With the long July 4th weekend upon us, welcome to this week's musical finale. Note that I will not be blogging until Wednesday (July 5th) of next week.
For this week's, I am offering up one of the great songs in rock history, Simon & Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter":
While Simon & Garfunkel's version only made it to number 13 on the billboard charts, the Bangles' cover for the 1987 movie Less Than Zero made it all the way to number 2. This is one case where the charts got it right, because the Bangles' cover kicks up the rock aspect of the song to maximum:
However, there is one aspect about the Bangles' cover that most people don't notice. It omits five lines from the fourth verse (omitted lines are in red bold):
Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery Weaving time in a tapestry Won't you stop and remember me At any convenient time? Funny how my memory skips While looking over manuscripts Of unpublished rhyme Drinking my vodka and lime I look around Leaves are brown now And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
It is a credit to the arrangement that this goes unnoticed.
Overall, "Hazy Shade of Winter" is one of those songs which is hard to screw up, and I am surprised more people haven't done covers of it. Even the worst covers I've heard were at least easy on the ears.
That is all for me this week. Enjoy the 4th of July weekend with your vodka and lime, or whatever your drink of choice is, this weekend. I will return Wednesday.
Serious question: Is anyone out there still gullible enough to fall for an edited, right-wing propaganda video -- in 2017?
Perhaps, although why does Jones wait until nearly the end of the column to actually respond to the specific allegation? Because he is spending the majority of the piece attacking James O'Keefe. While O'Keefe has had issues in the past, is THIS video inaccurately portraying what Van Jones believes?
Roll the tape, Van:
So let's turn back to the latest video from James O'Keefe, where I was supposedly caught on camera shrugging off the Russia investigation.
Interviewer: "What do you think is going to happen this week with the whole Russian thing?
Van Jones: "The whole Russia thing is a big nothing-burger. There is nothing you can do --"
Did I mean that there is "nothing" to the allegations that members of team Trump colluded with the Russians and then tried to cover it up by firing FBI Director James Comey? No -- and far from it.
Then Jones tries to shoehorn his views into what he said on the video:
I said in a recent Twitter chat: "I am glad there is a Russia investigation, and I hope they get to the bottom of it. But I think Democrats are fooling ourselves if we think that something is going to come out of this investigation that is somehow going to end the Trump presidency and make everything better. Unless there is a real smoking gun, which there is probably not, it's just going to be a big old mess. Meanwhile we are not talking about jobs, not talking about poverty, not talking about solutions, not talking about the addiction crisis. Let's talk about our stuff."
In other words, no evidence is going to emerge ("THIS WEEK," soon, or maybe ever) that is powerful enough to force the craven GOP to oust Trump. Too many Democrats see the Russia controversy as some kind of magical "get out of jail free" card. They insist that we will be delivered from our misery -- as soon as the next shoe drops and Trump is impeached.
In other words, he likes the conspiracy theory, even though he admits there is no evidence of it, "'THIS WEEK', soon, or maybe ever". So he gets to keep his progressive street credibility, while still admitting what he said is the TRUTH.
If President Trump made this kind of statement, CNN would justifiably call "bull" on it.
House Republicans joined President Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon in declaring war on sanctuary cities -- passing legislation targeting the cities' funding while hammering a message of the dangers posed by undocumented immigrants.
"Kate's Law" is named for Kate Steinle, a young woman murdered on a busy walkway in San Francisco two years ago allegedly by an undocumented immigrant who was deported multiple times. It would increase maximum penalties for undocumented immigrants who repeatedly enter the country illegally after deportation, especially with criminal records. It passed 257-167.
The "No Sanctuary for Criminals Act" would expand what is required of cities regarding federal immigrant enforcement and allow the government to deny jurisdictions federal law enforcement funds if they don't comply. It passed 228-195.
The rest of the article expends much verbiage decrying the "war on sanctuary cities". It doesn't take a genius to figure out CNN likes sanctuary cities.
But if you need more proof, just look at the Fox News take on this story:
House Republicans took action Thursday to crack down on illegal immigrants and the cities that shelter them.
One bill passed by the House would deny federal grants to sanctuary cities and another, Kate’s Law, would increase the penalties for deported aliens who try to return to the United States.
Kate's Law, which would increase the penalties for deported aliens who try to return to the United States and caught, passed with a vote of 257 to 157, with one Republican voting no and 24 Democrats voting yes.
Notice how CNN and Fox each emphasize different aspects of the same bill? This is a clear case of biased reporting on both sides.
It takes a lot of people doing something wrong to create a tragedy. In the case of the Philando Castile shooting (shown above), a lot of people want to write it off as racism. If you look at the whole situation, there is plenty of blame to go to everyone involved, including society as a whole. When you break down the video into individual parts, you can see everything that went wrong from the beginning.
The police dash-cam video starts with the officers following Castile's car, and then they pull him over. The confronting officer, Jeronimo Yanez, approaches the car and informs Castile that he pulled him over because Castile's tail lights were broken.
This sounds innocuous enough, but there is an inherent problem here. Why does Yanez need Castile's license, registration and insurance? At this point, Yanez is no longer trying to serve the public good by alerting a motorist to a broken tail light. No, now Yanez is trying to find something illegal.
The officer decided the car looked suspicious. He radioed to a nearby squad that he was going to pull it over and check IDs of the driver and passenger.
“The two occupants just look like people that were involved in a robbery,” he said casually, according to police audio obtained by the Star Tribune. “The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just because of the wide-set nose. I couldn’t get a good look at the passenger.”
A "wide-set nose" is not much of an identifying characteristic, and Yanez couldn't even tell what the passenger looked like. This looks a lot like being pulled over for "driving while black".
Yanez was fishing here, based on virtually nothing, and was arguably performing racial profiling. This was awful police work here.
But here is another aspect to this: Yanez lied to Castile. Yanez did NOT pull Castile over for a broken tail light. In fact, how many times do cops pull people over for broken tail lights? While it probably happens, I would be willing to bet it is cops fishing for trouble more often than not. They aren't doing it for public safety reasons, unless their supervisors go on a broken tail light quotas bender.
If cops want to pull somebody over to alert them to a busted tail light, that is fine. But it shouldn't be necessary to see a license and registration for that. Informing them is as much for their own benefit as it is for the public safety. Let them know, let them go.
Cops, especially uniformed cops, need to be honest at all times.
THE MIDDLE:
Here is the transcript of what happened next, from CNN:
9:05:38 p.m. -- Yanez asked for Castile's driver's license and proof of insurance.
9:05:48 p.m. -- Castile provided Yanez with his proof of insurance card.
9:05:49 - 9:05:52 p.m. -- Yanez looked at Castile's insurance information and then tucked the card in his pocket.
9:05:52 - 9:05:55 p.m. -- Castile told Yanez: "Sir, I have to tell you that I do have a firearm on me." Before Castile completed the sentence, Yanez interrupted and replied, "Okay" and placed his right hand on the holster of his gun.
9:05:55 - 9:06:02 p.m. -- Yanez said "Okay, don't reach for it, then." Castile responded: "I'm... I'm ... [inaudible] reaching...," before being again interrupted by Yanez, who said "Don't pull it out." Castile responded, "I'm not pulling it out," and Reynolds said, "He's not pulling it out."
Yanez screamed: "Don't pull it out," and pulled his gun with his right hand. Yanez fired seven shots in the direction of Castile in rapid succession. The seventh shot was fired at 9:06:02 p.m. Kauser did not touch or remove his gun.
Some people have made the argument that Castile was trying to follow Yanez's initial instruction, asking for Castile's driver's license. The problem with this analysis is when a cop tells you to stop reaching for something, you stop reaching period.
In Castile's defense, cops like Yanez need to be more aware of when they have given conflicting instructions. However, Castile's admission to having a gun on him changed everything, and Castile should have expected that knowledge could have made Yanez nervous.
Finally, was it really necessary for Yanez to unload his firearm into Castile? Fire one shot, then take at least a moment to see what happens.
IN SUMMARY:
We have many things that could be fixed here that might have prevented this situation. Among them:
1. Police "fishing trips" need to end. Unnecessary encounters between cops and the public need to stop, especially when they are strictly excuses to find criminals, but without any real basis for suspicion other than skin color or ethnic persuasion.
2. A broken tail light should NEVER be used as an excuse by police to see someone's license, registration, or insurance. The encounter should be, "Excuse me sir, you have a broken tail light. You need to get that fixed. Have a nice day." The only reason to see a person's documents for a broken tail light is #1 above, which also needs to stop.
3. Uniformed police need to be completely honest with the public at all times. When uniformed cops lie, they breed distrust, which makes their own job more difficult. Honesty may not keep something like this from happening, but it would help police when the public sees tragedies like this, because the public would know the cop was at least being honest with the suspect.
4. A police officer should never unload a firearm into a suspect, unless the first shot hit and had no effect, or if the suspect is presenting a clear and present danger to the public or the officer. This was NOT the case here.
5. The fact Castile ignored Yanez's last command for his first command shows that Castile was either stupid or under the effect of marijuana. Ultimately, every civilian is responsible for the end result of their encounter with a police officer when they do not follow the officer's LAST order to the letter.
6. Always make sure your tail lights are working. It may sound silly, but Yanez wouldn't have had an excuse to pull over Castile, other than to confront him as a robbery suspect, for which Yanez didn't have sufficient cause.
Ultimately, justice was done here when Yanez was fired. But if we treat that as the end of the story, then Castile died in vain.
Which abuse is worse: Sexual abuse of multiple people by a trusted public figure, or the institutional abuse of public trust by the mainstream media?
If you believe that sex abuse is the more important story, then you will be delighted with the editorial choices by Fox News and CNN today. Here is CNN:
Cardinal George Pell, a senior adviser to Pope Francis, is taking leave from the Vatican to fight historical sexual assault charges in his home country of Australia.
The case is the latest black mark on the Catholic Church, which has been reeling from sexual abuse scandals across several countries that date back decades.
That last statement is exactly why I would argue this isn't a lede story. Because it has been going on for decades (maybe even centuries).
I would argue the true lede story is bigger than this story, because it hits all of us, and not just Catholics:
For the second day in a row, we have one of CNN's people calling the Russia story nothing. In this case, it is CNN commentator Van Jones, saying, "The Russia thing is just a big nothing burger."
So far, that makes one CNN producer and one CNN on-air personality, both calling the Trump-Russia collusion story baseless.
How does CNN respond to this story? They ignore it and blame Trump at the same time:
CNN's Clarissa Ward, a foreign correspondent, served as guest co-host on Wednesday's broadcast of CNN's News Day. Ward fretted that "people" in war zones have been "emboldened" by President Trump's "declaration of war on the media." Ward, expressing concern for members of the media in dangerous areas of the world, said to guest Chris Cillizza, 'I can only imagine what a person like you is dealing with. At what point does this become reckless or irresponsible?'
It should be noted Chris Cillizza is a Washington-based political correspondent and commentator.
CNN started this war of words with President Trump, and now they are worried about their own safety? But it is ok to blame Trump for their own bad editorial decisions? Even more important, how does Trump's "war on the media" create more danger for the media in dangerous parts of the world? This is a war of words that CNN made the editorial decision to start.
By the way, it is quite obvious that Fox News hasn't taken advantage of this to pile onto CNN. Any wagers that Project Veritas has a Fox News expose in the works? Stay tuned...
Warren Buffett is attacking the Republican Party's plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare, claiming bills in the House and Senate would provide tax cuts for the rich.
Legislation passed by the House, he said, should be called "Relief for the Rich Act."
Buffett, one of the wealthiest men in the country, claimed his tax bill would have been reduced by $679,999, or 17 percent, from the House bill.
"There’s nothing ambiguous about that. I will be given a 17 percent tax cut. And the people it’s directed at are couples with $250,000 or more of income. You could entitle this, you know, Relief for the Rich Act or something," he said in an interview with PBS.
Buffett made the comments are a question about the GOP plan to do away with an ObamaCare surcharge on people earning a higher income.
When did the purpose of Obamacare become eliminating taxation inequality? Frankly, Buffett's comments are irrelevant to the discussion of health care legislation. If the Republicans could fix health care by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, it would be worthwhile. Or is wealth envy more important than providing access to health care to every American?
Of course, this whole discussion is silly anyway, since there is little chance Republicans or Democrats will fix health care. Will Rogers said it best:
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Mitch McConnell is delivering an urgent warning to staffers, Republican senators and even the president himself: If Obamacare repeal fails this week, the GOP will lose all leverage and be forced to work with Chuck Schumer.
President Donald Trump continued to float the possibility on Monday that Congress and the White House would simply let Obamacare’s individual markets collapse if the GOP’s repeal effort goes down later this week. But McConnell called up Trump recently, according to people with knowledge of the call, to deliver a reality check.
Translation: McConnell would rather do a bad bill with the Democrats than do nothing at all. He gets the bear for that one:
A Republican congressman lost close to $17 million on Tuesday when stock in an Australian pharmaceutical company he allegedly promoted to other lawmakers plunged to pennies per share.
Shares of Innate Immunotherapeutics fell more than 90 percent in Sydney after a multiple sclerosis drug being tested by the pharma company showed no signs of working.
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), the largest stockholder in the company, lost roughly $17 million as Innate’s stock price sunk after the news broke Tuesday morning, according to Bloomberg. Collins sits on the company’s board of directors.
While Collins is up-front about owning the stock, that doesn't make him less shady:
Several GOP lawmakers told The Hill this month that Collins had pitched stock in the company to Republican colleagues, and had bragged during a dinner party that he’d help fellow lawmakers make money on the tip.
“If you get in early, you’ll make a big profit,” Collins told a group of House Republicans last summer.
Collins denied to The Hill earlier this month that he ever recruited members to buy Innate stock, nor bragged about making anyone richer. Collins, reportedly worth as much as $66 million, is one of the wealthier members of Congress.
Rule of thumb: Never take stock tips from politicians.
Just days before he resigns from Congress, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Monday that House and Senate lawmakers should receive a $2,500 per month housing allowance — something he explained would help ease housing costs for members who can’t afford two mortgages or rents.
“I really do believe Congress would be much better served if there was a housing allowance for members of Congress,” Chaffetz told The Hill in an interview in his Capitol office, where he sleeps whenever he’s in Washington. “In today’s climate, nobody’s going to suggest or vote for a pay raise. But you shouldn’t have to be among the wealthiest of Americans to serve properly in Congress.”
...While Chaffetz said $174,000 a year is a “handsome” congressional salary, he explained that subsidizing lawmakers’ housing costs in the pricey D.C. metro area could actually save taxpayer dollars. If he had a proper home in Washington rather than a cot in his office, Chaffetz said, he wouldn’t need to fly home every week on the taxpayers’ dime, and his wife, Julie, could visit more often.
A 2017 Kiplinger report ranked Washington as the sixth-most expensive city in the country to live.
A $2,500 monthly allowance would cost taxpayers about $30,000 a year per lawmaker, or roughly $16 million a year for all 535 members.
Cut twice that much from the federal budget, and it's yours.
A young African-American man is stopped for jaywalking. A white law enforcement officer sternly orders him to the police car, threatens to put him in jail, and tells him he needs to have identification on him at all times — and tickets him for not carrying his ID.
Miami Beach, 1962? No, Jacksonville, 2017.
Such was the encounter between Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officer J.S. Bolen and Devonte Shipman last week.
Bolen accused Shipman, 21, and a pal of jaywalking. And, as the video posted June 20 to Shipman’s Facebook’s page showed, such behavior would not be tolerated on Bolen’s watch.
The video opens with Shipman asking what he did wrong. Bolen tells Shipman: “Take your camera and point it across there at the red hand,” and then says that Shipman and his friend crossed against the light.
“My bad,” Shipman says to Bolen, who tells him that jaywalking is a $65 fine and orders him to the police car. Shipman, at first, refuses. Bolen then threatens: “I’m about to put you in jail” for resisting an officer without violence.
As Shipman walks toward the car, Bolen asks for his identification. Shipman says he doesn’t have it and Bolen snaps, “That’s another infraction. In the state of Florida, you have to have an ID card on you identifying who you are or I can detain you for seven hours until I figure out who you are.”
That’s not the law, however.
One of Bolen’s citations says Shipman violated Florida Statute 322.15, which states, “Every licensee shall have his or her driver license, which must be fully legible with no portion of such license faded, altered, mutilated, or defaced, in his or her immediate possession at all times when operating a motor vehicle and shall present or submit the same upon the demand of a law enforcement officer or an authorized representative of the department.”
Shipman wasn’t operating a motor vehicle, though. He was operating his feet.
In Officer Bolen's defense, traffic was supposedly stalled while Shipman and his friend were crossing the street against the light. So the jaywalking charge was appropriate, even if the ID charge was wrong.
Project Veritas has released a video of CNN Producer John Bonifield who was caught on hidden-camera admitting that there is no proof to CNN's Russia narrative.
"I mean, it's mostly bullshit right now," Bonifield says. "Like, we don't have any giant proof."
He confirms that the driving factor at CNN is ratings:
"It's a business, people are like the media has an ethical phssssss... All the nice cutesy little ethics that used to get talked about in journalism school you're just like, that's adorable. That's adorable. This is a business."
According to the CNN Producer, business is booming. "Trump is good for business right now," he concluded.
Bonifield further goes on to explain that the instructions come straight from the top, citing the CEO, Jeff Zucker:
"Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we're done with that, let's get back to Russia."
Bonifield also acknowledged: "I haven't seen any good enough evidence to show that the President committed a crime." He continues:
"I just feel like they don't really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the President is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof."
This is where CNN has stepped over the line from "news organization" to "propaganda organization". They are no longer reporting the news, but making it.
It should not come as a surprise that CNN is not covering this story. They did actually report that James O'Keefe (the founder of Project Veritas) had done an expose on them back in February, where the article claimed, "Given his track record, many consider O'Keefe discredited, and not a serious journalist.".
What is very surprising is that Fox News is NOT covering this. Personally, I picked up this story on both Twitter and Drudge Report. It was also covered by Real Clear Politics, USA Today, and RT (the infamous Russian news website).
However, news sites like ABC News, Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Herald, have been covering the Project Veritas story as an aside to the story about the three CNN reporters being fired for a fake story that CNN published and then had to retract because it was wrong (they called it "poorly sourced", which is "wrong" in layman's terms). In other words, they are happy to report on a competitor's failure, but the Project Veritas story hits a little close to home, especially where it criticizes the mainstream media (MSM) for promoting ratings over news.
But Fox News went a step further in hiding this story. This was their mention, which at least was in their lede story:
The feud between the Trump White House and CNN reached a fever pitch Tuesday during a feisty press briefing where Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders slammed “fake news” and said Americans “deserve something better.”
...Sanders went on to reference an undercover video allegedly showing a CNN producer knocking the network's Russia-Trump coverage.
“There are multiple instances when that outlet has been wrong—there’s a video circulating now, whether it's accurate or not, not sure—but I encourage everyone to take a look at it,” she said. “If it is accurate, I think it’s a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism.”
Fox News knows they are in the same boat as CNN, and that Project Veritas could easily turn on them at any time. Frankly, their fears are justified. As is routinely reported on this website, Fox News shows just as much bias as CNN, just in the opposite direction. But in this particular case, neither Fox nor CNN are going to promote this very real news story, because it shows the TRUTH about them.
To James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, a TRUTH award:
Sally Yates warned that President Donald Trump had already lowered the standard of conduct that should be expected from — or tolerated by — the chief executive.
The former acting attorney general, who was ostensibly fired by the president for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban, said Trump had already violated traditional norms — regardless of whether he’d broken any laws, reported The Hill.
“Surely [criminality is] not our bar,” Yates said during a panel discussion at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “That’s not the standard of conduct that we’re looking for from our president or our administration. I mean, It shouldn’t just be whether you’ve committed a felony or not. It should also be whether or not you’re observing the kinds of norms that we’ve been talking about here today.”
...She said the evidence uncovered so far should concern Americans, even if there’s no smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“There are facts here that should be alarming to us as a country that falls short of facts that would establish a basis for impeachment or for prosecution,” Yates said.
In other words, Americans should find shocking a story that cannot be proven, and may not in fact be true. While she is right that Americans should demand a standard of ethical behavior from our politicians that goes beyond what the law expressly forbids, that doesn't mean false narratives such as the Russia story should be our standard for moral outrage.
Sarah Palin is suing The New York Times for defamation, according to documents filed in federal court Tuesday that were obtained by The Daily Caller.
The lawsuit has to do with an editorial the NYT ran on June 14 that falsely smeared Palin as inciting the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords by a mentally ill man. There is no evidence to support the NYT’s implication that Palin played a role in inciting the Giffords shooting.
But what is surprising is how much Palin is suing for: $75,000. Whatever the Times is spending on legal fees will probably top any cost of losing.
What is amazing about this New York Times editorial was what it was about:
The NYT editorial followed the attempted mass assassination of Republican lawmakers by a left-wing Bernie Sanders supporter, who espoused anti-Republican rhetoric on his Facebook page and belonged to several anti-GOP groups on Facebook, including one titled, “Terminate The Republican Party.”
In other words, the New York Times used a false narrative to justify attempted murder by a Leftist. This is a new low, even for them.
"If we evaluate ACA using the parameters Democrats themselves laid out when campaigning and passing, it has failed on everything other than the massive expansion of welfare. Even then, it offers 'access' by threatening and forcing people to buy insurance. This is tantamount to celebrating an increase in military recruitment after passing a draft."--David Harsanyi, from "The Democrats’ Three Big Political Lies About Health Care"
The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to go forward with a limited version of its ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries, a victory for President Donald Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency.
The justices will hear full arguments in October in the case that has stirred heated emotions across the nation. In the meantime, the court said Monday that Trump's ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can be enforced if those visitors lack a "credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States."
In the case of a country like Syria, where we are effectively at war, a travel ban not only seems logical but necessary. In fact, this travel ban seems too limited in scope for that situation. Imagine allowing travel from Germany or Japan during world War II?
The Trump administration said late Monday that it had discovered evidence that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad could be planning another chemical weapons attack.
Sadly, Fox buried the real story here:
The White House did not detail what prompted the warning. Several State Department officials typically involved in coordinating such announcements told the Associated Press they were caught completely off guard by the warning, which didn't appear to be discussed in advance with other national security agencies.
Typically, the State Department, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies would all be consulted before the White House issued such a declaration.
There are two possibilities here. First, President Trump could be trying to be open with the American people about what we know is happening in Syria.
The second and far more likely possibility is the White House is trying to cover up some other piece of news. What news could that be?
The Senate Republican health care bill teetered on the edge of collapse Monday evening after the Congressional Budget Office released a devastating report on its impact and multiple Republicans announced they would not vote to advance the legislation.
The mood was tense and chaotic on Capitol Hill moments after the non-partisan agency predicted that the Republican proposal would result in 22 million more people becoming uninsured by 2026...than under Obamacare.
Naturally, the CNN story completely ignores a very important aspect of the CBO report:
Senate Republicans’ health care bill would reduce the federal deficit and eventually lead to lower premiums, but would result in millions more Americans being uninsured a decade from now, according to a fresh analysis from Capitol Hill’s nonpartisan budget scorekeepers.
...But the budget impact could be appealing to fiscal conservatives. In large part due to Medicaid changes, the report said the legislation would cut deficits over the next decade by $321 billion.
In summary, insuring the health care of those 22 million people will cost us $14,590 each for the next decade. That is dirt cheap. That is TOO cheap. If we are providing health care to 22 million people at that price, then we need to take a serious look at the quality of the health care provided. It cannot be good.
On the other hand, if that health care is of reasonable quality, we need to expand it to all Americans. For just over $400 billion per year, we could provide health care for all Americans. Unfortunately, health care spending in the U.S. was $3.2 trillion in 2015. Providing health care for less than current cost is unlikely, unless you get rid of all the private sector (i.e. insurance companies) and government middle men, Eliminate all the buck-passing in health care, and we might be able to afford it again. But that means we would have to actually write the checks ourselves. No Rube Goldberg health care bill will fix the fact we are all trying to get somebody else to pay our bills for us.
This is how Obamacare works.
Here is the TRUTH which none of us wants to hear: There is no health care "fix" possible, other than pulling government out of health care entirely. Contrary to what your politicians of all stripes want you to believe, they don't have a magic solution. Europe doesn't have it, Canada doesn't have it, and Cuba doesn't have it.
At best, a health savings account combined with some form of catastrophic health insurance might be able to provide health care for everyone at a reasonable price. Note that reasonable isn't necessarily cheap. This is just the least expensive of the options, since it allows market forces to keep prices down for routine procedures.
For all the stories about "Trumpcare", there is an important fact being lost: Trumpcare is undefined at this point. There is no bill that is ready for President Trump to sign, or that is even being voted upon yet. It would be just as useful to argue about the pros and cons of unicorn milk, because neither exists.
That said, there is a bill in the Senate being considered. What that bill is now, and what it will be when it finally comes to a vote, assuming it does, could be radically different. Even then, it will still have to go to the House for a vote. Or the House could decide they don't like the Senate bill, and then demand to have negotiations with the Senate to decide on yet another kind of compromise bill.
In other words, there is no way on Earth to decide what Trumpcare is or is not, at this point in time. But that doesn't stop the people on the Left from pulling their Chicken Little routine, or the people on the Right from defending something that doesn't exist.
All Ariana and Kevin Gonzalez want is birth control.
As far as health care needs go, that's pretty simple.
But the California couple says that if the Republican alternative to Obamacare becomes law, they'll be driving over the border to Mexico to get it.
It's not that the Gonzalezes don't have insurance; they have very good insurance through Ariana's job as a high school teacher.
The problem is that "Trumpcare," as Ariana calls it, would probably run her health clinic out of town. It's Planned Parenthood, which the Republican health care proposal defunds because it performs abortions.
The Gonzalezes live in the Imperial Valley, an agricultural area two hours east of San Diego, with a severe doctor shortage. On average in California, there's one primary care physician for every 1,341 people. In the Imperial Valley, there's one physician for every 4,170 people, according to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
For Ariana, that means it takes well over a month to get an appointment with her gynecologist and then four or five hours in the waiting room to see him, which means she has to take the day off work. At Planned Parenthood, she gets an appointment the next day and is in and out in about 30 minutes.
It is amazing how Leftists can always overlook the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Hello McFly? Doctor shortage!
Even if we assume the defunding of Planned Parenthood is in the final version of Trumpcare, which is reasonable, that doesn't mean we should ignore the real problem here just so people don't get inconvenienced by their birth control choices. The real problem is an insufficient supply of primary care physicians (PCP). Is there a reason why there aren't enough PCP's in California, or even Imperial Valley specifically? Or is this a problem across the country? Could it be our medical schools aren't creating enough PCP's? These are bigger, more important questions that need to be asked, rather than knee-jerk funding a group that provides abortions.
Contrary to what CNN thinks, publicly funding a procedure that denies the right to life of an unborn human is reasonably controversial. It is one thing to allow women to get abortions, but it is quite another to publicly fund it. People have the right to be able to buy a Mercedes, but to demand public funding for it is laughable. Abortions are not a "good thing that every woman should have", which public funding presumes.
When health care gets fixed, it should fix real problems like insufficient PCP's, and not what idiots at CNN consider important.
President Trump expressed optimism Sunday about GOP congressional leaders being close to overhauling the “dead carcass” of ObamaCare, but acknowledged more deal-making is needed to get enough votes, as Republican senators appeared to put their chamber’s legislation in further doubt.
There is a good reason why this wasn't a lede story at Fox News. "Republican president supports Republican health care legislation efforts" has all the newsworthiness of "Sun rises in morning".
North Korean officials, in their first remarks responding to the death of American student Otto Warmbier, are calling themselves the “biggest victim” in the tragedy and accusing the U.S of corroborating with South Korea in a “smear campaign.”
The North’s official state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a statement from an unidentified foreign ministry official in Pyongyang on Friday, defending their actions and insisting that although the country “had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state,” Warmbier was provided with “medical treatments and care with all sincerity on humanitarian basis until his return to the U.S.”
“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week just after his return to the U.S., is a mystery to us as well," the statement continues, noting that his health indicators were “normal” at the time of release.
Warmbier died June 19, just days after being returned to the U.S. in a coma after having been detained in North Korea in early 2016 on allegations of stealing a propaganda poster. U.S. doctors noted that Warmbier had suffered extensive brain damage, but could not determine the cause. He was laid to rest on Thursday, but no autopsy was performed, due to his family’s wishes.
North Korea officials claimed the 22-year-old, who is believed to have been in a comatose state for more than a year, contracted botulism and fell into a coma after being given a sleeping bill. However, doctors have rejected such an explanation and his parents also have refuted those claims – instead vowing that their son was “brutalized and terrorized” while imprisoned.
First, the Warmbier family doesn't get to have a say in speculation over what happened. They chose not to have an autopsy done, which could have definitively said what happened, and left the North Koreans with no excuses. While the Warmbier family deserves sympathy for their loss, any sympathy for them should end there.
Mind you, that doesn't mean they were wrong. Considering the nature of the North Korean regime, even traveling there is risky. It is unknown whether Warmbier actually stole the propaganda poster, but that isn't necessarily relevant. Just going to North Korea was stupid enough. Going into the lion's den just because you can, doesn't mean you should. For this, Warmbier gets a Darwin Award:
People from all over the country are calling for a University of Delaware adjunct professor to be fired after she wrote on Facebook that Otto Warmbier "got exactly what he deserved" after being taken into custody by North Korea, falling into a coma and dying.
On her personal Facebook page, Kathy Dettwyler, an anthropology professor, wrote Tuesday that Warmbier was "typical of a mindset of a lot of the young, white, rich, clueless males who come into my classes."
"These are the same kids who cry about their grades because they didn't think they'd really have to read and study the material to get a good grade. ... His parents ultimately are to blame for his growing up thinking he could get away with whatever he wanted. Maybe in the US, where young, white, rich, clueless white males routinely get away with raping women. Not so much in North Korea. And of course, it's Ottos' parents who will pay the price for the rest of their lives."
Dettwyler is 100% correct. Sorry if this offends anyone, but the TRUTH is ugly sometimes. For this, Dettwyler is getting the first TRUTH award:
A secretive Washington firm that commissioned the dubious intelligence dossier on Donald Trump is stonewalling congressional investigators trying to learn more about its connections to the Democratic Party.
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.
What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources say it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda.
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”
Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.
More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.
While Donald Trump is not an innocent by any stretch of the imagination, it is also clear the Democrats have been working hard to sling mud at him, some of it made up by them. The problem here is that anything he does wrong gets hidden by the mud, which people begin to ignore because they know what the Democrats are doing. If the Democrats would just sit back and let Trump make his own mistakes, their lives would be so much easier.
A college professor who recently appeared on Fox News to defend a Black Lives Matter event in which only black people were invited has been fired.
It was announced Friday that Lisa Durden, a former adjunct professor at Essex County College in New Jersey, would be let go from her job following a heated argument on the June 6 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight. While speaking about an “all-black Memorial Day celebration” hosted by a Black Lives Matter group, Durden, who is black, told the host “you white people are angry because you couldn’t use your white privilege card” to attend the event.
The former professor, who taught communications and pop culture classes as an adjunct according to the Newark Star-Ledger, also called America a “racist society.”
Clearly, Durden is representative of the racism inherent in American society. Mind you, this is not a denial of the existence of racism against blacks. But that racism doesn't justify turning the tables against all whites, many of whom are not racist. This is the inherent problem with racism: The generalities based on nothing more than silly qualities like skin color.
Welcome to the weekly musical finale, where I end the blogging week on a musical note.
This week, I am journeying into the industrial rock genre, and specifically KMFDM's "Juke Joint Jezebel" from 1995:
KMFDM stands for "Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid", which translates as "No Pity for the Majority". Although the band was formed in Hamburg, Germany, they moved to the United States in 1989, and has gone through various convulsions, split-ups, and re-formations since then.
As for "Juke Joint Jezebel", I will offer my own journeyman's interpretation of the song. It is from the point of view of a man being seduced by a "jezebel" (a deceptive woman) from a musical bar of some kind (juke joint). The song is dripping with his regret, even as the protagonist allows the seduction to proceed to its inevitable conclusion. The lyrics use the classical symbolism of sex equating to death throughout. However, the protagonist expects some kind of revelation from this experience, although that may just be an exaggerated way of saying "carnal bliss". Your mileage may vary.
That is all from me this week. This juke joint is closed for the weekend, but returning Monday with more blogging. Enjoy your weekend!
Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled a draft version of their healthcare reform bill that cuts Medicaid, ends penalties for people not buying insurance and reshapes subsidies to low-income users.
The bill, revealed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, could go to a vote as early as next week. Senate Republicans made the proposal public in a bid to stem criticism that they have been slow to respond to a House version of an ObamaCare overhaul.
In other words, they rushed some trash out so it looks like they did something.
Even their own senators aren't buying this garbage:
Four Republican senators say they will not vote for the GOP health care bill unless changes are made, putting passage of the bill at risk just hours after it was unveiled.
With Republicans holding 52 seats in the Senate and no Democrats expected to support the legislation, GOP leaders can only afford to lose two votes among their own ranks.
The four conservative GOP senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas — released a joint statement Thursday afternoon outlining their concerns:
"Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information before it is brought to the floor. There are provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs."
"It looks like a reiteration or a keeping of Obamacare," Sen. Paul told reporters Thursday afternoon. "I'm a 'no' on the bill currently."
Paul said the group came out together because they'd have more negotiating power to move the bill in a more conservative direction.
Their displeasure includes the amount of subsidies given to people to purchase insurance, the Medicaid expansion continues for another three years and the $15 billion per year to prop up the insurance companies providing insurance in the individual Obamacare market for the next three years.
The headline alone tells you what to expect, but here is the first paragraph in case you enjoy Soviet-style propaganda:
In the hellish months since Donald Trump’s inauguration, a dark parlor game of sorts has cropped up in liberal circles that I like to call “Would an Impeachment Even Be Worth It?” With the full acknowledgment that it’s unlikely to happen as long as Republicans are in charge, participants still sip cocktails and ponder out loud the question of whether booting out Trump on his butt would be enough to save our democracy, considering the fact that the Republican slimeball taking his place would invariably sign a bunch of retrograde legislation setting back this country decades.
In fact, the Republican health care bill isn't mentioned until the third paragraph.
Amanda Marcotte, the author of this Salon editorial, is delighted to point out the evils of the Republicans, even as she spews venom at them. When this much venom is used, one has to question which side is truly evil. Or as Shakespeare wrote, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks".
The TRUTH is the Left's objection comes down to they are still having their temper tantrum. We may as well let them hold their collective breath until they pass out.
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he did not make and does not have any “tapes” or recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, ending a nearly six-week saga he kicked off by suggesting in a tweet that such tapes existed.
“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are ‘tapes’ or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” Trump stated in a pair of tweets on Thursday afternoon.
Unless somebody has evidence to the contrary, end of discussion.
ST. LOUIS • An off-duty officer was wounded by "friendly fire" as police looked for suspects after a stolen vehicle fled police and crashed late Wednesday.
The injured off-duty officer was treated at a hospital released on Thursday. The suspect was also treated, and released into police custody.
At Barnes-Jewish Hospital early Thursday, Interim Police Chief Lawrence O’Toole told reporters the off-duty officer had come out of his home to help after the stolen car crashed nearby, and was hit in the crossfire between officers and suspects who had been in the car.
But police now say the off-duty officer was shot by a fellow cop who did not recognize him as an officer, in a separate encounter away from the initial crash.
According to a department summary of the incident released later Thursday, two officers who encountered the armed off-duty officer ordered him to the ground. He complied. When they recognized the off-duty officer, they told him he could stand up and walk toward them.
Another officer just arriving at the scene saw the off-duty officer get up and, not knowing he was an officer, fired his weapon once at the man. He hit the off-duty officer in the arm, the department said.
I was originally going to give the St. Louis police the face-palming bear for this, but I decided another reaction was more appropriate:
If you ever needed a reminder that the police are more about "enforcement" than "justice", look no further than this story. Even cops aren't safe around other cops.
"What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking — there's the real danger."--Frank Herbert, from the novel God Emperor of Dune
President Trump announced Wednesday night that he will soon ask Congress to pass legislation banning immigrants from accessing public assistance within five years of entering the U.S.
“The time has come for new immigration rules that say ... those seeking immigration into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years," Trump told a campaign-style rally in Grand Rapids, Iowa.
Trump's proposal would build on the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which allows federal authorities to deport immigrants who become public dependents within five years of their arrival. Many of that law’s provisions were rolled back during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, but Trump's proposal would make more categories of federal benefits off-limits to immigrants.
...In requesting these changes, the White House will cite a 2015 report from the Center for Immigration Studies that found 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant are using some form of public assistance, compared to 30 percent among non-immigrant families. That report has been disputed by critics who say it does not take into account the nuances of many immigrant families.
If immigrant households only used 10%, would that make this proposal a bad idea? Not at all. People shouldn't come to this country to collect welfare.
Regardless of where you stand on this issue, it is politically touchy for the Left, considering Bill Clinton was the first to sign it into law, and it took true Leftists like Bush and Obama to backtrack on it. The fact CNN gave this proposal a bare mention on a video tells you how sensitive it is.
So what was CNN's lede in the absence of the Trump proposal?
President Donald Trump's son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner should "absolutely" have his security clearance suspended, Rep. Mike Quigley told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview Wednesday afternoon.
Appearing on "The Situation Room," the Illinois Democrat said Kushner "shouldn't have clearance at this point," echoing a letter from House oversight committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings and citing a "whole series of activities," including "concerns about Mr. Kushner's activities prior to the Inauguration."
Kushner's crime? He contacted Russia during the Trump team's transition. Of course, he also contacted other countries, because that was his job.
So is there something specific behind this?
In his interview with CNN, Quigley indicated there were additional concerns about Kushner's security clearance, referencing "a whole series of activities that I can't get into at this point in time, but they raise concerns about his judgment and his ability to keep our nation's secrets." When pressed by Wolf Blitzer, Quigley said, "I can't get into details, because some of those things were also discussed in classified settings."
Maybe there is something there, but if they cannot discuss it, then there is nothing there. Which means this isn't a story. The fact it is being promoted by an obviously partisan Democratic representative adds to the lack of substance. At best, this should get a mention in a political rumor column, not a lede story.
Officials in Ohio have recommended a 1-day suspension for Columbus police officer Zachary Rosen after he was caught on video kicking a man in the head.
In a video that was published on social media earlier this year, an officer can be seen handcuffing Demarko Anderson, who appears to be complying with demands.
“I am, sir,” Anderson says repeatedly as he lays face down on the sidewalk.
Suddenly, officer Rosen is seen charging into view of the camera and delivers a kick to Anderson’s head.
Rosen was reassigned to non-patrol duty pending the outcome of an investigation.
On Wednesday, the Columbus Police Department revealed that Chief of Police Kim Jacobs had recommended a 24-hour suspension for Rosen.
Really Jacobs? A one-day suspension? Zachary Rosen shouldn't be a police officer anywhere in this country, period. Personally, I wouldn't hire him as a mall guard.
Fortunately, the chief of police doesn't have the final say in this:
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther noted in a statement on Wednesday that the Director of Public Safety will have the final say about whether to uphold the suspension, fire Rosen or choose another outcome.
Seriously, the one-day suspension admits that Zachary Rosen did do this (as if the video isn't enough proof). By admitting that his officer did this reprehensible act, and then giving the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, Chief of Police Kim Jacobs has earned himself a shark:
Vir Cotto: I thought the purpose of filing these reports was to provide accurate intelligence! Mollari: Vir, intelligence has nothing to do with politics! (from the tv show Babylon 5)
Republican Karen Handel on Tuesday night defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s record-spending, special-election House race, according to the Associated Press.
With all precincts reporting, Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, led Ossoff 52 percent to 48 percent -- a margin of nearly 11,000 votes out of more than 250,000 ballots cast.
Seems pretty straightforward. Yet the CNN story veered into more news analysis than reporting:
Democrats tried an inoffensive moderate message in Georgia. They ran a banjo-strumming populist in Montana. They called in the cavalry in South Carolina and tried to catch their foe sleeping through a long-shot in Kansas.
None of it worked.
In the special elections for House seats vacated by Republicans who wound up in President Donald Trump's Cabinet, Democrats went 0-for-4.
Now, party officials, strategists and candidates are pondering what went wrong -- and how they can turn it around in time for the 2018 midterm elections.
Jon Ossoff's loss Tuesday night in a hyper-competitive Georgia race -- the most expensive in history -- "better be a wake up call for Democrats," tweeted Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, an emerging Democratic leader.
"We need a genuinely new message, a serious jobs plan that reaches all Americans, and a bigger tent," he wrote, "not an smaller one. Focus on the future."
#Ossof Race better be a wake up call for Democrats - business as usual isn't working. Time to stop rehashing 2016 and talk about the future.
It is hard to disagree with the TRUTH of that analysis, but let's try? Note the races were all in districts which Republicans held previously. Strike one against the Democrats.
Strike two against the Democrats came in the following:
But before the 2018 midterms, Democrats must grapple with the party's need to drive its base to the polls while also convincing some independents and moderate Republicans to reject Trump.
This was why Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama in 2012 (and many of the Republican campaigns against FDR as well): You cannot run a campaign "against" somebody. If you don't represent something, if you don't believe in something, you can never win. In other words, you have to present an alternative. The Democrats are overly focused on "not Trump", but they have no ideas of their own, other than the tired ones of the last 8 years under Obama. Trump's election was a wake-up call against those policies, but the Democrats are still hitting the snooze button.
The two campaigns and outside groups supporting and opposing the candidates shelled out at least $36 million as of May 31, including more than $22 million from Ossoff's campaign. The election easily set a record for spending in a House race, according to NBC News.
This presents one inherent flaw in political thinking in general, although Democratic Party thinking in this particular case: You can fix any problem if you throw enough money at it. This doesn't work when the government does it, and it doesn't work in the private sector either. Some problems require more than money. Some of them require thinking.
"There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."--John Wayne
Today's award for "best lede story" goes to Drudge Report, which ran with a New York Times story that even the New York Times didn't have as its main lede:
Long-running tensions between the United States and Russia erupted publicly on Monday as Moscow condemned the American military’s downing of a Syrian warplane and threatened to target aircraft flown by the United States and its allies west of the Euphrates.
The Russians also said they had suspended their use of a hotline that the American and Russian militaries used to avoid collisions of their aircraft in Syrian airspace.
The episode was the first time the United States downed a Syrian plane since the civil war began there in 2011 and came after the SU-22 jet dropped bombs on Sunday near American-backed fighters combating the Islamic State.
The implications are severe: This increases the risk of the Russians intentionally attacking American air forces over Syria. Is Syria really worth risking a war with Russia?
So what is the main lede from the Leftist media today?
Progressives poured $23 million into Jon Ossoff's campaign. House Democrats' campaign arm sent a team to Georgia to organize the sixth congressional district months ahead of the special election there.
Now, voters will decide whether all the effort was worthwhile.
Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel are facing off Tuesday in what has become the most expensive House race in history, with the candidates, their parties and super PACs pouring more than $50 million combined into the effort to win a single House seat in the northern Atlanta suburbs.
The fact CNN leads the story talking about the Democrat tells you where their bias lies (as if you didn't already know). But this is all manufactured drama in an election that Karen Handel will probably win.
If Ossoff pulls off the upset, we can discuss deeper meaning. Until then, this article is nothing but wishful thinking looking for a news story to back it.
They once enjoyed a life of ill-gotten luxury, married to identical twins who climbed to the top of the world’s most profitable – and deadly – drug cartel. But these days, Mia and Olivia Flores live in the shadows, wearing disguises and shuttling their children from home to home, always wary someone is coming for them.
Daughters of Chicago police officers, Mia and Olivia married Pedro and Margarito Flores Jr. as the brothers rose from street-level dealers to running Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel in the United States.
The article goes on to describe how their husbands helped to bring down El Chapo. While this article does paint an interesting story, is it really a lede story? As Fox is fond of saying, "You decide".
All of that free publicity couldn't push Megyn Kelly over the top.
Despite a week's worth of stories about her controversial interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the Q&A ended up being watched by only 3.5 million viewers, and was soundly beaten by CBS rival “60 Minutes,” which drew 5.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
...The program took a nosedive in comparison to Kelly’s debut on June 4, which featured an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin. That interview drew 6.2 million viewers.
And Kelly didn’t just lose viewers. Forbes reported JPMorgan, along with several local advertisers, dropped spots from the show or, in the case of the financial company, the enirety of NBC News, until after the interview aired.
In summary, Americans don't really care to watch media personalities interview each other. Let them take their circle jerk elsewhere.
You are probably thinking that is an odd title for a post about the news, but it is quite apt.
The main lede in most news services is about a London van attack where one person died and about 10 more were injured, plus the alleged terrorist was captured. Per my policy, I will not be covering this.
The other so-called big story is the news reporter Megyn Kelly interview of news reporter Alex Jones. When news reporters interviewing news reporters becomes news, it is just pathetic. Can the end of civilization be far behind this? We can only hope so, because otherwise it may need to be euthanized.
So all I have for news is one story, and even it is more propaganda than news:
Amid a broadening investigation of Russian contacts with his associates and his own role in trying to stop it, President Trump fired off another angry tweet this past week repeating his assertion that he has no business interests in Russia.
Actually, according to Trump's attorney, he is NOT under investigation. Mind you, that doesn't mean he couldn't be under investigation at a moment's notice. But there would have to actually be evidence. But don't let that stop you, New York Times!
Last year, while hacking Democrats’ emails and working to undermine the American presidential election, the Russian government also granted extensions to six trademarks for Mr. Trump that had been set to expire...
Again, we have no evidence connecting the Democrats' emails with Russian hackers. allow me to clarify: The emails released by Wikileaks have yet to be connected to Russian hackers connected to the Russian government. There is evidence that Russian hackers have tried to hack many computers connected to the American election, yet we have no proof that they were successful, nor any proof that anything was ever affected, such as actual votes. So the line about "hacking Democrats’ emails" is speculative, and not fact like it is worded.
...The Trump trademarks, originally obtained between 1996 and 2007 for hotels and branding deals that never materialized, each had terms that were coming to an end in 2016.
Despite their inactivity, the Trump Organization sought extensions for the trademarks from Rospatent, the Russian government agency in charge of intellectual property. In a series of approvals starting in April 2016 and ending in December, Rospatent granted new 10-year terms for the trademarks, the agency’s records show.
Sound like pretty routine stuff, until...
Four of the approvals were officially registered on Nov. 8 — Election Day in the United States.
Under normal circumstances, renewing trademarks in Russia is generally a routine matter, and there is nothing to suggest from the few public records available that Mr. Trump was shown favoritism. Still, extensions are not guaranteed and can be subject to challenge — particularly if, as in this case, the trademarks went unused for years, according to interviews with a half-dozen lawyers specializing in intellectual property law.
Certainly a trademark CAN BE challenged, but it isn't a certainty that it will be. By the way, that last line is a bit misleading, as this article later states:
Since then, the Trump trademarks have remained on the books but not put to use. If there were no challenges to a renewal application, approval by Rospatent would normally not be a problem, said Peter Sloane, a trademark attorney with Leason Ellis in White Plains.
“I am not aware of any reason why a renewal would be denied if the necessary formalities, such as filing a new power of attorney, are met,” he said.
In other words, if nobody else is applying for the trademark on "Trump Tower" or "Trump Vodka", then renewing them would be a breeze.
Continuing:
Beyond the questions about Russian government approvals, the trademark renewals cast doubt on Mr. Trump’s oft-stated insistence that he has no business interests in Russia. Mr. Trump has made the claims in response to investigations of possible collusion between his associates and Russia during and after the election.
Let us be clear on what the New York Times is implying: Donald Trump received favorable treatment from the Russians on his trademarks, because they wanted him to win the presidential election, which they approved on the day he won the presidential election, which they helped him to win (this is fact according to the Times).
Also buried in the Times' story is the fact it wasn't just Russia approving trademarks:
An announcement by China in February that it approved trademark registrations the Trumps had long sought set off alarm bells among ethics watchdogs and congressional Democrats, though the action appeared to have been the final step in a decision reached before Mr. Trump became president. Peruvian officials approved Trump trademarks in late December, not long before Peru’s president met with Mr. Trump in February.
Where are the questions about Chinese or Peruvian hackers? Don't laugh at the Peruvian hackers. From the Daily Mail in September 2014:
The Peruvian hackers have broken into military, police, and other sensitive government networks in Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, defacing websites and extracting sensitive data to strut their programming prowess and make political points.
Now the team calling itself LulzSecPeru has created a national political uproar.
Emails the hackers stole from the Peruvian Council of Ministers' network and dumped online last month fueled accusations that top Cabinet ministers have acted more like industry lobbyists than public servants. That helped precipitate a no-confidence vote last week that the Cabinet barely survived.
The hackers, who describe themselves as two young men, are a homegrown version of the U.S. and U.K-based LulzSec "black hat" hacker collective that has attacked the Church of Scientology and agitated on behalf of the WikiLeaks online secret-spillers and Occupy Wall Street.
Mind you, this doesn't mean the Peruvian hackers actually hacked the DNC emails, or even did it for the Peruvian government. Then again, we have just as much proof of Peru's involvement as we do of Russia's involvement.
