Mueller Time - First Quarter 2018

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 or other Americans and the Russian government regarding the 2016 elections. 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.

A partial list of first quarter 2018 news about the investigation.

01/16/2018 - Steve Bannon is subpoenaed by Mueller to testify before the grand jury. He later agrees to a more informal interview by the investigators in lieu of the grand jury.

01/23/2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned by the Mueller team for several hours the week before.

James Comey, former FBI Director, was interviewed by special counsel investigators in 2017.

02/16/2018 - The Justice Departments indicts 13 Russians and three Russian organizations for interfering with US elections and other crimes.

02/16/2018 - In a court filing in the Paul Manafort case, Mueller's team indicates that there could be additional charges including fraud and money laundering.

02/20/2018 - Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who worked with Manafort and Gates, has been charged with making false statements.

02/22/208 - Mueller files additional charges against Manafort and Gates in a 22 count indictment. New charges include income tax fraud.

02/23/2018 - Rick Gates pleads guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.

Former Trump aide, Sam Nunberg, subpoenaed by Mueller to appear before grand jury. Nunberg says he won’t comply. Well OK, the tough guy did comply. Good choice.

More Russian links are disclosed by Mueller's team. Paul Manafort and Rick gates have links to Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected former Russian intelligence officer.

Stay tuned.

wjh

Winning - March 2018

• Trump thinks a trade war is a good thing and is easy to win. He announces import tariffs on steel and aluminum. Says no countries will be exempt. Stock market drops. They are opposed by most.
• GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan breaks with Trump on tariffs.
• 3/8 - Trump signs tariff order that exempts Canada and Mexico. Leaves door open to exempt more countries.
• Trump name and management removed from Panama hotel. The third building since Trump's inauguration to remove the name.
• Trump imposes $60 billion in tariffs against China. They respond by increasing tariffs on US goods.
• Gary Cohn, Trump's Chief Economic Advisor, resigns. Trump appoints Larry Kudlow, a cable news pundit, to replace him.
• Stormy Daniels sues Trump over the nondisclosure agreement. That's the nondisclosure of the non-affair for which your lawyer made a non-payment.
• In an interview on 60 Minutes, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos shows how unqualified and unprepared she is for that post. 
• John McEntee, who has served as Mr. Trump’s personal assistant since he won the presidency, was forced out of his position and escorted from the White House on 3/12 after his security clearance was revoked.
• Trump fires Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, names current CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, as the new head of State.
• 3/19 - The Supreme Court refuses to block new Pennsylvania congressional district maps.
• Conor Lamb, a Democrat, wins Pennsylvania special election for the US House, Trump won the district in 2016 by 20 points. Trump also campaigned in person against Lamb.
• Karen McDougal, a former Playmate, sues The National Enquirer to get out of nondisclosure agreement about Trump affair.
• A New York judge allows Summer Zervos's, a former Apprentice contestant, defamation suit against Trump to proceed, potentially opening him to discovery. Another sexual harassment victim. 
• John Dowd resigns as Trump's lead attorney for the Mueller investigation. Fox News talking head and conspiracy theorist Joe diGenova is added to the legal team. Oops, no diGenova after all. A conflict of interest issue.
• National Security Adviser, General H.R. McMaster is relieved of command by Trump. Fox News pundit and war hawk John Bolton assumes the position. Another cable TV cabinet appointment. 
• New spending bill allocates little money for and imposes restrictions on The Wall.
• Trump now wants the military to fund The Wall. No word whether he means the US military or the Mexican military.
• Trump reverses full ban on transgenders in the military. Another flip-flop. 
• A federal judge has ruled that the D.C. and Maryland attorneys general have legal standing to sue President Trump for allegedly violating the Constitution’s ban on receiving “emoluments” from foreign governments and U.S. states.
• More Russian links disclosed by Mueller's team. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates links with Konstantin Kilimnik, a suspected former Russian intelligence officer.
• President Trump fires his Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin. Another member of the administration gone.
• The administration expels 60 Russian diplomats and closes the Seattle consulate. Russia responds by expelling 60 of our diplomats and closing our St. Petersburg consulate. 

wjh

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