Tag Archives: Talking point

This Would Be Funny If It Wasn’t True

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The National Review posted an article today about a recent comment by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Before I share the comment, I would like to point out that Speaker Pelosi took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;”

The article reports:

In her Dear Colleague letter pushing back against Republican anti-impeachment talking points, Nancy Pelosi wrote this: “The weak response to these hearings has been, ‘Let the election decide.’ That dangerous position only adds to the urgency of our action, because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.”

‘Let the election decide’ is not a dangerous idea–it is how our representative republic works. Exactly what is President Trump doing that jeopardizes the integrity of the 2020 elections? Does the idea of national voter ID jeopardize elections? What Speaker Pelosi fears is that the voters will see through the sham that is going on now and ‘throw the bums out’ that are responsible for the sham.

I also would like to note that the continued charge that President Trump has ‘abused his power’ is never followed by specifics. Meanwhile, the reason that DACA is before the Supreme Court is that President Obama abused his power. In his own words, President Obama admitted that.

The Heritage Foundation reminded us of the following in September 2017:

Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he said that with “respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn’t “just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.”

There was no outcry when he changed his mind and did it anyway. When has President Trump done anything similar?

The Impact Of The Policies Of President Trump

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Yesterday Breitbart reported that Latino business owners are enjoying a 46 percent jump in revenue this year.

The article reports:

In May, Alfredo Ortiz of the Job Creators Network said that although Democrats claimed the Trump economy was no help to the Hispanic community, the facts revealed the opposite.

Ortiz wrote:

The fact is that Hispanics are flourishing in the Trump economy. Democrats asserting the contrary is a mere partisan talking point to try to deny Trump the Hispanic support he has earned and which may decide the presidential election outcome next year. Expect Democrats to increase their identity politics attacks in an effort to skew Latinos against Republicans over the next year and a half.

In September of 2018, Arora called the rapidly expanding Latino community a “powerful force” and stated that their businesses “contribute more than $700 billion to the economy annually.”

“The achievements of Latino small businesses are impressive when you consider it is often hard for them to gain access to capital. Yet they are making progress,” Arora concluded.

The Democrats will say anything to convince people that the Trump economy is not working for average Americans and minorities, but thinking Americans can look at the statistics and realize that the numbers show that average Americans and minorities are the people who have benefited from President Trump’s economic policies. If these groups want their prosperity to continue, they need to vote to continue those policies. I can guarantee that no Democrat running for President will continue those policies.

Facts Are Such Inconvenient Things

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The biggest advantage the Republicans will have in 2020 is a strong economy. Because the Democrats know this, they are trying very hard to downplay the economic recovery that is currently taking place. They have invented some interesting facts in their attempt to do this. However, the alternative media has learned to fact check these attempts to downplay President Trump’s economic success.

Townhall posted an article today that includes some recent fact checking.

The article reports on some recent statement by Kamala Harris:

First, I’m not sure many economists or Republicans cite the stock market as the top indicator of economic health, despite her initial straw man claim. There are many other metrics that are more indicative and more helpful to building that argument, which we’ll mention in a moment.  But it’s also worth pointing out that a robust stock market is not merely good news for people who own stocks, as Harris sarcastically says.  Plenty of workers’ benefit and retirement funds, including those of many public sector employees, are tied into the performance of the stock market — so it’s not just investors who benefit when markets are humming along, and it’s not just investors who feel pain when markets sustain hits. 

Second, in her attempt to downplay the impressive, stable and low US unemployment rate, Harris recycles a claim for which AOC was slapped down by fact-checkers a few months ago.  Even left-leaning Politifact assigned her a “pants on fire” rating.  Harris’ spin is less explicitly clumsy and wrong than AOC’s, as she didn’t specifically state that the low rate is directly attributable to people working more than one job, which makes absolutely no sense — but she does use this argument to undercut the (compelling) argument that the economy is in good shape because so many Americans are employed.  While it’s certainly true that a substantial number of people are working multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, it’s not accurate to pretend that this phenomenon is sufficiently widespread as to justify Harris’ talking point.

The article further reports:

The February jobs report found that just five percent of the employed population is working more than one job, down from 5.2 percent one year ago.  The experiences of the people who constitute that five percent matter, of course, but they are not evidence of a larger trend — and certainly not a trend that represents a real basis to shrug off the historically-low unemployment rate.  The jobs report that came out on Friday was a major ‘miss’ on a key number, with the US economy adding only 20,000 jobs last month; economists were expecting 180,000.  That’s a potentially concerning data point, underscoring the folly of simply assuming that the current prosperity streak will continue unabated.  But there were positive statistics, too.  The previous two months’ job creation data was revised upward by 12,000, and the overall unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent.  That marks 12 consecutive months, a full year, with the U3 figure at or below four percent, which is unambiguously good.

The article concludes:

Sustainability is a fair worry for the White House, but as of this moment, the most useful measuring sticks of the US economy are unemployment (3.8 percent), GDP growth (3.1 percent Q4 to Q4), and wage growth (3.4 percent).  All three are impressive.  Harris’ snarky point, therefore, is weak.  

As wages and jobs increase, voters will have to decide whether to believe what they are experiencing or what they are being told.

Hasn’t Anyone Read The U.S. Constitution?

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Yesterday The New York Times posted an op-ed piece titled, “The Inevitability of Impeachment” by Elizabeth Drew. It is an opinion piece, so I guess facts don’t really matter, but it is still an amazing work of fiction.

The piece states:

An impeachment process against President Trump now seems inescapable. Unless the president resigns, the pressure by the public on the Democratic leaders to begin an impeachment process next year will only increase. Too many people think in terms of stasis: How things are is how they will remain. They don’t take into account that opinion moves with events.

Whether or not there’s already enough evidence to impeach Mr. Trump — I think there is — we will learn what the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has found, even if his investigation is cut short.

I can see the talking point already–if the House begins impeachment proceedings and the Mueller investigation is ended because of that, the cry will be that he would have found something if he had had more time. The man has been supposedly looking for Russian collusion for two years at taxpayers’ expense and so far all he has come up with is a legal contract asking someone to remain silent.

The piece continues:

The word “impeachment” has been thrown around with abandon. The frivolous impeachment of President Bill Clinton helped to define it as a form of political revenge. But it is far more important and serious than that: It has a critical role in the functioning of our democracy.

Impeachment was the founders’ method of holding a president accountable between elections. Determined to avoid setting up a king in all but name, they put the decision about whether a president should be allowed to continue to serve in the hands of the representatives of the people who elected him.

So the impeachment of Bill Clinton was frivolous even when he lied to a Grand Jury and tried to influence others to do the same, but the impeachment of Donald Trump would not be frivolous. Wow. Please explain the logic here.

It always seemed to me that Mr. Trump’s turbulent presidency was unsustainable and that key Republicans would eventually decide that he had become too great a burden to the party or too great a danger to the country. That time may have arrived. In the end the Republicans will opt for their own political survival. Almost from the outset some Senate Republicans have speculated on how long his presidency would last. Some surely noticed that his base didn’t prevail in the midterms.

But it may well not come to a vote in the Senate. Facing an assortment of unpalatable possibilities, including being indicted after he leaves office, Mr. Trump will be looking for a way out. It’s to be recalled that Mr. Nixon resigned without having been impeached or convicted. The House was clearly going to approve articles of impeachment against him, and he’d been warned by senior Republicans that his support in the Senate had collapsed. Mr. Trump could well exhibit a similar instinct for self-preservation. But like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Trump will want future legal protection.

Mr. Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford, and despite suspicions, no evidence has ever surfaced that the fix was in. While Mr. Trump’s case is more complex than Mr. Nixon’s, the evident dangers of keeping an out-of-control president in office might well impel politicians in both parties, not without controversy, to want to make a deal to get him out of there.

Just for the record, Article II Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution reads:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

As far as anyone knows, that standard has not been met. You can’t impeach a President just because you don’t like him or you are mad because your candidate did not win the election.

The Truth Eventually Comes Out

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The upcoming issue of the Weekly Standard includes an article by Stephen Hayes about the evolution of the Obama Administration talking points concerning the attack on Benghazi. It is a rather lengthy article, and I suggest following the link above and reading the entire article. The Obama Administration purposely misled the American people in order to convince us that Al Qaeda was no longer a threat. I don’t know if the results of the 2012 would have been different if voters had known the truth, but I still hate being lied to.

In a nutshell, this is the story:

The changes are not minor changes, nor are they related to security concerns–the changes are political. Secretary of State Clinton was smart enough not to go on television and repeat the drivel that finally emerged as talking points. Had she gone on all of the Sunday talk shows with the final version of the talking points, her political career would have ended as soon as the truth came out. The entire truth is not out yet, but I am hopeful that it will come out in the future.

I don’t care about the talking points as much as I care about why we did not send available aid immediately to those people who were attacked in Benghazi. To me, that is a much more important question.

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When National Security Takes A Backseat To Politics

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Today was the day General Petraeus testified before Congress on the Benghazi attack of September 11. MRC.TV is reporting on a statement made by Representative Peter King after the General testified.

This is the video:

The article reports Representative King’s statement:

Representative Peter King stated that former CIA Director David Petraeus stated that he knew the Benghazi attack was terrorism and that the talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice were different from the ones prepared by the CIA. Petraeus stated Rice’s talking points were edited to demphasized the possibility of terrorism. 

The reason behind this is simple. The Democrat Convention was all about killing Osama Bin Laden and the end of Al Qaeda. The attack on Benghazi showed that Al Qaeda was alive and quite capable of attacking American assets. Therefore, the fact that the attack at Benghazi was Al Qaeda needed to be covered up–at least until after the election.

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