Biden as being an inherent racist and who said Biden must drop out of the race.  Maybe Trump's denunciation of Reid was designed to temporarily raise her audience so that they could see Biden called a racist.  Who knows?

Si Se Puede

In the Obama campaign for the White House, his slogan Yes We Can was used in Spanish as Si Se Puede.  Now, it seems that the slogan should be adopted by President Trump and the GOP.  According to new polling, the national chair of the GOP says that support by Hispanics in Texas for Trump and the GOP has increased by 20 percentage points over the levels of 2016.  It's just polling and it's just Texas, but just think for a moment what that means.

Let's assume that Hispanic support for Trump just increases by half as much as the claimed 20 points.  In 2016, according to Pew Research, Trump won 28% of the Hispanic vote.  That would mean that in 2020, with the increase noted above, Trump would carry 38% of the vote to the Democrat's 62%.  That would still lose the Hispanic vote, but it would shift the margin by about 2% nationally.  That's a huge difference.  It's enough to lock up states like Florida, Arizona, Texas and to place Nevada and Colorado into play if all other votes stay the same.

Polling also shows that African American support for Trump has risen over 2016 levels.  Add in this difference and the national margin would shift over 3%.  That would swing Virginia to the GOP, lock in NC and GA as well as MI for 2020. 

In other words, these changes in minority support for Trump would pretty much assure that he would carry all the states he won in 2016 and would likely swing VA, CO and NV to the Republicans as well.  In other words, the race wouldn't even be close.

Of course, these changes aren't being made in a vacuum.  The votes of whites, Asian Americans and others would change.  Still, if the above numbers hold in the Hispanic and African American groups, the Democrats really just cannot win.

The Perils of Warren

Jonathon Trugman, writing in the NY Post, make a compelling point about Democrat Elizabeth Warren.  In just the last ten days, Warren has advocated breaking up the big tech companies and the big banks in the USA.  Trugman points out that the USA leads the world in banking and finance as well as in high tech.  Literally many millions of high paying jobs depend on those industries.  Destroying the companies that constitute a big part of those industries will cause the loss of many of those jobs and will batter the economy in major ways.  Trugman doesn't mention it, but if you add in Warren's hugely expensive plans for healthcare (which will end the private insurance market and all the insurance companies in that market), you have a recipe for a long term depression in the US economy.  We may get equality, but it will be the equality of poverty.

More Kavanaugh -- Really?

The New York Times is out with a new attack on Justice Kavanaugh.  It's another claim of supposed sexual misconduct during college.  It's also a rather poor joke.

Think about it.  When there were all sorts of claims of this sort during the confirmation hearings, the new story got no traction.  According to the Times, a man (who happened to be one of Bill Clinton's lawyers) came forward to tell this tale to the FBI and to two senators.  He says no investigation was done of it (although one wonders how he would know that.)  Remember, you can fault the FBI, but two Democrat senators would be very unlikely to leave this allegation untouched (no pun intended).  Now he's back in the public eye with this claim through the Times.

During the confirmation hearings, there was a reason for all the stories.  Even though some were obviously false, they merited consideration because Kavanaugh was up for a seat on the Supreme Court.  He needed 50% of the senate to win; he got that and more.  Now he's on the Court.  It would take 67% of the Senate to remove him.  There's no way that's going to happen.  So now, the story is just another attack on the guy about something he supposedly did 30 years ago.

Even the new allegations are not all that serious.  So why is the Times pushing this story again?  Most likely, they want to change the subject away from other stories.  Remember that towards the end of last week, it started to look like the Justice Department was about to get an indictment of Andrew McCabe.  We are also about finally to see the report of the Inspector General about the attack by the intelligence agencies and their Democrat allies against candidate, president-elect and even president Trump.  My guess is that the Kavanaugh nonsense is an attempt to change the subject away from those stories.

Iran and Its Lies

One half of the Saudi oil production has been shut down after a drone attack on oil shipment sites in Saudi Arabia.  The Iranian-controlled Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack, but it's doubtful that they actually carried it out.  The USA has blamed Iran.  One way or another, that's correct.  Consider these facts:

1.  The sites struck are much closer to Iran than to Yemen.  While it is not impossible for drones to fly to the site from Yemen, it would be much more difficult to achieve that feat than to fly them over the Persian Gulf from Iran to Saudi Arabia.  There are also many targets much closer to Yemen that the Houthis could have hit with a similar effect.

2.  The Houthis are not technologically advanced.  Here too, the Iranians have the skill set to make this attack while the Houthis really don't.

3.  The Iranians control the Houthis.  In other words, even if the attack actually came all the way from Yemen, the Houthis wouldn't have launched such an attack without an express approval from Iran.

4.  Iran has been trying to pressure the USA prior to next week's possible meeting between the Iranian prime minister and president Trump at the UN General Assembly in New York.  They want to force President Trump to relax the sanctions placed on Iran.

The Iranian response to the statement by Secretary of State Pompeo that the USA places responsibility for the attack on Iran by saying that since the US plan for "maximum pressure" has failed, the US has switched to "maximum lies."  Iran also said that it was ready for war.

The reality, however, certainly appears to be that Iran is the true culprit here.  Iran also seems to think that it is still dealing with president Obama.  They expect the USA to back off on the sanctions when faced with the possibility of concerted attacks from Iran or even war.  It's a very high stakes gamble.

I think that Iran doesn't understand President Trump.  Trump is, by his own terms, a "counter-puncher".  If he is convinced that Iran is responsible for the drone attack, he will understand that the Saudis were only one target of Iran.  The other major target is the USA.  He won't relax the pressure on Iran moving forward in response to this attack.  Indeed, it would not surprise me to see an American retaliatory strike on Iranian targets in the next few days.  That response will likely come after the UN General Assembly meeting this week, but Trump could order it sooner.  Note that there could also be a major Saudi counter strike instead of an American one.

The big issue for me is just how Iran will react to a counter strike.  The Iranians have to know that they would get wiped out in a war with the USA and its Middle Eastern allies.  The future of the Islamic Republic is at stake.  The Ayatollah has never been willing to risk that future.  I don't think he will be willing to do that now either.  Indeed, my guess is that after a lot of bluster, Iran would pull back following a counter strike.  There will be no all out war.

One wild card in the mix is the Israeli reaction.  There is an Israeli general election on Tuesday.  Almost certainly, the Israelis will take no action prior to that time.  Still, the Iranian attack makes the neighborhood much more dangerous, and it strengthens the electoral prospects of the governing Likud party.  Iran may have just succeeded in re-electing Netanyahu as prime minister, someone who is an ardent opponent of Iran.  If Netanyahu does win re-election, he may try to use the current situation to take action against the Iranian nuclear sites.  The Saudis may be willing to let Israeli planes use Saudi airspace or even bases for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.  It would be a high stakes gamble, and the Israelis might carry out such an attack in concert with the Saudis but without approval of the USA.  One never knows.  If that attack comes and is successful, then the likelihood of war in the region increases.  Such an attack would also up the prospect of war (although not by as much) should an Israeli attack fail.

We also can't forget the impact of all this in Europe, China and Japan.  Just a few days ago, French president Macron offered to pay the Iranians in "aid" so that they will adhere to the Iranian nuclear deal.  Iran did not accept.  This latest attack, however, is going to raise the price of gasoline and other petroleum products rather rapidly across Europe by 20% or more.  Given that the European economies were very weak, Europe could easily sink into a recession as a result.  We may finally have reached the point where the European leaders feel compelled to confront the Iranians.

China is also in a weak economic position at the moment.  Growth has slowed in dramatic fashion.  China gets a big percentage of its oil from the Gulf.  Japan does too.  They have a stake in stopping Iranian attacks of this sort.

Strangely, the rise in the price of oil and the reduction in the supply will benefit the USA the most and harm it the least.  America is now exporting oil.  We will get the benefit of the price rise.  We are also exporting liquefied natural gas.  This alternative fuel will become much more attractive as the price of oil pushes up.  There will likely be domestic rises in the price of gasoline, but not by all that much most likely.

Iran has placed a very big bet with this attack.  Given the situation around the world, however, it looks like a losing gamble, a very big loss indeed.

Another Strange Disparity

CBS News is making a big deal about an article written under the names of William Weld, Joe Walsh and Mark Sanford in the Washington Post today.  These three are candidates for the GOP nomination in 2020 and are running against President Trump.  It's not a real contest.  Trump had 88% support with 7% undecided in the last poll.  That means the three listed above shared 5% in the poll.  In any event, the three write to lament the decision of four states to drop their GOP primaries in 2020.  They made the decision to save the cost of running a primary.  The delegates to the GOP national convention for 2020 will be chosen by a state convention.  This sort of thing happens pretty much every time a sitting president runs for re-election.  For example, it happened when Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama each ran for the second term.  CBS, however,  blows the story up into some sort of plot to thwart the opposition to Trump.

Maybe CBS can explain why it feels so strongly about supporting a 1% Republican candidate but has no problem with debates that block 1% Democrat candidates.  

Taking Action or Virtue Signaling

It's a sad thing to watch Congress these days.  It has never been pretty to follow what happens at the Capitol day after day, but it has gotten so much worse lately.  The House of Representatives no longer seems even to be serious about dealing with problems.  They spend their time voting on bills that have no chance of passage in the Senate.  And make no mistake about it, these votes are not the start of a long negotiation with the Senate to come to some agreement.  No, these are virtue signaling bills.  This week, for instance, the House voted to end drilling in certain offshore areas even though there's no way the Senate would pass this or the President sign it.  It might be possible to trade of a drilling ban in some of these areas as part of an overall agreement on a batch of needed legislation, but the House seems to have no interest in getting anything done.

For its part, the Senate is focused on confirming nominees.  There have now been 150 judges confirmed after nomination by President Trump.  This is a record pace for confirmations.  In that respect, the Senate is taking its duties seriously.

The Democrats' Debate

As I posted last night, I didn't watch the Democrats' debate.  I didn't think I could take three hours of meaningless blather.  I have now watched the "highlights" of that debate as presented by six different media sites of varying political views.  It seems that I made the correct choice in skipping the event.

1.  As usual, the bogus moment of the night goes to Beto O'Rourke.  I saw his impassioned rant about taking certain weapons away from those who now own them.  It was insipid.  Even as president Beto wouldn't have the power to seize those guns.  And guess what?  Congress will never approve such a seizure.  So the whole thing is a joke.

2.  Joe Biden didn't seem to be able to give a coherent one minute statement on anything.  I didn't see all his answers, but I saw enough of them to realize that Old Joe is either senile or at least has attention deficit disorder.  His answer about whether the quick withdrawal from Iraq that let ISIS form was a mistake managed to talk about all sorts of things other than Iraq. 

3.  Bernie Sanders was still the angry old man.  The funniest line, though, had to be his statement that a plan for healthcare that would cost $30 trillion was the most cost effective plan around.  Right now, the country spends about 4 trillion per year on healthcare, and that is all individuals, companies and the government.  Bernie thinks 30 trillion would be cost effective.  Sure, Bernie.  You've obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

4.  I didn't see highlights from Elizabeth Warren for the most part.  Did she hide?

The Tremendous Validity of On Line Polls

The Democrats have finished about a half hour of their three hour debate.  I'm not crazy -- I'm not watching.  I can only take so many giveaways and empty promise before I start getting sick.  No matter.  I happened upon the on-line poll run by the Drudge Report. Usually after a debate, they run a poll as to who won.  Thousands of people vote.  Well guess what?  With only about 15% of the debate completed, there are already 2000 votes cast.  Yang is way ahead with 46% of the votes cast.

It's just another indication of how little value should be given to polls.

The Warren Reality

Elizabeth Warren's latest give away is her promise to raise Social Security benefits by $200 per month for all current and future beneficiaries.  Remember, Social Security will run out of money within ten years.  Adding $200 per month for 64 million people means an additional cost of $153 billion per year.  That's $153 billion each year forever, not just once.

Warren says she will pay for the extra cost by means of her wealth tax of 2% assessed against every American worth more than 50 million dollars.  That means that it would take a bit more than 7.5 trillion dollars taxed every year on this wealth tax to come up with the needed cash.

There are about 1.2 million households in the country that are worth $10 million or more.  There are fewer than 100,000 households worth $50 million.  If you use 100,000 households and say that they are worth on average about 100 million dollars, then you have a total net worth for all of them of 10 trillion dollars.  That means that for the first year, you will raise the needed cash to pay the Social Security bonus.  But then the tax avoidance measures will kick in.  How many of these rich people will have their lawyers and accountants find ways around the wealth tax?  What do we do is people like Bill Gates or other billionaires decide that it would be lovely to live in the the Bahamas or Curacao or just some other country that doesn't impose these taxes?  You can be sure that at least half of these people will find a way to avoid much of the tax.  For example, if Jeff Bezos is planning to set up the Amazon Foundation on his death, might he not do that now.  He could not only get an income tax deduction but he could also save the annual 2% wealth tax.

On top of the avoidance schemes, you would have the horrible impact that this move would have on the stock market.  To use Bill Gates as an example again, what if he decides that he has to sell 3% of his Microsoft stock to pay for the wealth tax?  After all, he will have to sell something.  Dumping that stock on the market will depress prices for sure.  As that happens in company after company, the entire market will decline.  People who depend on their savings to supplement their social security will get squeezed.  People who have 401K savings will get squeezed.  It will be harder for new companies to raise capital, and that will slow economic growth.  People across the country will have fewer job choices and unemployment will be higher.

The point is that we cannot tell exactly what the effect of this tax will be, but we know that it will surely hurt the economy and push us back towards the sort of stagnation that we saw under Obama.

Throw on top of this Warren's plan to raise income taxes to extreme levels and you can see just what is coming.  The reality of a Warren economy would be an endless cycle of recession and stagnation punctuated by occasional depressions.  It is a recipe for disaster.

Lindsey Boylan -- One of the USA's Most Important Democrats

The House Judiciary Committee passed a kind of resolution today outlining the proceedures to be followed in an investigation to determine whether or not it should proceed with considering and impeachment of President Trump.  If that sounds like weasel words, don't blame me.  That's pretty much the way the resolution reads.  It's designed to let House Democrats say that they are pursuing impeachment without actually pursuing impeachment.  Generally, the House Democrats understand that in places other than the West Side of Manhattan, Cambridge, and San Francisco, there is no clamoring for impeachment.  Indeed, impeachment is a manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Those pushing impeachment just hate Trump so much that they can't imagine not proceeding with hearings and a vote.

It is the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has forced the committee to take this vote.  The chair of the Judiciary Committe is Democrat Jerry Nadler and he happens to represent the West Side of Manhattan.  In other words, his district is way way to the left.  And to make matters worse for Nadler, he already has a primary opponent named Lindsey Boylan who is making Nadler's failure to move ahead with impeachment one of the principal issues in the campaign.  Given the nature of Nadler's district, he can't just let time pass without an investigation unless he wants to risk being upset in the primary.  Remember, primaries in NY draw a turnout of something like 15% of the eligible voters.  That means that a tiny, but motivated, minority can throw out a long-time congressman, and they can do it on a crazy issue like impeachment.  That's how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it to Congress in 2018.  Nadler knows this, and he just won't risk losing his permanent seat in Congress over something like this.  Instead, he will push impeachment even though he knows it will hurt the Democrats across the board.

By the time we get to election day in 2020, the campaign being waged by Lindsey Boylan could actually work to return control of the House to the GOP by pushing a large number of Democrats out past the voters on the issue of impeachment.

Can't They Be Honest?

Tonight there's a debate among the top ten Democrat candidates.  It is being held in Texas.  Right now, there are planes circling above the site of the debate that are trailing message banners stating that Socialism will kill millions of jobs.  This is a sign placed by the Trump campaign.

So far, this seems pretty usual.  The Dems are advocating for Socialism and the GOP oppose it.  The GOP has a sign up that argues that point.  Low and slow flying planes pulling signs is an old political tactic.  Certainly, anyone who spend time at a beach has seen one of these planes.

So how is the media playing this?  Politico calls the planes a "devious" tactic by the Trump campaign.  Similar language is used by others in the mainstream media.  But why is this devious?  A billboard wouldn't be devious, would it?  A TV commercial wouldn't be devious, would it?

The truth is that anything that promotes the GOP position is "devious" by definition according to the left wing media.  It's one of the main reasons why no one believes anything the media says anymore.

A Big Plus For Weld

William Weld was the Republican governor of Massachusetts some years ago.  He also was the Libertarian candidate for VP in 2016.  Now, he's running for President against president Trump in the GOP primaries.  There was a poll in New Hampshire that was released yesterday.  It showed Trump ahead of Weld by 88 to 3.  New Hampshire should be one of Weld's best states since he was governor in MA and more than half of NH gets its TV news from Boston.  That makes Weld well known in the Granite State.  Oh, lest I forget, Joe Walsh who is also running in the GOP primaries was at 1%.

Congratulation to Weld on his showing.  Now he ought to drop out and stop wasting everyone's time.

Coverage of North Carolina

Almost a day has passed since Dan Bishop won the special election to Congress in North Carolina.  For weeks leading up to the election the media told us that the Democrat would win.  It was a referendum on Trump and Trump was losing.  Then came the election.  The GOP candidate won by a rather standard margin for an open seat.  So what's today's standard headline?  Here's CNN:

GOP's narrow North Carolina victory is bad news for Trump in 2020

Except it wasn't a narrow victory.  It was pretty much what one would expect for an open seat.  it was also won by the GOP by a bigger margin than they led in 2018.  So nothing much has changed.  The media just can't tell the truth, though.

Often Overlooked on 9-11

Today is 9-11.  Essentially nobody needs to be reminded of the terrorist attack in 2001.  Remember, though, this is also the anniversary of the terrorist attack in Benghazi that took the lives of four including the US ambassador to Libya.  One thing that rarely, if ever, gets discussed, however, is the readiness status of US forces on 9-11.  The terrorists love celebrating the anniversary by launching attacks.  As a result, one would think that American forces would be on alert all around the world for this day.  There would be contingency plans as to how to quickly react should a new attack ensue.

Today, US forces are on alert.  For obvious reasons, I can't publish the details; I don't know them.  Hopefully, neither do the terrorists.  In any event we are prepared to respond should anything happen.

When Benghazi was attacked, things were different.  Despite the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East at the time (it was still the "Arab Spring"), president Obama and his people took no steps to prepare for 9-11.  When the consulate in Benghazi was attacked, there weren't even planes at our bases in Italy ready to respond.  Had that preparation been made, it is likely that the attack in Benghazi would have ended much sooner.  That would have saved two lives of US personnel.

This lack of preparation is something for which Obama should be remembered.  He always was able to talk about things well, but he never did anything well.  Often, he never did anything at all.  On 9-11, we need to remember this.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Dan Bishop won today's special election in the 9th district of North Carolina.  He beat the Democrat by a much larger margin than was the case in this district in 2018 when the race was extremely close.

So how has this been covered?  Until today, the media line was that the GOP was "struggling" to try to "avoid" the Democrats' blue wave.  The race was "surprisingly close", or it was "trending to the Democrats."  The truth, of course, turned out otherwise, but that really doesn't matter to the mainstream media.

It would be nice to see the media just cover this as a GOP win in a district that one would normally expect to be won by a Republican.  I don't get why media outlets like The Hill, Politico and CNN can't just be straight with the voters.