Democratic Underground posters think the police should allow reckless drivers to continue going 100 mph while weaving through traffic
According to this recent news story from Associated Press, a pickup truck in San Diego was
weaving through traffic at speeds of up to 100 mph
This kind of irresponsible and illegal behavior can end up killing innocent people in other vehicles.
For example, you know that awesome movie A Christmas Story from 1983, about a young boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas?
Well, Bob Clark, the director of that wonderful film, was killed by a reckless driver who was driving the wrong way in another vehicle. Clark’s son was also killed in the crash.
Anyway, in the recent San Diego incident, the police used a spike strip to stop the pickup truck so innocent people in other vehicles would not get killed.
Instead of stopping his vehicle, the driver of the pickup truck ran over the spike strip. This caused the truck to crash and roll over. Eleven people were in the pickup truck, with most of them being in the truck’s bed, which is illegal. Three of the people in the truck were killed, and the other eight were seriously injured.
Thanks to the police, no innocent people were hurt or killed.
I agree with what the police did.
On the other hand, people at Democratic Underground think the police should have allowed the truck’s reckless driver to continue going 100 mph while weaving through traffic.
Here are some of their comments, taken from this thread and this other thread:
“Can this situation at the Border possibly get any worse? When do the tanks roll?”
“we’ll be reminded in the future how extreme this has become and it won’t be fondly”
“Highway speeds, pickup, people in the back, rain…. spike strip. What could go wrong? These mother****ers didn’t even get held accountable during Obama’s administration. There’s no hope of justice or integrity now. Manslaughter with impunity.”
“Sounds like murder to me. What crime was committed that warranted deadly force?”
“This is obscene.”
“‘This is obscene.’ Says it all.”
“what the border cops did was reckless and led to unnecessary deaths. This truck was weaving in and out of traffic at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The shoulders on that stretch of freeway were trenched next to the lane for drainage or something so it wasn’t safe for rapid deceleration. They knew that. What they did was no different than if they had pulled up next to the truck and opened fire, like in a movie.”
“JESUS CHRIST! What the **** is wrong with them? Sick ****. That device should never be used anyway.”
“Welcome to Trump’s Amerikkka. Border Patrol and ICE should be wearing white sheets with hoods.”
Did the Washington Post publish a staged photo of the caravan and not tell readers that the photo was staged?
Here’s a screenshot from a recent article that was published by the Washington Post, along with the link to the article:
Soon afterward, the Gateway Pundit published this version of the image, with multiple notations which suggest that the photo was staged:
I hope that other news organizations will investigate this to find out whether or not the photo was staged.
Shame on Trump for ordering General Motors to “put something else in”
Reuters just published this article about General Motors planning to close a plant in Ohio due to there being less demand for small cars.
Trump responded by saying:
“They better put something else in.”
It’s not the job of the President to tell private companies what products to make or how many kinds of products to make.
Shame on Trump for trying to give himself powers that are not authorized in the Constitution!
Hypocrite Ellen Pompeo wants OTHER white people (but not herself) to lose their jobs so there can be more diversity
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
November 20, 2018
I had no idea who Ellen Pompeo was when I first read this news article about her that just got published today, so I looked up her wikipedia article. This is how it starts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pompeo
Ellen Pompeo
Ellen Kathleen Pompeo (born November 10, 1969) is an American actress, director, and producer. She is one of the highest paid television actors, having signed a $20 million annual contract with the American Broadcasting Company in late 2017. She was honored with the 2007 Special Achievement in Entertaining by the National Italian American Foundation for her contributions to the entertainment industry.
Later on, the wikipedia article says:
Pompeo was then cast in ABC’s popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and garnered worldwide recognition for her portrayal of the title character Dr. Meredith Grey. The role on the long running series earned her a Golden Globe nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Award. The character became widely popular, making Pompeo one of the most renowned television actresses. In 2016, Pompeo was ranked fourth in the list of highest paid TV actresses by Forbes, with earnings of $14.5 million; she became the third highest paid female and the fifth highest paid actor overall in 2018 with earnings of $23.5 million. She was also the highest ranked actor from a drama series on the list.
OK. That’s fine. Although I myself have never watched Grey’s Anatomy, there are obviously a lot of other people who do, and I don’t have any problem with that. And I don’t have any problem with all of the money, awards, and prestige that Pompeo has received for her work on that show, as well as from her other endeavors in the entertainment industry.
What I do have a problem with, however, is the incredibly huge amount of hypocrisy in Pompeo’s statement that was reported in the article from earlier today.
Here’s a video of what she said. Skip to 0:24:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BisDPHiqHkU
This is what she said:
“This day has been incredible, and there’s a ton of women in the room. But I don’t see enough color. And I didn’t see enough color when I walked in the room today. And I had a meeting with the director of another endorsement project that I’m doing. I said, ‘You know, when I show up on set, I would like to see the crew look like the world that I walk around in every day.’ And I think it’s up to all productions to make sure that your crew looks like the world we see. As Caucasian people, it’s our job, it’s our task, it’s our responsibility, to make sure that we speak up in every single room we walk into, that this is not OK, and that we can all do better. It’s our job, because we’ve created the problem.”
Then Pompeo starts to cry, just to make sure that everyone knows how much she cares about this issue.
But she’s a fake and a phony.
If she truly cared about this issue, then she wouldn’t just be asking for other white people to give up their jobs so there can be more diversity.
Instead, if she truly cared about this issue, then she would give up her own job so there can be more diversity.
But Pompeo didn’t do that.
She’s not willing to give up her own job so there can be more diversity.
She just wants other white people to give up their jobs so there can be more diversity.
She is a hypocrite in the worst possible way.
Shame on Ellen Pompeo for not practicing what she preaches.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know that the Supreme Court is one of the three branches of the federal government
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know that the Supreme Court is one of the three branches of the federal government.
In this video, she says:
“What we really need is that should we, and if we work our butts off, to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress, uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House in 2020…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn-6N9sR2_o
Before Barack Obama was famous, Archie comics used the expression “Brrack!” as a sign of disgust
I was just getting around to reading some of the Archie comics digests that I’d purchased over the past few years, and I came across this panel from issue #64 of World of Archie Comics Double Digest:
Since the digests are reprints of older stories, the original story was almost certainly published many years (or even decades) before anyone had ever heard of Barack Obama.
I’m not sure when or in which issue this story was originally published. My guess is that it’s from the late 1970s or early 1980s.
Also, since this is a modern day reprint of an older story, they edited the text to remove Svenson’s Swedish accent. This alteration is an unfortunate symptom of today’s political correctness. Decades ago, the whole point of the Svenson character was his accent. Without it, all of his personality is gone.
You can read the entire story (which is called “Clean Sweep”) at this link. Scroll down about 30% of the way: https://books.google.com/books?id=MhpsDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=world+of+archie+digest+64&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx-6O1vt7eAhUM11kKHXg4BDoQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
Florida Dems planned to use altered forms to fix mail ballots across state after deadline
Florida Dems planned to use altered forms to fix mail ballots across state after deadline
November 15, 2018
TALLAHASSEE — A day after Florida’s election left top state races too close to call, a Democratic party leader directed staffers and volunteers to share altered election forms with voters to fix signature problems on absentee ballots after the state’s deadline.
The altered forms surfaced in Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus and Okaloosa counties and were reported to federal prosecutors to review for possible election fraud as Florida counties complete a required recount in three top races.
But an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida shows that Florida Democrats were organizing a broader statewide effort beyond those counties to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline. Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a “cure affidavit,” that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline.
Jake Sanders, a Democratic campaign consultant based in Treasure Coast who saw the email, told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that he warned party staffers about the legality of the email, but was ignored.
“I warned FDP staff members of the questionable legal status of altering a state form and misleading people their vote would be counted before the court case played out,” Sanders said. “And coordinated campaign leadership told them to keep pushing it that ‘We are exhausting every possibility’.”
Sanders said the legality of the email was never discussed.
To Sanders, the party was not being upfront with voters and “undermining making sure every vote counts.”
“They should have been saying, ‘This is unprecedented. We are fighting for your vote to count. Fill this out so we can fight for you.’ But self-imposing a fake deadline and deceiving people is counter to that,” Sanders said.
One Palm Beach Democratic activist said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.
U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that voters should have until Saturday to correct signatures on ballots, a move that could open the door for these ballots returned with altered forms to be counted. Republicans supporting Gov. Rick Scott, who leads U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson by less than 13,000 votes in the recount, appealed the ruling.
The Democratic Party email was sent before Nelson and his party allies filed a series of lawsuits challenging some voting rules that applied during the election, claiming they disenfranchised voters.
Jake Sanders, a Democratic consultant in the Treasure Coast who saw the email, told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that he warned party staffers about the legality of using an altered form, but was ignored.
“I warned FDP staff members of the questionable legal status of altering a state form and misleading people their vote would be counted before the court case played out,” Sanders said. “And coordinated campaign leadership told them to keep pushing it that, ‘We are exhausting every possibility.'”
Sanders said the legality of use of the altered form was never discussed.
To Sanders, the party was not being upfront with voters and “undermining making sure every vote counts.”
“They should have been saying, ‘This is unprecedented. We are fighting for your vote to count. Fill this out so we can fight for you.’ But self-imposing a fake deadline and deceiving people is counter to that,” Sanders said.
Florida recounts also are underway in races for governor and the state agriculture commissioner.
Jennifer Kim, the party’s central Florida deputy field director who also served as deputy training director, was clear in her Nov. 7 email that staffers should target people who submitted absentee vote-by-mail ballots before Election Day and did not sign them properly. Her email subject line said “VBM signature cure instructions” and labeled the list of voters to be contacted as “VBM signature chases.”
That same day, however, state Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo wrote on a private Facebook page that efforts to fix ballots should be focused on provisional ballots, which were handled separately with a Nov. 8 deadline for voters to fix any issues.
“Hi all. Once again, to clarify: the activity taking place today is for provisional ballots. Not absentee ballots,” Rizzo’s note read.
Provisional ballots do not need to be corrected to be accepted by a county’s canvassing board, but voters can provide additional information to help resolve any outstanding issues. They also use a separate state form for voters to complete when filing a provisional ballot.
Scott’s campaign said Thursday that Nelson should demand Rizzo’s resignation in the wake of news about the party’s connection to the altered election documents and the plan to share with voters.
“Bill Nelson can either stay silent and be in favor of organized fraud by the Democrat Party, or he can do the right thing and demand the immediate resignation of Florida’s Democrat Party Chair,” said Jackie Schutz Zeckman, Scott’s campaign manager.
Nelson’s campaign did not respond Thursday. Democratic Party Executive Director Juan Penalosa also did not respond Thursday to requests for comment about the use of the altered forms.
The party compiled a list of voters and their contact information across the state who had their vote-by-mail ballots flagged with signature problems, and therefore not eligible.
“These are people that submitted VBMs before Election Day and did not sign them properly,” Kim wrote in the email.
It is not clear how many altered forms were sent across the state, but Kim’s email outlined a step-by-step process for volunteers and staffers to follow in order to get as many voters as possible to submit the altered form three days after the deadline.
“The voters MUST print out the form and sign it by hand,” Kim wrote in the email that attached copies of the altered forms in both English and Spanish. The email also included a sheet with the contact information of all election supervisors in the state.
Among those Democrats on Kim’s email was Joe Walters of Brandon, listed by the Nelson campaign as a recount contact.
The document Kim attached to her email was an altered state form to fix an absentee ballot with signature problems. The altered form modified the original state document by replacing the deadline identified as “no later than 5 p.m. on the day before the election” with a new deadline “no later than 5 p.m. Thursday Nov. 8.”
Kim’s email instructed staff and volunteers to use the list of voters to contact about their signature problems on the absentee ballots, to complete the form on the phone with the voter and to email the completed form to the voter.
The voter was instructed to print the form and to sign it. And Kim’s email instructed the party workers to tell voters to deliver the signed form to their local election office.
Kim told staffers that voters should reply back to them after they delivered the forms at the party’s email, vote@floridadems.org. That email was also included in documents Florida election officials referred to federal prosecutors in connection to the altered forms received by Broward and the other three counties.
“If needed (party) staff or volunteer should go pick up their affidavit and deliver it for them if they are not able to deliver by 5 p.m. Thursday. (Each office should identify a runner that can do this.),” her email states.
“We will also follow with a tracking system for people who we send affidavits,” Kim told staffers.
Pam Keith, a Palm Beach County Democratic activist, came under fire Wednesday after Republicans circulated a screenshot of a Nov. 7 deleted tweet she sent to about 22,000 of her Twitter followers, encouraging people to fix their absentee ballots two days after the state-mandated deadline.
Keith told the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida that she was aware the deadline to submit “cure affidavits” had expired but she told people there was still time to fix their absentee ballots. She then directed voters to email Katharine Priegues, a field organizer with the Florida Democratic Party, with the subject line “I want to help” for instructions on what to do.
“I was trying to show that if given notice, voters would try to fix their ballots,” Keith said. “I was putting the word out because I was anticipating a challenge of that deadline (in court).”
Keith, who this year ran in the Democratic primary for Florida’s 18th Congressional District, knew that because the deadline to submit the “cure affidavits” had passed, it was almost guaranteed they would be rejected by election supervisors, who were under “no obligation to accept the affidavits.”
“But better to have evidence in hand,” said Keith, who volunteered for Democrat Andrew Gillum’s campaign for governor.
That evidence would be a record of emails sent by voters who wanted to fix their absentee ballots but couldn’t do so because they couldn’t meet the state-imposed deadline. She said she did not alter the form or circulated by others in the party and has no ideas who did.
She said she doesn’t consider her efforts to encourage voters after the deadline to fix their absentee ballots election fraud, arguing she acted because she believes the deadline to fix absentee ballots was arbitrary.
“It is not fraud to try and correct something. There’s nothing fraudulent about that,” she said.
After Walker’s ruling Thursday to allow voters more time to fix signature problems on absentee ballots, Keith said the actions that she and other Democrats took to help voters with the altered forms was justified.
“The deadline wasn’t ‘wrong,’ per se. It was functionally meaningless and arbitrary,” Keith said. “Most people never get notice, and many ballots weren’t even looked at until the deadline had passed.”
The Department of State, which oversees elections, raised concerns about the altered forms, arguing that making changes to state forms is a criminal offense in Florida. The forms were forwarded on Friday to federal prosecutors.
Federal law defines election fraud to include preventing voters from participating in a federal election “through such tactics as disseminating false information” about the race, as outlined in an Oct. 25 letter to the state department by Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry C. Wallace in Miami.
Wallace, who is handling federal election complaints in Florida, declined to comment when contacted about an investigation into the altered forms.
“Making or using an altered form is a criminal offense under Florida law,” wrote Bradley McVay, the state department’s lawyer, when he referred the altered forms circulated in Broward and three other counties to federal prosecutors. “More fundamentally, altering a form in a manner that provides the incorrect date for a voter to cure a defect (or an incorrect method as it related to provisional ballots) imposes a burden on the voter significant enough to frustrate the voter’s ability to vote.”
Federal Prosecutors Discover Altered Election Documents in Broward County Tied to Florida Democrats
Federal Prosecutors Discover Altered Election Documents in Broward County Tied to Florida Democrats
November 14, 2018
Federal prosecutors in Florida are reviewing date changes on forms used to fix vote-by-mail ballots.
Feds discovered the dates were altered by the Florida Democrat party in four different counties, including Broward.
“Cure affidavits” are due by 5 PM the day before the election, however prosecutors have discovered these altered documents show the ballots could be turned in on Thursday, one day after the election.
Via Politico:
The Florida Department of State last week asked federal prosecutors to investigate dates that were changed on official state election documents, the first voting “irregularities” it has flagged in the wake of the 2018 elections.
The concerns, which the department says can be tied to the Florida Democratic Party, center around date changes on forms used to fix vote-by-mail ballots sent with incorrect or missing information. Known as “cure affidavits,” those documents used to fix mail ballots were due no later than 5 p.m. on Nov. 5 — the day before the election. But affidavits released on Tuesday by the DOS show that documents from four different counties said the ballots could be returned by 5 p.m. on Thursday, which is not accurate.
Among those counties is Broward, which emerged as the epicenter of controversy as three statewide races and three local legislative races went into recounts following the Nov. 6 elections. Republicans have pointed to embattled Broward Elections chief Brenda Snipes’ record of past election gaffes in arguing that the largely Democratic country is tilted against them — perhaps fraudulently so.
The dates on the cure affidavits were also altered in Okaloosa County and the elections supervisor said the email he received included a person from the Florida Democrat party.
Another email included in the DOS document dump included correspondence from Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux, who also said he believed the affidavits were from the Florida Democratic Party.
“Please pass the word to the FDP that they can’t arbitrarily add their own deadline to your form or VBM cures!!” Lux emailed DOS officials on Nov. 9. “This is crazy!”
In a Tuesday interview with POLITICO, Lux said he received an email from someone sending a cure affidavit marked with the wrong date that included a Florida Democratic Party email address. The email does contain the email address votes@FloridaDems.org, which is associated with the party.
While Republicans have ‘election day,’ the Democrats enjoy ‘election week’ or ‘election month.’
Democrats have produced tens of thousands of ballots several days after the election–even worse, Broward County refused to disclose how many ballots they had left to tabulate which allowed them to count however many they needed to bring the Democrats within the margin of a recount.
It is a violation of state law to count ballots with irregularities such as mismatched signatures however; Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) reported Tuesday evening that Democrat lawyers are actually arguing to change Florida laws to steal the elections.
“Florida law requires that the voter signatures on mail ballots match the signature of the voter, but Dem lawyers are asking a judge to throw that law out & force Florida to count ballots with signatures that don’t match the voter signature on file,” Senator Rubio explained.
Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes also admitted that one of her elections officials was driving around with blank provisional ballots in a rental car–and she still has not been removed from her position and prosecuted.
Former Democratic official says Brenda Snipes is too incompetent to commit election fraud
The New York Times recently reported the following regarding Brenda Snipes, the Supervisor of Elections in Broward County, Florida:
“To do fraud, you have to be clever,” said Lori Parrish, the county’s former elected property appraiser and a Democrat who endorsed Dr. Snipes’s opponent in 2016. “I don’t think there’s fraud. There’s incompetence.”
I don’t know if Snipes’s actions are due to fraud or incompetence.
After last week’s election, Circuit Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips ruled that Snipes had violated Florida’s public records laws by not publicly reporting the number of votes that had been cast in the election.
To many people, it would seem that the reason that Snipes didn’t report this number on time is because she didn’t yet know how many new votes she would need to manufacture in order to get the Democrats to win. By not reporting the number of votes that had been cast, Snipes could “find” enough votes later on to cause the Democrats to win.
Also after last week’s election, Broward County put ballots that had been declared illegal into the container with the legal votes. Now that they are mixed together, there is no way to distinguish the legitimate ballots from the illegal ones.
After a previous election, Broward County had illegally destroyed some ballots after they had been counted but before they were legally allowed to be destroyed.
Also after a previous election, Broward County opened mail-in ballots in secret instead of while under observation by multiple parties as required by law.
Furthermore, in a previous election, a constitutional amendment was left off of some ballots.
In addition, during a previous election, the results were posted online 30 minutes before the polls closed.
I don’t know if Snipes is incredibly incompetent, or if she is deliberately committing election fraud.
But either way, she should have lost her job a long time ago.
Dems to probe Trump’s treatment of CNN, Amazon, Washington Post in triple-threaded abuse-of-power inquiries
Dems to probe Trump’s treatment of CNN, Amazon, Washington Post in triple-threaded abuse-of-power inquiries
November 11, 2018
The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee this week said that when the new Congress is seated in January, Democrats plan to scrutinize whether President Trump abused his authority by taking adverse action against retail giant Amazon and two of his bitter left-leaning media rivals: CNN and The Washington Post.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said in an interview with “Axios on HBO” that he and his colleagues will employ committee subpoena powers — which are backed by the legal threat of contempt of Congress — to conduct the triple-threaded inquiry into Trump’s possible use of the “instruments of state power to punish the press.”
Specifically, Schiff charged that Trump “was secretly meeting with the postmaster [general] in an effort to browbeat” her into “raising postal rates on Amazon,” whose founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, separately owns The Washington Post.
“This appears to be an effort by the president to use the instruments of state power to punish Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post,” Schiff said in the interview.
The president signed an executive order earlier this year mandating a review of what he called the “unsustainable financial path” of the United States Postal Service (USPS). And he has reportedly met with Postmaster General Megan Brennan several times to push for hikes to the shipping rates paid by companies like Amazon, although there are no indications he did so to seek political payback.
Trump has long derided the political coverage at the Post, which is fiercely and relentlessly criticial of the White House, as a lobbying tool for Bezos. Most recently, the White House has contradicted the Post’s unequivocal reporting that it had shared a “doctored” video of CNN reporter Jim Acosta making contact with a White House intern during a press conference last week, as a Buzzfeed analysis suggested the changes in the video could have resulted inadvertently from the conversion of the footage to the lower-fidelity .gif format commonly used on Twitter.
But Trump has also feuded specifically with Amazon throughout the year, saying it is taking advantage of taxpayer-subsidized shipping rates.
In March, he argued in a series of tweets that the online retailer’s “scam” shipping deal with the U.S. Postal Service is costing the agency “billions of dollars.”
While the U.S. Postal Service has lost money for 11 years, package delivery — which has been a bright spot for the service — is not the reason. Boosted by e-commerce, the Postal Service has experienced double-digit increases in revenue from delivering packages, but that hasn’t been enough to offset pension and health care costs as well as declines in first-class letters and marketing mail.
Schiff also raised the possibility that the Trump administration’s opposition to AT&T’s $85 billion takeover of Time Warner on antitrust grounds may have been motivated by the president’s animus toward CNN, whose parent company is Time Warner. Trump frequently claims that CNN speads “fake news” and that when it does so, it is acting as the “enemy of the people.”
“We don’t know, for example, whether the effort to hold up the merger of the parent of CNN was a concern over antitrust, or whether this was an effort merely to punish CNN,” Schiff said, without offering evidence.
“It is very squarely within our responsibility to find out,” Schiff said. Along with incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and other top Democrats, Schiff will have a mandate to serve a slew of subpoenas on the Trump administration.
But former GOP Judiciary Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who is now a Fox News contributor, told Politico in October that Cummings and Schiff shouldn’t get their hopes up.
“If [North Carolina Rep.] Mark Meadows and [Ohio Rep.] Jim Jordan can’t get documents out of the White House, I don’t know why Elijah Cummings and the Democrats think they’ll do any better,” Chaffetz said.
Still, Democrats had signaled even before last week’s midterm elections that they would aggressively investigate the Trump administration if they took power in Congress. Bogging down the White House with burdensome document requests and subpoenas could indeed backfire, political analysts tell Fox News, but there is little doubt that the strategy — made more viable by heightened partisanship and loosened congressional norms — would impair Republicans’ messaging and even policy goals for the next two years.
“Well, we are responsible,” House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who is campaigning to reclaim her role as House speaker, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We are not scattershot. We are not doing any investigation for a political purpose, but to seek the truth. So I think a word that you could describe about how Democrats will go forward in this regard is we will be very strategic.”
But Pelosi has previously suggested that she would, indeed, use the threat of subpoenea for political gain.
“Subpoena power is interesting, to use it or not to use it,” Pelosi said at a conference in October, referring to the authority of House committees to summon individuals and organizations to testify or provide documents under penalty of perjury. “It is a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects.” She added that she would use the power “strategically.” (Trump has flatly called Pelosi’s plan “illegal.”)
Pelosi’s approach would mark the continuation of a trend. Research conducted by Cornell University political science professor Douglas Kriner, who co-wrote the 2016 book “Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power,” underscores the increasingly political nature of House investigations.
“We examined every congressional investigation from 1898 to 2014 – more than 11,900 days of investigative hearings,” Kriner told Fox News. “What we found is that divided government is a major driver of investigations in the House. This is particularly true in periods of intense partisan polarization. For example, from 1981-2014, the House averaged holding 67 days of investigative hearings per year in divided government, versus only 18 per year in unified government.”
Kriner added that modern congressional probes seem geared toward “maximiz[ing] the political damage on the White House,” rather than producing more substantive results. “Investigations are less likely to trigger new legislation than in previous, less polarized eras,” Kriner told Fox News.
On Election Day, Pelosi vowed to “restor[e] the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration” by enhancing transparency and accountability. But Trump last week signaled he had no patience for that approach, which he characterized as an expensive folly.
“If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!” Trump tweeted.
Feds Now Have Evidence Trump Broke the Law to Become President
Feds Now Have Evidence Trump Broke the Law to Become President. Will Whitaker Bury It?
Prosecutors won’t likely charge a sitting president, yet have implicated him in a criminal scheme to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. What to do then? Go to Congress.
November 10, 2018
Friday’s in-depth Wall Street Journal report suggests the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York and the FBI appear to possess evidence of Donald Trump’s involvement in a criminal scheme that helped get him elected president. This raises serious questions about what comes next, particularly in light of Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker, a political loyalist, as acting attorney general.
Trump played a central role in hush-money payments made to Karen McDougal and Stephanie Clifford during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Journal reports, adding more detail to the case of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-lawyer who pled guilty to federal campaign finance violations in the Southern District in August.
Recall that when Cohen pleaded guilty in federal court, he stated under oath that he had made the payments “in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office”—many assumed that that candidate was Trump, of course. We now know from the Journal that the person who directed Cohen in this criminal scheme was, indeed, Donald Trump. The charging document to which Cohen pled guilty states that he “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” The Journal reports that “[t]he unnamed campaign member or members referred to Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the document.”
In addition, we now know that the evidence of Trump’s involvement in this criminal scheme is not limited to Cohen. Even accounting for the likelihood that the piece relies in some part on information provided by Cohen himself, there are plenty of other sources weighing in; the reporters note they obtained information from “interviews with three dozen people who have direct knowledge of the events or who have been briefed on them, as well as court papers, corporate records and other documents.”
Of course there is an important caveat here that what can be reported in the Wall Street Journal doesn’t always translate into usable evidence in the grand jury—in other words, people who are willing to talk to the press may not be as willing or as thorough when it comes to giving testimony to federal prosecutors or a grand jury. But, the Journal article contains an important nugget along these lines: “In August, [prosecutors] outlined Mr. Trump’s role—without specifically naming him—in a roughly 80-page draft federal indictment they had been preparing to file against Mr. Cohen.” As former federal prosecutors, that tells us that the SDNY had evidence of Trump’s involvement even before Cohen pled guilty and began cooperating.
All of this, taken together, indicates that evidence of Trump’s involvement in the hush-money scheme would be a combination of witnesses and other evidence not limited to Cohen, which makes it much more difficult for Trump to brush this off as lies concocted by Cohen to save himself, which Trump’s team have already begun arguing.
And, we know more about Trump’s role in this scheme from the article. For example, the story opens with a detailed recounting of a crucial and previously unreported August 2015 meeting between Trump and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker (who reportedly has been granted immunity to testify by the SDNY) during which Trump asked Pecker how he could help the campaign. Pecker reportedly offered to use his tabloid newspaper to purchase and squash the stories of women alleging affairs with Trump (which he did months later with McDougal).
This conversation, on its own, establishes Trump’s direct involvement with and direction of the hush money payment: precisely as Cohen stated when he pled guilty and goes to the heart of the question of Trump’s intent, namely, did he know and intend that these hush money payments would benefit his campaign for president?
So, can President Trump be charged by the SDNY with a crime of violating the federal campaign finance laws? Probably not. First, even assuming that the quality of the evidence is to the level that prosecutors demand, it is currently DOJ policy not to indict a sitting president, and SDNY, fiercely independent as it is, is still part of DOJ.
If the feds have evidence of criminality but do not believe they can indict, then what becomes of the information?
If the SDNY charges other people or entities involved in the campaign finance scheme, Trump’s involvement as an unindicted co-conspirator could be laid out in those documents for the public to see. Short of that, it will be challenging for the SDNY to share its evidence and information with other authorities. Rule 6e of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure strictly governs disclosure of grand jury materials. We do not know how much, if any, of the SDNY’s evidence falls into this category. Even if it does, there is precedent in an opinion by Judge John Sirica in the Watergate case from 1974 that the SDNY grand jury could provide evidence to Congress in the form of a report. A third option is that the SDNY could share the evidence it has, pursuant to a court order, with a state prosecuting authority, such as the New York Attorney General’s Office which is not necessarily limited in its ability to charge a sitting president, assuming there are parallel state crimes.
Further complicating matters is the DOJ’s new boss, who has taken the view that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s finances would cross a “red line.” In 2017, Whitaker wrote an opinion piece for CNN that if Mueller’s office “were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel’s investigation was a mere witch hunt.” Will the fact that this investigation is now in the hands of the SDNY and not Mueller change that conclusion for Whitaker? It should.
But, given Whitaker’s unusually partisan past and his statements hostile to any criminal investigation of Trump, the American public and Congress need to ensure that any evidence that the SDNY possesses of Trump’s participation in an illegal campaign finance scheme to help get him elected does not get buried by political forces looking to protect him.
Gillum, Nelson teams object to tossing non US citizen voter ballot during PB County vote counting circus
Gillum, Nelson teams object to tossing non US citizen voter ballot during PB County vote counting circus
November 10, 2018
Attorneys for Senator-elect Rick Scott, the National Republican Senate Committee and the Republican Party of Palm Beach County descended on Palm Beach County’s Supervisor of Elections office on Friday night to oversee the vote counting that could decide the outcome of key Florida races.
Democratic candidates Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum have their own team of attorneys watching the canvassing board closely, looking for anything that could change the result of the elections and snatch the Senate and Gubernatorial wins from exiting Governor Rick Scott and newly elected Governor Ron DeSantis. Apparently, that includes counting non-U.S. citizens’ votes.
Among the crowd of dedicated observers who remained past midnight was Michael Barnett, the chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. Barnett sent BizPac Review part of the transcript from the proceedings showing attorneys for both Gillum and Nelson objecting to tossing out a non-citizen vote.
Susan Bucher, the election supervisor of Palm Beach County, rightfully called the ballot as “not counted,” but not without objection from both Gillum and Nelson’s attorneys.
Indiana driver who killed three children says she didn’t know there was a school bus in front of her
The Indiana driver who recently killed three children says she didn’t know there was a school bus in front of her.
This is a photo from the crash site. I’d say it’s pretty obvious that it’s a school bus. I wonder if the driver who killed three children was texting while driving.
Image sourced from https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/01/indiana-school-bus-stop-accident-driver-alyssa-shepherd/1846987002/
This next photo is also from the crash site. This is the truck that the driver used to kill three children. The truck did not crash into another vehicle. Instead, all of the dents and other damage in the front of the truck are from driving into the children. Imagine what this must have done to their bodies.
Image sourced from https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2018/11/01/indiana-school-bus-stop-accident-driver-alyssa-shepherd/1846987002/
https://www.abc57.com/news/driver-in-fatal-crash-told-police-she-didnt-realize-it-was-a-school-bus
Driver in fatal crash told police she didn’t realize it was a school bus
November 1, 2018
The woman who was driving the truck that killed three children and injured one as they walked to the school bus told police she saw the lights, but didn’t recognize it as a school bus until it was too late, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Alyssa Shepherd, 24, spoke with investigators right after the crash happened on SR 25 Tuesday morning around 7:15 a.m.
The information about what Shepherd told police was revealed in the probable cause affidavit.
Shepherd told police she saw the lights of the bus, but didn’t recognize it as a school bus. By the time she realized what it was, the kids were in front of her, according to reports.
Multiple witnesses reported seeing the lights on and the stop arm down, police said.
Shepherd told police she doesn’t usually drive her husband to work, but on Tuesday she did. She dropped him off in Talma at 7:05 a.m. and then headed to her mother’s house to drop off her little brother.
She said she was not running late or in a hurry.
Her brother and two other children were in the truck with her when the crash happened.
The bus driver told police he saw the pickup truck coming but it was a long way off. Since he had his flashing lights and stop arm down, he waved the kids across the street.
When he realized the truck wasn’t slowing down, he honked his horn as a warning – but it was too late, he told police.
A driver who was behind Shepherd testified she came around the curve and saw the school bus lights. She saw the headlights of the truck light up the kids just before they were hit, according to reports.
Shepherd is facing three counts of reckless homicide and a misdemeanor count of passing a school bus with arm extended causing injury.
My new Obama book is arranged by chapters instead of a long list
My new Obama book is arranged by chapters instead of a long list.
It’s called Barack Obama Is Afraid of Sharyl Attkisson: The definitive guide to the shenanigans of America’s 44th president.
Here are the chapter names to help give you an idea of what’s in the book:
Chapter 1: Trying to silence the media
Chapter 2: Less transparent than Nixon
Chapter 3: Sharyl Attkisson
Chapter 4: James Rosen
Chapter 5: IRS Scandal
Chapter 6: Fast and Furious
Chapter 7: Bill Ayers
Chapter 8: Medical marijuana
Chapter 9: Firefighters
Chapter 10: Air-traffic controllers
Chapter 11: Democrats criticize Obamacare
Chapter 12: Unions criticize Obamacare
Chapter 13: No, you can’t keep your insurance
Chapter 14: Obamacare’s 29 hour work week
Chapter 15: Benghazi
Chapter 16: Dinesh D’Souza
Chapter 17: If Obama had a son
Chapter 18: Wasting the taxpayers’ money
Chapter 19: Military
Chapter 20: Teachers and police officers
Chapter 21: Solyndra
Chapter 22: Voter ID
Chapter 23: Education
Chapter 24: Sharia law and Islamic terrorism
Chapter 25: Civil liberties
Chapter 26: Hillary Clinton
Chapter 27: Iran
Chapter 28: Obama Motors
Chapter 29: Supermarkets
Chapter 30: Miscellaneous
You can buy the paperback version at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1730800769.
You can buy the amazon kindle version at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K53ZN9F.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 