Tag: Donald Trump

The Democrats’ Wrong Number

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 14, 2019
1 Comment on The Democrats’ Wrong Number

Donald Trump, telephone, phone call, impeachment,

“Where’s Hunter?” Donald Trump asks in front of his pro-Trump rallies (and of course on Twitter), referring to Joe Biden’s son and his cushy Ukrainian sinecure.

From the beginning of the Phone Call quasi-scandal, the upshot sure seemed to portend disaster for the Democrats, in general, and Biden’s presidential bid in particular — for, nested in the secrecies of Ukrainian corruption are not only the ties to the Biden Family Biz, but also perhaps to the conspiracy behind the Russiagate fizzle.

Surely, President Trump cannot kill two birds with one phone.

Impeaching him, however, still seems risky — for Democrats.

Mark Tapscott explored just how perilous by focusing on what might happen in the Senate, after a House impeachment. “Trump’s defense lawyers for the trial will have wide latitude to call witnesses and subpoena documents,” wrote Tapscott in late September.* “That could lead to devastating blows damaging Democrats for years to come, which possibility they would be foolhardy not to ponder seriously, given Trump’s love of political fisticuffs.”

Can the party of Big Government afford to publicize the most obvious lesson coming from their hyping of the Phone Call?

The lesson being that the undrained swamp is nothing other than Crony Capitalist Politics As Usual.

No matter how divisive all this may seem, it may prove awfully educational — in the case against Big Government.

Bob Hope had a funny punchline, way back in the Eocene: “Boy, did I get a wrong number.”

In impeaching Trump over a phone call, Democrats may have dialed their destruction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* See “Assessing the Most Dangerous ‘What Ifs’ of the Democrats’ Impeach Trump Frenzy,” The Epoch Times (September 29, 2019).

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Don’t Tempt Her

Scrolling down @realDonaldTrump’s prolific Twitter feed, I cannot help but wonder: when does the president find time to do his job?

I am not the only one to wonder.

Still, as President, Trump sure is a great . . . troll. “I think that Crooked Hillary Clinton should enter the race to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “Only one condition. The Crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting ‘C’ Subpoena!”

Mrs. Clinton responded curtly: “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”

I wonder if she fumed, under her breath, “do my job!”

CNN, in its report on this Twitter exchange — yes, this is our reality, now, this is the news! — recalled Clinton’s assurance, in March, that though she will continue “to keep speaking out” and “is not going anywhere” (heh heh), she definitely will not run again. CNN did not take Trump’s bait about Clintonian corruption, instead mentioning that “Trump’s invocation of Clinton — whom he has attacked repeatedly in his role as President — comes as the Democratic presidential primary ramps up alongside a House impeachment inquiry into the President centered around his interactions with foreign leaders.”

CNN also neglected to mention that the Hillary Clinton campaign had interacted with foreign leaders — including Ukrainian, it appears — for election advantage.

Which I guess is why we need Twitter — to allow the president to push news the press won’t cover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people political challengers

Twitter Abuse

Donald Trump, twitter, censorship, Kamala Harris threat,

“Look,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris, “let’s be honest. . . .”

When a politician talks about being honest — presumably “for a change” — it’s gonna be a doozy.

President Trump’s “Twitter account should be suspended.”

“What?” the reader will likely object, “Trump’s Twitter account is the second-best thing about the his presidency!”

The reader wouldn’t be wrong.

We may disagree about the actual best thing, but the presidential Twitter account is indeed one of the things that makes the current chaos bearable. Sure, it is the cause of much of the chaos, but, well, we take our chuckles where we can get them. At least Trump’s tweets are not articulated in standard insiderese.

So, what did Trump tweet that so upset the former California prosecutor?

This: he had come to the “conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

Harris publicly called upon Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, to “do something” about the tweet.

He did nothing.

Understandably.

Suspending the account of the United States President because a failing opposition candidate was offended by typical Trumpian hyperbole would br idiotic. Mr. Dorsey has a lot to answer for, sure. But complete and utter idiocy? Not that.

For he knows something: Donald Trump has it within his powers to command every federal agency to cease using Twitter. Trump himself could switch to Gab or Minds or even MeWe — perhaps he should.

The federal government is not required to use a particular social media platform over another, is it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Deep State, Deeply Fake

deep fake, Donald Trump, Young Frankenstein,

Is there a good, presumptive reason to believe what the government tells us?

Not when it comes from the “intelligence” agencies.

One of the more breathtaking developments of recent years has been the transformation of Democratic Party politicians and activists from skeptics of alphabet soup intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA, FBI and many more — to becoming enthusiastic cheerleaders.

On the bright side, Republicans are drifting in the other direction, from their old-fashioned lockstep support of “intelligence agencies” to a new realism — the relentless Deep State “coup” attempts against the Trump Administration having proved . . . instructive.

While we might wish to think that, whew!, these agencies are comprised of loyal Americans, consider what Senator Chuck Schumer said earlier this year, almost approvingly: “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

But more important than all this is the developing techniques the Deep State can marshal. I refer to Deepfake tech, where anything video can be faked, convincingly and completely. If not now, then very soon, technicians within the Deep State — and outside, too — will be able to videofake anything, from Trump cavorting with Moscow hookers to an Iranian “attack” to . . . UFO landings.

We shouldn’t have trusted intelligence agencies in the run-up to the Iraq conquest, now we have good reason to doubt anything and everything they tell us.

Which means Congress should take very tight control of them, rein these agencies in — for Congress is indeed worried about deepfake tech.

How?

Well, de-classifying old secrets might be a good start. The last bit of the JFK assassination files? Maybe. UFOs? Maybe. But it’s what’s not on our radar that may be the most important.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags deep fake, Donald Trump, face recognition technology, Frankenstein, media, technology

national politics & policies Popular responsibility U.S. Constitution

Congress’s King

King of Diamonds, King Donald, Donald Trump, trade, tariff, power,

Politics today reveals a troubling dialectic.

Thesis: President Trump boasts that he is going to unilaterally “do something” as if he were Emperor, not President.

Antithesis: Then comes pushback from political opponents and the media, castigating our current commander-in-chief for imagining himself a lawless dictator.

Synthesis: This is soon followed, however, by the discovery that the president does have such awesome power.

Legally.

In our constitutional system, can a president can just wake up one day and slap tariffs on imports? Well, numbskulls in Congress passed a law handing the president that specific power.

When President Trump declared an emergency to re-direct money, appropriated by Congress for different purposes, toward building the Wall, many argued that the president cannot usurp Congress’s undisputed power of the purse. True, but irrelevant. Congress had indeed delegated all these undefined and largely unchecked “emergency” powers to the prez.

Last week, as the trade war with China was coming to a boil, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”*

I thought, “Does Trump really think he has the legal authority to order all U.S. businesses to leave China?”

Yes . . . and apparently he does. It’s called The International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“One of the enduring phenomena of the Trump era,” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck told CNN, “is going to be the list of statutes that give far too much power to the President, but that many didn’t used to worry about — assuming there’d be political safeguards.”

Or that “the right person” would always be in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Note that Mr. Trump did not order the companies to leave, but did assert his “absolute right” to do so.

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Tags Donald Trump, King Donald, King of Diamonds, power, tariff, trade

international affairs

Buying Ice

Greenland, Trump, land, territory, purchase, ice,

The president wants to buy more land.

On our dime.

“The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer’s imagination,” began a Wall Street Journal report last week. Donald Trump has asked about it anyway, “with varying degrees of seriousness.”

Grønland — “Kalaallit Nunaat” — is Danish territory now. But the United States does run the Thule Air Base on the glacier-dominated island already. So it might seem . . . natural.

The last major American purchase of territory from another sovereign power was, actually, from the Kingdom of Denmark back in 1917, when the United States obtained the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The notion of buying Greenland was floated back during the Truman administration, too. So there is ample precedent. Which gives Trump a plausible context to advance a destabilizing meme for his upcoming visit to Denmark, where he will no doubt be doing some “negotiating” . . . about more important matters.

And what might those be? Well, matters like the country’s contributions to its own defense. Denmark is low on the list of contributing NATO participants, devoting only 1.7 percent of GDP to defense, not the treaty level of 2 percent.

It’s mainly just amusing, of course — probably even to Trump himself. “It’s just something we’ve talked about,” he’s explained. “We’re very good allies with Denmark. We’ve protected Denmark like we protect large portions of the world, so the concept came up.”

Of course, the U.S. doesn’t need Greenland. And it certainly doesn’t need to spend money it doesn’t have to do so.

Still, there have been and will be more idiotic proposal floated this election season. Plenty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Photo from pixabay

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media and media people meme national politics & policies Popular

Courage and Wisdom?

gun violence, gun control, law, mass shooting, 2nd Amendment, Donald Trump,

President Donald Trump responded to the weekend’s two shooting atrocities by decrying hatred and making five substantive proposals.

“They include tools to identify early warning signs in mass shooters, reducing the glorification of violence, reforming mental health laws, enacting ‘red flag’ laws to stop dangerous individuals from gaining access to firearms, and enacting the death penalty for mass murderers,” the Epoch Times summarizes.

But how useful are these?

The “early warning signs” of a criminal are often identical to grumpiness and even righteous indignation in others — “tools to identify” could easily serve as excuses for unwarranted meddling and worse.
Who would enforce lessening the “glorification of violence”? The federal government that is always at war?
Is it mental health laws that should be reformed, or the practice of putting whole generations of boys on Ritalin and worse . . . made especially ominous by the percentage of shooters on such drugs?
Denying “dangerous individuals . . . access to firearms” remains problematic under any semblance of due process and the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle.
Since “death by cop” is often one of the apparent goals of many would-be shooters, how much of a deterrent could death by sterile procedure actually be?

But if you are looking for even worse reactions, look beyond Trump. The Democrats took the occasion to raise funds.

And complain to the New York Times, which “changed a headline on its front page because it presented Trump in a neutral light,” reports independent journalist Tim Poole. “This was in response to far left activists and Democrats expressing shock and outrage and demanding everyone cancel their subscriptions to NYT over it.”

Ideological bias or old-fashioned market pressure?

If it is in tragedy that we find our greatest tests of courage and wisdom, the weekend’s shootings show a lot of political and media failure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency

Transparent on Twitter?

AOC, Trump, twitter, block, blocking, free speech,

I find Twitter distasteful, annoying, even stupid. I sometimes wonder why I should care about that particular “micro-blogging” platform.

But since it is a big deal to others, I struggle to understand.*

Joining me in the struggle are our two most famous political Twitterers, President Donald Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

The president lost in court the other day, with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals telling him he must no longer block users on the social media platform.

Now AOC finds herself in a similar pickle. On Tuesday, a former Democratic New York Assemblyman filed a lawsuit in federal court against the popular freshman U.S. Representative for doing the same thing Trump had been doing: blocking users on Twitter based on their personal viewpoints.

The litigant surmises that AOC had blocked him “apparently because my critique of her tweets and policies have been too stinging.”

Ouch?

“Twitter is a public space,” insists this Democrat, Dov Hikind, “and all should have access to the government officials on it.”

This puts me in a pickle, too. I am all for government transparency — and I do think officials and representatives should not be completely insulated from the citizens they serve. But we don’t have a right to follow them into their bedrooms or bathrooms.

So, high-profile federal employees who in any way discuss public matters on social media should not be allowed to block Americans from seeing their posts. But take pity on the poor pols: they should be able to mute users, that is, keep others from cluttering up their social media experience.

Oddly, the lawsuit does not address this muting option.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I even use it, occasionally.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, block, blocking, Donald Trump, free speech, Trump, Twitter

media and media people

Morning Mind-Probe

Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, Donald Trump, Russia,

There’s news reporting, done well or not, and opinion, with which one can agree or disagree. But on MSNBC’s Morning Joe you get something even more illuminating: mind-reading.

Yesterday, the show addressed U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s testimony the previous day before a Senate subcommittee. Viewers were shown The Washington Post’s succinct front-page headline: “Barr thinks U.S. spied on Trump.”

And heard the Attorney General tell Senators that he wanted to “explore” and “make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance” of the Donald Trump for President campaign. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he added.

“You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?” asked Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

“I think spying did occur,” Barr replied, “yes.” Barr defined “spying” as “unauthorized surveillance.”

“Someone’s been Trumped!” co-host Mika Brzezinski exasperatedly declared as the footage ended. Co-host and husband Joe Scarborough then took over, likewise uninterested in any such inquiry.

“[Barr] knows that what he’s saying is unbelievably reckless,” the clairvoyant former congressman informed. “And you can almost see in his mind, Barr going, ‘How do I answer this question so that Trump doesn’t tweet at me, so that I keep my job, but still not make a jackass of myself for lying?’”

As on-set bobbleheads nodded, Mike Barnacle vouched for Joe’s telepathic veracity, sharing a tale that “two people who have known Bill Barr for 30 years” were “stunned.” These unnamed sources are known only to Mr. Barnacle, the disgraced former Boston Globe columnist, a plagiarist and fabricator of stories, once described accurately as “cynically churning out fiction clothed as journalism.”

“I want to satisfy myself that there were no abuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers,” Barr told the committee. “I think that is one of the principal roles of the attorney general.”

I agree . . . but you read my mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies too much government

Long Gone Rogue

Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow, deep state, Donald Trump

Back in the 1990s, we used to talk about “rogue agencies” of the U.S. Government. And for good reason: the Branch Davidian massacre and the Ruby Ridge fiasco were hard to forget.

After 9/11/2001, however, we cut the agencies some slack. Why? Their incompetence and our hope.

But it became obvious from the NSA’s illegal metadata collection program, as revealed by Edward Snowden, the core agencies of the military-industrial complex do not like playing by rules that the American people have a say in.

How bad is it?

On New Year’s Day this year, Sen. Chuck Schumer was talking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about their favorite conspiracy theory. Maddow, as we all know, had gone Full Nutter on this “collusion”/“corruption” story, and Democratic politicians (along with nearly the whole of the mainstream news media) ran with the story for two years. Then, the Mueller report is “no collusion.”

But on that first Tuesday of 2019, Ms. Maddow was talking about Trump’s tweets which she characterized as “taunting” the CIA and other agencies obsessed with the “Russian hacking” angle of the brouhaha. And Schumer’s response?

“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

We should take this as a signal. It is like making prison rape jokes. It says something about the situation: prison rape or Deep State machinations. And about the speaker: leveraging a rogue element as a threat.

No wonder many now think the Russiagate/Mueller investigation was a “Deep State Coup” attempt.

A republic with rogue agencies is hardly a republic at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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