The Asterisk Impeachment

The House of Representatives impeached President Trump but they failed to name an actual crime and instead went for Abuse of Power and added in a second charge of Obstruction of Congress.

Taking the second part first, it's true that the White House ordered witnesses not to cooperate with the impeachment. The justification was a combination of executive authority and an objection to the rules being used by the Democrats. This should have been referred to the courts to sort out. Rather than doing that the Democrats rushed the impeachment.

The first article list several allegations about the phone call and the president of Ukraine. None of the witnesses called during the hearings had first-hand knowledge of and wrong-doing. This should have been referred to a special prosecutor. But, again, the Democrats were in a rush and that would have taken months or years. What was not included was a list of law that President Trump broke. That's because Trump did nothing outright illegal. You have to assume his state of mind in order to infer criminal intent. Was the President actually trying to get a political advantage on one of the 24 Democratic candidates or had he seen the video of Biden on Fox and sincerely thought that it merited further investigation? The House Democrat pretend to know but they lack proof.

The whole impeachment was rushed and incomplete. The House Democrats have even admitted this. They are trying to get additional evidence and have suggested filing additional articles of impeachment.

The Democrats are also trying set the rules for the Senate trial. For Bill Clinton's Senate trial, there were no witnesses, just transcripts of testimony. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting that this time there be a full trial with new witnesses. Again, this shows how rushed the House proceedings were. The House should have gone to court to get a definitive answer on how far executive privilege stretches.

It is obvious that the House Democrats do not care about following proper procedures. They already tried that with the Russian collusion investigation but the Mueller Report failed to find anything actionable. They are not willing to wait months or years for a second investigation that may also turn up nothing.

The Democrats know that there is no way they can force Donald Trump from office. That's no longer the goal of the impeachment.

Last Summer the lawyer representing Christine Blasey Ford when she testified prior to the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh admitted that Ford's real goal was not to stop Kavanaugh from being confirmed. The real goal was to put an asterisk on the justice. "He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, and we know what motivates him, and that is important; it is important that we know, and that is part of what motivated Christine."

That's all the Democrats are left with President Trump: putting an asterisk on his name. WaPo columnist and Trump-hater Eugene Robinson calls it the "Asterisk of shame".

It's possible that Nancy Pelosi is holding off transmitting the Articles of Impeachment in order to stretch out the process. She knows that the President will be acquitted as soon as the case goes to the Senate.

This whole thing is likely to backfire on the Democrats. Trump's approval rating has already improved and the Republicans have raised tens of millions in donations.

The Democrats have done as much damage as they can by voting to impeach the President. If they try to go any further then they risk putting an asterisk on themselves as the Congress that used impeachment for political gain.

Impeachment Narratives

In their report to the House, the Judiciary Committee admitted that none of President Trump's actions were outright illegal but still claimed that they were improper because the committee could read the President's mind (they actually said this). This echos a judge ruling on Trump's immigration pause who admitted that it was within the President's power but still issued an injunction based on the President's motives.

But what if the Judiciary Committee got it wrong? The impeachment is all about narrative. Their narrative is that Trump was trying to hurt the Democrats' inevitable nominee by forcing a foreign power to publicly open an investigation on actions that may have benefited his son. But there are other narratives possible.

My narrative is that Trump saw a clip of Biden bragging about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired on Fox News and thought that there was legitimate cause for concern so he mentioned it in his phone call to the Ukrainian president. It wasn't an important point to Trump. He was more interested in Crowdstrike and who hacked the DNC in 2016 but it was a concern to him.

My narrative also says that Trump first learned about the aid to Ukraine in the Washington Examiner and put a hold on it out of concern that the US is under an unfair burden as the only country supporting Ukraine. Trump started the phone call by making that statement - that no one else is helping them. The hold on the aid was renewed a few times until Trump was convinced that it was justified and the money was released in mid-September without anyone in Ukraine knowing about it.

There is nothing remotely impeachable in my narrative and there's more evidence to support my version than the narrative the House is using.

This is not the first time that something Trump has said was given a different spin. During the election he called on any country that had hacked Hillary Clinton's emails to release the ones she had deleted. This was a joke but one with an edge. Trump was reminding us that Clinton had kept her emails on a poorly-secured server and that she had deleted more than 30 thousand of them before turning the other 30 thousand to the government. But the Clinton campaign immediately spun this as Trump asking a foreign power to hack into her emails and suggested that this was treasonous. Trump had done no such thing. Clinton's server was already offline and in FBI custody. He was suggesting it had already been hacked. Regardless, the media clutched their pearls and went with the Clinton spin.

The same thing has happened with the impeachment. You don't even have to assume the best of Trump to go with my narrative. You just have to look at how he operates (Fox News conspiracies and resentment over Europeans not contributing enough to NATO). None of the witnesses who testified could go beyond "I heard" or "I assumed". We still don't officially know who the whistle-blower who started this mess is or what his motivations are. That his name is still officially secret is telling. Supposedly they are keeping it secret for fear that his life will be threatened but at this point he would just be one of many witnesses against the President. Why should he get different treatment?

All of this smells to high heaven. The Democrats have been wanting to impeach the President since the day after election. They already had four impeachment votes over four different "offenses". When asked about the speed of the impeachment, Nancy Pelosi responded saying "We've been working on impeaching him for 22 months, two and a half years." That was the length of the Mueller investigation which was supposed to provide justification for impeachment but failed. This current effort seems too much like a last-ditch effort to impeach.

Look at how this differs from the Nixon and Clinton impeachments. Those rose out of criminal referrals by independent investigators. Both of those began with a full House vote. Both of those were of a president in his second term.

In contrast, there has been no criminal referral or independent investigation. It was all done internally in the House. And Trump is still in his first term with an election less than a year away.

The Democrats' conduct makes it appear that this is nothing but a political stunt. This is reinforced by public statements they have made. At this point the Democrats know that they have no case and no chance of having President Trump removed from office. It's nothing but a mean-spirited desire to add an asterisk to Trump's name.

Investigations Biden and Clinton

I noticed this in the November 8th Washington Post Daily 202:

Trump's demands for Ukraine came down to three words -- "Investigations, Biden and Clinton" – according to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, who oversaw Ukraine policy. The transcript of his deposition, published yesterday afternoon, lays out in perhaps the starkest terms to date Trump's shadow efforts to coerce Ukraine's leadership to open investigations that would benefit him politically, Greg Jaffe and Mike DeBonis report: "Trump 'wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to a microphone and say investigations, Biden and Clinton,' Kent told House impeachment investigators.

One word in that summary jumped out at me - Clinton.

The whole impeachment is based on the conviction that President Trump was trying to use foreign policy to damage a political rival. The President's defenders say that he was simply interested in ending corruption in Ukraine, particularly if it also involved former US officials. The fact that one of them is running for president is irrelevant to an inquiry into past misconduct.

There are some things in favor of the pro-Trump version of the events. Joe Biden did brag about getting a prosecutor fired, there had been an investigation into Burisma, the company that had hired Joe's son Hunter and the State Department had issued a warning about possible conflicts of interest with Hunter being employed by a major company in a country when Joe was responsible for Ukraine policy.

The pro-impeachment people insist that the Bidens did nothing wrong and that Trump was asking a foreign power to help with the US election.

Here's why Clinton's name is so important. Hillary was not running for President in July when the phone call was made nor has she done more than say that she'd love to be President if it were handed to her but she's not running.

If the call was all about hurting a rival then why bring Clinton into it? Her only involvement would have been during her days as Secretary of State or possibly through the Clinton Foundation. That is all in the past. Lumping the two together means that Trump was interested in past misdeeds, not hurting a possible rival.

One last point, Biden is not a political rival. He is a potential rival. He is a front-runner but not a single vote has been counted. Hurting Biden at this point does not help Trump unless you believe that Biden is the only candidate who can beat Trump. Personally I think that Biden would not stand a chance against Trump but hurting him early in the primaries could help someone with a better chance against Trump in the general election. That means that hurting Biden now would potentially hurt Trump later.

I don't believe for a moment that Trump hasn't considered this. So if he wants Ukraine to investigate Biden and Clinton then it's because he genuinely believes that they were involved in some corrupt dealings and wants them punished for it.

Columbus Conundrums

In a single breath the anti-Christopher Columbus Progressives say that:

A) Columbus didn't set foot in the modern US so

B) We should recognize Leif Erikson instead, even though he never set foot in the modern US and

C) We should blame Columbus for the genocide of the Native Americans eve though it happened hundreds of years after his death and was mainly confined to the areas occupied by the modern US and, finally,

D) We should celebrate Indigenous People's in honor of the people who Columbus never encountered (see A above).

I'm sure this all makes perfect sense to someone.

The "Impeachment". Where are we at?

If rumors and partial news accounts are correct then the impeachment that's not an impeachment becomes clearer.

First, there was no House vote to begin impeachment because not all Democrats would have voted for it. It's one thing to have a party-line vote. It's much harder to justify if there is bipartisan opposition and only partisan support for it.

Pelosi and the Democrats are trying to have it both ways. They haven't had a formal vote to begin impeachment but they are acting as if they had.

In some ways this is a continuation of the Russian investigation. The Democrats waited for the Mueller Report only to have it come up empty. Yes, there were instances of obstruction of justice identified but many of those were nothing more than the President complaining to the press. The Democrats were sure that Mueller must have uncovered SOMETHING but the grand jury proceedings are sealed and the only way to get them unsealed is to begin a formal impeachment. The Democrats have filed a motion to have the grand jury records opened but the judge resisted since there was no formal impeachment vote.

Everything about the whistle-blower is suspicious. It now appears that he approached the Democrats first and they helped him write up his report. They even managed to get the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community to change the requirements and eliminate the need for 1st hand knowledge. The Democrats are making every effort to conceal the whistle-blower's identity but it has leaked out that he is a registered Democrat and he has a connection with one of the presidential candidates. Now it's being reported that the candidate in question is none other than Joe Biden. That would explain why his identity is being kept so secret. A close connection to Biden means that instead of being a civil servant who was outraged at the abuse of power he had heard about, he might well be a Biden supporter who wants to shield the Bidens from an investigation.

This would sound a little paranoid if they hadn't done the same thing last year with Judge Kavanaugh. If they had forwarded Christine Ford's original assertion to the full Senate Judiciary Committee before the hearings, the FBI would have interviewed the people named and reported back that everyone named denied it and that Kavanaugh's diary gave him an alibi. Nothing further would have been heard about the accusation.

Instead the Democrats referred Ford to an attorney who coached her. The original story, "Kavanaugh groped me over my clothes at a party but I pulled away" was too mild. So details were added in lurid detail, "He put his hand over my mouth and I thought he was going to kill me!" and "It gave me a life-long fear of being enclosed." This last part was an outright lie. Ford claimed that she was so afraid of being enclosed that she couldn't stand to fly but her history showed that she flew often and seemed to enjoy it.

So the Democrats have a recent history of coaching a witness and stage-managing their allegations. They also learned last year that once an accuser's identity is known it becomes easy to discredit the accuser. So they are suggesting going to extraordinary lengths. It's been suggested that the whistle-blower will be at a remote location with his face blurred and his voice altered. Is this really to protect his identity or to cover it up?

But none of this amounts to more than a fishing expedition and an attempt to stop the investigation into the beginning of the Russian conspiracy hoax.

The Race So Far

Bernie Saunders had to be taken to the hospital and given two stents. His campaign was already in trouble. There were reports of shakeups. Elizabeth Warren was endorsed by the Working Family's Party of New York. That's important because they are to the extreme left and normally would be more comfortable with an avowed socialist. Saunders has been dropping in the polls, ranking well behind Warren and Biden. Given his failing campaign and worries about his health I think we can cross him off of the likely winners list. Not that I really expected him to get the nomination. A grouchy 78-year-old socialist doesn't have wide appeal, even among today's Democrats. Four years ago he benefited from being the 2nd choice for Warren supporters and the only choice for the Not-Hillary vote. With those gone he was coasting on name recognition.

Joe Biden is also fading. There are questions about his memory and his honesty. The Ukraine story may sink him even if nothing comes of it. And he's also in his late 70s. He spends most of his time running on the Obama/Biden administration but that's a hard sell. It would be very unusual for a former vice president to be refused the nomination if he wants it but Joe may manage to pull that off.

That leaves Elizabeth Warren among the front-runners. She's The youngest of the front-runners (including Trump) and projects a lot more energy and earnestness than Saunders or Biden. She's currently the front-runner in some polls. I'd give her better-than-even odds of getting the nomination. I'd say it was a sure thing except for the tradition of giving the nomination to former vice presidents.

How will the election come out?

Biden insists that he can beat Trump "like a drum". He's fooling himself. If he gets the nomination he'll lose to Trump. He'll look old, tired and confused compared to Trump.

But Warren's my top pick. How will she do?

Trump has a lot of advantages. He's the incumbent. That's always a good thing in a healthy economy. And people know him now. Four years ago Democrats were calling him mentally unstable and likely to start a war. Instead he's the first president in decades who hasn't involved us in new wars, at least not so far. And he can claim to be a peacemaker based on his negotiations with North Korean. Republicans, including me, were worried that Trump would turn out to be a New York Liberal in disguise. He hasn't. His administration has been mainstream Republican and to the right of both Bushes. Trump won in 2016 even though his campaign was in constant turnover and he was outspent two-to-one. This time he will have the bigger campaign chest and experienced campaigners won't be afraid that working for him will ruin their careers. The impeachment proceedings are also likely to help Trump. Unless the Democrats can make a much stronger case than they have, it just looks like an attempted coup and that's enough to motevate lukewarm voters to vote. That happened in 2018 when the circus surrounding Kavanaugh's confirmation is credited with motivating enough Republicans to keep the Senate.

Warren has some significant handicaps. She wants to run without corporate money. That only helps Trump but it's doubtful that corporations and big-money donors will support her regardless. She is proposing government takeover of health care and education. She wants to raise taxes and to tax wealth itself. She has proposed a partial takeover of large businesses with the government mandating the membership of corporate boards. Any of those will cause major economic disruption. All of them put together are likely to crash the economy harder than the Great Depression. The only way a politician can push through this sort of wrenching change is during a major economic downturn when people think that they have nothing to lose. Trying to pass this during an economic boom is nearly impossible. She's certain to turn Wall Street against her which is major since they've been supporting Democrats over Republicans for the last several elections cycles. I doubt that Warren will go down in a defeat comparable to McGovern or Mondale. She's certain to win California and New York. But she's also certain to lose a lot of states that haven't voted Republican since Reagan.

One other handicap that Warren will have. If she's on the ballot then this will be the 4th election in a row with a woman or black running. The novelty of voting for the first woman candidate is gone.

So, my final prediction - Trump vs Warren with Trump winning.

Why Now?

A week ago Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would be investigating impeaching President Trump over an unreleased whistle-blower report claiming that Trump threatened to withhold military aid meant for Ukraine unless they reopened an investigation into Joe Biden's son. According to the rumor, Trump demanded the investigation be reopened six times during the phone call. This seemed very premature since Trump had already announced that he would release both the transcript of the call to Ukraine and the whistle-blower report by the end of the week. Why not wait?

Sure enough, Trump did release both and it was a big nothing-burger. While Trump did ask that the investigation be reopened, he only mentioned it once and that was after several other requests. There was no mention of a quid pro quo agreement. The military aid funds that had been held have already been released even though the investigation has not been reopened.

The whistle-blower report was similarly unimpressive. The author admitted to not having any direct knowledge so it's all "people familiar with ... tell me". There was an accusation that the original transcript had been hidden on a secure server because people understood the enormity of what the President did. This accusation also fell apart because Trump willingly released the transcript and because Susan Rice admitted that the Obama administration had put similar transcripts on the secure server. Also, after the Washington Post printed transcripts of Trump's first two calls to foreign leaders, they can be excused for taking extra steps.

So why did Pelosi launch an impeachment so early? After a week, a few things have become clear starting with the fact that there is no reason for impeachment here.A week ago it looked like Pelosi had lost control of the House to the Squad and other pro-impeachment Democrats. That is certainly a factor. There is a vocal wing of the Democratic party that has always planned on impeaching Trump and was just looking for an excuse.

The real factor here is timing. There is only four months until the primaries start and an impeachment will be a major distraction. No one will be watching the primaries if the President is on trial in the Senate. Also the longer things drag on the worse the case for impeachment. Why bother to impeach a president with an election coming up in a few months?

But another factor has come up over the weekend. Attorney General Barr has been talking to the Australian and Italian governments about the origins of the Steele Dossier. This seems to be a reasonable thing for the Attorney General to look into. There are credible reports that officials from both of these countries entrapped a low-level Trump campaign worker with promises of Clinton's deleted emails. Was this done by low-level officials acting on their own or did these governments try to interfere in a US election. You'd think that people would want to know. Instead the Washington Post made a shot across Barr's bow, by suggesting that he is at risk of prison time. Prison time for investigating election fraud? Seriously?

So maybe the other factor here is that the left knows the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration crossed some lines and they are using the impeachment to try to stop the investigation.

Either way, they are out of time. With deadlines approaching, they seized on the Ukraine call because they don't have anything else to use and they are committed to impeaching the president no matter what.

Impeachment Fever

According to the Democrats' master plan, August was going to be used to make the case for impeaching President Trump at town halls. Then they planned to get down to impeachment when they returned to work in September. As it turned out the town halls didn't raise much excitement. Still, the Democrats returned to DC rested and ready to impeach someone.

The first target turned out to be Justice Kavanaugh. An excerpt from an upcoming book claimed that he wagged his penis at someone while in college and Democrats were ready to start impeachment proceedings over that. But then it turned out that no one could remember it except a lawyer connected with the Clintons. Even the woman who was supposed to be the victim denied it so that fell apart.

Back to the original target, President Trump. But the original justification for impeachment wasn't going to work. The Mueller probe came up empty on Russian collusion. It listed possible obstruction of justice charges but let's be honest, you can't remove a sitting president because he complained to the media that the special council should be replaced because of a conflict of interest.

But, just at the right time a new allegation appeared. There were rumors that a whistle-blower had reported a conversation between President Trump and the prime minister of the Ukraine in which Trump demanded that an investigation into Former Vice President Biden's son be reopened. Trump was supposed to have threatened to  withhold aid unless they acquiesced. Democrats and the press were up in arms.

New information has come out. Yes, Trump did put a temporary hold on $400 million around the call but he says that this was unrelated to the investigation. It turns out that the whistle-blower did not have first-hand knowledge of the call and technically is not a whistle-blower which is why the Inspector General has not released the complaint to Congress. The President has agreed to release a transcript of the call and of the complaint to Congress by the end of the week.

But Congress has Impeachment Fever. The Squad has been working their fellow members and Speaker Pelosi. So, rather than wait until they have all the relevant documents, Pelosi announced an impeachment probe. This raises the immediate question, "Has she lost her mind?"

She announced the inquiry just days before she will have the facts. If Trump is telling the truth then this will blow up in her face. And there's every reason to believe him. If the transcript showed a true quid pro quo deal then he'd be refusing the release the transcript. So this could blow up in her face by the weekend. This is important because she's likely to only get one shot at impeachment. If it fails then it will be much harder to do a second impeachment. Further, trying to get 67 votes in the Senate will be nearly impossible without an iron-clad case. After all, the Republicans have a Senate majority and will face angry voters if they remove a president with a 90% approval rating among Republicans.

There are other dangers. Joe Biden is the Democratic front-runner and he has bragged about using a quid pro quo deal to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired. This is the same prosecutor who was investigating the company his son was working for. If the Democrats start impeachment over Trump trying to revive this case then people are going to demand to know if there was anything to it? And they will want to know why a quid pro quo agreement was ok for Biden but impeachable for Trump. This will also tarnish Obama's reputation. Biden insists that Obama backed him.

This could catch other fish, Hillary Clinton tried to get damaging information on Trump through the Ukrainian Embassy. People associated with her did PR work for Ukraine as did Mueller.

So there is a real possibility that the investigation could leave the Democrats disillusioned and dispirited and their front-runner's campaign crippled.

Why would Pelosi risk launching an impeachment with so many possible downsides? I can think of a few reasons. One is that she's lost control of the House. The Squad has always been for impeachment and they forced her to rush into it.

Another possibility is that the Democrats want a failed impeachment as a campaign tool. "Elect Democrats so that we can finally remove Trump from office!" This means that they've accepted that Trump will win the 2020 election and are thinking ahead to ways of removing him during his second term. While this is possible, it's not likely. If requires the Democrats to admit that Trump will win and that they will be able to mount a second impeachment after the first one fails.

The final possibility is spite. The attorney who represented one of Justice Kavanaugh's accusers talked about the importance of putting an asterisk on his name. The Democrats might simply be trying to put an asterisk on President Trump's name.

Kavanaugh Conspiracies

A bit over a year ago Judge Kavanaugh looked like a shoe-in for confirmation to the Supreme Court. But then, after what should have been his last confirmation hearing, Senator Diane Feinstein revealed that someone had contacted her weeks earlier with allegations of sexual misconduct. The accuser, Christine Blassy Ford, refused to contact the Senate Judiciary Committee directly, instead  going to the Washington Post with her story. That was followed by numerous other allegations.

Because of the #MeToo movement, people were inclined to believe Ford that something happened. After all, the #MeToo'ers said, coming forward with such complaints was such a burden that no one would make something like that up. But, as the allegations piled up, it was obvious that people were making things up. But let's assume for a moment that Ford and Ramirez were telling the truth.

Ford's basic story is that when they were in high school, Kavanaugh groped her over her clothing and swim suit but she easily got away from him. That's all it amounts to. What she said during her testimony had been coached to make it sound much worse. She talked about being afraid that he would suffocate her and life-long trauma she suffered from the incident. But, the trauma-induced claustrophobia she claimed to have did not exist. She lied about it which casts doubt on the rest of her story. Further, Kavanaugh kept a detailed diary showing that he was so busy with sports that this event never occurred, at least not with him. And, finally, the other three people named all denied it.

The second allegation happened at Yale. Somehow, at a drunken party, Kavanaugh lost his pants and put his penis in the face of Deborah Ramirez. Assuming it happened, so what? Yes, it's at odds with Kavanaugh's reputation as boringly straight-laced but it tells us nothing about his fitness as a judge 30+ years later. But, again, it's unlikely to have happened. Ramirez admits that she was drunk at the time and spent a week trying to decide if it was Kavanaugh or not. She called friends before coming forward but could not find any who remembered the incident. Again, it's likely this did not happen, at least not with Kavanaugh.

What brought this up again is that someone else remembers a second incident similar to the one with Kavanaugh. This launched calls for a new investigation and possible impeachment. But this allegation is on even shakier ground than the others. The accuser, Max Stier, is a lawyer with deep ties to the Clintons and the alleged victim doesn't remember it happening. Considering that Stier has his own axe to grind and could not produce a single witness, this is likely another fabrication.

There is some outrage because Stier informed the Senate Judiciary Committee of his allegations a few days prior to the final vote. Democrats are complaining that the process was rushed.

So, now that I've covered the facts, here's what I think really happened. When Justice Kennedy announced his retirement, the Democrats decided they would prefer to keep the seat open until 2021 in the hopes that a Democrat would defeat Trump for reelection. So their plan was to stall until the 2018 election when they hoped to take the Senate. After that, they would either refuse to consider any Trump nominees or would vote them down.

Kavanaugh was one of the best-qualified candidates in modern history. Some of his opinions were copied verbatim into Supreme Court rulings. The only way to keep Kavanaugh off of the Court was to engage in personal destruction. They used the same play-book as was attempted under the Clarence Thomas hearings - wait until after the confirmation hearing then breathlessly introduce an unsubstantiated accusation of sexual harassment. Ford's lawyer has even said that the whole purpose was to "put an asterisk" on Kavanaugh's name.

Stier's accusation came so late in the process precisely to stall for time. If they had waited for an investigation then it would have been followed by more accusations in an endless procession. No one wanted to know the truth about Kavanaugh, that he is a decent man. They wanted to stall and besmirch his character.

Now, a year later all of this is coming up again. Why? It is unlikely that Kavanaugh will be impeached and removed from the bench. The real reason is to add more asterisks to his name in order to scare off other conservative candidates.

Scary Old Men

The two Democratic front-runners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, are both quite elderly. If either one gets the nomination then he will be the oldest candidate in history (and that's with the current record-holder, Donald Trump, on the ballot). Beyond this, both candidates are getting outright scary.

Biden has a long history of stretching facts, sometimes well past the breaking point. He plagiarizes other people's stories and inflates his own story. He claims to have been in charge of drawing down the troops in Iraq but the generals in command contest that. He says that he "beat the NRA twice" referring to the Clinton-era assault weapons ban. His role wasn't big enough to make Wikipedia's summary of the legislation and the re-authorization of the law died in committee, not on George Bush's desk so it's difficult to understand what his second "win" over the NRA was.

Even his reason for running is based on the lie that President Trump called neo-nazies and Klansmen "good people". Yes, Trump said there were good people on both sides but he also made it clear that he meant people protesting against removal of a statue. In the same breath, Trump condemned the racists. Beyond this, Biden has no clear reason for running.

Biden is also getting forgetful. He's referred to President Obama as "President my boss" and to President Bush as "the last President" (somehow forgetting Obama's tenure). He frequently forgets what city or state he's in. This sort of memory loss is common in people his age but it's not comforting.

Then there are statements he's made that are difficult to decide if he's stretching the truth as he always did or miss-remembering. He claims to have met with students from the Parkland shooting in his office as Vice-President but the shooting happened after he left office. He tells about a soldier refusing an award as he pinned it on while vice president but he was wrong about the name, rank, and branch of the service the soldier was in as well as the reason for the award. In addition, he was a senator at the time and someone else was pinning on the award.

Biden also has violent tendencies. When the Billy Bush tapes came out, he said that if Trump had said something like that when they were in high school he'd have beaten him up over it. He later said that if Trump followed him around on the debate floor then he'd turn around and deck him (Note: this was a lie by the Clinton campaign. Hillary repeatedly walked across the stage and stood between Trump and the camera so Trump would appear to be looming over her shoulder). Earlier this Summer when asked about debating Trump, Biden raised his fists and mimed boxing.

Biden's violent tendencies are not limited to Trump. He's known for inappropriately touching women but he has a worse habit. At least three times in the last month, when a woman asked a question he didn't like, he grabbed her hand or arm and held her in place while he lectured her.

So, is Bernie any better? No, he's scarier.

When he ran in 2016, Bernie said that people should have gone to jail for the 2008 crash. He went on to say that even if no laws had been broken, an imaginative prosecutor can always find something to charge someone with. For his current run Saunders wants to jail oil company executives.

When asked about population control and global warming, he said that he's eliminate the Mexico City rule (which prevents the US from funding abortions in other countries) and push the rest of the world to use birth control and abortion to reduce the population. Talk about your American imperialism!

So, we have Biden who lies, forgets things and has violent tendencies and Bernie who campaigns on jailing his enemies, even if they haven't broken the law, and dictating something like China's One Child policy world-wide.

I find both of these guys terrifying.

Their First Day

The presidential candidates are in a bidding war for how much they will do to limit guns through executive action on their first day in office.This means they are planning on circumventing Congress, defying the Supreme Court, ignoring the Constitution and violating their oath of office (almost as soon as they give it).

What are they planning on their second day?

And why aren't Democrats scared of these people?

What Elizabeth Warren SHOULD Say About Claiming To Be An Indian

This week presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren made a general "I'm sorry for what I did and I apologize to any the people I harmed" without actually admitting what she was apologizing for. Since she's having problems admitting what she actually did and why it's bad, I thought I'd write a proper apology for her:

Back when I was just starting my career I realized that I would have difficulty getting a job at a top tier law school with a degree from a 2nd tier school. In order to get an "in" I relied some old family stories and checked "Indian" as my race. I never actually researched what it actually meant to be Native American. It's as much culture as ancestry and I never had a living relative talk about growing up in a tribe or on a reservation. But no one checked. Harvard was thrilled to have a minority, even a blond, blue-eyed Native American. I was even asked to contribute to Pow Wow Chow, a cookbook of traditional Indian recipes. By that point I'd convinced myself that we were descended from Indians and therefore anything we ate must be traditional, even if it was a seafood recipe I copied from a magazine.

Once I had established myself I quietly dropped any claims to Indian heritage until it came out during my first Senate run. I ignored this issue when it came out but I decided to put it to rest when I began organizing my presidential campaign. I had a genealogist check my DNA and I did an interview with family members where we talked about the stories we'd grown up with. As it turned out, I didn't properly understand that the DNA results undercut my claim and family stories are meaningless.

So I apologize for using this claim to advance my career. I apologize to the people I displaced by elbowing my way in front of them with a false claim. And I apologize to the Native Peoples of America and to all minorities. I used programs meant to make up for centuries of discrimination even though I was not entitled to use them.

Was the Revolutionary War Fought Over Slavery?

According to the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project, the reason that America broke away from Great Britain was that the British government was going to outlaw slavery. This is so stupid it hurts.

Great Britain didn't outlaw the slave trade until 1807 and they didn't outlaw slavery itself until 1833 and it did not become fully effective until 1840. Granted there was an abolitionist movement in England in the 1770s, but there was also one in the colonies.

Under English law, slavery was legal in every colony in 1776. Once independence was declared, various colonies began outlawing it. Six states outlawed it by 1790 and all of the northern states had abolished it or were working to eliminate it by 1804. Slavery was never allowed in the Northwest Territory which meant that free states outnumbered slave states through the Civil War.

Given all of that and how long it took England to outlaw slavery throughout Great Britain, it's offensive to claim that the Revolution was inspired by a desire to keep slaves.

The Objection to Universal Background Check Explained

It's a knee-jerk reaction: there's a mass shooting and immediately the call is renewed for Universal Background Checks, AKA the Gunshow Loophole. This would require a background check for any transfer of a gun. Some proposed versions would even require it for lending a gun to a member of the family. The problem with this as a solution to gun violence is that there has yet to be a single mass shooting where either the shooter(s) passed a background check or the gun existing law was broken for the shooter to obtain the gun. In Columbine, the grandfather of school shootings, a cousin bought the guns and was charged for it. In the recent Dayton shooting, the gunman was legally able to buy guns but a friend made the purchases so his parents wouldn't know. It should be pointed out that the guns used in the vast majority of drug and gang related crimes were obtained illegally.

It should also be pointed out that during the Obama administration the ATF tried to exploit "gunshow loophole" and the "dark web" to buy guns. They were unable to make any purchases while posing as someone who would not pass a background check.

 

So right off the bat you have a disconnect between gun owners and people who want "common sense gun legislation". If universal background checks won't stop mass shootings then why are people pushing so hard for them?

Many of the people pushing for this are doing it reflexively. They've been told that this is needed all of their adult lives going back to Bill Clinton in the 1990s. They never stopped to examine the effectiveness of background checks because people they trust have already told them that these work.

But some people have to know how ineffective these would be. Why are they still pushing for it? What will they gain from them?

The most charitable motive is that they hope to slow the number of gun purchases by making it difficult enough that people give up on the purchase or don't bother in the first place. Opposition to this is the same as opposition to obstacles to abortion. The advocates worry that allowing any anti-gun legislation to pass will make it easier for stricter legislation. Once a background check is mandated then it's fairly simple to extend the time needed for it. In California and other places where local law enforcement has to sign off on concealed carry permits, some authorities have refused to ok a single application turning a formality into a roadblock. That could well happen to background checks.

The real scare for gun owners is that when a background check has to be performed on all transfers, that gives the government a list of gun owners that could be used for confiscation. While this is unlikely in the US, it is how England was able to disarm its population. In England, every gun had to be registered. That made it easy for the government to ask every registered gun owner for their gun.

At its heart, this is an emotion vs reason argument. People who want background checks are not acting rationally and are unwilling to listen to reasons why this would be ineffective. Rather than listening to gun-owners' objections, they see the gun-owners as either tools of the NRA or "being willing to sacrifice childrens' lives". Beign talked down to like that just makes the gun owners dig in deeper with their opostition.

 

The Problems with Joe

Joe Biden tops the polls of contenders for the Democratic nomination for president. The first two debates didn't budge him. His biggest challenger, Bernie Sanders, has slid a bit and is now fighting it out with Elizabeth Warren for second place. This is typical. Biden is a former Vice-President and when one of them runs he gets to be his party's candidate (the one exception to this was Hubert Humphrey who narrowly failed to get nominated for a second time in 1972 following his loss in 1968). Biden has a glow about him from residual warmth for President Obama and he projects the image of a father or grandfather. There are some warning flags that Biden is not up to being president.

Biden has a reputation as a "gaff machine". He often says things wrong. Recently he told a group of children that " Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kid". He caught his mistake and added " wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids." It's possible that he slipped and said "white" when he meant "wealthy" or it could be a Freudian slip. It's also easy to write off him getting the locations of last week's shootings wrong. Trump made a similar mistake. But some of Biden's other slips are much harder to ignore.

Recently he also said, " those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president". The shooting happened in 2018, more than a year after he left office. His campaign says that he was thinking of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 but that raises more questions.Sandy Hook involved very young children while Parkland was young adults, some of them months away from graduating high school and the two shootings were more than five years apart. That is more significant than substituting one "w" word for another.

This is nothing new. In 2008 he talked about how FDR went on TV to address the nation after the stock market crash of 1929. Again, this was more than a slip of the tongue. FDR wasn't elected until 1932 and no one was on TV in 1929.

There is also Biden's temperament. He has a temper and often resorts to violent imagery. When the Access Hollywood tape came out with Donald Trump's comments on touching women. When asked about it, Biden said  "The press always ask me, don't I wish I were debating him. No, I wish we were in high school, I could take him behind the gym. That's what I wish."

A year or two later, when asked about debating Trump he referenced Trump looming behind Clinton and said if it was him, he'd have turned around and slugged him (note, Trump never left his podium. Clinton repeatedly crossed the stage and stood between Trump and the camera in a practiced move to make Trump appear to loom over her.)

In a different interview Biden said, "The idea that I'd be intimidated by Donald Trump? ... He's the bully that I've always stood up to. He's the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I'd smack him in the mouth." 

Recently when asked about debating Trump, Biden said he was looking forward to it and raised his fists in a boxing stance.

It's not only Trump that causes Biden to lose his temper. Recently a teenage girl asked him how many sexes there are. He said "three". She asked him to name them and he accused her of playing games. She started to walk away and he grabbed her arm and said he was the first to support (gay) marriage. This was a very minor incident although it left the girl upset but it shows Biden's temper.

He also (with a smile on his face) challenged Trump to a pushup contest.

If I was a Democrat I would be very worried that this man was my front-runner and the face of moderation.

If Trump's a racist then why is it so hard to find proof?

We're constantly told that President Trump is an irredeemable racist but I have yet to see an accurate quote taken in context that proves this. Why is this so hard?

The quote most often used "good people on both sides" was butchered. In the same breath he condemned the white supremacists and then went on to say that some of the people protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee were acting in good faith and speculated on statues of Washington and Jefferson being next (surprise, he was right). There's no racism there.

After some ISIS-inspired attacks in the US including the Pulse Nightclub shooting and during a wave of refugees from ISIS-infested territories, Trump suggested a temporary freeze on accepting people from these countries until we could put stronger vetting in place. This is still being referred to as a ban on all Muslims.

At least three times Trump has made statements about the violent drug-gang MS-13 that were rephrased to claim that he was talking about all Latinos.

Just a few days after people insisted that it was not racist for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to respond to attacks from the Squad, the same people insisted that it was racist for Trump to respond to their attacks. His tweet suggested that the three of them who were from different countries/territories or whose parents were should clean them up before telling us how to change the US. He did not tell them to "go back where they came from" which is how his tweet was reported. The same was true when he responded to attacks from Rep. Elijah Cummings by pointing out how little he's done for his district and how bad things are in Baltimore. Suddenly it's racist to point out reality.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, the Washington Post had at least a dozen reporters investigating Trump and the worst example of racism they could find was his father's company being fined for discrimination in the 1970s.

So, again, if Trump is so racist then why do they have to manufacture all of the evidence of it, something like saying that "poor kids can be as smart as white kids?"

Why Trump's Supporters Still Support Him

Trump haters keep asking this question, "Why to people still support him?" This is usually accompanied by a list of heinous acts Trump has done and sometimes a list of virtues that the Obamas embodied.

There are some interrelated reasons. It starts back in the early 1990s with Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton. During his confirmation hearings in 1991, Thomas was attacked as unfit for the court because of accusations of sexual harassment. But then, the following year the Democrats nominated Bill Clinton. Clinton has has multiple extra-marital affairs, before, during and after his presidency. Some of these were clearly worse than anything Clarence Thomas was accused of. His supporters made it clear that they didn't care what his personal life was like as long as he supported the proper policies in the White House (starting with abortion). There was no question that George H. W. Bush was the more upright person but Clinton supporters didn't care. In fact, when his affair with Monica came out, Clinton supporters outright admitted that their outrage to Thomas had all been an act to keep him off of the court.

Once you've admitted that your moral outrage depends on the policies of candidate it's hard to be taken seriously. And this wasn't ancient history. We almost had Bill back in the White House again as First Gentlemen.

And it's not like Hillary Clinton was a spotless candidate, either. The choice wasn't between Trump and Obama. It was between Trump and a Clinton. The list of scandals she has been involved in is far longer than I want to devote space to here. It was bad enough that, on Inauguration Night, 2001, SNL did a sketch about all of the last-minute Clinton scandals with the punch-line "What do you expect, we're the Clintons?"

In addition to having an unsteady moral compass, the Democrats also showed that no one was virtuous enough to escape attack as a racist. McCain was going to roll back civil rights to the 1950s. Romney was going to roll them back to the 1950s and bring back slavery. The two primary attack against Trump, moral superiority and racism, were blunted by overuse.

Many of the attacks on Trump were exaggerations or outright lies and his supporters know it. He did not call the neo-klansmen good people. He did not follow Hillary around the stage. He did not collude with the Russians. It's not racist if Speaker Pelosi attacks the Squad but if Trump does it's a top news item for days (complete with a twisted version of what he actually said). Never-Trumpers seem to believe that the louder they say these things the more effective they are but instead Trump supporters just tune them out.

There's also a matter of policies. Obama's policies hurt a lot of the middle class. He presided over the slowest recovery in history. Obamacare caused a dramatic rise in insurance costs for people who had been buying catastrophic insurance. His middle-east policies were a disaster. He inherited a stable Iraq and, through mismanagement, allowed the rise of ISIS. He allowed Russia to expand. He signed the Paris Accords which would have hurt American industry in exchange for a rounding error in CO2 reductions. Clinton promised to continue or expand on these policies. The current crop of candidates has moved far to the left of candidate Obama.

The Democrats have become the party of heavily urban areas. They openly disdain people who live in the suburbs and rural areas.

So, the question really becomes, "Why don't Trump supporters abandon him and embrace a candidate who despises them and who's policies will hurt them but who is a certified member of the ruling elite?" To ask it that way is to answer it.

A final note on the Obamas: The image we have of them as the ideal couple is a media creation. She hated being First Lady. He didn't like working with people and preferred to go over briefing papers alone at night. Foreign leaders hated meeting with him because it always came with a lecture. He was ultra-competitive, a poor loser and a worse winner. He also had a poor opinion of rural voters, describing the people who preferred Hillary in 2008 as bitter, clinging to guns, religion and racism.

Why Conservatives Mock PolitiFact

Several days ago Representative AOC posted a picture of herself during a visit to an immigrant detention center last year when she was still a candidate. She was nearly doubled-over in grief in front of a chain-link fence giving the impression that seeing children in cages was to much for her to bare. A few days later conservative sites posted photos takes from a different angle. These showed that there was nothing on the other side of the fence but an access road with some parked cars and a nondescript building in the distance. There was not a child to be seen. This gave rise to an Internet meme about AOC crying in front of a parking lot.

Enter the "nonpartisan" fact-checking site PolitFact. They decided to do a fact-check on this but they didn't fact-check AOC's original picture which implied she was crying over children, nor did they fact-check the conservative sites which accurately described the pictures. Instead they fact-checked the Internet meme's use of the word "parking lot". They carefully showed pictures documenting that what was in the background was cars parked on a road rather than on a parking lot. Based on this, they rated the meme false.Left unrated was the fact that AOC was weeping in front of a mass of pavement and parked cars.

This is a perfect example of why conservatives mock PolitiFact. Any real fact-checking would have made AOC look bad. They managed to phrase the question in such a way as to ignore the whole AOC question and concentrate on the work "parking lot". Even then, a fair site would have rated the meme mostly true. After all, she was in front of cars on pavement. But they managed to ignore the context of the picture in such a way to give the impression that AOC did not fake her histrionics. More people will see the false rating and not bother to read the details so by framing it this way they covered for AOC.

Why I Couldn't Care Less About the Women's Soccer Team Win

The American Woman's Soccer Team won the World Cup. Big Whoop. I'm sick of hearing about it. I've never been much of a sports fan and even less a soccer fan. But there are several other reasons that I'm less than thrilled about the team.

They got off to a bad start by showing poor sportsmanship (shortspersonship?). They were always the favorite team. They made a big show of celebrating each score against a team that never stood a chance against them.

Then there's the politics. Star player Megan Rapinoe made a show of not standing for the national anthem and saying ahead of time that she'd never accept an invitation to the White House from President Trump. This isn't a regular pro team playing in an American league. She's a member of a team representing the USA but her actions show that she does not represent all Americans. She doubled down on this in a post-win interview when she said that she'd be willing to meet with Nancy Pelosi, AOC and anyone else who she agrees with. But she won't meet with any politicians she disagrees with. Again, she's supposed to be on a team representing all Americans. And she's a soccer player, not an elected official.

And, finally, there's the pay issue. The team's been very vocal about wanting pay equity with the men's team. But the issue is a LOT more complicated than they are making it out to be. In the World's Cup, the men's tournament makes a lot more money than the women's does. Both teams are paid a proportion of the earnings. The women get a bigger share of a smaller pot. In the US, the woman's team's pay is figured very differently. They are on a salary with benefits. The men are only paid when they play and have to pay their own benefits.

When a team representing the USA wins a championship then it should be a cause for a national celebration. This isn't. It's become multiple reasons to browbeat the country instead of uniting it.

Trump, Kim and the Editorial Staff

I saw an editorial recently that was written after President Trump became the first American President to enter North Korea. Naturally, the editorial downplayed that historic event and said that he should leave the negotiations with North Korea to normal diplomatic channels. This is an excellent example of an editor who reflexively hates anything that Trump does without bothering to use any sort of historic perspective.

Regular diplomatic channels were used by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. The result of that was that North Korea is now a nuclear power with intercontinental missiles capable of reaching Washington DC (although it's doubtful they can get anywhere near as far with a nuclear payload and their guidance systems are iffy). They also celebrated their chairman's birthdays by releasing videos of their missiles destroying American cities. Regular diplomatic channels were so ineffective that the Obama administration gave up and adopted a policy of "strategic patience" which was a euphemism for kicking the can down the road. So, after 24 years of letting diplomats handle the negotiations we were left with a country that is more dangerous than nuclear powers like Pakistan and India (neither of them has tested intercontinental missiles).

Our dealings with other countries made a deal with North Korea even less likely. The Bush administration toppled two governments. Afghanistan was understandable since they were sheltering the perpetrators of 9/11 but Iraq had given up its nuclear program and we overthrew it on suspicion that they had restarted it.

The Obama administration doubled down on this. First they helped overthrow Libya, a country that had voluntarily given up its nuclear program. Then they ratified Iran's program and sent them billions on condition that they simply slow their nuclear program down a bit. We even let them keep their missile program.

The clear message to the North Koreans was that the US is more likely to overthrow a country that gave up its nuclear program and to reward one that refuses to give it up.

Following the tradition of leaving advice for one's successor, Obama warned Trump that North Korea would be his first challenge.

So Trump took a completely different approach. He realized that North Korea will never give up its nuclear program without the consent of Kim Jong-un but if Kim agrees to disarm then it will happen. He also employed a carrot and stick approach. He used Viet Nam as an example of a country that went from being at war with the US to being a prosperous trading partner. At the same time he tightened sanctions. His message is that North Korea can be like South Korea or Viet Nam and become peaceful and prosperous but first they have to give up their nuclear program.

So far North Korea has refused to disarm but, and this is important, they also stopped testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. This may be the best that can be accomplished but it's still a major improvement over the state of affairs when Trump took office.

And that is why Trump is pursuing the proper course and the editorials are wrong.

A Few Final Thoughts on Colin Kaepernick and Independence Day

First Nike announced that it was recalling a new line of shoes because Colin Kaepernick objected to the Betsy Ross flag on them. Then Colin himself out out a tweet on the 4th of July quoting from Frederick Douglass saying " This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

This is all very childish and ignorant. The American Revolution was not about slavery. Slavery existed world-wide before and after the revolution. It did not completely end in the United States until the Civil War but this was the beginning of its end. Massachusetts incorporated language from the Declaration in it's state constitution in 1780 and by 1783 this was used in court cases to outlaw slavery in that state. By 1804 every state in the north had abolished slavery. The middle states were slower to abolish it with the last two, New Jersey and New Hampshire being the last in 1865. While new southern states were allowed slavery, it was always outlawed in the Northwest Territory.

Great Britain freed it's slaves with an act in 1833 that required slaves to remain apprentices until 1840. Mexico outlawed it in 1829. France alternated abolishing slavery and allowing it again in its colonies until it was outlawed for the final time in 1848.

The point here is that slavery was not "America's original sin" and unique to the US but rather something practiced by all of the European powers. I won't get into what the Indians did to each other because it's irrelevant to people enslaved and transported from Africa. Anyway, claiming that the flag Washington fought under is tainted is quite a stretch.

As for Kaepernick's 4th of July tweet, that was excerpted from Douglass's " The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" speech which was given in 1852, well before the Civil War, and was give by someone who was born a slave and was calling for the abolition of slavery. Was Kaepernick who is part of the 0.01% comparing himself to a slave? Seriously? Or did he just find a pithy quote without looking up the context?

Save the Flag

Nike just cancelled a new line of shoes with a small Betsy Ross flag on them because of protests from Colin Kaepernick. Depending on who you listen to, the flag is either offensive because it was used when slavery was legal or because it's been adopted as a symbol by white supremacists

Addressing the second reason first, no, this flag is not on anyone's list of hate symbols.

"Most white supremacists would not know what the Betsy Ross flag was if you asked them about it, compared to all the other symbols that they constantly use," Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said.

So that's just a lame excuse someone thought up to excuse the cancellation.

The first excuse is equally lame. The 13-star flag was used from the 1770s to the 1790s when two new states were added. Yes, slavery was legal in the US during that period in some of the states but not in the majority and slavery was also legal in most of the rest of the world at the time. It was not used by the Confederacy or any other uses beyond patriotism. So it's only a "symbol" of slavery because it's from the 18th century. 

Despite what Nike said, the real reason for Kaepernik's objection is probably a general dislike for the United States and its history. This is in contrast to when he first began sitting and then kneeling for the National Anthem. It was claimed then that he was objecting to the treatment of contemporary blacks and not showing disrespect for his country.

Regardless, this is part of a general trend in declaring American icons to be tainted. What started with Confederate statues has spread to Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, even General Grant because someone gave him a couple of slaves who he quickly sold (it was very difficult to free slaves at the time).

This also has the possibility to become another "Ok" symbol where some pranksters decided to start a rumor that it's used as a symbol of white supremacy and it spread. Now that the sainted Kaepernick has declared the Betsy Ross flag to be forbidden, trolls from the left will emerge to defend that, even if they have to make things up.

We need to take a stand and push back. We can't let the symbol of America's founding be tarnished by lies and a second-string quarterback.

The Question Not Asked

Here's a question that an unbiased moderator would have asked the candidates during the two-night Democratic debates:

You have said that you are in favor of decriminalizing immigration and giving free health care to illegal immigrants. Most of you have also signed on to the New Green Deal which promises $15+/hour jobs for everyone (presumably including immigrants). Beta even went to far as to make a statement in Spanish that seemed to promise allowing non-citizens to vote. All of this put together is guaranteed to lead to an influx of immigrants not seen since the 19th century. Do you welcome an influx of 10s of millions of new immigrants or do you have a plan for preventing this?

The First Night of the Democratic Debates

First, Elizabeth Warren lost the election last night. Even if she manages to be the candidate she came out on record as wanting to take away everyone's insurance. That's a problem for her for numerous reasons. The majority of Americans are happy with their insurance. Insurance is one of the biggest benefits to being in a union so she's piratically inviting unions to endorse Trump. And, eliminating insurance will throw at least a million people out of work and throw the stock market into a tailspin. Out of the ten candidates on stage, only one other came out in favor of Medicare for all which shows how out of step she is with even the far-left contingent of her party that was on stage.

But she won't be the candidate. Despite being given more than her share of airtime at the beginning she failed to establish a presence. The longer the debate went on the more she faded.

Booker did well, a lot better than I expected after his Spartacus moment last fall. Regardless, Trump would rip him to shreds in a real debate.

Beto's stunt of answering a question in Spanish was foolish and made him the subject of numerous hilarious memes.

Castro's insistence on "reproductive justice" was just puzzling. He didn't make it any better by talking about how trans-women need access to abortions, too News-flash, Castro, a trans-woman was born with male reproductive organs. You meant trans-men.

MSNBC came out looking terrible. The broadcast had several momentary blackouts, there were screw-ups with the microphones, one caused a long, unintended commercial break while they straightened it out. Rachel Maddow was a poor moderator, giving speeches and asking candidates to comment on them rather than asking questions. Most of the candidates were unknowns to the audience and they should have had name tags under them the entire time they were talking but the name tags came and went fast.

The set was meant to look high-tech and exciting but it had problems. The podiums were a cool blue but turned red at some point for some reason, possibly to show who was talking. This may have been nice for the live audience but TV audience only got brief glimpses of it as they pulled away after a candidate's time ended.The giant screens behind the candidates were distracting during close-ups.

All told, it made MCNBC look amateurish.

The first Democratic Debates

The first round of Democratic debates begins tonight. With 20 contenders, it was broken into two debates over two nights. Here's my quick take on the candidates:

Biden. As the front-runner he has little to gain and a lot to lose. He did poorly in his two previous runs for president. He's the front-runner now because of his association with Obama. So far he's largely stayed out of the public eye since entering the race. He runs a big risk of being the next Jeb!, a front-runner who fades as soon as he shares the stage with more dynamic candidates. His best hope is to emulate Trump. Trump got more speaking time than anyone else because all of the other candidates attacked him giving him a chance to respond. Duplicating Trump's performance will require Biden to be fast on his feet and avoid the slightest gaff.

Sanders. Four years ago Sanders entered the race to move Clinton to the left and to increase his own standing in the Senate (both worked). He knew he didn't have a chance so he could be gracious and declined from personal attacks. As the race progressed he began to think he had a real chance and he became a humorless scold. This time he's entering the race with a real shot at winning the nomination. At the same time, he has a pack of younger candidates snapping at his heels from the left. There's a real risk that voters will tire of him and turn to a younger, less grouchy candidate with similar ideals.

Warren. She's at a real disadvantage. She's the only major candidate in the first debate. Everyone else will be attacking her. She does have debate skills from her high school debate team but a presidential debate is vastly different from a high school one. Voters don't look for points. They see who connects with voters the best. Trump understood that and Clinton didn't in 2016. He spent his opening remarks saying what he would do for the voters while Clinton spent hers telling us what a bad person Trump was. Journalists gave the win to Clinton on points but Trump actually connected with the voters.  Political writers insist that Warren can be charming and authentic on the stump but the version most of us have seen was her stilted video where she announced "I'm gonna get a beer." She could be the break-out winner of the first debate, ready to take on Biden and Sanders or she could be seen as stilted and inauthentic.

And the Rest. Everyone else is struggling for name recognition. Even political junkies like me can't put a name to half of their faces. This is their chance to be see on a equal footing with the front-runners. For many, possibly most of them, this is their last chance. If they don't break out of the pack now then they will have difficulty meeting the standards for the next debate. They will all be trying to explain why they are different from the 19 other Democrats with the same platform and to convince people that they have the best chance against Trump. This will be exceedingly difficult for them.

Sleepy Joe and the Segregationists

A few days ago Joe Biden was trying to make a point about working with people he disagreed with and recalled working with some prominent segregationists when he was first elected to the Senate. Naturally it went badly. Joe has real problems keeping from putting his foot in his mouth. Regardless, here's some thoughts on it:

First of all, the point he was trying to make is a good one. Even if you strongly disagree with someone on a major issue that shouldn't mean that you disagree with them on everything. That's not something the modern Democratic Party wants to hear, though. To them, it's all or nothing. As recently as the wave election of 2006, President Bush was still able to assemble a working coalition of Republicans and Democrats to pass legislation. That changed with the election of Obama and the Democrats gaining a super-majority in 2008. Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote through some legislative slight-of-hand and Republicans were not even able to offer amendments to the legislation. That happened with most other legislation during that period. When the Republicans took the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 they treated the Democrats much the same as they had treated the Republicans. With the election of Trump in 2016, the rallying cry of the Democrats was "Resist" which means denying the president a win, even if it's in the country's best interests. Biden's goal of backing away from such partisan politics is both admirable and out of step with his party.

Biden reminded us of how different the party was when he was first elected in 1972. The segregationists he mentioned were powerful Democrats. It's an uncomfortable reminder that he was rubbing shoulders with actual white supremacists at a time when they held real power in the Democratic Party.

Biden's lack of message control ruined his point. He said that one of them called him "son" instead of "boy". It's puzzling why he would think this was relevant since "boy" is regarded as a put-down for backs rather than white. This gave Corey Booker an opening to denounce Biden's comments and make the case for the current super-partisanship. Ever tone-deaf, when asked about apologizing to Booker, Biden suggested that Booker owed him an apology instead.

Biden's lack of message control and tone-deafness are why he never got very far in his previous runs for President. Despite his status as front-runner, he still struggles with this.

AOC and Concentration Camps

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put out this tweet:

This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.

This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ …

The expert she's quoting is from Esquire which is not my first choice as a scientific or historic authority. Regardless, it's pushing the idea that the term "concentration camp" predates Nazi Germany. This may be true but today the term is exclusively used in relation to the Holocaust. No one uses of "concentration camp" and "Boer War" in the same sentence. AOC gave it away when she used the term "Never again" in a back and forth about her tweet. That's another term from the Holocaust.

But regardless of how you frame it, the detention facilities used for immigrants fail the definition of concentration camp several ways.

The argument that they are concentration camps comes from the fact that immigrants are being confined for long periods without having broken any laws. While this is true, it's also a voluntary confinement. They can be released if they want to go back to Mexico (since they crossed at the Mexican border) or elsewhere.

The Democrats are largely to blame for the conditions the migrants are housed in. They refused to even begin negotiations with President Trump in the name of #Resist. So no money has been allocated to expand facilities or to hire more caseworkers.

The vast majority (90+%) of these migrants will have their application as a refugee turned down and will be sent back. What AOC and other Democrats want is for anyone who presents themselves at the border to be given a green card and a court date and released into the country, possibly with a path to citizenship.  We're already seeing a surge in migrant applying at the border. We're beginning to see Africans and others trying to enter the US through the Mexican border. If we allow anyone who presents themselves at the border legal residency then the current surge will be nothing compared to the flood we'll see.

Exaggerated outrage like AOC's serves two purposes. One is yet another attack on President Trump. The other is to force open borders. She's said before that anyone from the Americas should be allowed into the US. Now she's trying to force it.

Why Biden will be 2020's version of Hillary

Watching the Biden campaign is like watching history repeating itself. Consciously or unconsciously, he's using the same strategies that Hillary Clinton used and making the same mistakes.

First a couple of little things - everyone knew that Hillary was going to run in 2016 but she kept insisting that she was still making up her mind and teasing the press for weeks before announcing with a video. Biden did the same thing. He was the last major candidate to announce and he did it with a video.

After dropping the announcement video, both candidates vanished for a while, preferring small, controlled events to large, spontaneous ones. Biden just skipped a big event in Iowa that the other 19 candidates attended. Binden's excuse was that he wanted to attend a grad-daughter's graduation. While that's noble of him, it also leads into the important similarity with Clinton...

Neither one took the primaries seriously enough. Hillary was the front-runner in 2008. The race was hers to lose. She assumed that she'd have the nomination seed up by Super Tuesday and didn't keep any cash reserves on hand in case the campaign lasted longer than that. In contrast, Obama planned a 50-state campaign from the beginning and seized the nomination from under her nose.

In 2016 Hillary again assumed that both the nomination and the presidency were hers. She was surprised by the strength of Bernie Sanders then surprised again by Donald Trump.

Biden seems to assume that he only needs to show up to secure the nomination. He sees himself above the fray and is trying to start his campaign against President Trump. That's a mistake. After a strong start, he's dropped in the polls. He's going to have to work for the nomination, especially since the party reduced the role of the super-delegates in enforcing party orthodoxy.

Hillary counted on the Obama coalition to turn out for her and made no effort to woo swing-voters. Her plan was to suppress Trump voters by on-stop negative advertising while appealing to the Obama coalition as his rightful successor. This was unlikely to happen. Obama was a special case. Blacks turned out for him in record numbers because he was black. Immigrants and their recent decedents saw Obama as one of them because of his African father and foreign up-bringing. Obama was a youthful candidate running on a blank slate of hope and change. Groups across the political spectrum from Progressives to Libertarians were convinced that Obama was really one of them.

Hillary failed to motivate a lot of Obama voters. She saw herself as a pioneer because of her gender but many voters simply saw an old, rich, white woman and stayed home. Trump was able to appeal to working-class voters who felt left behind by Obama and ignored by Clinton.

Biden will have a worse time trying to motivate the Obama Coalition. As a rich, old, white guy who has been in politics since before most of the electorate was born, he has nothing exciting to offer. He does have a history of working class appeal but that was with a different generation. His last Senate run was 2002 and his 2008 Presidential run folded in 2007.

Biden ha an additional problem that Hillary didn't have. He'll have to run against an incumbent. In 2016, Trump was a complete unknown. Given that he is from New York and has switched parties a few times, the best conservatives could hope for was a RHINO. Instead his administration has been the most conservative since Ronald Reagan. Voters seldom if ever turn out an incumbent president during good economic times. Trump is not the madman, ready to launch a nuclear war that some painted him as. Neither is he the totalitarian that many claimed. It's impossible to define a sitting president the way you can a candidate so there's one more tool denied to Biden.

There is one final similarity between the two - voters like the idea of them better than the candidate. Hillary always polled highest when she was out of public sight. The more she was seen the lower her poll numbers. It's too early to say for sure but Biden seems to be suffering from the same problem.

The Intolerance of the Democratic Party

A couple of days ago Democrat presidential front-runner Joe Biden expressed his continuing support for the Hyde Amendment. After heavy criticism from his party he reversed his position the following day. This is important because it shows how the Democratic Party has become intolerant of opposing opinions.

The Hyde Amendment says that federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions. If was passed because even abortion supporters like Biden realized how unfair it is to ask people to pay for abortions (through taxes) when they believe that it's murder. That received bipartisan support because back the Democrats recognized that other people could have a different opinion without being an evil person.

That's changed in the current Democratic Party. The official position is that abortion is always the woman's choice, even when the fetus is well past the point if can survive on it's own. Bernie Sanders reflects the party line when he says "It's up to the women. I trust them to make the right choice." 

The Democrats used to brag of their Big Tent meaning that they embraced a variety of opinions. This is no longer true. There is a party line and anyone who doesn't follow it is denounced and possibly excommunicated.

Biden is an old-school Democrat with an accent on old. While he sees himself as a progressive, at one point or another he's held positions that are anti-ethical to today's Democrats. He's also from a time when politicians recognized that well-meaning people had different positions and it was permissible to make accommodations with them. He just ran smack into today's intolerant party.

Why Trump's Wall is Not the Berlin Wall

I saw a legal blog comparing President Trump's wall across the Mexican border with the Berlin Wall. This was in the Volokh Conspiracy and framed as Trump's Plan to Force the Mexicans to Lock in Their Own People. So, why is this comparison wrong?

1) The Berlin Wall separated Germans from Germans. In the wake of World War II, Germany was divided into four sections managed by the US, England, France and the USSR. The first three were merged into a single government but the USSR-controlled region was kept separate. The Berlin Wall was built 12 years after the founding of East Germany. So it was separating Germans from Germans. Mexico and the US are separate countries with very different histories and cultures. Even the parts of the US that were previously owned by Mexico have been states for over a century.

2) The East Germans were prisoners in their own country. The Berlin Wall actually surrounded West Berlin which was deep in East Germany. Prior to the wall, Germans had escaped to the West by crossing into West Berlin then traveling to West Germany. The border between East and West Germanies was also closed. In contrast, Trump is insisting that Mexicans and South American refugees be prevented from crossing the US Mexican border but he in not insisting that Mexico's other borders or coast be closed.

3) It was death to cross the Berlin Wall. There were actually two walls with a killing ground in-between. Anyone seen in the killing ground was shot on sight. That's very different from the US/Mexican border.

This comes down to the question, does the US have the power to determine who enters it? If the answer is yes then the President is justified in taking steps to secure the border.

There is a substantial group who does not believe in borders and believes that anyone should be able to go anywhere with no attempt at assimilation. This will ultimately be self-destructive. Allowing multitudes of an-assimilated immigrants will eventually over-tax the country and destroy the institutions that made it desirable in the first place.

Talk of Impeachment Should Be Disqualifying

Despite the Mueller Report failing to find that President Trump actually committed high crimes or misdemeanors, there is still talk of impeachment. This is rather silly. Impeachment requires the the House of Representatives pass Articles of Impeachment. This takes a simple majority but to date less than 1/10th of the House has come out in favor of impeachment. But that's the easy part. The process moves on to the Senate where it takes a super majority of 67 votes to remove the President from office. Given that Republicans control the Senate and the lack of actual crimes, this is doomed to failure.

Even the Washington Post is admitting that people knew what they were voting for when they elected Trump. Simply disliking a President is not enough nor can you impeach a President for wanting to do something but not following through. It's "high crimes and misdemeanors", not "thought crimes".

Plus there's a presidential election coming. It's just a year and a half away. That's the proper way to remove a president, through the ballot box.

But there is one group that is dad-set on impeachment - Democrats running for President. I'm sure that they have to restrain themselves from promising that their first act as president would be impeaching Trump.

I can understand why these people want Trump weakened or removed from office. They expected that Trump would be so unpopular that whoever won the game of Democrat Survivor would win the White House in a landslide. But Trump's popularity is growing, he has the advantage of being an incumbent during an economic boom, and he showed in 2016 that he's a shrewd campaigner. The best chance that the passengers in the Democratic Clown Car have is eliminating Trump and running against Pence.

But every one of thee clown who are calling for impeachment should be disqualified from running for the presidency. They are unfit to hold that office.

Trump is often accused of breaking norms. There is a double or even a triple standard here since President Obama broke all sorts of norms as have Trump's detractors. Obama's Attorney General established the president for ignoring a Congressional subpoena and being found in contempt of Congress. The Nuclear Option was triggered under Obama. Both of these came back to bite the Democrats. I could give other examples but you get the idea.

There are two rationals for impeaching President Trump. One is to impeach on the grounds of obstruction of justice in the Russian investigation. This is difficult to prove since there was no collusion and Trump knew it. The other rational is to start impeachment proceedings on general principle in order to open sealed Grand Jury records in the hope that something would turn up. The satire site the Babylon Bee ran this as "Congress files Articles of Impeachment with the reasons to be filled in later".

So, let's imagine that they succeed in impeaching Trump on these grounds and get as far as passing the articles in the House before the measure fails in the Senate. This will be yet one more broken norm. Democrats are still angry about Clinton being impeached but at least there he was actually proven to have committed perjury. Nothing has been proven against Trump so imagine how angry Republicans will be.

And this will establish the new norm - from now on, any time the opposition party controls the House then it will stat impeachment proceedings against the President.

None of these presidential-wannabies have realized that if Trump is impeached and they win they will be facing impeachment themselves. It doesn't matter if they actually do anything wrong. Simply hating the President is enough to justify impeachment. They are proving that with Trump right now. And that's why none of them should be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

Why Rep. Rashida Tlaib needs to apologize

On a recent podcast, Rep. Tlaib said this:

There's always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, and it was forced on them.

She was quickly criticized by President Trump among others. Then House Speaker Pelosi claimed that her statement was taken out of context and that the President should be the one to apologize. Pelosi is wrong.

It's true that, taken out of context, the first part of this gives the false impression that Tlaib said that the murder of Jews gives her a calming feeling. But Trump didn't repeat the quote in part or in all. He simply referenced it.

Tlaib was engaging in Holocaust revisionism. She was claiming that the Palestinians welcomed the Jews into Israel to escape the Holocaust. Lots of groups and countries do that to escape the guilt of having done nothing. The entire world including the US stood by and did nothing to help the millions who were murdered. In fact, the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular never welcomed the Jews.

But then Tlaib goes a step further and frames it as "we invited the Jews in and they took our land, our jobs, our dignity and our existence". So Holocaust Remembrance became an excuse to vilify Israel. And that's why Tlaib needs to apologize.

Handicapping the Candidates

Here's my take on the front-runners so far:

President Trump: Various Republicans are planning to challenge him in the primaries. He will smash them just as he did the other Republicans in 2016.

Joe Biden: It's common for a Vice President to run for the presidency but it's rare for them to win. George H. W. Bush is the only one to have done so (plus Nixon on his second try running against Vice President Humphrey). Biden is following Hillary Clinton's lead and running as the presumptive candidate. Like her, he teased his candidacy for months then announced that he'd be announcing before finally announcing with a video. Biden is already looking past the primaries. His announcement video's message was "Orange man bad, vote for me". Hillary's 2016 campaign showed that you have to do more than attack Trump if you want to win the White House. Also, like Hillary, Biden carries a lot of baggage. He was first elected in 1972. He's always supported mainstream Democrat positions but the party has drifted so far to the left that votes for tougher sentencing and the Defense of Marriage Act in the 90s, both of which were overwhelmingly supported by the Democratic Party, are now negatives. Biden has a reputation as a gaffe machine and his campaign is following his lead. On his announcement day he received criticism for misrepresenting what President Trump actually said about Charlottesville, using Charlottesville as a campaign prop, his treatment of Anita Hill in 1991, and releasing a picture with a big "N" on President Obama. Biden has name recognition and some reflected glory from Obama but little else. Binden's going to have difficulty securing the nomination but he's the Democrats' best chance at winning back the White House.

Bernie Sanders: In 2016 Bernie was the fresh face of the Democrats (and the oldest person running). He brought a far-left agenda which excited a lot of younger Democrats. He originally ran in an effort to move the party to the left. He was so successful that his positions are now accepted by early all the other candidates. That's going to cause problems for Bernie. In 2016 he pledged to run a positive campaign but once he realized that he might have a shot at winning his natural crankiness came out. He's going to have a huge advantage in fund-raising but he's ancient and crotchety and probably too far to the left to beat Trump.

Elizabeth Warren: Her time came and went six year ago. She seceded her role as far-left spokesperson to Bernie. She got a start on her career by claiming Indian heritage. She tried to put that behind her last Summer with a DNA test that not only flopped but angered real Indians. She's struggled to get traction with her proposals. He proposal for college loan forgiveness was criticized on all sided. Her live-cast last Winter seemed forced and unnatural. Her campaign manager resigned over her decision to reject corporate donations. She's also struggled to break into the double digits in polls. With neither cash nor wide-spread appeal and no message that resonates her candidacy is doomed.

Beto O'Rourke: His main attraction is that he attracted a record amount of out-of-state donations in a losing Senate race. For a while the press loved him but they've moved on to Pete Buttigieg.

Pete Buttigieg: The mayor of South Bend Indiana came from nowhere to vault into the top contenders. He's already secured a spot in the debated based on the number of people who have contributed to his campaign. Buttigieg's main claim to fame is that he's openly gay. He uses this as a bludgeon, constantly insisting the Vice President Pence hates him for being gay. This is an outright lie. Pence has always been cordial to him. I suspect that Buttigeig's current popularity comes mainly from gays and he's already reached his ceiling. His record as mayor of a mid-sized city isn't that strong and doesn't really qualify him to be President.