The Special Election in PA - 18

There's a special election in two days in the 18th congressional district of Pennsylvania.  This is the southwest corner of the Keystone State, and it is an area that supported Donald Trump in 2016.  Although there are more registered Democrats than Republicans in the district, it has been represented by a member of the GOP for the last 16 years.  The Democrats are salivating at the prospect of winning this seat and embarrassing the President by doing so.  The polls show the Republican, Saccone, slightly ahead of the Democrat, Lamb, but there is at least one that shows the Democrat ahead.  So what should we make of all this?

The outcome in Pennsylvania will be decided by one thing and one thing only:  turnout.  Without question, there are many Democrats who are motivated by their opposition to anything and everything Trump.  They will vote.  There will also be the people who vote in every election no matter if it is regular or special, presidential or off-year.  Then there are the people who came out to vote for Trump in 2016 but who normally do not vote especially in off-year or special elections.  The deciding question in the district will be how many of this last group turns out to vote for Saccone.

The President held a rally in the district last night to promote Saccone's candidacy.  He got a large turnout and the speech was carried on all the cable news networks.  In 2016, though, a rally in the area by Trump got a larger turnout.  Other White House and national Republican figures have been campaigning for Saccone as well.  Will that be enough to bring a victory to Saccone?

There's one thing that may help push Saccone over the finish line to victory.  This district has been home to many coal mines and steel mills.  President Trump has already taken actions to try to help the coal industry, and this week he announced tariffs on steel that should help the steel mills as well.  Already, the owner of one steel mill in Ohio has announced that the mill will reopen and bring back 1000 jobs.  There is no doubt that this move must have been extremely popular in the district.  Will this bring people to the polls?  We will know on Tuesday.

My prediction is that Saccone will win with something like 54% of the vote.  Undoubtedly CNN will call this a defeat for the Republicans because the victory margin will be less than Trump's in 2016, but that is silly.  After all, the Democrat in this race, Lamb, does not have all the defects that Hillary Clinton had in 2016.  There will be no real anti-Lamb vote while there was a huge anti-Clinton vote.  I realize that my prediction is just an educated guess.  Anything can happen.  Tuesday evening should be interesting, for sure. 

Democrats Double Down on Taxes -- Are They Trying To Lose

For the longest time, the Democrats haven't had any policy proposals other than open borders.  Basically, the Democrats' position has been to say "we're the party that hates Trump."  Now that the 2018 elections are eight months away, the Dems have decided to start rolling out policy proposals on which to run.  I guess that they realize that being anti-Trump is not enough.  So what have the Dems chosen as their first position?  They have come out in favor of a massive tax increase.  They want to raise taxes by 1.6 trillion dollars and use the money for some undefined infrastructure program.  I'm not kidding.  The Democrats have released a detailed plan for raising taxes.  Here is the essence of it:

-          Return The Top Individual Tax Rate Back To 39.6%

 

-          Restoring The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax To 2017 Law

 

-          Restoring The Estate And Gift Taxes

 

-          Closing The Carried Interest Loophole

 

-          Bring The Corporate Tax Rate To 25%

It's hard to imagine that the Dems would choose to run on higher taxes.  Remember, prior to the passage of the now popular GOP tax cut, the Democrats managed to get the public to dislike the plan because they claimed it was actually a tax increase, and no one wanted that.  Now that the Democrats' lies about the Republican tax cut law have been revealed to the public, the Democrats are pushing their own tax increase.

And despite the spin of the Democrats, this is not just a tax increase on the wealthy.  It hits the middle class hard.  Just look at the second item dealing with the Alternative Minimum Tax.  The AMT was originally passed 50 years ago to hit the wealthy, but since it was not indexed for inflation, it moved on to hit much of the middle class as well.  In 2017, the AMT starts to hit single taxpayers at $54,000 of income and married couples at $84,000.  Those are hardly wealthy people; they are in the heart of the middle class.  Further, because of the way the AMT works, most of the truly wealthy don't get hit by it; the tax hits the middle class much harder.  This is the tax that the Dems want to "restore"

And how about the estate and gift taxes?  The GOP plan changed the exemptions but kept the tax.  The point of the change was to make it possible for family farms and small businesses to be retained by heirs rather than being forced to sell these assets to pay high estate taxes.  For a billionaire, the changes were minuscule.  Once again, the Democrats aren't aiming their tax plan at the truly wealthy, but rather at the middle class.

I can't believe that the Dems are positioning themselves as the party of higher taxes, but they are.  How many people are going to be won over by that?  I don't think the number will be too high.

 

#FakeHistory ???

We've been through two years of Fake News as a topic of discussion.  Now we may be getting Fake History.  There's a new book coming out by David Corn and Michael Isikoff in which the authors detail a supposed plan to launch a cyber counterstrike against the Russians in the Summer of 2016 to get them to stop meddling in the US elections.  Supposedly a detailed plan for this cyber strike were developed at the White House until the Obama administration wimped out and stopped the preparations.  Of course, given the authors of this book, there's no way to know if anything it contains is true.

Isikoff is best remembered as the reporter who first got the Monica Lewinsky story but who sat on it.  It took Matt Drudge to bring the truth to light.  Corn writes for Mother Jones magazine (which ought to tell you all you need to know.)  Corn was a major Clinton acolyte; he is also not a slave to the truth.  These two could easily be writing a history to show that it was Obama who led to Hillary's defeat.  That would not be because the history would be true, but rather because it would please the Clintons.

It may be easy to believe that Obama wimped out in confronting the Russians and protecting the USA.  After all, Obama wimped out so many times previously, it was as if wimping out was Obama's hobby, a hobby he loved.  Still, since much of the story in the book supposedly depends on statements by Susan Rice who has never met a lie she didn't like, there's no way to know if any of this is true.  Thus, we go from #FakeNews to #FakeHistory.

You Decide

Here's a question for you to ponder in connection with the announcement yesterday in Washington about America's upcoming dealings with North Korea:

Which of the following facts do you consider more important:

1.  The news that there will soon be a meeting between President Trump and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was delivered to the media on the White House driveway after dark by a South Korean, and the reporters were cold; or

2.  North Korea says it has suspended testing both nuclear weapons and missiles pending that meeting?

If you are the AP, your choice is easy.  You pick item 1.  In fact, in the article about the announcement, the AP does not even mention the cessation of nuclear/missile testing by the NK's.  The AP article makes it sound like President Trump is meeting with Kim on a whim.  The article does not mention that for the last year, the White House has said that negotiations with the North Koreans would only take place once the NK's stop their testing programs for both nukes and missiles.  The North Koreans had refused to even consider such a condition for negotiations, but yesterday we got the news that Kim had backed down and was now accepting President Trump's announced conditions.  For the AP, this is not even news worthy of mention.

I don't know if this is an intentional choice by the AP, in other words FAKE NEWS, or if the reporters who wrote this piece are so ignorant about the subject that they somehow missed these facts.  If it's the former, the AP should be ashamed of its work.  If it's the latter, the AP should be ashamed of its work.  That's an easy choice to make; the AP should be ashamed.

Trump Can't Win with The Media

Tonight we got the news that North Korea was suspending nuclear testing and missile testing in exchange for NOTHING.  We also learned that the North Koreans no longer were requiring the USA and South Korea to stop joint military exercises before the NK's would enter into any sort of negotiations.  Finally we learned that Kim Jung Un asked for a meeting with President Trump to discuss denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

So what has the reaction of the mainstream media been?  Here are a few examples:  1.  Rachel Maddow told her audience that it was "risky and foolish" for an American president to meet with the North Korean dictator.  Apparently, Maddow has no suggestions about how to end the North Korean march towards nuclear weapons, but she knows that whatever Trump does must be wrong.  2. On CNN, I watched three panelists on Anderson Cooper 180 (they only give one side) tell the audience that there was no way that the USA or Trump could possibly prepared for a meeting with the North Korean leader in the seven weeks or so that remain until May starts (when the meeting is supposed to take place.)  These "experts" said that there needed to be "careful study" of the issues before the meeting.  So that means that the "experts" on CNN think that no one has studied the issues before now and that the process is only going to start now.  3.  I also saw a "presidential historian" tell a TV audience that it would be hard for the USA to do well in these meetings because we would be represented by a "novice" president.  Huh?  It's that same "novice" president who managed to get the NK's to back down and come to the table.  He succeeded while all those other "non-novice" presidents failed.

I know that the mainstream media does not like President Trump.  I get that.  What I don't get is why the supposed reporters of the mainstream media have to play everything Trump does as a failure.  America had a wonderful advance in its foreign policy with these North Korean developments.  If you listen to the media, however, you would think these latest developments are the harbingers of doom, indeed, a total disaster.  They just cannot bring themselves to speak with approval of anything that Trump does.  It's just sad.

Missing The Point

Tonight brought an extraordinary triumph for American foreign policy under President Trump.  You wouldn't know it to listen to the mainstream media, however.  Here's what happened:

1.  North Korea has agreed to suspend nuclear weapons and missile testing.  The North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un has received nothing in return for this suspension of testing.  The US-South Korean joint military exercises will continue as scheduled.  The sanctions on North Korea will remain in place.  In other words, North Korea may well have blinked.

2.  North Korea is also proposing a meeting directly between the NK leader and President Trump to discuss issues including the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.  Again, North Korea gets nothing in return for this.

3.  President Trump has agreed to meet with the North Korean leader as a result of these action.  The meeting will be arranged to take place some time by May.

If you read most mainstream media accounts, all you learn is that there will be a meeting between Trump and Kim Jung Un.  Points 1 and 2 above -- which are the key to tonight's announcement -- somehow get mentioned very little, if at all.

Think about this.  For the last year, the "experts" with whom the media has communicated have blasted Trump for putting pressure on the North Koreans, for insulting Kim with names like "little Rocket Man", for threatening military action against the NK's, and the like.  These "experts" wanted to follow the old policies that had failed.  The North Koreans are at most months away from having a nuclear armed missile that can hit essentially anywhere in the USA.  All through the Obama years, the USA followed those failed policies, and the prospect of a nuclear North Korea just got closer and closer.  It was Trump's maximum pressure on the NK's -- much derided by the "experts" -- that finally may have led to this breakthrough.

Now let's be clear.  This may still be nothing more than a ruse by Kim to buy more time to work on the nukes and the missiles.  We won't know that for a while.  Without a doubt, however, we have moved from the Obama road which led only to disaster to the Trump road which may end with success.  It's wonderful news, even if the media doesn't want to admit it.

The Assault Never Ends

The mainstream media assault on President Trump just never seems to end.  I just saw an article on yahoo news that discusses how the people who predicted that the economy would tank under Trump were right, just premature.  You see, the past year under Trump when the economy grew much faster than it had under Obama and unemployment fell to long time lows was just a precursor to a big recession which is sure to come in the near future, at least that's what the "reporter" says.  It's not a problem to predict doom and gloom so long as you always put the onset of the disaster in the future.  It's coming, even if the USA never gets there.

I'm tired of all this nonsense.  The facts are clear.  The economy is finally growing at a decent pace, and the tax cuts are likely to speed up growth further.  The numbers of people with jobs is way up and growing.  Wages are going up after stagnating for eight years under Obama.  Minority unemployment is at all time lows under a president who the left calls "racist".  Somehow, Trump brought down black unemployment to levels Obama could only dream about.  The prospects for continued growth are good; the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates, in part because the Fed wants to make sure the economy doesn't grow too fast to be sustainable.  Economically speaking, the USA is in a better place than at any time under Obama.  Nevertheless, the left wing media just cannot stand to admit the truth, so we get idiocy like the article at Yahoo News.