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For Wed. Dec. 6, 2017
~All Gave Some~Some Gave
All~God Bless America
FACT CHECK: Does The GOP Tax Reform Bill By Raise Taxes?
Tim Dukeman
Among the silliest objections to the Senate’s Tax Reform bill is the notion that the bill actually increases taxes. Despite its incredible lack of plausibility (Republicans raising taxes? Seriously?) this claim is still being repeated ad nauseam. This is one of the worst recent examples of media malpractice/blatant fake news. In more detail:
1. Literally 69% of the country took the standard deduction in 2013, the most recent data available. This means that 69% of Americans certainly got a tax cut, since the rates went down and the Standard Deduction doubled. In layman’s terms, that means you’ll be paying a lower percentage on your taxes, and being taxed on less of your income. So if someone tells you that the bill hurts more people than it helps, tell them to stop reading fake news. This is basic arithmetic.
2. Let’s look at the 30% now. The vast majority of them only itemized because the Standard Deduction was so much lower than it will be under the GOP bill. Going forward, expect 80% or even 90% of Americans to just take the standard deduction.
It’s a simple question: did you itemize more than $24,000 last year? Because that’s the Standard Deduction for married couples under the GOP bill. A married person itemizing less than $24k or an individual itemizing less than $12k is getting a tax cut, so that’s basically the entire middle class. This is huge, because if you don’t itemize, doing your taxes is much, much easier. Combined with the lower rates, these people will be keeping more of their own money.
3. All the rates went down (except the top bracket), so there’s a high chance that even people who benefited from the loopholes will save money (or at least break even). If you are paying a lower rate, the deductions you can take matter a lot less. The people who break even will still save money on tax prep, because they’ll be able to use Turbotax and get done in half an hour.
4. When you combine the Standard Deduction, Rate Cuts, and doubling the Child Tax Credit, the only folks who are likely to see a tax increase are very rich people who live in very expensive houses and pay high state and local taxes. So if you’re not in that group, you can likely count on saving at least a little bit of money.
5. There are mainstream media reports that average Americans will see a tax increase. This is utterly shameless deception. You’ll notice that all of these Mainstream Media reports are talking about the year 2027. There’s a reason for that: 2027 is the year that the individual rate cuts are set to expire. So if 2027 comes and goes with zero congressional action, the rates would go up. However, we all know that isn’t going to happen. The journalists know it too, but they’re rabid Democrat partisans whose coverage of the GOP bill is designed to help Democrats win elections next year. We especially know this because we’ve seen this movie before. In 2013, the Bush tax cuts were set to expire, and Congress extended them, even though Democrats controlled 2/3 of government. There is almost zero chance of these rate cuts expiring in 2027.
Don’t believe the lies. The GOP tax reform bill will provide at least modest tax savings for almost every American. If you’re a very rich person who owns a mansion in a high tax state/city, you will probably pay a little bit more money, but you can always dry your tears with $100 bills. If that’s not you, then relax.
You just got a nice raise.
Hillary Has Most Tone-Deaf Moment Ever: Lauer’s Fall Was Karma for Mistreating Me
BY V SAXENA
A day after Matt Lauer’s termination last Wednesday from NBC over allegations of “inappropriate sexual behavior,” failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton appeared to suggest that his fortune was a result of bad karma.
But not bad karma accrued from being a creep, but rather bad karma accrued because he had the audacity to hit her with tough questions during a town hall event for her and then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump last year, according to the Philly Voice.
“Every day I believe more in karma,” she said Thursday during a promotional event in Philadelphia for her recently published woe-is-me memoir, “What Happened?” specifically referencing the “men who shaped the (allegedly negative media) narrative” about her that she continues to blame for her election loss.
“Every day I believe more in karma,” she said Thursday during a promotional event in Philadelphia for her recently published woe-is-me memoir, “What Happened?” specifically referencing the “men who shaped the (allegedly negative media) narrative” about her that she continues to blame for her election loss.
She essentially posited that any bad fortune being suffered by men whom she blames for her election loss — to be clear, she blames practically every man on Earth — is a result of those men not being nice enough to her.
Especially Matt Lauer.
The Voice noted that she made this loopy remark about karma after host Jennifer Weiner brought up a snippet from Clinton’s book in which she castigates Lauer for having allegedly been tougher on her than then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump at the town hall last year.
“I was ticked off,” she wrote, as noted by The Hill. “NBC knew exactly what it was doing here. The network was treating this like an episode of ‘The Apprentice,’ in which Trump stars and ratings soar.”
“Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush,” she added. “What a waste of time.”
“Hillary Clinton seems to believe that Lauer’s new reality was partially brought on because he screwed things up for her by being tough during the forum,” Ross wrote. “This is laughable at best.”
“Furthermore, if Mrs. Clinton believes in the idea of karma, what of hers?” she then asked, alluding to Clinton’s own trail of misfortune: losing the presidential election, witnessing the downfall of the Clinton Foundation and being exposed for both engaging in shady email habits as the secretary of state and standing by her perverted husband.
“She must have forgotten all of these things,” Ross concluded.
In her “me, me, me” world, the notion of karma only applies to those who allegedly mistreat her. But when things don’t go her own way, then of course it’s not her fault — it’s the fault of sexism, of misogyny, of Macedonia, of Russia, of every single other thing in the world but her, of course.
Likewise, when evil men like Matt Lauer and her husband abuse women, it doesn’t matter. But if and when they allegedly “mistreat” her, then they’d better brace themselves for a dose of some bad karma — or so says America’s queen of narcissism, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about Hillary Clinton’s narcissistic attitude regarding Matt Lauer’s downfall.
Fox host Lou Dobbs says U.S. Marshals should haul Obama back to America
Lacy Landre / CCL
On Friday, Lou Dobbs, host of the Fox Business program Lou Dobbs Tonight, came to the defense of President Donald Trump over a veiled attack on him by former President Barack Obama.
After Obama sniped at Trump for his Twitter habits at a forum in India last week, Dobbs joked that Obama should be brought back by the U.S. Marshals. “Isn’t there some law that says presidents shouldn’t be attacking sitting presidents?” he asked.
Insults from Abroad
Just weeks after Trump arrived back in the United States from a tour in Asia, Obama embarked on his own tour. At a leadership forum in New Delhi on Friday, Obama made comments ostensibly aimed at his successor.
During the forum, Obama was asked to respond to critical statements his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, made Tuesday during a speech in Toronto. Michelle Obama had said it is not a good idea to “tweet from bed,” a shot aimed at Trump’s habitual morning tweets.
The former-President seconded his wife’s criticism. “Michelle was giving the general idea … don’t say the first thing that pops in your head. Have a little bit of an edit function,” he said.
“Think before you speak, think before you tweet,” Obama instructed, before going on to boast about having 100 million followers. “I actually have more than other people who use it more often.”
Trump has roughly 44 million followers on Twitter; nearly half of the 97.5 million Obama took over eight years to accrue, while Trump has held the same office for just over one year.
Dobbs Defends Trump
Dobbs has no more patience for the Obamas’ condescension — and worse, their habit of traveling the world taking pot shots at the current U.S. president. “I think U.S. Marshals should follow him, and any time he wants to go follow the president like he is, and behave — I mean, this is just bad manners. It’s boorish, it’s absurd, he doesn’t realize how foolish he looks,” Dobbs told his guest, Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes.
Dobbs went on, “I mean, he should be brought back by the Marshals. Isn’t there some law that says presidents shouldn’t be attacking sitting presidents?” Forbes responded, “There’s an unwritten one, sort of a Logan Act for ex-presidents,” but clarified that it was not enforceable.
A critical opponent of Obama’s perceived globalist policies, Dobbs added, “He calls it destructive populism, I guess he prefers destructive elitism. At least the people get a voice now.”
Pro-Doug Jones Super PAC Using Voter Intimidation Tactics — Ad Claims ‘Your Vote Is Public Record’
by JEFF POOR
Highway 31, a Birmingham-based pro-Doug Jones super PAC is using what could be perceived as voter intimidation tactics against Roy Moore by suggesting the votes cast in a December 12 special election are “public record.”
Highway 31, a Birmingham-based pro-Doug Jones super PAC is using what could be perceived as voter intimidation tactics against Roy Moore by suggesting the votes cast in a December 12 special election are “public record.”
Beginning last week, some Alabamians were posting on social media about encountering online pre-roll video advertising making such a claim.
"Your vote is Public Record. And your community will know if you helped stop Roy Moore" Anyone else think this looks like voter intimidation? #VoterIntimidation
In watching some youtube videos on Cash Cab there is an ad running for Doug Jones as follows: "Your vote is public record & your community will know if you voted to stop Roy Moore" @MooreSenate I will just leave this here. #VoteRoyMoore
@fmtalk1065 have you seen the YouTube ad for Doug Jones where they state that "your vote is public record and your community will know if you fought to stop Roy Moore "? Is that not voter intimidation?
I keep hearing there are Doug Jones' ads declaring your vote will be public, which is silly and untrue. Anyone have proof of this? #alpolitics #alsen
Breitbart News has obtained two of those ads, both which taken by a resident in the Montgomery, AL designated market area.
One declares Moore to be a “child predator,” a claim apparently based on a report that lays out decades-old allegations that he acted inappropriately and that he engaged in sexual misconduct with underage women while employed as a prosecutor in Etowah County, AL in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
After leveling the “child predator” charge, the narrator tells viewers their vote is public record, and their community will know if they “helped stop Roy Moore.”
“If you don’t vote, and Roy Moore – a child predator – wins, could you live with that? Your vote is public record and your community will know whether or not you helped stop Roy Moore,” she said.
Another shorter advertisement, clocked at five seconds, also declares your vote public record and says “you community will know whether or not you helped stop Roy Moore.”
At the end of each of those videos, the group Highway 31 claims responsibility for the ad and directs viewers to its website.
Little is known about the Highway 31 super PAC given that it has been intentionally set up in a manner that prevents the public from discovering who is funding it.
According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay, voters won’t know the source of nearly $2 million worth of ads until after the election.
“Super PACs are required to disclose their donors, but the group Highway 31 has structured its spending in a way that campaign-finance experts say is almost unprecedented,” Markay wrote. “While legal, it will have the effect of obscuring the group’s benefactors, who will have financed a series of ads over the last two months of the campaign propping up Jones and hammering his Republican opponent, former State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore.”
An earlier report from Breitbart’s Michael Patrick Leahy showed three Washington, D.C. consulting firms with ties to former Obama campaign staffers “have provided millions of dollars in advertising services” for Highway 31.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
Bannon: Trump Endorses Roy Moore Against Democrats Radical on Life, Guns, Border Security
by JOHN HAYWARD
Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images
Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon discussed President Trump’s Twitter endorsement of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore on Monday’s Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.
Bannon said Trump’s tweet forthrightly laid out the issues facing Alabama voters and explained how putting another Democrat in the Senate would jeopardize the agenda they voted for in the 2016 presidential election. He criticized the “Fake News” media for clouding the issue, citing false report by ABC News about former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, and the attendant drop in the stock market on Friday, as another example of false news coverage harming the fortunes of American voters.
“I think ABC has got a lot to answer for,” Bannon said. “If Breitbart had done that, we’d be out of business. They’d say Breitbart has got to be shut down. We’d have 9,000 derivative shareholder suits. If these shareholders go and get some class action lawyers, you never know what could happen to ABC News. It was really inappropriate.”
Bannon said President Trump’s Twitter account, which he employed to deliver his endorsement of Moore, “disintermediates” the mainstream media.
He said there was no “better, more succinct summary of what the Trump agenda is, and why putting ‘Pelosi/Schumer liberal puppet Jones’” would damage that agenda, than Trump’s Monday morning tweet.
“Liberal Puppet Jones, that’s a good handle, it’s almost as good as Little Bobby Corker or Crooked Hillary, et cetera,” he added, quoting Trump’s description of Alabama Democratic candidate Doug Jones.
Bannon portrayed the Alabama election as part of the “nullification project” to overturn the results of the 2016 election. “I think that’s why you see President Trump coming in now, understanding the importance of Roy Moore, particularly against somebody like Jones, who’s very radical – whether it’s on life issues, whether it’s on gun issues, whether it’s on the border,” he said.
“Here’s a guy that didn’t even have the guts and the courage to come up on the Kate Steinle situation,” he added. “It’s just pathetic. The difference down in Alabama, for the people of Alabama, is pretty clear.”
“But now you’re seeing the rear-guard action of the Washington – you know, Republican elites are already whining that there’s no good solution for these guys. They’ve already admitted defeat in this thing,” he said, quoting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comment over the weekend that it’s up to the people of Alabama to choose who their next senator will be.
“The Democrats have nationalized this election,” Bannon said, noting that Jones has a ten-to-one campaign spending advantage over Moore.
“They’re pouring money into TV ads, get out the vote, et cetera. So Judge Moore, once again cut off by the entire Republican Party, cut off by Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell made a decision to get the RNC out of there, made a decision to get the Senate Leadership Fund out of there. This is on Mitch McConnell, he’s got to do more than just let the people of Alabama decide. If anything happens untowards down there, it’s on Mitch McConnell’s shoulders. Mitch always wants the easy way out,” he charged.
“This is one of my problems with Mitch McConnell. They shepherd this tax bill through there – which is really not tax reform, it’s more of a tax cut – he shepherds it through there and he thinks it means all credit to get out of the sins he’s had against President Trump and the grassroots populist-nationalist-conservative movement. And the answer is no,” Bannon declared.
“He’s still allowing these senators to trash President Trump,” he complained. “He really hasn’t had President Trump’s back on anything. As Lindsey Graham said the other day, I think it was picked up on ABC, that ‘we have to’ – that meant the senators – ‘had to get the Senate bill passed, or the Bannon wing of the Republican Party, you know the grassroots populist wing, will have every right to throw us out.’”
“Every accomplishment Mitch McConnell has had is because this great audience, and the people that go to Breitbart and other conservative sites and other grassroots sites, have put tremendous pressure on him,” Bannon contended. “They had to start working more days a week. They had to start working longer hours. They had to have more hearings. They had to get focused on getting the tax bill done. And now they’re still trying to slip in some DACA stuff, they’re trying to play their games.”
“It’s constant, constant pressure from the grassroots movement, from the grassroots conservatives. The hobbits with their pitchforks and torches outside the castle are the guys that are making these guys do anything. So don’t think they’re there to help you. They’re not. They’re there to basically respond to the donors and respond to their global corporatist clients. But when the ‘deplorables’ get focused, they can put the wood to them and make these guys get the job done,” he said.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.
Supreme Court Hands Trump Another Win: ‘Travel Ban’ to Take Effect
By Randy DeSoto
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that President Donald Trump can fully implement his travel ban.
The ban applies to those traveling or seeking to immigrate from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The president’s executive order made an exception for those seeking to enter the country with a “bona fide” relationship with people in the United States.
The high court’s order overrules a September decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which more broadly defined what constituted a bona fide relationship.
The ban applies to those traveling or seeking to immigrate from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The president’s executive order made an exception for those seeking to enter the country with a “bona fide” relationship with people in the United States.
The high court’s order overrules a September decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which more broadly defined what constituted a bona fide relationship.
The Supreme Court allows the latest version of President Donald Trump's travel ban to take effect while legal challenges continue http://cnn.it/2noZCjw
Trump DOJ lawyers argued before the 9th Circuit that only those in the immediate nuclear family and in-laws counted as bona fide relationships.
The 9th Circuit ruled that “(s)tated simply, the government does not offer a persuasive explanation for why a mother-in-law is clearly a bona fide relationship, in the Supreme Court’s prior reasoning, but a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew or cousin is not.”
BREAKING: Supreme Court allows full enforcement of Trump travel ban affecting residents of six mostly Muslim countries.
June, the Supreme Court also overruled the 9th and the 4th Circuit’s decisions blocking the implementation of the entire travel ban.
Monday’s order by the Supreme Court does not decide the overall constitutionality of the travel ban, which is still being litigated in lower courts.
However, it does allow the ban to remain in place, until a final disposition is made.
The 9th and the 4th Circuit, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week, according to The Associated Press.
Trump DOJ lawyers argued before the 9th Circuit that only those in the immediate nuclear family and in-laws counted as bona fide relationships.
The 9th Circuit ruled that “(s)tated simply, the government does not offer a persuasive explanation for why a mother-in-law is clearly a bona fide relationship, in the Supreme Court’s prior reasoning, but a grandparent, grandchild, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew or cousin is not.”
BREAKING: Supreme Court allows full enforcement of Trump travel ban affecting residents of six mostly Muslim countries.
June, the Supreme Court also overruled the 9th and the 4th Circuit’s decisions blocking the implementation of the entire travel ban.
Monday’s order by the Supreme Court does not decide the overall constitutionality of the travel ban, which is still being litigated in lower courts.
However, it does allow the ban to remain in place, until a final disposition is made.
The 9th and the 4th Circuit, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week, according to The Associated Press.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor opposed Monday’s order.
Illegal Alien’s Lawyer in Kate Steinle Trial Touted ‘Great Diversity’ of Jury, Asked Jurors About Trump
by JOHN BINDER
AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
Defense attorney Matt Gonzalez, the chief lawyer at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, touted the “great diversity” of the jury that ultimately acquitted the illegal alien who caused 32-year-old Kate Steinle’s death.
Gonzalez also asked jurors before the trial if they were comfortable “coming to a verdict opposed by President Trump.”
Gonzalez represented five-time deported and seven-time felon illegal alien Jose Garcia Zarate, also known as Juan Francisco López-Sánchez, who was not convicted of the 2015 murder of Steinle, despite the illegal alien’s previous admission to the incident.
The unsequestered jury, made up of six men and six women, three of which were legal immigrants, was heralded by Gonzalez after being officially selected, as the Mercury News reported.
“We are very pleased with the jury,” said Matt Gonzalez, the lead defense lawyer in the case and the chief attorney of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. “We have such great diversity built in in San Francisco and I think we have a jury that understands a lot of the concerns about the defendant receiving a fair trial.” [emphasis added]
Gonzalez did not say which countries the three immigrant jurors are from. But he said at least one of the jurors speaks Spanish.
Gonzalez also seemingly tied in President Trump’s stance on immigration when he was choosing the jury, with the report stating:
Gonzalez asked them at one point if they would be comfortable coming to a verdict opposed by President Trump. The prosecution and defense attorneys also asked the potential jurors their opinions on police, crime and guns.
The jury mostly consisted of millennial Americans ranging from their 20’s and 30’s, with at least two of the jurors working in the prominently liberal Bay Area tech industry.
In 2015, a local news station interviewed Zarate. In this interview, the illegal alien admitted that he had relocated to San Francisco because of its sanctuary city policy, which gives safe haven to criminal illegal aliens by refusing to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
“Sanchez said he knew San Francisco was a sanctuary city where he would not be pursued by immigration officials,” the report stated.
Since Steinle’s death in 2015, the state of California has become a sanctuary state, Breitbart California reported in October, allowing illegal aliens to roam freely across the West Coast region without being detained or deported by federal immigration officials.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has committed to deporting — for the sixth time — the illegal alien who caused Steinle’s death, as Breitbart News reported.
Steinle was killed while walking with her father on a pier in San Francisco in 2015, when the illegal alien shot her. Steinle pleaded with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed away in her father’s arms.
Steinle’s death has not only caused a national debate on immigration policy, but the killing has galvanized a grassroots movements of pro-American immigration reformers and Angel Parents — the family members of Americans killed by illegal aliens — to demand a crackdown on illegal immigration and a legal immigration policy that puts the jobs, needs, and lives of Americans first.
Meet the real Indian who sent Elizabeth Warren a DNA kit to check her ancestry
Stephen Melkisethian / CCL
Shiva Ayyadurai is the Indian born, MIT educated, independent challenger to Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in next year’s election. Ayyadurai is highly critical of Sen. Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry, and her history of allegedly abusing her pseudo-minority status.
Warren’s new challenger sent her a DNA test kit in June as a facetious birthday present — to the chagrin of Warren, who sent it back.
Ayyadurai has quite the resume; he holds four degrees from MIT and is a successful entrepreneur, scientist, and internet pioneer. Ayyadurai is convinced he can inflict a lot of damage to Warren on the campaign trail:
Ayyadurai added: “I can say, ‘Wait a minute, what do you know about the journey of a person of color? You know nothing. This is all theory to you. Because you did lie. You took advantage of affirmative action.”
A Perpetual Problem For Warren
The controversy surrounding Warren and her ancestry came to light in April 2012 when she was running against incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown.
Warren had taught as a tenured professor at Harvard Law School where she received adulation for being a great example of the university’s diverse faculty. Warren listed herself as Cherokee and Delaware Indian from 1986 to 1995.
Warren has provided no proof to validate her claims that she was Native American. She was raised in Oklahoma and claims her late parents and grandparents told her she was Native American.
Warren said at the time:
These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.
“They Call Her Pocahontas!”
Last month, President Trump again derided Sen. Warren with his now famous nickname for the Senator, “Pocahontas.”
At the White House ceremony, Navajo code talkers were being honored when Trump thanked them and continued to slam Sen. Warren:
I just want to thank you because you are very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here,” Trump went on. “Although, we have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time … longer than you — they call her Pocahontas!
While Trump is famous for his nicknames for political opponents, it’s rumored that he uses Warren’s Pocahontas monicker in private as well. During a meeting with senators at the White House, Trump jabbed Democratic leaders by saying “Pocahontas is now the face of your party.”
Trump’s Pocahontas comments have been met with backlash.
Ayyadurai Defends Trump, Warren the Real “Racist”
Ayyadurai came to the defense of Trump’s comments labeling Warren as the true racist.
What Trump did is not racist. She’s the racist. … She shoplifted some other group’s race identity, and then when she’s exposed on it, she calls other people racist. And it is a legitimate issue.
There is a “DNA Dance Party” on Dec. 12 in Cambridge hosted by Ayyadurai. Warren has been invited.
Report: Sen. Kennedy colluded with the Soviets to manipulate a U.S. election
Degtyaryov Andrey / Shutterstock.comFormer National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators on Friday, leading many Democrats (and by extension, the mainstream media) to speculate that the Russia-Trump collusion narrative may have finally found its legs.
However, it appears that in their haste to vilify the president and his administration, Democrats and liberals are ignoring evidence that implicates former Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) in a similar scandal. Kennedy sought to work with the Russians to subvert Former President Ronald Reagan on several occasions, according to The Washington Examiner.
Ted Kennedy attempted to collude with the Russian government to undermine Former-President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and Democrats refuse to acknowledge it.
The History
At that time, Kennedy was (unsuccessfully) battling for the presidential nomination of the Democrat Party. He lost to former President Jimmy Carter, who lost to Ronald Reagan.
After this string of events, the senator likely felt he could have prevented Reagan’s monumental win for the GOP had he possessed the DNC nomination.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, Reagan biographer Paul Kengor explained that Kennedy’s top aides (including John Tunney) made trips to Moscow in May of 1983.
They did so to meet with Russian KGB agents about a possible partnership designed to weaken Republican rule by delegitimizing or unseating President Reagan.
Kengor’s analysis is centered around a letter allegedly sent by then-KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, dated May of 1983, to the Soviet General Secretary, Yuri Andropov. The letter detailed Kennedy’s movements in the country and his proposal to the Russians.
Kennedy’s Discontent
Kennedy targeted Reagan’s militaristic approach to leadership, believing it was harmful to the country. However, historians have credited Reagan’s tough approach as being one of the key factors in bringing down the Soviet Union.
It also appears that Reagan’s intent to provide intercontinental ballistic missiles to American allies in Europe (a move meant to intimidate the Soviet Union into behaving more diplomatically in the region) was a major concern to Kennedy.
The smoking gun came in the form of Tunney himself acknowledging making over a dozen trips to Moscow on Kennedy’s behalf.
Tunney mentions travelling there on Kennedy’s orders as early as 1980, which means that Kennedy may have not one, but two Russia collusion scandals under his belt.
Ted Kennedy was a liberal hero who survived several major scandals that would have cost less well-connected men their careers. There’s no doubt that he could have survived this one too, had it come out while he was still alive.
After all, it takes a Republican to make the media and the Democrat party concerned about Russian collusion.
Profs Call to Censor Public Art by Removing NYC Statues of Christopher Columbus and Theodore Roosevelt
by DANIEL J. FLYNN
AP Photo
More than 100 artists and academics call on the city of New York to censor public art memorializing figures they dislike.
The petition sent to the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers cited the Big Apple’s professed “tolerance and equity” in justifying the censorship. The signatories include members of the faculty of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, as well as CUNY, Barnard, NYU, and other schools located in the city. The statues the group seeks to remove include ones of Christopher Columbus and Theodore Roosevelt.
The letter singles out a memorial of Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History as deserving of removal. The artists and academics describe it as “not simply a free-standing statue of the 26th President, but rather a grouping of figures: Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by subordinate figures on foot, one Black (African by appearance) and the other Indigenous (in a stereotypical Native American cast but with an especially inappropriate mix of headdress and clothing).”
This depiction, the petition’s signers claim, represents “Roosevelt’s views on racial hierarchy.”
Regarding Columbus, the group dismisses concerns by Italian-Americans and advances dubious charges of genocide against the explorer, maintaining that “the public claim of ‘ownership’ of Columbus by Italian-Americans cannot be allowed to override his key role in the historical genocide of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. By 1600, at least 50 million Indigenous people died in this hemisphere as a result of the Columbian encounter with Europeans, whether from war, disease or enslavement.”
The group wants Columbus erased from Columbus Circle. “Many U.S. cities have chosen to do what is just and renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” they hold. “There is now a national movement to remove statues of Columbus parallel to the movement to remove Confederate monuments in the South.”
Apart from Roosevelt once calling the city home and coming in third place in a run for the office Bill de Blasio currently holds, the museum owes its existence in part to Roosevelt’s father, who helped found it. The museum aided Roosevelt in organizing his River of Doubt expedition and counts among its collections numerous specimens donated by the president, including two elephants felled on Roosevelt’s post-presidency African safari.
Columbus, who holds far more tenuous ties to a place he never stepped foot in, nevertheless remains a revered figure, particularly among the city’s many Italian Americans, for discovering the Americas. Most estimates place the population of the New World at the time Columbus encountered the natives as far less than 50 million, the number of lives the artists and academics lay at the foot of Columbus in charging him with “genocide.”
Though Roosevelt and Columbus made the censorship index, Samuel Dickstein Plaza, named for a Soviet spy, on the Lower East Side, a street section honoring W.E.B. Du Bois, a man owning the strange distinction of praising both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on trips there, and a public school bearing the name of Stalin Peace Prize-winner Paul Robeson did not.
“The empty sites could be used as the subject for artistic competitions, as with London’s Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square,” the letter, shared last week, concludes. “In short, we see the outcome of the Commission not as destroying heritage, let alone the purported erasure of history, but as the beginning of an exciting new set of possibilities for public art and museums in New York City, one finally devoted to an inclusive and reparative vision of the difficult histories of settler colonialism and the Indigenous peoples of this land.”
Here’s How Much Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation Has Cost Taxpayers So Far
By Joe Setyon
The Justice Department revealed Tuesday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election has cost taxpayers over $3.2 million since Mueller was appointed to oversee the probe in May.
The report included the “financial activity” of the Special Counsel’s Office from May 17 through Sept. 30. It did not include expenditures made in October and November.
Just over $1.7 million was spent on “Personnel Compensation and Benefits.” However, $1.2 million of that amount went to employees who had previously been employed by the DOJ but were then assigned to Mueller’s probe.
As reported by The Washington Times, Mueller has 17 attorneys on his team, five of whom were outside hires.
“Acquisition of Equipment” cost $733,969, the second-largest expenditure on the report. “Rent, Communications, and Utilities” totaled $362,550, while “Travel and Transportation of Persons” cost $223,643,
The Special Counsel’s Office also spent $157,339 on “Contractual Services.”
In addition to the $3.2 million, the DOJ said it spent over $3.5 million on “expenditures attributable to the investigations” that were meant to support Mueller’s investigation.
According to USA Today, the statement of expenditures was “the first public accounting of the costs associated with Mueller’s far-reaching investigation.”
Mueller was appointed on May 17 by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of President Donald Trump removing FBI Director James Comey from his post.
Mueller has filed charges against four current or former officials who worked in the Trump administration or presidential campaign.
In October, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were indicted on 12 charges, including “conspiracy against the United States,” “conspiracy to launder money” and “false statements.”
Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was also charged. He ended up pleading guilty to lying to the FBI over contacts he had with officials that were connected to the Russian government.
Most recently, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty Friday to lying to the FBI.
Flynn admitted that he “willfully and knowingly” made “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” regarding conversations he had with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak between Trump’s election and his inauguration.
Trump, though, has denied any and all allegations of collusion with the Russians, going so far as to call Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.”
A must watch: Legal Scholar Alan Dershowitz was just on @foxandfriends talking of what is going on with respect to the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history. Enjoy!
On Monday, the president indicated he is unsure as to why the Justice Department is not investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who he said “lied many times to the FBI.”
“She lied many times. Nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it’s like they ruined his life. It’s very unfair,” he said.
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen and Moe Lauzier
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