Winning - February 2018

More in the continuing saga of Trump's and the GOP's winning ways in February 2018. A partial list:

• Trump allows the release of the "Nunes" memo over the objections of the FBI and Justice Department over security issues. This further undermines our trust of the government law enforcement agencies.
• Trump finds it necessary to lie about the size of his SOTU TV audience. He says it was the highest number ever. It was actually sixth largest. Not even close.
• Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wanted ‘illegal aliens’ including Dreamers arrested at the State of the Union. That likely won’t help the GOP with Latinos.
• Trump refuses to implement Russian sanctions passed by Congress. The law passed by veto-proof bipartisan majorities. The vote was 419-3 in the House and 48-2 in the Senate. His bromance with Putin continues.
• The RNC has decided to keep the money donated by Steve Wynn who resigned as RNC Finance chair over sexual misconduct allegations. Once again they make the moral choice. 
• The Supreme Court refuses to delay Pennsylvania court ruling that Republican illegally gerrymandered Congressional districts must be redrawn immediately.
• The White House has withdrawn its controversial nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality, Kathleen Hartnett White. Another completely unqualified nominee.
• Trump incorrectly says the UK's National Health Service is broke and not working. Brit's strongly disagree. 
• Trump calls the Congressional Democrats who didn't clap and stand during his SOTU speech un-American and treasonous. Disagreement is not treason. 
• On 2/5/18, the Dow dropped 1,175 points, the largest point drop in history. Another record for Trump but he failed to tweet or take credit for it. 
• 2/7 - Rob Porter, who served as the White House staff secretary, resigns following allegations by his two ex-wives of physical and emotional abuse. Another of the best and brightest bites the dust. 
• The FBI shoots down the White House timeline on the Porter security clearance issues. 
• 2/9, White House aide David Sorensen resigns over domestic abuse allegations.
• Associate Attorney General, Rachel Brand, resigns after only nine months on the job.
• Thomas Brunell has withdrawn as a candidate for deputy director of the Census Bureau. He wrote the book Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America. Really?
• Trump's infrastructure plan thinks $200 billion in federal spending will result in $1.5 trillion in overall spending. This is the definition of "new math" or is it "voodoo economics"?
• 2/14 - Michael Cohen, a Trump personal attorney, admits that he paid Stormy Daniels $130K. Why?
• Another Trump affair and coverup comes to light. This time with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal.
• 2/16 - Despite Trump's continual denial of Russian interference in our elections, the Department of Justice files an indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian organizations. 
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt comes under fire for excessive travel expenses. Are you seeing a pattern among Trump cabinet members?
• Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who worked with Manafort and Gates, has been charged with making false statements.
• Mueller files an additional 22 count indictment against Manafort and Gates. New charges include tax fraud.
• 2/23 - Rick Gates, former deputy to Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.
• The Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration request to hear the Dreamers case currently in lower courts.
• A new $31K dining room set for HUD Secretary Ben Carson's office. This while HUD's budget is being cut. 
• 2/27 - Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, has his security clearance downgraded from top secret to secret.
• Hope Hicks, White House communications director, resigns. The fourth person to hold that position in Trump's administration. 

wjh

SOTU 2018 TV Ratings

... and other fairy tales.

Trump tweeted on February 1st - "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!"

For once, he actually got the raw numbers close to right. Unfortunately, he completely blew the ranking. According to the math I learned, 6th place does not count as the "highest number". We have seen this dyslexia on Trump's part before. When he looks at two or more numbers, whichever number is attributed to him is the largest, most, best, etc. When he looks at the numbers 68, 53, 51.7, 48, 45.8, and 45.6 it is obvious that 45.6 is the highest.

Let's say the Neilson rating service made a slight error. Then maybe you could make a case that Trump could leap ahead of Clinton's 1994 numbers. He would then be in 5th place, still not quite 1st. Trump would need way more than even those three million illegal voters to get past Bush's 2002 or 2003 ratings. He'd need about 16½ million more viewers.

Why does Trump consistently lie about things that can be easily checked? In a White House "clarification", they stated that Trump was referring to cable news network viewers. Yet, he used the 45.6 million total TV viewer number in his tweet. This just amounts to the normal White House spin and damage control. It is a fulltime job for several people. 

The 45.6 viewers were spread over 12 networks. Fox News did have the highest viewership during the speech. Congratulations to them. The next highest rated networks were NBC (7.1 million) and CBS (7 million). You can see all the ratings in the PolitiFact article.

It seems only right that Trump would vastly exaggerate the ratings of a speech that was full of lies and misrepresentations. Guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks, it's in his DNA.

wjh

Fact checking the State of the Union 2018

Subtitled: If Trump is talking, he is lying.

1. “Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.” Since election day? Since when do president-elects create jobs. The real number is 1.8 million since the inauguration. The slowest job growth since 2010.
2. “After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.” Actually, wage increases in 2017 were the lowest in the last five years.
3. “African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.”  This is actually true, but during the 2016 campaign, Trump continually said the unemployment statistics from the Bureau of Labor were false. Now he embraces them. The unemployment rate has been declining since 2010.
4.   “Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low.” Actually, it was a six week low. Although unemployment numbers are good overall.
5. “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value. That is great news for Americans’ 401(k), retirement, pension and college savings accounts.” Again, that is a number since the election, not the inauguration. Still, good news. In fact, the US stock market is lagging behind the global markets and the 2017 percent increase (25.5%) is lower than the 2009 increase (33.3%), Obama's first year in office. Remember, if you take credit for the market increases, you also have to own the decreases. The market was down the day of the SOTU.
6. “Just as I promised the American people from this podium 11 months ago, we enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history.”  It's actually the 8th largest tax cut. Reagan holds the record and two Obama tax cuts were larger.
7. “Our massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses.” The tax cut does help the middle class until the cuts expire. Most of the cuts benefit the rich and large businesses.
8. “We slashed the business tax rate from 35 percent all the way down to 21 percent, so American companies can compete and win against anyone in the world. These changes alone are estimated to increase average family income by more than $4,000.” Independent economists claim the numbers don't add up. A $4K increase per family would be more than all the corporate taxes collected. Estimates are more like $1,600 per average household. That's pretty good, why lie and inflate the number?
9. “We have ended the war on American energy — and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal. We are now an exporter of energy to the world.” First, there is no such thing as "clean coal" and certainly not "beautiful clean coal". What he did do is repeal the Clean Power Plan. We have always exported energy, but we are not a "net" exporter of energy. 
10. “Many car companies are now building and expanding plants in the United States — something we have not seen for decades. Chrysler is moving a major plant from Mexico to Michigan.” Fiat Chrysler planned that new plant before the 2016 election.
11. “The third pillar ends the visa lottery — a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill, merit or the safety of our people.” This "lottery" is administered by our State Department, not the foreign countries. Applicants must have at least a high school diploma or equivalent or two years work experience. They are vetted and given medical tests.
12. “The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration. Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives.”  Only citizens can bring in more than spouses and unmarried children. Even at that, these are not automatic immigration visas. There are currently about four million on the waiting list.
13. “In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration. In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can no longer afford.”  Technically correct. Two immigrant terrorists out of the thousands who have come into the country via these programs are statistically insignificant. 
14. “We are proud that we do more than any other country to help the needy, the struggling and the underprivileged all over the world.” True in total dollars but as a percentage of GDP, the US ranks 22nd out of 29 wealthy countries. 

There were also a few things that Trump failed to mention. Approximately ⅓ of Puerto Rico is still without power and FEMA is ending emergency supply shipments. He also didn't mention that all those Carrier jobs he "saved" are now going to Mexico after all. Russia is still trying to influence our elections.  

To Trump's credit, he stayed on script and boringly read the teleprompter. He also clapped at his own statements. He promised bipartisan cooperation. Let's see how that works out.

wjh 

Winning - January 2018

More in the continuing saga of Trump's and the GOP's winning ways in January 2018. A partial list:

• In his first year in office, Trump has made over 2,000 false or misleading claims. A new record. Trump certainly is the BEST and MOST prolific liar.
• Trump claims that his nuclear button is bigger than Kim Jong Un's. Two children trading insults.
• Trump disbands the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Only two meetings, no results reported. All collected data will be destroyed. Trump still lost the popular vote by three million.
• There seems to be a breakup coming in the Trump-Bannon bromance. What a shame.
• “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency,” Trump's statement said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
• In a binding ruling, the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission unanimously rejected a proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry that would have boosted coal and nuclear energy over natural gas and renewables in competitive electricity markets.
• The NC Congressional District map was ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered by Republicans. 
• A Federal judge rules that DACA can’t end while a lawsuit is pending. 
• US Ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, resigns over differences with Trump's administration.
• The decision by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to exempt Florida from the offshore drilling expansion draws ire from other state governors, both Republican and Democratic.
• No one who was in the meeting with Trump originally denied that he referred to several, mostly Black or Brown, countries as "shithole countries". They have either confirmed his language or implausibly "don't recall". 
• After originally not being able to recall what Trump said about immigration, GOP Senators Cotton and Perdue now "remember" that Trump did not say shithole countries. I wonder who helped them remember.
• After further review, some of Trump's minions are insisting that Trump didn't say "shithole" but really said "shithouse". What is the difference? It is still a racist comment. 
• Trump fails to publicly respond to the Hawaii attack false alarm. No leadership, no concern. Too busy playing golf.
• Steve Bannon is subpoenaed by Mueller to testify before the grand jury. Later agrees to an interview with Mueller's team in lieu of the grand jury. 
• Nine of 12 members on the National Park System Advisory Board quit on Monday (1/15) "out of frustration that Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had refused to meet with them."
• Attorneys General from 21 states have filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission repeal of net neutrality. 
• Three hotels and three apartment/condo buildings have removed the Trump name. Others wanting to but the Trump Organization has threatened legal action.  
• The government shuts down on the anniversary of Trump's inauguration. 
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions questioned by Mueller's team. 
• Steve Wynn resigns as RNC Finance Chairman after sexual misconduct allegations. 
• Newly appointed CDC director, Brenda Fitzgerald, resigns due to her financial investments including tobacco companies.
• South Carolina Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, Mr. Benghazi, plans to retire. 

wjh

Closed For Business

Here we are Monday 1/22/2018 and our government is closed for business. It officially closed at 00:01 on Saturday but there was no major effect over the weekend. As the work week starts, it gets real.

This post is not meant to go over or dissect the issues involved that got us to this stalemate. It is to express my complete disgust with ALL our elected officials in Washington. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, House, Senate, White House, Ryan, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer, and Trump. The whole damn lot of them.

On the Sunday morning political talk shows, every single guest blamed the other side for this mess. Democrats blamed Republicans for the "Trump Shutdown" or "Republican Shutdown". The Republicans said it was the "Democratic Shutdown" or "Schumer Shutdown". There were no ideas about how to compromise and fix the problem, just blame for the other side.

Many of the arguments by both sides were laughable, disingenuous, and outright lies. It was very interesting to see the video clips and quotes from several people in 2013. That was the last time we had a government shutdown. At that time, the sides were reversed. The Republicans, Ted Cruz in particular, were trying to stop Democratic legislation. You can take the quotes from this shutdown compared to the 2013 shutdown. Except for the specific issues on the table, the quotes and arguments are exactly the same. The difference is that the Republican arguments and reasons from 2013 are now the Democratic arguments and reasons of 2018. And vice versa. 

Almost every politician talks out of both sides of their mouth. They are shameless. They also count on the fact that the populace as a whole has a short memory. What is said in 2013 will never be remembered in 2018. If by chance someone does remember the past statements, the politician has a spin as to how these are different times, a different issue. They try to spin that there completely contradictory statements are both right. In fact, they are both probably wrong. 

We now also have the circumstance of "tribal" politics. Whatever my guy says is right, whatever the other guy says is wrong and probably a lie. Whatever I don't agree with is fake news.   

Both sides try to justify their stance. Both sides blame the other. Meanwhile, our government remains closed. Government services go undone. More importantly, many government workers and others go unpaid and/or are furloughed. 

Stop the public statements and arrow slinging. Get behind closed and locked doors. Buy a few hundred pizzas, cases of beer, a case of Diet Coke and get this solve. No one gets out of the room until a deal to re-open the government is reached. 

Act like adults and do the job you were sent to Washington to do now. We should all be mad as hell at our representatives.

wjh 

It's Mueller Time - 2017

On 05/17/2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as Special Council. Mueller was to investigate any possible collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. The investigation was not limited to that issue and any crimes discovered while investigating were also subject to prosecution and/or being turned over to the Justice Department or state prosecutors. The first tangible results of that investigation were made public in late October 2017. The first of what may be a long line of indictments, guilty pleas, and embarrassing information. 

• On 10/30/2017, indictments were served on former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manifort and his business partner, also a Trump campaign official, Rick Gates. They were charged with lying to the government, money laundering, failing to register as a foreign lobbyist or agent and conspiracy against the United States. There are 12 separate counts in the indictment. The Manafort-Gates indictment is here.
• Also on 10/30/2017, it was learned that George Papadopoulos, a Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about meetings with the Russians. The Papadopoulos charges are here. 
• Around Thanksgiving, we learned that Michael Flynn's lawyers would no longer share information with White House or Trump lawyers. Is there a deal in the works?
• On 12/01/2017, Michael Flynn, former Trump National Security Advisor, pleads guilty to lying to the FBI concerning contacts with the Russians.

Despite the statements by Trump that Mueller's investigation will be over soon, it appears it is just getting started. The Mueller team has been very tight-lipped since it began. Barely any leaks in a city, Washington DC, that usually leaks like a sieve. 

Expect much more in 2018. We may also get some finalization from the various Congressional investigations. Where will it all lead, when will it all end? 

wjh

Winning - December 2017

More in the continuing saga of Trump's and the GOP's winning ways in December 2017. A partial list:

• Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor to candidate and President Trump, pleads guilty to lying to the FBI concerning contacts with the Russians.
• Indications are that Flynn is cooperating with the Mueller investigation. 
• The Flynn indictment records indicate that a “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team” directed Flynn.
• Trump declares that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Draws outrage and objections from the Arab and European world.
• A federal judge upholds the January 1, 2018, deadline to allow transgender people to enlist in the military. 
• At Trump's pro-Moore rally in Pensacola, he lies about Black home ownership percentage being the highest in history. It's not even close. Current is 42%, highest is 49.7% in 2004.
• Doug Jones, a Democrat, defeats bigot, racist, pedophile Roy Moore, a Republican, for the Alabama US Senate seat. That despite Trump's and Bannon's full endorsement of Moore. Senate now at 51-49 for GOP.
• Omarosé Onée Manigault-Newman either quits or is fired by John Kelly.
• Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of The Senate Judiciary Committee, said that based on his discussions with the White House, the Trump judicial nominations of Jeff Mateer and Brett Talley would not move forward through the confirmation process.
• Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) embarrasses Trump judicial nominee Matthew Spencer Peterson during a confirmation hearing. Another who has never tried a case. Trump continues to find the best of the best.
• Completely unqualified judicial nominee Matthew Peterson withdraws.
• The FCC rescinds net neutrality rules. A big win for internet providers. A big loss for internet consumers.
• Trump's nominee to head the Export-Import Bank, Scott Garrett, failed to win approval by the GOP controlled Senate Banking Committee.
• On 12/19, the House passed the GOP tax bill. Then realized it didn't adhere to some Senate rules. That's what happens when you rush big bills through. 
• The Trump administration takes down Petitions.WhiteHouse.Gov website without ever answering any of the petitions. Transparency?
• Trump threatens to cut aid to countries that vote for a UN resolution against recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
• The UN Security Council votes 14-1 to condemn the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The US vetoes the resolution.  
• The UN General Assembly condemns US/Jerusalem move 128-9 with 35 abstentions. Another win?
• Trump has absolutely no clue how the diversity visa lottery program works. What a surprise.
• Several of the women who accused Trump of sexual improprieties have re-emerged. How are all those lawsuits he promised coming along? 
• Recently, Trump has once again disparaged the FBI and Justice Department but praised Putin.   
• For the third year in a row, Trump retains his title as King of the Whoppers according to FactCheck.org.
• Trump brags that he has signed the most bills ever in a presidential first year. WRONG! He has actually signed the fewest in the last 60 years. 
• In a rambling, often incomprehensible, interview with the New York Times, Trump gets most of his "facts" wrong.

That's a wrap for 2017. I'm sure Trump will continue "winning" in 2018. Well, at least he'll tell us he is winning.

Happy New Year!

wjh