Tag Archives: State of the Union address

When The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up

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Issues & Insights posted an article Monday about President Biden’s claims in his State of the Union address about the taxes the wealthy pay versus the taxes he thinks the wealthy should pay. The bottom line is ‘simply hang on to your wallet no matter how much you make,’ but the article refutes some of his claims.

The article reports:

First, consider his claim that the tax rate paid by billionaires is 8.2%. That plays well with soak-the-rich leftists. But where did he get this number?

Not from the IRS. It calculates the actual tax rate that various income groups pay, including the ultra-rich. Its data show that the 400 people with the biggest incomes in America were paying an average tax rate of more than 23%. Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation figures that the tax rate on the top 0.4% of families is 26%.

So where does Biden come up with an 8.2% tax rate? He changes the definition of taxable income to include all unrealized gains from investments.

If you have money in the stock market, any gains in the value of those stocks would count as income to Biden, even if you don’t sell the stock. Presumably so would any gains in the value of your home. Or the value of any other assets you possess.

By artificially inflating income, Biden can make their tax burden seem tiny. 

The idea of taxing unrealized gains — in other words, extending the income tax to things that aren’t income — could very well be unconstitutional in addition to being economically reckless.

Just for the record, Americans are already taxed on unrealized gains–every year we pay a real estate tax on what the city or county assesses is the value of our house. We haven’t sold our house. The only actual gain from our house is having a place to live, yet every year we pay taxes on it.

The article concludes:

What about his claim that taxing the wealth — not the income — of billionaires would raise $500 billion?

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Except Biden is hoping nobody notices the caveat — that it’s $500 billion over 10 years. In other words, $50 billion a year.

Even that might sound like a lot … until you put it in context.

That $50 billion wouldn’t even cover one month’s worth of interest payments on the national debt, which was $69.2 billion in January.

It wouldn’t even pay half of the increase in the deficit in the first five months of this year compared with last year. (The deficit from October through February was $830 billion, which is up $108 billion from the same months the year before.)

The idea that an extra $50 billion could finance a new childcare entitlement, paid leave, and home care isn’t just ludicrous, it’s insane.

We don’t expect Biden to know or understand what he’s reading on the teleprompter, but shame on anyone else for believing the lies he’s spewing.

Someone needs to explain the Laffer Curve to the Biden administration.

How Long Can This Continue?

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On Sunday, Clarice Feldman posted an article at the American Thinker about our rapidly disintegrating President.

The article notes:

A day after his pumped-up divisive State of the Union address, unsurprisingly headlined “fiery” by the copycat media lackeys, President Biden, speaking in Pennsylvania, reverted to his old befuddled self.

“Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: send me to Congress!” 

“Last night [at] the U.S. Capitol — the same building where our freedoms came under assault on July the 6th!”

“We added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history!”

Some Americans believe that the senility and dementia are an act. I don’t agree, but I think it would probably be better if it were.

The article continues:

Well, the last statement is true. I’ll give him that. And large budget deficits are a pattern in Democrat-run cities and states. Democrats pay off cronies and constituencies with government money and then raise your taxes because they’ve spent more than they were able to squeeze out of the economy.

Nearest to me, that pattern is evident in Maryland and Washington, D.C.: They look the other way at rising crime because they defunded the police and decriminalized conduct and then bemoan empty purses as people and businesses flee. They locked down their states and were surprised to learn that capped the revenue spigot. They made ridiculous, frivolous expenditures like bike lanes and street cars and painting BLM on a major street and then can’t pay for necessities like cops, road repairs, and schools.

The article concludes with a list of some of the accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge and some of the things that happened under his watch:

Without government interference, private enterprise quickly electrified the country and created a transportation revolution as more Americans could drive their new automobiles.

Average earnings rose 30 percent in a decade. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by a third… This great economic and lifestyle revolution for Americans of modest means happened with basically no guidance from the federal government. The government largely stayed out of the way. 

We can dream, can’t we?

It really is time for a change.

“Get Off My Lawn,” He Shouted

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Last night I watched the State of the Union Address. I watched the entire speech and the rebuttal. I learned that to our ‘representatives’ and the elites in Washington, the most most important issues are Ukraine and January 6th. In the rebuttal, I learned that the four things important to Republicans are our southern borde5r, conflicts overseas, inflation, and crime–not necessarily in that order. When the State of the Union Address was over, I felt like someone had yelled at me for an hour and a half. The speech proved that President Biden does have the energy to give an hour and a half speech. It also left many Americans wondering if there were drugs involved.

In his speech, the President needed to allay doubts about his cognitive abilities. He also needed a reset from his image as a tired old man. He did a reasonable job on both counts as long as you ignored the yelling and the slurred speech near the end of the address.

There were a number of lies told during the speech. January 6th was not an insurrection–there were no guns involved and no one has been convicted of insurrection. The President did not inherit a struggling economy–he inherited low inflation, low interest rates, energy independence, and an economy on the rebound from the Covid lockdowns. A large number of the jobs he claims to have created were simply people returning to the jobs they held before the Covid lockdowns. I would also like to note that many of the jobs currently being created are part-time jobs. During the past two months, the number of full-time jobs has significantly decreased. The President also claimed that crime is down under his administration. That is simply not true, although much of the increase in crime is due to Democrat-run cities who have eliminated bail and are not keeping criminals in jail. In New York, the National Guard has been called up to patrol the New York City subways because crime has become a serious problem there.

Also, why was there a fence around the Capitol, but not a wall at our southern border? Do fences and walls work or do they not work? There was also a comment about increasing taxes on corporation and on the wealthy. Corporations do not pay taxes–they pass them on to their customers, fueling inflation. “Taxing the rich” is a proposal that simply feeds class envy. If you want to see the results, look at the Laffer Curve. I would also like to note that during the Obama administration, General Electric paid no income taxes. Why weren’t they sharing the burden?

The speech was loud, inaccurate, and divisive. The tone was not attractive. I do wonder if this speech, which seemed more like a campaign speech than a State of the Union Address, actually won over any undecided voters.

I Wondered About This When He Said It

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There were a lot of misleading statements in the State of the Union address on Tuesday. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about one of these statements.

The article reports:

Presidents typically embellish their achievements during their State of the Union addresses, but President Biden’s pose as a budget deficit hawk is one for the ages.

“By the end of this year, the deficit will be down to less than half what it was before I took office,” he said, adding that he will be “the only President ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.”

That’s not by choice.

The article notes:

This assumes Congress doesn’t enact his Build Back Better plan or the more Covid relief he’s asking for.

He’s also using the fiscal 2020 budget as his benchmark. Congress passed $2 trillion in Covid relief in March 2020 to prevent a recession. Both parties piled on $900 billion more that December, and Democrats in March 2021 ladled out nearly $2 trillion more. The deficit is declining because Congress blew it out for two years.

…Inflation is always good for government coffers. Receipts are up 28% during the first four months of this fiscal year. But the Congressional Budget Office still projects deficits to exceed $1 trillion on average over the next decade.

The article concludes:

Mr. Biden is hoping the deficit reduction ruse will lure West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to go along with more spending. Don’t fall for it, sir.

Remember, statistics can pretty much be manipulated to say anything a statistician wants them to say. President Biden evidently has some good statisticians in his speech writing department.

The New York Post Analysis

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On Wednesday, The New York Post posted a list of the top 10 ways President Biden deluded himself during his State of the Union address.

Here is the list:

1. FEIGNING to stand up for Ukraine when he publicly told Vladimir Putin last month that a “minor incursion” was tolerable, and when his son Hunter treated Ukraine like a private piggybank during Biden’s vice-presidency.

2. CALLING for unity to a room full of Republicans while falsely claiming that the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut only helped “the top 1%.”

3. POSING amusingly as an America First nationalist — complete with Trumpian “USA! USA!” chants from his colleagues on the floor. All power to Biden if he follows through on his promised “revitalization of American manufacturing,” but he will be going against his own record.

4. Securing our border: This takes some chutzpah when Biden deliberately dismantled Trump’s hard-won border protections and is still in court fighting the remain-in-Mexico policy.

5. BEATING the opioid epidemic: The “opioid crisis” he anointed as a bipartisan cause was turbocharged when he flung open the southern border to record quantities of fentanyl, a drug which is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

6. GASLIGHTING us on the pandemic: “Let’s stop looking at COVID as a partisan dividing line,” said the president who has done nothing but manipulate COVID fear for political purposes, and changed tune only after opinion polls on his handling of the pandemic headed south.

7. BLUNTING gas prices: He’s pulling our leg. Biden boasted about tapping into 30 million barrels of our emergency oil reserves — less than two days’ supply — while not mentioning a word about unleashing our plentiful untapped oil and gas supplies.

8. CHAMPIONING police “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police,” Biden thundered.

9. VALORIZING the military Biden paid tribute to soldiers said to have contracted cancer from “burn pits” — an as-yet unproven claim on which he dwells in hope of a combat-related cause of his own son’s death from brain cancer.

10. MYSTIFYING the world Biden went off script after saying “God bless our troops” at the end of his speech. “Go get him!” he ad-libbed.

It would be wonderful if President Biden actually closed the southern border and acted to lower fuel prices for Americans by using our own resources. However, I think the chances of that are slim to none.

 

When The Actions Just Don’t Match The Words

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On Tuesday, Breitbart posted an article about a particularly odd comment in President Biden’s State of the Union address.

The article notes:

President Joe Biden used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to call on Congress to “secure the border,” after his administration allowed roughly 1.5 million migrants to pour across the southern border in his first months in office.

This is a direct quote from the speech (via CNN):

And if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure the Border and fix the immigration system.
We can do both. At our border, we’ve installed new technology like cutting-edge scanners to better detect drug smuggling.
We’ve set up joint patrols with Mexico and Guatemala to catch more human traffickers.
We’re putting in place dedicated immigration judges so families fleeing persecution and violence can have their cases heard faster.

We’re securing commitments and supporting partners in South and Central America to host more refugees and secure their own borders.

On December 9, 2021, The Washington Times reported:

If anyone is dismantling the immigration system, it is the Biden administration. While it systematically reversed the most successful border security policies ever created, it has been lying to the American people and projecting its failures onto its predecessors.

Within the first few days of taking office, Biden discontinued the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), better known as the Remain in Mexico program. He ended it even though it was the most successful border security program ever created and resulted in a significant decrease in illegal immigration. Even after officials from the Trump administration, including myself, consulted with his transition teams on multiple occasions about the risks of ending MPP along with the data that show it was a game-changer, Biden dismantled it anyway.

He also ended the Safe Third Country agreements the Trump administration had put in place with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the homelands of a majority of the illegal migrants entering the U.S. This policy was also effective at stemming unlawful immigration into the U.S. and helping to prevent thousands of fraudulent asylum claims. This policy made it possible for migrants who claimed to be fleeing fear and persecution from their home government to claim asylum in the first safe country they entered.  

The Biden administration then dismantled the deportation process by placing a moratorium on all deportations. To end consequences for illegal behavior only brings more illegal behavior. The proof can be seen in the caravans and accelerated flow of migrants since Biden assumed office.  

Securing the border is a really good idea. Americans are being killed not only by the illegal drugs coming across the border, but by illegal aliens driving drunk, and stealing from and assaulting American citizens. President Biden needs to undo the Executive Orders he put in place that have made our country less secure.

I Guess We Don’t All See The Same Things

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On Tuesday, President Biden will deliver his State of the Union address. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to preview the speech. I guess your perception of America right now depends a lot on which political party you belong to.

The article reports:

To close out her segment, host George Stephanopoulos brought up a stark reality that Biden is facing right now. “Finally, the president is approaching his State of the Union in a pretty difficult political position right now, 37 percent approval rating, Democrats trailing badly in the midterm polling. A majority in our recent poll out this morning even question the president’s mental capacity,” Stephanopoulos mentioned, highlighting the results of a new ABC News-Washington Post poll, which I also covered earlier.

“How is he going to turn that around on Tuesday night? And how much has his State of the Union been changed by this war in Ukraine?” Stephanopoulos asked.

The article includes Ms. Psaki’s answer:

PSAKI: Well, George, I think there’s no question that, in the State of the Union, the American people and anybody watching around the world will hear the president talk about the efforts he has led over the past several months to build a global coalition to fight — fight against the autocracy and the efforts of President Putin to invade a foreign country. That is certainly something that is present in all of our lives and certainly in the president’s life in this moment.

But what people will also hear from President Biden is his optimism and his belief in the resilience of the American people and the strength of the American people.

And you know, George, from covering State of the Unions for some time, that — that it is about delivering a message to the public at a moment in time. And if you look back when President Obama gave his first State of the Union, it was during the worst financial crisis in a generation. When President Bush gave his first State of the Union, it was shortly after 9/11.

Leaders lead during crises. That’s exactly what President Biden is doing. He’ll speak to that, but he’s also going to speak about his optimism about what’s ahead and what we all have to look forward to.

Wow. If we are all so thrilled with President Biden’s leadership, why are they putting fencing up around the Capitol?

The Consequences Of Success

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article that illustrates the bias of the mainstream media.

The article begins with a denial from the networks. I am not sure I believe the denial:

Representatives from both CNN’s State of the Union and CBS’s Face the Nation refuted Grisham’s claims that they turned down an appearance from a White House official. A Fox News spokesperson also pointed out that Grisham inaccurately said Fox Business was the only network to accept a White House spokesperson because they do not have a Sunday talk show.

The article states:

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed a slew of networks declined to book a White House official for Sunday programming after a good news week for President Trump.

Grisham, in a Friday night appearance on Hannity, acknowledged the White House will not get much airtime to discuss the State of the Union address, the president getting acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial, and a strong jobs report.

“I have got to tell you there is not going to be one White House official on any of the Sunday shows this weekend. Only Fox Business is taking a White House official to talk about what an amazing week this president has had, and I do find that timing very, very suspect,” she explained.

The article concludes:

While most networks aren’t featuring a White House official, many are bringing on Trump supporters. CBS’s Face The Nation will have South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, as well as 2020 hopefuls Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The two presidential candidates will also appear on Fox News Sunday.

Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani will appear on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures.

ABC’s This Week will also feature two Democratic presidential candidates; the only conservative on their guest list is former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, who is also a network contributor.

It will be interesting to see the comments about Speaker Pelosi’s tearing up the speech on the Sunday shows. Her actions were childish and totally inappropriate. However, I doubt they will be reported as such.

What Does The Green New Deal Have In Common With The United Nations’ Solutions To Global Warming?

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Yesterday Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial about the Democrat’s Green New Deal. Oddly enough, when you look at the consequences of the policies of the Green New Deal, they have a lot in common with ideas espoused by the United Nations.

The motives of both are somewhat questionable.

In March 2016, I posted an article with the following:

…Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

For those who want to believe that maybe Edenhofer just misspoke and doesn’t really mean that, consider that a little more than five years ago he also said that “the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”

Mad as they are, Edenhofer’s comments are nevertheless consistent with other alarmists who have spilled the movement’s dirty secret. Last year, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, made a similar statement.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said in anticipation of last year’s Paris climate summit.

“This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

Let’s compare that to the Green New Deal.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

Reading the Green New Deal (GND) plan, put out Thursday by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, one is tempted to think it’s not real, just a joke from the satirical “The Onion.” The individual planks in the plan, individually and collectively, sound like the rantings of someone who should be institutionalized, not like a rational political plan to solve a real problem.

Let’s begin with what the plan promises: “a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline.”

That’s a sweeping, explicit pledge of radical socialist change. And that’s  not all. It offers “a 10-year plan to mobilize every aspect of American society at a scale not seen since World War 2 to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and create economic prosperity for all.”

The editorial at Investor’s Business Daily concludes:

“The so-called Green New Deal resolution presented today by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., is a Back-to-the-Dark Ages Manifesto,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment. “It calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in ten years, ‘upgrading all existing buildings’, and replacing our vehicle fleet with electric cars and more mass transit. And turning our energy economy upside down must be accomplished while ending historic income inequities and oppression of disadvantaged groups. Needless to say, the costs would be stupendous, and the damage done by its policies would be catastrophic.”

We’re grateful that President Trump threw down the gantlet against socialism during his Tuesday night State of the Union address. As he said, “America will never be a Socialist country.” And he drove that point home by adding: “We were born free and we will stay free.”

Scourge Of Socialism

We hope he’s right, and America’s declining education system and the increasingly far-left mainstream media have’t made socialism a palatable choice against the extraordinary success of  the free market. Socialism is among humanity’s worst ideas and it has failed everywhere — everywhere — it has been tried.

Those who don’t think the socialist disaster of Venezuela can happen here are sadly — tragically — mistaken.

It should never be tried again, anywhere, but especially not here.

They idea that a country can prosper by guaranteeing everyone a comfortable standard of living whether they choose to work or not goes against human nature. Prosperity comes from achievement, and achievement is generally spurred on by the rewards it receives. If hard work is not rewarded, there will be no great achievements. It’s that simple.

Morality In America

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General Omar Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was a field commander of the United States Army who saw distinguished service in North Africa and Europe during World War II and later became General of the Army. He once stated:

“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and we have rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without conscience, our world is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”

One of the moral issues facing America today is abortion. Not just abortion–late term abortion and deciding whether or not a baby who survives an abortion should be given a chance to live. Part of the problem is that abortion is a million-dollar industry partially subsidized by our government and at the same time making large campaign donations.

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about one of Speaker Pelosi’s guests at the State of the Union speech:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., invited Leana Wen, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, to be one of her guests at the State of the Union address.

Wen’s seat was not cheap. Affiliates of her organization spent millions to support Pelosi’s quest for the majority in the House of Representatives and the ultimately unsuccessful efforts by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to retake the Senate.

In total, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Votes — the arms of the Planned Parenthood Network allowed to engage in electoral politics under tax regulations — spent almost $6.5 million in outside spending supporting the election of Democrats to both houses of Congress in the 2018 midterm and special elections, according to FEC records compiled by OpenSecrets.

The article explains the current goals of Planned Parenthood:

Planned Parenthood didn’t spend large sums just to get face time with Speaker Pelosi or reward donors such as Wallace. Federal government programs channel $563.8 million to the Planned Parenthood network annually. To keep Pelosi and her allies in charge of the federal purse strings is to ensure the continued flow of taxpayer money to the organization and its affiliates.

Planned Parenthood also hopes to expand the scope of abortion law. Planned Parenthood-backed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam recently sparked controversy when he defended a Planned Parenthood-backed repeal of certain limits on late-term abortions. Northam suggested that an infant delivered alive in a botched late-term abortion would “be kept comfortable” and “would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.”

At the federal level, the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from directly funding abortions except in extremely limited circumstances; Planned Parenthood would like to see these inconvenient restrictions removed.

So on “SOTU” night, full of kingly pomp and symbol, Leana Wen sat in Speaker Pelosi’s section. It was yet another symbol of a powerful special interest’s hold on a Congress it helped pay to elect.

If you do not support these goals, I suggest you get involved locally in order to elect people to Congress who share your beliefs. Otherwise, federally-paid-for-late-term abortions will become a reality in America.

 

Have We Passed The Point Of Being Able To Have A Serious Discussion Of Issues?

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article that provides some background information on Stacey Abrams.

These are some basic facts about Ms. Abrams listed in the article:

1. She ‘Wouldn’t Oppose’ Noncitizen Voting  –  she did support the idea of non-citizens voting to local elections, but the fact remains that people who are here illegally are breaking the law and should not have voting rights.

2. She Wants to Turn Georgia Blue – that’s not all that unusual, but her approach in somewhat interesting.

3. She Wants to Promote ‘Race and Gender’ Issues – has anyone else noticed that promoting race and gender issues divides us rather than unites us?

4. She Was Endorsed by Planned Parenthood – just for the record, Planned Parenthood receives on average approximately $500 million a year in taxpayer funds. How much of that money is essentially laundered and spent on campaign contributions?

5. She Is ‘Sick and Tired’ of Free Market Role in Health Care – actually health care worked very well until the government got involved – people were taken care of and the cost was not prohibitive.

6. She Says ‘Liberal’ Is a Good Word – that is her privilege.

7. She Says the AR-15 Doesn’t Belong in Civilian Hands – Don’t look for her to support the Second Amendment.

And finally:

8. She Is a ‘Romance’ Novelist – she writes sexually explicit romance novels under the name of Selena Montgomery.

The comments in bold type are from the article. Other comments are mine.

This is the person the Democrats have chosen to respond to the State of the Union address.

The Week To Come

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Next week is shaping up to be an interesting week. On Tuesday we will hear President Trump’s State of the Union Address followed by a response given by failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

On Tuesday Townhall posted an article about the choice of Ms. Abrams.

Some highlights from the article:

Abrams, who believes illegal aliens should be able to vote in elections, refused to concede to duly elected Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and repeatedly accused him of racism.

Interestingly enough, in addition to scheduling President Trump’s address for the coming week, the Democrats have now scheduled February 7 as the date to vote on the confirmation of William Barr as Attorney General, and scheduled acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee for February 8. There is a method to their plan. Part of the method is that the President’s speech is quite likely to be about the amazing economic achievements of his two years in office and he will probably talk about some of the problems on our southern border. The Democrats are looking for a way to blunt any positive impact of the speech.

Yesterday American Greatness posted an article about some aspects of the scheduling.

The article reports:

The committee’s vote is scheduled to take place one day before acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee on a number of topics, including the Mueller probe; Trump foes claim Whitaker should have recused himself from oversight of the investigation based on some of his past comments, even though a Justice Department ethics review cleared him of any conflicts.

This one-two punch has a purpose: To taint Barr’s impartiality and discredit his office on all matters related to Trump-Russia. Why? Because during his confirmation hearing, Barr agreed—at the behest of Republican senators—to begin his own inquiry into who, why, and how the FBI launched several investigations into Trump’s presidential campaign and, eventually, into the president himself.

As indictments unrelated to Trump-Russia collusion pile up, Republican lawmakers and Trump’s base increasingly are outraged that the culprits behind perhaps the biggest political scandal in American history remain untouched. Barr signaled that the good fortune of these scoundrels could soon take a dramatic shift under his stewardship.

The article notes a very interesting aspect of this whole Russian investigation:

A few days before Barr’s hearing, the New York Times reported that in May 2017, the FBI opened an investigation into the sitting U.S. president purportedly based on suspicions he was a Russian foreign agent. Then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe—whom the Times does not mention by name at any time in the 1,800 words it took to report this information—initiated the probe immediately after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey.

McCabe was fired last year and now is under criminal investigation for lying to federal agents.

The article concludes:

Other materials of public interest include the initiating documents for Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s investigation into four Trump campaign aides—which Comey claimed he never saw—and any details about who at the FBI started the unprecedented counterintelligence and criminal investigation into a sitting U.S. president.

And while he’s at it, and before Mueller’s team is finished, Barr should begin a formal inquiry into why the special counsel’s office scrubbed the iPhones used by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page while they worked for Mueller for a brief time in 2017. The phones and the data contained on those devices are public property. Barr needs to find out why that information was not collected and archived since both FBI officials already were under scrutiny. Destroying potential evidence is a crime.

The enormousness of Barr’s task and the devastating consequences for those involved are now coming into clear view. The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans who are desperate to defeat Trump and the GOP in 2020. That’s why we can expect both parties to whip up more criticism of Barr over the next few months. One hopes he will resist that criticism—and both Trump and Graham need to reassure the new attorney general and the American public that his investigation will receive the same amount of protection that was afforded to the Mueller team.

Get out the popcorn, the show is about to begin.

I Don’t Think This Is Helpful

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CNN posted an article today with the following headline, “State of the Union will not take place Tuesday, Pelosi aide says.”

The article reports:

President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union address will not take place on Tuesday, an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN.

The aide confirmed that the address, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday, will not happen — answering a key question about the address’s fate in the wake of the reopening of the federal government.

At a news conference Friday following Trump’s announcement that there was a deal to end the partial government shutdown, Pelosi said, “The State of the Union is not planned now.” The California Democrat added that discussions about the date of the address would take place after the shutdown — the longest in US history — officially ended.

Trump’s director of strategic communications Mercedes Schlapp said Monday that the White House has been in discussions with Pelosi’s office about rescheduling the address and that “we should have a response soon.”

In order to give an address like the State of the Union to a joint session of Congress, both the House and Senate must pass a resolution allowing it to happen, making Pelosi’s voice an important part of the discussions.

I truly believe that this is a new low in partisan politics. There is no excuse for this. The State of the Union Speech is a tradition and should not be the victim of political pettiness. If this is the attitude the House of Representatives is going to show to the President, he needs to cut to the chase now, declare an emergency on the southern border, build a wall, and tell Ms. Pelosi to go pound sand. I also think Ms. Pelosi is trying to block President Trump from speaking directly to the American people about the need for border security on our southern border. She is definitely out over her skis on this one.

When You Are Convinced You Know It All

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Power can do strange things to people. Some people handle it well, and some people are so impressed that they have some power that they decide they are all-powerful. Nancy Pelosi is a good example of the latter.

The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about one of Speaker of the House Pelosi’s recent statements.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday night she “doesn’t care” if the Secret Service said it was prepared to appropriately secure the State of the Union address despite the partial government shutdown.

Instead, she stood firm in her resolve to delay the January 29 event until the government completely re-opens.

In a letter to President Trump, Pelosi claimed the lack of funds to Homeland Security posed a risk to the White House and the Congress during the event, but the Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen released a statement refuting that.

So Speaker Pelosi knows more about security than the Department of Homeland Security?

The article concludes:

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise called Democrats’ security concerns nonsense, telling reporters on Wednesday, “There are no security concerns that have been raised and that has nothing to do with that. Ironically, it seems like she’s only concerned about security when it’s a State of the Union that will expose what this fight is all about.”

It may be that the Democrat focus groups are starting to indicate that the shutdown isn’t going exactly the way the Democrats thought it would. Meanwhile there is another caravan headed our way. I wonder what the impact of that will be on public opinion.

Two Posts About The State Of The Union Speech From Facebook Friends

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I will post an analysis of the State of the Union speech later today, but this is a start:

MiliitaryAt SOTUThis screen shot is from bizpacreview. THIS was the exact response of our TOP military leaders at the EXACT moment Obama said that terrorists were not a threat to our nation’s existence. Houston, we have a problem.

The graphic below was posted by another friend:

StateOfTheUnion

Breitbart.com posted the following about President Obama’s claim that he has cut deficits:

“[W]e’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.” This is pure fiction. Obama has doubled the national debt, and it’s not because he cut the deficit. Rather, he spent staggering amounts of money in his first months in office–which he assigns, dishonestly, to the previous fiscal year, under George W. Bush. He “cut” (i.e. spent more gradually) from that spending, but only under protest, after Republicans took the House in 2010.

(Update: It is true that Obama’s 2015 budget deficit was about 25% of his 2010 deficit. But he referred to “deficits,” plural. Until last year, all of Obama’s deficits were worse than all of Bush’s deficits except for the last two.)

More to follow.

Beware Sob Stories And Success Stories

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The Washington Free Beacon reported the following today:

The woman whose story of economic recovery was showcased by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address is a former Democratic campaign staffer and has been used by Obama for political events in the past.

The article relates the entire story, you can follow the link above for details. The use of a Democrat staffer to make this point is an indication of one of two things–a staff too lazy to find a person actually helped by President Obama’s policies or the fact that so few people have been helped by the President’s economic policies that the staff could not find one. Either way, it is a tacky move.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today comparing President Obama’s statement about equal wages for women with the actual pay scales at the White House. Please follow the link above to read the entire article, but this is the gist of it (as posted at McClatchydc.com):

But a McClatchy review of White House salaries shows that when the same calculations that produced the 77 cents is applied to the White House, the average female pay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is less than the average male pay. When counted the same way that produced the 77-cent figure, the analysis found, women overall at the White House make 91 cents for every dollar men make. That’s an average salary of $84,082 for men and $76,516 for women.

 Asked about its own payroll, the White House said Wednesday that it should be measured by how it pays men and women in the same jobs, but not the kind of broad brush that compares overall male and female pay.

In other words, the White House doesn’t want to be measured by the same yardstick they use for everyone else. The 77-cent canard is based on averaging on the widest possible “big brush” scale. Their answer — that men and women doing the same work and responsibility get paid equally — holds true in the marketplace as well. In fact, that’s what the 91% gap shows, in both the White House and the Blau-Kahn study; the difference is in the rational choices made by women in the marketplace, not some kind of malicious conspiracy against the female gender.

Another reason the alternative media is necessary under the Obama Administration.

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The State Of The Union

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Today’s Independent Journal Review posted a list of seven of the lies President Obama told during his State of the Union address. There were more than seven, and I am sure anyone who has been paying attention was able to spot many of the lies in the speech.

The article lists seven:

1) Income inequality is the worst it’s ever been! The article points out that income inequality is the same as it was in 1987.

 

2) Raising minimum wage will help families. The article reminds us that it’s not hard to believe that Obama, who has never run a business, doesn’t understand that artificially forcing a business to pay someone more than their wage is worth will put more people out of the labor market. Making job creation more expensive leads to fewer jobs.

 

3) His minimum wage hike for federal workers brings immediate relief. The article points out that most employees of federal contractors earn more than the minimum wage, so this will apply to only about 10% of those, or 200,000 employees. Finally, this wage hike won’t apply until 2015 at the earliest, and even then, only for new contracts, not old ones.

 

4) How many Americans have gained insurance under Obamacare? In fact, five million Americans have lost insurance, meaning that this number is not a net gain. In other words, the vast majority already had insurance before Obamacare. As few as 11% might be new enrollments to Obamacare. Finally, the payment system for the federal Obamacare website isn’t completed; who knows how many of these will experience more “glitches.”

 

5) Obama will cut red tape that’s holding up construction jobs!  The article reminds us “The reason most of these projects are delayed is they don’t have enough money. So it’s great that you are expediting the review process, but the review process isn’t the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough money to invest in our infrastructure in the first place.”

 

6) Your medicare premium went up? You’re making that up! The article points out that on paper, the program’s giant trust fund for inpatient care gained more than a decade of solvency because of cuts to service providers required under the health law. But in practice those savings cannot simultaneously be used to expand coverage for the uninsured and shore up Medicare.

 

7. Obama’s created 8 million new jobs in the last four years. The article reminds us that this figure leaves out a lot of lost jobs early in Obama’s presidency and glosses over that this recovery has been the weakest since World War II. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a net gain of 2.4 million job have been added on Obama’s watch (this doesn’t account for population growth, leading to the lowest labor participation rate since 1978).

 

Generally speaking, there were a lot of lies in the speech. After listening to the speech, a person could easily assume that ObamaCare was working fabulously, the economy was in great shape, and the President could do anything he wanted to without the approval of Congress. Obviously, none of the above is true. I understand that politicians tend to stretch or spin the truth, but any resemblance to truth in last night’s State of the Union speech was purely coincidental.

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ObamaCare Has Caused More Problems Than It Has Solved

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Today’s Daily Caller posted a story about Emilie Lamb, an accountant who suffers from lupus. She is now working a second job to cover a calculated $6,000 increase in out-of-pocket health care costs per year. She will watch the State of the Union address as a guest of Representative Marsha Blackburn.

The article reports:

She was forced to purchase a more expensive plan after her old policy with CoverTN was canceled. The federal government had denied CoverTN’s request for a waiver to grandfather her plan into Obamacare three times.

Even with a small federal subsidy, her premiums increased from $57 to $373 per month.

Ms. Lamb explained that she voted for President Obama in 2012 because she hoped that ObamaCare would help her with her medical care.

Please follow the above link to the story, which includes a video of Ms. Lamb telling her story.

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An Interesting Perspective On The State of the Union Address

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PJ Media posted its own interpretation of President Obama’s State of the Union address. They were not kind. I’m not saying that they were not accurate; I am simply saying that they were not kind.

The article begins:

The state of our union is weak and fraying. This president has launched attacks on faith and is going out of his way to divide our people. Our economy is not growing, it contracted in the final quarter of 2012. Our economy is not growing jobs. On the international front, North Korea greeted President Obama’s 2013 rendition of Give Me More Money with a nuclear test — a sure sign that his strategy of engagement, which his soon-to-be defense secretary supports, is a failure.

But like with all of his other failed policies, Barack Obama declared that he will just keep on doing them all.

The speech included more taxes on the ‘rich,’ which will neither create jobs or grow the economy. What is the purpose of raising anyone’s taxes? He also stated that “ask more of our wealthy seniors.” You know–those people who have worked and saved all their lives for their retirement.

President Obama stated in so many words that he wanted us all to get along. Somehow he failed to mention that we will not get along until all of us blindly follow him. Somehow I don’t think many Americans are interested in doing that.

The article reminds us:

From there he moved on to pressing for “comprehensive immigration reform.” He claimed that he believes in stronger border security, which simply is not credible when his homeland security chief claims that the border has never been safer while there is a civil war raging in Mexico. He called on people of faith, whom he has attacked via the ObamaCare abortifacient mandate, to help him “get it done” on immigration reform. He hits you with one hand, then wants you to help him with the other.

The article concludes:

Near the blessed end of his speech, Obama hailed the idea and ideals of the citizen. But this president is working to water down the legal meaning of the word. Again, incoherent.

The consequences of Barack Obama’s loose grasp on the real world are just going to have to work themselves out now. He will win some and he will lose some. Hopefully he will lose more than he wins.

“The evil that men do lives after them,” Shakespeare wrote of ambitious men centuries ago. So it will be with Barack Obama, who has done much evil to the Constitution, to the country, and to the concept of truth. He will continue to do more evil to them all for the next four years.

America, you were warned but you re-elected him anyway. And that’s the state of our union.

That is one of the best reports on the speech I have seen.

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Speeches And Reality

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Last night Victor Davis Hanson posted his comments on President Obama’s State of the Union address at National Review last night.

Mr. Hanson listed what he considered the five major points of the speech:

1. After stating the good news and taking credit for it, the President then lists the bad news and begins to blame others for it. Mr. Hanson reminds us, “In the new math, not having one month below 7.8 percent unemployment (in comparison with the prior administration’s not having one month above that figure) means after “shedding jobs for more than ten years, our manufacturers have added 500,000 jobs over the past three.” Adding some jobs matters; losing more of them doesn’t.”

2. President Obama engaged in his usual class warfare again reminding us of Warren Buffett‘s secretary, although not by name. I am tired of the President demonizing success in order to push his agenda. Enough is enough.

3. The speech was full of inaccuracies. Mr. Hanson sights one, “The Congress is responsible for sequestration rather than Obama who thought it up in the first place.” The Obama Administration has been repeating this lie for a while and will probably continue to do so.

4. The President blamed superstorm Sandy on climate change and used that as a premise to fund more Solyndras. Let’s talk about superstorm Sandy. By the time Sandy arrived in New York, it was a category 1 hurricane. Unfortunately, it was a very large, slow moving storm that hit a very densely populated area. That was the problem. We have had superstorms and severe hurricanes before–Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was a Category 4 and 5 hurricane when it hit Florida. “The Perfect Storm,” immortalized in the book and movie, occurred in 1991. We have had hurricanes and storms forever. One of the most devastating hurricanes ever to hit New England occurred in 1938. Actually, in recent years we have had fewer hurricanes–not more.

5. The last section of Mr. Hanson’s analysis of President Obama’s speech is called, “Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better.” It deals with the total lack of logic in some of the President’s statements. One problem was the President taking credit for increased gas and oil production while limiting gas and oil production on federal lands. Another was claiming that Al Qaeda was on the run. The article at National Review lists an entire array of illogical or dishonest claims of success.

Mr. Hanson concludes:

After five years of these soaring hope-and-change speeches, there are the same three themes I think will keep reverberating: Obama’s soaring rhetoric bears not much resemblance to the reality of the present tough times here and abroad; no one in the administration or the media will go back to see whether last year’s similar utopian ideas ever worked or even saw implementation; and the majority of listeners to the speech either probably believed every word — or were angry at anybody who did not.

Hopefully Congress will be able to stop some of the more damaging ideas proposed in the President’s State of the Union address. Otherwise we can expect more unemployment and higher taxes for everyone who works.  

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