Wrap It Up, Mr. Mueller. Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2018. A16. (Click image if you prefer to read it from the paper – image will enlarge)
Last week was supposed to be earthshaking in Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, with the release of sentencing memos on three former members of the Trump universe—Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Yet Americans learned little new and nothing decisive about the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion that triggered this long investigation.
The main Russia-related news is the disclosure, in Mr. Mueller’s memo on Mr. Cohen, of a previously unknown attempt by an unidentified Russian to reach out to the Trump presidential campaign. “In or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,” the memo says.
The Russian also offered the possibility of a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Alas for conspiracy hopefuls, MR. COHEN “DID NOT FOLLOW UP ON THIS INVITATION,” the memo says, because Mr. Cohen says he was already talking to other Russians about a Trump Tower hotel project that has been previously disclosed. Mr. Trump has said he shut down that hotel negotiation in 2016 because he was running for President.
So a Russian wanted to insinuate himself into the Trump orbit but nothing happened. Why drop this into a sentencing memo? The press is breathing heavily that it signals Mr. Mueller’s intention to promote a narrative that the Trumpians were all too willing, for commercial and political reasons, to hear Russian solicitations.
This would make Trump officials look dumb or naive, as Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were when they took that famous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Such a narrative would be politically embarrassing, but it’s not conspiring to hack and release the email of Democratic Party officials.
The Manafort memo is even less revealing. The memo says Mr. Manafort lied about his contacts with a Ukrainian business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik. But the memo redacts the details about those lies, so it’s impossible to know if they concern Russia or the tax and other violations that Mr. Manafort has pleaded guilty to. We are left again with media speculation about what else Mr. Mueller knows, not with evidence of any attempt to steal an election.
More legally troubling is the separate sentencing memo on Mr. Cohen from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Mueller handed off the probe into Mr. Cohen’s business practices, including the legal grifter’s payoffs to porn actress Stormy Daniels and another woman who claim to have had affairs with Donald Trump and threatened to go public during the 2016 campaign.
This was another example of dumb and dumber, SINCE ANY SENTIENT VOTER KNEW MR. TRUMP HAD A BAD HISTORY WITH WOMEN. Voters ignored it in 2016 because Hillary Clinton spent years apologizing for worse behavior by her husband. But the payoffs are now a political problem for Mr. Trump because Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty to violating campaign-finance laws and implicated Mr. Trump.
Campaign violations are often treated as CIVIL, NOT CRIMINAL, VIOLATIONS, and the Justice Department dropped criminal charges against Democrat John Edwards in 2012 for payments made by campaign donors to his mistress. But acting U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami is playing up Mr. Trump’s role, saying in the memo that Mr. Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1” (Mr. Trump).
The memo waxes on about the importance of campaign-finance law to American democracy, which suggests Mr. Khuzami would indict Mr. Trump if he could. Justice Department guidelines advise against indicting a sitting President, so Mr. Khuzami’s memo looks more like a road map for House Democrats. So much for all the media handwringing that Mr. Trump has interfered with the independence of the Justice Department. He has less influence at Justice than any President since Richard Nixon in his final days.
The political dilemma for Democrats is that lying about sex and paying to cover it up are wrong, but they’re a long way from collaborating with the Kremlin to beat Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Trump lied to the public about his dealings with Mr. Cohen. Bill Clinton lied to the public and under oath in a legal proceeding, yet Democrats defended him. Good luck trying to impeach Mr. Trump for campaign-finance violations.
* * *
All of this argues for Mr. Mueller to wrap up his probe and let America get on with the political debate over its meaning for Mr. Trump’s Presidency. Mr. Mueller has been investigating for 19 months, and the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign began in July 2016, if not earlier. The country deserves an account of what Mr. Mueller knows, not more factual dribs and drabs in sentencing memos.
Larry Elder discusses two paths to Bullet Trains with Professor of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University — Lee Ohanian. Dr. Ohanian catches us up with the latest regarding Trump’s economy as well. I haven’t done audio of the sage for a while (job change), but it is good to catch up with this run. Here is the professors article on the trains:
Mind you this is after reading some articles and listening to talk radio and dissenting callers expressing their opinion. BUT RUSH LIMBAUGH is the boss of this! First of all, I wish to say, if the 45-people who left Congress for a variety of reasons did so in part because they believed the media in their “Blue Wave” supposition. Obviously many of these Republicans included ideas of their dislike of Trump, or that they were in leading positions and do not want to be “demoted,” but instead transition into the private sector, as well as spend time with family, also reading the tea-leaves about the “blue wave” (etc., etc.). And so, with the amount of GOP incumbent calling it quits for a variety of reasons, the Democrats won the amount of seats they did this election. They would have won MUCH less if these Republicans stuck through another couple years to the 2020 election. Here are some examples that show just how bad this first mid-term is for the party in power:
The most House seats ever lost by a president’s party in power was Obama in 2010. He lost 63. Next was Bill Clinton in 1994. He lost 52. In 1958, Eisenhower lost 48, as did Ford and Nixon in 1974. They lost 48. Lyndon Johnson in ’66, lost 47. Harry Truman in ’46 lost 45 seats. George W. Bush in 2006 lost 30. In 1950, Harry Truman lost 29. Reagan, in ’82, lost 26 seats, and in 2016 Trump is at 26 or 27 — and those are New York Times records. (RUSH LIMBAUGH)
UPDATE: More LIKE 37 seats.
So, my point is that what the GOP lost in the House yesterday, is FAR better than recent democrats as an example. AND, not only that, if the Republicans who left stuck around, the Democrats would have won less in the House. So to lose the amount we did was with thanks to Trump and keeping a natural cycle to a minimum. Very few midterm Presidents have added to the Senate during their tenure.
And WHY did Trump deem it important to spend time on the campaign trail for Senate races and not the House races? Because the Senate is where judges are confirmed — the Senate. So if say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies or retires, Trump/Mitch McConnell could nominate another Justice via a Senate with more Republicans who are more conservative than their predecessors. [UPDATE, and on cue]
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was seriously injured in a Wednesday evening fall in her chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The health of the 85-year-old justice and progressive favorite is much-watched, lest a sudden change of events give President Donald Trump a third appointment to the high court.
“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell in her office at the Court last evening,” the Supreme Court public information office said Thursday morning. “She went home, but after experiencing discomfort overnight, went to George Washington University Hospital early this morning. Tests showed that she fractured three ribs on her left side and she was admitted for observation and treatment. Updates will be provided as they become available.”
The injury precluded Ginsburg from attending Thursday morning’s ceremonial investiture of Justice Brett Kavanaugh…
…With the Republican-led Senate rapidly considering and confirming many of his judicial nominees, Trump already has appointed 26 appeals court judges. That is more than any other president in the first two years of a presidency, according to Russell Wheeler, a scholar at the Brookings Institution think tank, although he points out that there are more appellate judges now than in the past.
Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, appointed 55 in eight years as president.
Only four of the 13 federal appeals courts currently have more Republican-appointed judges than Democratic selections.
The two appellate courts closest to shifting to Republican-appointed majorities are the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump already has made three appointments to the 11th Circuit, leaving it with a 6-6 split between Democratic and Republican appointees. The 3rd Circuit, to which Trump has made one appointment, now has a 7-5 Democratic-appointee majority, with two vacancies for Trump to fill.
[….]
here are currently 13 appeals court vacancies, six of them with pending nominees picked by Trump, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
Both the 11th Circuit and 3rd Circuit have major cases pending in which Trump appointees could make their mark.
An 11th Circuit three-judge panel on July 25 revived a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state of Alabama’s move to prevent the city of Birmingham from increasing the minimum wage. Alabama has asked for a rehearing, which would be heard by the entire 12-judge 11th Circuit if the request is granted.
In the 3rd Circuit, the Trump administration has appealed a lower court decision blocking the Justice Department from cutting off grants to Philadelphia over so-called sanctuary city policies limiting local cooperation with federal authorities on immigration enforcement….
This is Yuuuge. The courts will have Constitutionalists influencing the Courts for generations.
Incumbent Senate Democrats in battleground states who opposed the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination appeared to have paid a price on Election Day, with senators Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Florida’s Bill Nelson all suffering defeat.
In fact, every Democrat incumbent who opposed Kavanaugh in states rated “toss up” by Fox News lost their race. In contrast, the lone Democrat who voted for Kavanaugh, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, won his race.
“Every Dem Senator in a competitive race who voted against Kavanaugh lost,” tweeted Tom Bevan, Co-founder of RealClearPolitics. Fox News polling offered evidence the Kavanaugh issue was a major problem for those battleground incumbent Democrats.
A Fox News poll from early October, just before the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, found 34 percent of North Dakotans said they would be less likely to vote for Heitkamp if she voted against Kavanaugh, with just 17 percent saying it would make them more likely to vote for her….
Josh Kraushaar compiled what he calls the progressive scorecard from last night. Note that it includes only seriously contested races. (Bernie Sanders won, as did the 29 year-old airhead from New York with the hyphenated name):
Arizona governor: Garcia loses
Florida governor: Gillum loses
Georgia governor: Abrams loses
Maryland governor: Jealous loses
Texas senator: O’Rourke loses
California 45th: Porter trails
Nebraska 2nd: Eastman loses
Pennsylvania 1st: Wallace loses
Virginia 5th: Cockburn loses
Dave Weigel adds three more to the scorecard:
Indiana 9th: Liz Watson loses
New York 24th: Dana Balter loses
Wisconsin 1st: Randy Bryce loses
This covers almost every region of the country. America isn’t quite ready for socialism yet.
…But then there were the midterm campaigns that weren’t gimmes, some very high profile, and high media-exposure ones: Joe Donnelly of Indiana for Senate. Bill Nelson of Florida for Senate. Andrew Gillum of Florida for governor. Stacey Abrams of Georgia for governor.
Those were the ones Obama went hoarse campaigning for, yelling and waving his arms, voice cracking, speeches described as fiery, telling voters to vote for these guys or die. With Gillum in particular, racial appeals were a factor and Obama’s presence was supposed to help. Gillum had a big media buildup about being a first black governor of Florida as an argument to draw votes, and he later cried racism to fend off corruption allegations. Adding Obama to campaign was obviously part of the appeal. This time, the race-politics identity card simply failed.
And Obama? What did he get? Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. The voters rather noticibly rejected the ex-president’s appeal for votes. Been there, done that.
A prized and coveted Obama endorsement, or campaign stop, obviously isn’t the election winner in a tight race it used to be. In fact, with these midterms, when it matters, Obama’s a bust. The lesson here that Democrats will surely notice is that it’s largely useless. …
My contention is that the crazies in the Democrat Party may end up helping Trump and Republicans come 2020.
“Democrats couldn’t stop Trump, but they could slow him down and make life miserable for him,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “Subpoenas would be flying from Capitol Hill towards the White House as fast as they can print them out.” (THE HILL)
Geist described his theory as “counterintuitive,” but it actually makes perfect sense. Imagine the spectacle of frothing Dems at House hearings, of rabid Dem members fighting for TV time to air their overwrought accusations. What better thing to ramp up the Republican base?
As Willie said, this would be Kavanaugh times 1,000. And as most concur this morning, it was the Kavanaugh hearings that were largely responsible for galvanizing the GOP, leading to an expansion of the Republican Senate majority. Imagine what that spectacle, times 1,000, would do to create a wave of broken-glass Republicans in 2020.
WILLIE GEIST: Here’s a counterintuitive thought: President Trump would like nothing more than an impeachment investigation. Because it’s not going anywhere in the Senate, it’s dead, it’s a Republican-controlled Senate. And it’s the Kavanaugh situation multiplied times a thousand, which is Democratic overreach, and Donald Trump looks like the victim in the whole thing. He does not mind an impeachment investigation.
Like Hugh Hewitt, I don’t disagree with Das Boot mentioning the attack on John McCain, even if McCain initiated the strain of disagreement. However, I want to deal with two points he made that come from a larger post of mine dealing with the three main media myths about Trump. Das Boot trampled on two of the three I already wrote on. Here are the two issues I refute, which, the conservative should be able to navigate with their adherence to truth. Which is what — I fear — Das Boot is negating in his life of late. POWERLINE calls it his mid-life crisis.
Max Boot mentions Trump calling Mexicans rapists (at the 2:22 mark)
Trump mocked a disabled man (at the 2:37 mark)
Is Mexico Sending Rapists?
When I ask people to offer me an example of Trump’s “racism,” I get a reference to this example most often:
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you…. They’re sending people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” ~ Donald J. Trump
Before I add information that I doubt a millennial has heard because either they or their friends are quick to label Trump as being bigoted or racist for saying this, and moving on without further reflection, I want to note that all Republican politicians said to round up illegals in America would be an impossible task. Trump has evolved on his statement that many understood as rounding up 11-million (actually, there are 30-million). ALSO, every Republican politician noted that the Constitution would not allow for the banning of all Muslims coming to our country. Again, our Constitution forbids this. It allows for banning all persons from a country, but not a religious or sectarian belief. He [Trump] has backed away from this as well, as all of us knew he would. In fact, this was removed from his site. Trump is not a politician, but his team is counseling him well.
…Continuing.
Okay. What of Trump’s statement? It surely sounds bigoted at best.
I will shock the reader.
I think that is the most pro-woman statement in a long time by a politician regarding real — violent — crime against women.
As the number of Central American women and girls crossing into the U.S. continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged against these migrants who are in search of a better life.
According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report…
[….]
Through May, the number of unaccompanied girls younger than 18 caught at the US-Mexico border increased by 77 percent.
But while many of these girls are fleeing their homes because of fears of being sexually assaulted, according to the UNHCR, they are still meeting that same fate on their journey to freedom…
For clarity in the sources for the HUFFPO article, for those that are of the impatient and research non-oriented generation:
✦ 60% Amnesty International Report (PDF) ✦ 80% Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream? (FUSION)
(UPDATED EDITORIAL BY RPT) To be clear, these rapes are happening by residents who live in towns and districts these migrants are passing through. Other rapes are happening by Coyotajes, as well as many by the men making the trip as well. We know that many Honduren gang-members make the trek, and so, a high percentage of these men (criminals) do in fact cross our border into our nation. Where American women of all ethnic background are subjected to assault. Since we know illegals commit crimes at double the rate of native-born… rape is also part of these increased stats.
…“According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report,” the well-known news outlet continued….
So, many of the men they travel with are rapping them. Many of the Coyotajes as well take advantage of them. There are what are now being called “rape trees,” which you can learn more about on a previous post of mine, here. Here is how a conversation using this understanding went in the real world:
The above exchange was discussed a bit wrong, like Trump, the main idea is lost in the presentation. Gavin McInness made it sound as if the rapes were happening at the border when in actuality they are happening during the entire trip. And the girl thought he meant Coyotes, the real animal. Not Coyotajes. (That was very funny BTW, and why I ended the video like I did.)
What would be the most compassionate step to take? I would say, to control our border. That would help the migrant woman AS WELL AS our own mothers, daughters, and wives. Many from these countries that are experiencing these horrible circumstances are experiencing it because of their government models they have chosen. But this is neither here-nor-there.
The bottom line is that Trump, while not explaining this well at all, was actually making a statement about policy that in the end will protect women. There is this as well dealing with drugs and violence aspect of the comment:
A fresh wave of crime from the infamously violent MS-13 gang in the District of Columbia is being driven by the heavy recruitment of young illegal immigrants.
A surge of minors crossing the U.S. southern border is helping the notorious gang boost their ranks and instigate a new string of violent attacks in the city, reported The Washington Times. Over the past few years a wave of illegal migrant children crossed the U.S. border, and MS-13 appears to be targeting them for recruitment.
“They are certainly susceptible,” Ed Ryan, gang prevention coordinator in Fairfax County, Virginia, told The Washington Times. “They are new, they have very little family, they don’t know the language very well. They are looking for someone who looks like them, talks like them.”
Experts say violence from MS-13, which originally started in California, historically occurs in waves. Currently MS-13, on orders from El Salvador, is ramping up efforts in cities across the U.S. to reestablish their dominance on the streets, reports The Washington Times….
This is just a very short clip of a longer audio (here: ) of John and Ken discussing Mollie Tibbetts and her murderer, Christian Bahena-Rivera. According to the DAILY CALLER, he was employed by a Republican small business owner…
“He worked on Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of GOP official Craig Lang, who was a former 2018 Republican candidate for state secretary of agriculture, according to reports by the Des Moines Register.”
…who may have illegally had him in their employ? However, he was an example of the DACA young… so did he have his temporary papers? I have no idea. Nor would I know if he immigrated legally if he would have passed all the checks/balances.
As an side…
Is this man a racist or bigot? He was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, and spoke out against the racist organization, La Raza, as well as calling workers who crossed the border “illegal immigrants” and “wetbacks.”
…“Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration,” Levin said during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News’ Hannity.
After saying that the premise that “compassion is an open border” is a “new idea” that has been pushed in recent times, Levin said that “a nation has a right to secure its border” and its citizens have a right to know who is coming into their country.
Chavez, who was also against ethnic organizations like La Raza, would tell illegal immigrants to get out of the country, especially because they lowered the wages of American workers. And he was often far from compassionate in handling illegal immigrants….
This one I believed for a long time. Here is a common way this is added into a litany of grievances:
If I owned a business and someone applied for the job that had a history of denigrating women, mocking a reporter with a disability, targeting people of a certain ethnic or religious affiliation, I would not hire that person. I am surprised to see that some would. Perhaps we have different values.
Firstly, it is not my job to correct EVERY detail a person brings up. Even I have a life. Barely, but it’s there… somewhere. So the denigrating women thing makes no real difference to the Democrat, because assaults, murder, and rape are all too common on the left. JFK raped a 16-year old girl in the White House and brought prostitutes into the same House. Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate,” a hero to the Left assaulted women even killing one in a drunken night out. Bill Clinton either raped or assaulted over 15-women and had sex with prostitutes, and his wife got a man she knew was guilty of rapping so violently a 12-year old girl that she could never have kids her entire life. She laughed about getting this rapist off. She [Hillary], also covered up her husbands attacks. She got so much flack for this that she removed from he campaign website a section detailing her hard work to protect women.
Thank you Bernie fans for being tough on her for this!
My answer to this requires watching a video/audio I worked on and uploaded to my YouTube… but if you want a condensed version that I responded to a person elsewhere on the WWW:
So, what have we learned so far by exchanging ideas in an open forum. Trump was right about the rapists comment, and the best thing to protect women is to control our border (both for the immigrant women and our mothers and daughters).
And the other things we learned is that Trump mocks everyone with the same motions. Childish? Yes. Not ideal for a President. Sure. He wasn’t my 18th choice out of seventeen. But what is said of him is not [often true].
Here is a time-line of each video of Trump mocking various persons (including himself) with the same mannerisms as the media says he expressly used to mock a man’s disability:
✦ May 2005 – Trump imitates a flustered Trump (decade prior to the “event” in question); ✦ October 2015 – Trump imitates flustered bank president (25-days prior to the “event” in question); ✦ November 25, 2015 – Trump imitates flustered reporter and flustered general (during the same speech given as the “event” in question); ✦ February 2016 – Trump imitates flustered Ted Cruz; ✦ October 2016 — Trump imitates a flustered Donna Brazile.
I include this call because it is more concise than my other uploads:
Again, he did this of himself, Ted Cruz, a general, and more. It is his “quirk.” One I hate, but not aimed at anyone in particular to represent a physical condition. (See a much longer report on all this here.)
Here is my “finisher” to a recent discussion via FB on this topic:
No, he was not mocking his disability. He was mocking his reporting. Like he was mocking the general later in that same speech. Unless, wait… Bonnie… you may have something… when Donald J. Trump mocked himself in May 2005, a bank president in October 2015, that general in November 25, 2015, Ted Cruz in February 2016, and Donna Brazile in October 2016…
…h-e was r-e-a-l-l-y mocking that reporter that doesn’t have a disability that causes him to make those motions.
…in 1866, the actual author of the post-Civil War Amendment – Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan – explained the real purpose of what become the 14th Amendment.
Unfortunately for liberals, it was only for granting citizenship to recently freed African slaves, not foreigners. In fact, it didn’t even include Native Americans.
Howard wrote “that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
Sadly, the 14th Amendment is a wildly-abused amendment, as it was also justification in the Roe V. Wade abortion case. Clearly, not enough Americans know what the amendment actually was intended for.
Dennis Prager does a decent job in dissecting Mika Brzezinski’s call for Democrats to stop the madness not created by their own actions/thoughts, but by not giving in to what the President wishes them to do. She herself has been led down the primrose path many a time by following exactly the dictates of Donald Trump. For instance:
You see, this is playing Donald Trump’s game, you see. If you don’t admit Donald Trump is playing you, you then are being fooled by him… er… wait. At any rate, a good commentary by Prager.
Steven Crowder takes Change My Mind to the White House to have real conversations with real people on hot button issues. In this edition, Trump is not a fascist. (See my post on “What Is Fascism” and “Is Fascism Right Or Left?“)
Some older videos by CROWDER:
You’ve heard it a hundred times: “TRUMP IS LITERALLY HITLER!” But when you look past the click-bait rhetoric and compare actual policies, it’s obvious the Hillary has far more similarities to the Führer…
Howard is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Among other things, he is a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur, inventor, and corporate executive.
Howard faced down the government. The jury didn’t think much of the government’s case. It returned with a verdict of acquittal on all charges after a day of deliberations, and that includes the time spent electing a foreman.
Howard’s case is important in its own way. The crimes charged were bogus. The government procured testimony through serious prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecution represented fruit of the poisonous Yates Memo tree. Howard had the resources to fight the government’s case against him and his company, but it exacted an enormous toll. The case cries out for study and reform.
Howard has thus sought to engage prosecutors in discussion of the case in person before professional audiences of lawyers and businessmen for whom it holds immediate relevance. The prosecutors and their superiors in the department have sought to keep Howard from speaking to such audiences. When I wrote the Department of Justice to request its explanation for what it was doing, it declined to comment (a week after I asked the question).
Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy was more forthcoming. He called out the Department of Justice’s behavior as “a disgrace.”
The Department of Justice declines to answer to Howard or me but it has at long last responded to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Utah Senator Mike Lee. Senators Grassley and Lee sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seeking an update on the Justice Department’s inquiry into professional misconduct committed by prosecutors and higher-ups who brought the charges against Howard and have since sought to prevent him from being heard. I posted the Grassley/Lee letter in “Fear & loathing at the DoJ, cont’d.”
In their letter Senators Grassley and Lee noted that “reports suggest a pattern of threatened and actual retribution against defendants and witnesses borne out of the Department’s disappointment with the outcome of a particular case. This not only casts doubt on the Department’s ability to accept the results of judicial proceedings in a professional manner befitting the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency, but it significantly undermines our confidence in its commitment to hold government attorneys accountable for questionable actions that may have occurred in the course of this case or other cases.” …..
Hannity led his radio interview of Rep. Jim Jordan with Jay Sekulow (I added the extended video of what was audio). A good interview, Jim is on it and we will within weeks have many more damning texts and understandings of the flimsy evidence of the “dossier” used to get the FISA warrants. See more here:
Nunes: Democrats, Journalists Will Be “Frightened” By Declassified Trump-Russia Documents (DAILY CALLER)
Here is Jason Chaffetz discussing his book regarding the “deep state”
This is all POWERLINE, but soo important for the “Mantra Busting” that …. here ya go:
…This is what is going on: Some “scientists”–read anti-Trump Democratic Party activists–constructed a theoretical baseline of how many deaths would be expected to occur in Puerto Rico during the months after Hurricane Maria. They then compared this baseline to the actual number of deaths, and voila! The actual number was higher than their hypothetical guess by 3,000. So all of those deaths–whether caused by cancer, car accidents, or whatever–are attributed to the hurricane. These activists have not made any attempt to count the actual number of hurricane-related deaths.
No one would use such a foolish methodology except for political reasons. This is more fake news propagated by anti-Trump activists. The fake news media, like CNN, have attacked President Trump for disputing the “scientists” who came up with the 3,000 number. Sadly, some Republicans have joined them, probably because they are ignorant about what is actually going on here.
For what it is worth, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017, and Puerto Rico’s death rate declined in 2017, after years of increases:
(click to enlarge)
So, following the logic of the Left and the #NeverTrumpers, MORE hurricanes should hit Puerto Rico. Just sayin’ — I love the holes dug by these early reactors to the MSM. Some article to preserve:
…Excess mortality studies have been used to measure everything from the life expectancy of smokers to “temperature-related stress” in the Netherlands. The problem is that such studies are inherently reliant on conjecture. There can be other problems as well, namely politics, as I learned a decade ago while poking holes in an excess mortality study in Iraq published by the Lancet.
An article in the British medical journal estimated some 650,000 “excess” Iraqi deaths in the 40 months following the U.S. invasion. This figure was seven times higher than the toll based on body counts. It was based on field surveys supposedly done by a former health official in Saddam Hussein’s government and was authored by outspoken critics of the Iraq war — and of George W. Bush. It was also timed to come out just before the 2006 midterm elections.
To some neutral observers, the controversy underscored the importance of actually documenting wartime casualties. I don’t know how much Donald Trump knows about this topic. But he apparently is aware that “excess mortality” is not how U.S. authorities have previously tallied storm deaths. The National Hurricane Center, for example, estimated that 1,833 people died in Hurricane Katrina, most from drowning.
In Puerto Rico, there were myriad problems getting accurate data, the biggest being that electricity was knocked out for so long. This inhibited the reporting ability of island health officials. It also led to deprivations that killed health-impaired residents months after the hurricane season ended. In that environment, excess mortality studies made sense. Inevitably, they would be imprecise, and perhaps just wrong. The first such study, by researchers at Penn State University, estimated the number of deaths at 1,085 – when the government in San Juan was still listing the official toll as 64. Days later, the New York Times, using island death certificates, produced an estimate of 1,052.
Harvard went next. Its study, trumpeted uncritically around the world, had problems. For one thing, its range of 793 to 8,498 excess deaths was unhelpful. So the media settled on the median figure, 4,645, which was little more than a guess. The bigger problem is that the methodology was a mish-mash. Harvard’s researchers compared actual deaths in 2016 to estimates based on interviews – polling surveys – in 2017. “The big thing is the methodology is so completely different, you don’t now what you’re dealing with,” said University of Texas biostatistics professor Donald Berry. “What you end up with is garbage.”
That’s the background when the governor of Puerto Rico tapped George Washington University’s school of public health to do another excess mortality survey. Like all such studies, it’s based on assumptions and guesswork – in this case assumptions complicated by the outward migration of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans to the mainland after the hurricane. That said, I know of no evidence that would undermine its estimate of 2,975 excess deaths…
The difference between survey results and demonstrable realities was also pointed out by the author of Hillbilly Elegy: “In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South.”
Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018), 23-25 (added references).
As Twitchy reported, the media went wild last week when a report from Harvard University estimated that nearly 5,000 people in Puerto Rico had died from Hurricane Maria.
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog, though, took a look at how Harvard, whose researchers admitted they conducted “a quick study on a limited budget,” came up with that number and found that the methodology was ridiculously flawed:
In effect, the researchers took one number — 15 deaths identified from a survey of 3,299 households — and extrapolated that to come up with 4,645 deaths across the island. That number came with a very large caveat, clearly identified in the report, but few news media accounts bothered to explain the nuances….
…It turns out there is no list of names. There is no accounting of what causes of death were attributable to the aftermath of the devastating storm. In fact, having now scanned the George Washington University report at the heart of this all, I have an itching feeling they missed a big statistical point.
The bottom line is that the researchers developed a model and made a projected estimate of the number of deaths to be expected on the island during the six months following the storm, based on previous year’s death numbers. They then factored in the fact that a full 8 percent of the population, 280,000 people roughly, left the island following the storm.
With that population change factored in, the “expected” number of deaths was about 3,000 fewer than the 16,000 deaths which were recorded September through February. Those 3,000 “excess” deaths above the projection are the one’s being attributed to the effects of the storm. I’m rounding because their report admits the projection is not exact. The chart I included above notes the higher death rate per 10,000 people.
There are not 3,000 death certificates noting hurricane-related causes (loss of electricity, stress, poor transportation response) and the authors chide the local medical community for not being sufficiently exact in filling out their death certificates. So they are left with models and projections and estimates, which have translated into MSM-accepted Truth.
Here’s my question, the itch not addressed in the report, that I saw: Who left? Who departed following the storm? Would the elderly, infirm and impoverished have been the ones to decamp to the mainland? Or would they have been the one’s left behind? Doesn’t the shift in the baseline also at least in part explain this? The death rate really only jumped dramatically when you reduce the baseline population…
