Tag Archives: Trump

Another Take On The Mar-a-Lago Raid

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On Wednesday, I posted an article about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) having permission to use deadly force during the raid at Mar-a-Lago. The spin on this by the FBI (and some other sources) is that the order for the raid was a standard order and those orders generally allow for the use of deadly force. That may or may not be the case.

On Thursday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about the raid and the permission to use deadly force.

The article reports:

In an appalling statement released Tuesday evening, the FBI claimed the authorization of deadly force on former President Trump is just “standard protocol.”

As Cristina Laila reported, the FBI also claimed Joe Biden had nothing to do with the use of deadly force on Trump, his family or Secret Service Agents assigned to his detail.

“The FBI, like other law enforcement agencies, requires the team leader of any search warrant or arrest warrant to complete a standardized form known as an “Operations Plan.” This form, which also must be read by the team leader to all assisting agents, is a reminder of the FBI’s deadly force policy. This is a legal requirement to be included on all Ops Plans and read to agents immediately preceding the enforcement action. The President (Biden) has nothing to do with, and has zero input on, an Ops Plan. This is an internal law enforcement document and a standardized form that FBI lawyers require before engaging in any enforcement operations,” the FBI said.

Of course, this was all a lie.

Dan Bongino was one of the first fire back at the corrupt intelligence agency.

Dan Bongino:  This is absolutely a big deal. Don’t buy the bullshit otherwise. It was not a standard op. The MAL raid was an unprecedented action with significant potential for confusion and blue on blue issues and conflict. It also involved competing equities between federal agencies (FBI & USSS) with equal statutory claims to interrupt the other’s activities. Anyone telling you otherwise is either dumb, or playing dumb. I’ve done more deconfliction with Russians in a foreign op I did for the USSS than the FBI did in their search warrant at MAL. Only a dumbass would pitch the “it’s the standard paperwork” line. Go serve a search warrant at the White House in the cocaine case while filling out your “standard paperwork” and see how that works out for you. Wake up.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes a video of an interview with Julie Kelly, the investigative reporter who has uncovered a lot of strange information surrounding the raid.

 

Is There An Ulterior Motive Here?

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On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about some recent statements by Hillary Clinton. I would like to make a few observations about Ms. Clinton and those statements. Ms. Clinton has been out of the spotlight for a while. Her popularity rises when she is out of the spotlight. Are we looking at Ms. Clinton on the comeback trail?

The article notes:

  • Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 76, said President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 77, are both ‘old’
  • Despite Biden’s age, Clinton said voters should still support him, as Trump poses a threat to democracy
  • Her comments come as polls find voters are upset with the ages of both party’s presidential frontrunners 

I wish the people who keep talking about ‘threats to democracy’ would acknowledge that we are not a democracy.

The article notes:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted President Joe Biden, 81, is ‘old’ Tuesday, adding Americans need to ‘accept the reality’ of his age and vote for him to save democracy from Donald Trump. 

Clinton’s jab at Joe’s age came during a radio segment with host Zerlina Maxwell.

She told Maxwell about a recent conversation she had about the president’s age. 

‘Somebody the other day said to me … ‘Well, but, you know, Joe Biden’s old.’ I said, ‘You know what, Joe Biden is old. Let’s go ahead and accept the reality. Joe Biden is old,’ Clinton, 76, said. 

‘So we have a contest between one candidate who’s old but who’s done an effective job and doesn’t threaten our democracy,’ she continued. ‘And we have another candidate who is old, barely makes sense when he talks, is dangerous, and threatens our democracy.’

She was referring to former President Donald Trump, who is just one year older than her at 77. 

Pay attention. This is a search for relevancy from someone who has been irrelevant for a while. This could get very interesting.

No Election Interference Here!

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On Monday, Breitbart reported that the Judge in the New York defamation trial against President Trump has postponed the trial from Monday until Tuesday (the day of the New Hampshire primary). I don’t think these people could be nastier if they tried.

The article reports:

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial against former President Trump, postponed the trial on Monday, citing a juror’s coronavirus illness, until Tuesday, the day of the New Hampshire Republican primary.

The rescheduled trial on the day of the New Hampshire primary raises concerns the judge is interfering in the 2024 election.

No kidding.

It is amazing to me that President Trump has the stamina and the willpower to continue with all that is being thrown at him. I am hoping for a big win for President Trump in November and a subsequent cleaning house in Washington, D.C.  I am not totally convinced that is a realistic hope, but I see it as the only way forward for our country.

Follow The Money

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The Daily Caller posted an article today about some serious money being used to buy advertising for the Biden campaign for President.

The article reports:

Planned Parenthood Votes is backing presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden with a five-figure digital ad campaign in key battleground states as the former vice-president prepares to face off with President Donald Trump.

The nation’s largest abortion provider’s political arm is launching ads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The ads contrast Biden and Trump’s leadership and highlight how each candidate approaches abortion rights, Axios reports.

Planned Parenthood wants to continue their ability to sell aborted baby body parts. This is what you are supporting if you vote for Joe Biden.

The article continues:

The campaign comes as part of Planned Parenthood’s larger $45 million effort to back Biden for president, according to Axios.

“This is literally a life and death election,” said Acting President of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson to NPR in June when Planned Parenthood announced their endorsement of the former vice president. “We felt like we can’t endure another four years of Trump; we have to do everything we can to get him out of office.”

Biden has taken a hard pro-choice stance on abortion access during the 2020 presidential campaign, but his present stances on abortion are a major shift from his past positions on the issue.

The former vice president often spoke of his distaste for abortion throughout his political career before he announced last summer, amidst pressure from fellow Democratic candidates, that he no longer supports the Hyde Amendment.

It’s amazing what a little donation can do to one’s principles.

In January 2020, The Washington Times reported:

And financial records show the nonprofit received more taxpayer dollars in the fiscal year ending last June than ever before ($617 million) through Medicaid and other health service program reimbursements and grants, constituting 37% of its overall revenue.

Planned Parenthood is a non-profit; it is their sister organizations that donate to political campaigns. The money is not interchangeable, but often office facilities and other overhead expenses are shared. I don’t think any sister organization of an organization that takes government money should be allowed to lobby or provide campaign advertising. The possibility of buying Congressional votes is just too high.

More Corrections For Falsely Reporting Information

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about another fake news story that created a false impression.

The article reports:

After initially reporting that new guidelines could potentially deny “birthright citizenship” to the children of American military members abroad, NBC followed up with a major correction.

Initial reports on the new policy from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services focused almost entirely on one line from the guidance, namely that the Department of Homeland Security “no longer considers children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members residing outside the United States as ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship.”

After a more careful reading of the policy, however, NBC’s Ken Dilanian offered a correction noting that the policy would apply to children adopted by American military and government employees overseas.

Candidate Joe Biden lost no time in trying to benefit from the false report. Below is his tweet:

It would have been nice if he had checked the facts before he spoke.

The Economy Continues To Move In A Positive Direction

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Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air today about the latest economic numbers. As usual when a Republican is President, the ‘experts’ were surprised that the numbers were better than expected.

The article reports:

It’s not great news for the White House, but it could have been a lot worse. The US economy’s growth slowed to 2.1% in the second quarter, down a full point from Q1. However, with economists predicting a recession right around the corner, the growth is still substantial enough to look positive:

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2019 (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.1 percent.

The Bureau’s second-quarter advance estimate released today is based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see “Source Data for the Advance Estimate” on page 2). The “second” estimate for the second quarter, based on more complete data, will be released on August 29, 2019.

The increase in real GDP in the second quarter reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), federal government spending, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased (table 2).

The deceleration in real GDP in the second quarter reflected downturns in inventory investment, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment. These downturns were partly offset by accelerations in PCE and federal government spending.

President Trump weighed in on Twitter:

The article at Hot Air concludes:

“Not bad” is a little bit of an understatement, actually. It’s pretty good, especially in the context of the global economy. That’s the bigger anchor, especially the trade disputes that at least for one quarter hit our exports hard.

The steady growth with low inflation should result in the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates in the near future.

Still Playing The Game

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The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday that explains why many people are moving away from Google as a search engine. Other than the fact that Google tracks your searches (DuckDuckGo.com does not), Google is not an unbiased search engine. It has a political agenda despite claims to the contrary.

The news of the day Friday was that there would be no further indictments in the Mueller investigation. If you went looking for that news on Google, it would not be immediately obvious.

The article illustrates:

Using Google search on multiple browsers and on private-browsing mode, the Free Beacon found Google search had an aversion to the search term “indictment.”

Using either “Trump” or “Mueller” as the subject, the following word “indictment” was not suggested even after spelling out most of it. For example, putting “Trump indi” into Google’s search bar does not lead to “Trump indictment” but rather to “Trump India,” “Trump India Pakistan,” Trump India tariffs,” and “Trump Indiana.”

Seems like Google might have overlooked the obvious. When “Mueller ind” was entered, the results were similar. The article also includes screenshots of Yahoo and Bing when the letters “Trump ind” and “Mueller ind” were entered. The first entries that came up were “Trump indictment” and “Mueller indictments”.

The article concludes:

Google was previously accused of pushing positive stories about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has denied this kind of bias occurs in its search results, saying so repeatedly in a congressional hearing last year. Democrats, however, seemed to undermine Pichai’s message by arguing in that hearing that Google is free to suppress conservatives in its search results if it so desires. Pichai said such suppression of different views would violate the company’s “core principles,” although an executive was caught emailing about making sure Google services helped Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The company’s fidelity to principles of free expression has also come under scrutiny as it has continued to work with Xi Jinping’s autocratic regime in China. Because of severe free speech restrictions in that country, Google had been developing a special search engine “Dragonfly” that would block topics disapproved by the regime, including history about China and the Communist Party. Dragonfly was put on hold after it spawned an outcry against Google, but employees have expressed concern that it’s being developed in secret.

Domestically, the Silicon Valley giant is also dealing with pressure to have its products more strictly regulated. Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren (D.) has called for breaking up major tech companies on anti-trust grounds.

On a somewhat related personal note, when I began this blog in 2008, Facebook was a good source of articles posted by conservative friends and conservative sources. Blogging was very easy. That has changed in recent years–many friends have spent time in Facebook jail, and many conservative sources have been blocked. Social media in its freest state is a wonderful thing, but gradually those in charge of social media have been removing our freedom. All Americans need to be vigilant about what they read on social media and also about what search engine they use. That is sad, but necessary.

 

 

How Cutting Taxes Creates Revenue

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On November 16th, Hot Air posted an article about the impact of the Trump tax cuts on government revenue. As I am sure you remember, the Democrats called the tax cuts on individuals ‘crumbs’ and swore that the tax cuts would bankrupt the country. Well, that’s not exactly what happened.

The article reports:

Unemployment is at an historic low. Employment is at an all-time high. Wagers are growing after years of stagnation.

And now from all that increased economic activity, the federal government has just reported historic record tax revenues in October, the first month of the new fiscal year, of $252,692,000,000.

That’s more than $11.4 billion above revenue for October of last year, which was the previous record tax revenue for an October.

And it did this by collecting more than $3 billion less in personal income taxes, thanks to the tax cuts.

The new revenues were the result of increased business taxes because of increased business. Here’s how much different it was:

Corporation income tax receipts to the U.S. Treasury this year in October were a whopping $8,000,000,000. This compares to the previous October’s $3.8 billion.

Despite the record tax revenues in October, the federal government ran a deficit of $100.5 billion that month because, spending. That’s a problem that newly-elected members of Congress such as Indiana’s senator-elect Mike Braun, a businessman, said would be a major target in 2019.

The thing to remember here is that as unemployment decreases, government spending should also decrease. Unfortunately Congress did not get the message. Our problem is not the revenue–the problem is the spending. If either party were serious about curbing government spending, it would have been done by now. Obviously they are not. There are a few members of the Republican party who have been trying to put the brakes on runaway spending for years, but they are either not trying very hard or they are ineffective. At any rate, we need to elect Congressmen (regardless of party) who will pledge to bring the spending under control. It does no good to increase the revenue if the spending increases right along with it.

What Happens When People Don’t Forgive

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A think more than half of the political and violence problems in today’s world could be solved by simple forgiveness and an effort by both sides to get along. I am not naive enough to think that could happen, but I think it is a great idea. As people, some of us seem to spend a lot of time hating people and holding grudges. The current situation in South Africa is an example of what can happen when vengeance is more important than dialog and compromise.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about a recent statement by Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

The article quotes Mr. Malema:

We want to send a strong message to USA authorities just like we did with the Australian authorities. Stay out of South Africa’s domestic updates. South Africa is a post colonial country – with deep inequalities that were long designed by apartheid and colonialism. Our land appropriations program seeks to realize the idea of equality and human dignity. Through land expropriation we’re pushing the white people to share their land which was gained through a crime against humanity… Be that at it may, we must put it on record that Donald pathological liar Trump we’re not scared of you and your USA or Western imperialist forces… Donald Trump is not saying anything we haven’t heard from white people. In all the years I’ve been on record and said I’ve still to meet a white person who supports expropriation of land without compensation. So why are you shocked?… As for Donald Trump, I don’t have time for this nonsense. I expected this.

So let’s take a look at this statement. He is stating that white people don’t like their land taken from them without compensation. Guess what–no one likes their land taken from them without compensation. The stealing (that’s what it is) of land without compensation will not solve the problem–it will only cause more hatred and division. Why is this man calling the West imperialistic when he is the one stealing land without compensation? It also should be noted that the policy of taking land without compensation eliminates private property rights. Mr. Malema does not understand the private property rights are the key to prosperity for a country (see article here). If he truly wants to see South Africa prosper, he needs to respect private property rights. Negotiating a settlement between white farmers and black South Africans might be a much better path in the long run than the one he is taking now.

It is obvious that this will not end well. Mr. Malema is only continuing a cycle of wrongdoing which will be followed by more wrongdoing. There is a peaceful solution to this problem if only those intent on stealing land would be willing to consider it.

When The Stories Just Don’t Add Up

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Kimberley Strassel posted an article yesterday about Mr. Downer. Mr Downer is a conservative politician who was Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister (1996-2007) and is also a former Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer’s conversation with 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, is supposedly what triggered the mess we know as the Mueller investigation.

There are, however, some serious problems with that premise.

The article lists a few of those problems:

When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian, a national newspaper, and “spoke for the first time” about the Papadopoulos event. Mr. Downer said he officially reported the Papadopoulos meeting back to Australia “the following day or a day or two after,” as it “seemed quite interesting.” The story nonchalantly notes that “after a period of time, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, passed the information on to Washington.”

My reporting indicates otherwise. A diplomatic source tells me Mr. Hockey neither transmitted any information to the FBI nor was approached by the U.S. about the tip. Rather, it was Mr. Downer who at some point decided to convey his information—to the U.S. Embassy in London.

However, that is not the way things are normally done. The article notes that The U.S. is part of Five Eyes, an intelligence network that includes the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement among these countries is that they share intelligence information. Under the Five Eyes agreement, Mr. Downer was obligated to share information with Australia and let them deal with it. Obviously, that is not what he did.

The article explains the significance of that:

So if Australian intelligence did receive the Downer info, it didn’t feel compelled to act on it.

But the Obama State Department did—and its involvement is news. The Downer details landed with the embassy’s then-chargé d’affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

When did all this happen, and what came next? Did the info go straight to U.S. intelligence? Or did it instead filter to the wider State Department team, who we already know were helping foment Russia-Trump conspiracy theories? Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, has publicly admitted to communicating in the summer of 2016 with his friend Christopher Steele, author of the infamous dossier.

The more we learn, the more questionable this story gets. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is becoming obvious that the entire Russian investigation had only one purpose–to remove a duly-elected President. That is called sedition.

And The Lies Keep Coming…

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Yesterday the Daily Caller posted an article with the headline, “Media Outraged After Trump Tricks Them To Cover Endorsements From Military Heroes.” The story explains that the media went to the Trump International Hotel expecting Donald Trump to take questions about whether he still questions President Obama’s birthplace. The media is trying very hard to make this an issue in the Presidential campaign (to illustrate that Donald Trump is not a good candidate?). When they got to the press conference, they were treated to a barrage of military endorsements for Trump. It wasn’t what they wanted or expected.

The article reports:

At the very end of the campaign event, Trump finally addressed the topic the media was there to hear. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it.”

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States,” Trump said. “Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong again.”

Many reporters, some standing on chairs, began shouting questions over the applause from the guests in attendance. But Trump, having accomplished what he wanted, took none.

Meanwhile, the media has tried very hard to hang the birther controversy on Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the age of google searches has made that impossible.

Yesterday Breitbart reported the following:

The mainstream media, from Bloomberg News to MSNBC to Politico to the Washington Post and more, have all confirmed: Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 campaign for president did substantially further the birther movement.

…It’s not just Hannity, who’s opposed to Clinton’s election and is a supporter of GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who has confirmed that Clinton’s 2008 campaign and its allies pushed this.

In fact, Politico, in 2011, published a piece from two of its top reporters at the time—Ben Smith and Byron Tau, who have gone on respectively to BuzzFeed and the Wall Street Journal—specifically detailing how the Clinton campaign was behind birther rumors spreading.

The birther thing is something the media tried to use to attack Donald Trump. It is totally irrelevant at this point. The problem is that most of President Obama’s personal records remain sealed–even after almost eight years in office. That is unusual. That is actually why the birther controversy has continued–there are some genuine questions about some documents relating to President Obama. The mainstream media is getting desperate. They have lost any objectivity or credibility that they might have had. This election will probably mark the end of their influence on the majority of Americans.

The article at Breitbart concludes:

“With Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager admitting on national television and on Twitter that they promoted the rumors surrounding now-President Obama’s heritage, Mr. Trump has been fully vindicated,” Miller (Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller) said. “Not only was a Clinton campaign worker blamed and fired over the activity, we have now been informed that Secretary Clinton was aware of what was going on, with Clinton’s campaign manager even apologizing to Obama’s campaign manager. This still does not explain why Hillary Clinton failed to fire her chief strategist Mark Penn on the spot over the memo he sent her advocating she portray Obama as ‘fundamentally’ foreign. Hillary Clinton didn’t tell the truth about her emails and she didn’t tell the truth about her campaign’s role in pushing these rumors in 2008. This pattern is never going to change, and it’s why nobody trusts Hillary Clinton.”

There will be people who will vote for Hillary Clinton regardless of how many lies she tells. That is their privilege. It is my hope, however, that Americans are tired of the lies that surround Hillary and her campaign and will make a different choice.