4 million visited Israel last year: https://www.facebook.com/
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My fourth Daughter, Abby, is a real estate agent in the general Orlando Area. She has been very successful, has built a service oriented team of professionals and just won the Best of HomeLight Award for 2018. The award is based on real estate transaction data.
She was within the top 1% f the area's seller's agents, top 1% of the buyer's agents, top 1% of producers and top 5% negotiator category.
Obviously we are proud of her achievements and suggest anyone moving to the Orlando Area would be wise to contact her at The Abby Nelson Great Homes Group.
Abby is Dagny and Blake's mommy.
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Ross rants again. ( See 1 below.)
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Re-hashing 2016. (See 2 below.)
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Democrats may hate Trump for a variety of reasons but they also could become his best friends by remaining enemies of America. (See 4 below.)
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Other op ed of possible interest:
Joseph Curl, Washington Times
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1)Putting aside Brexit, the real issue the UK is dealing with is a lack of productivity improvement due to a lack of capital investment. This is not a new issue since Brexit. It only got worse since then. UK productivity grew at only .2%. The main reason is there had been a huge influx of cheap Polish and Eastern Europe labor over several years, so companies used cheap labor instead of technology investment. Stupid decisions by companies who now cannot compete with fully modernized American, French and German competitors. With Brexit, the Poles are no longer welcome, so maybe now the UK companies will invest in modern machinery. It is looking more likely that it will be a hard Brexit, but nobody knows how this will end. Ireland is the biggest sticking point.
Because Trump didn’t get any electoral votes in California and New York, when we subtract the electoral votes of those two states, Clinton won just 143 electoral votes in the rest of the nation while Trump’s electoral total remains unchanged at 304. In the Electoral College, which is what we use to elect our presidents, Trump beats Clinton by more than 2-to-1 when California and New York are excluded. Even if the votes of the seven faithless electors were given to Clinton, Trump would still have trounced Clinton by more than 2-1 in the 48 states of “real America.”
It takes a bare minimum of 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Had Clinton received all 46 electoral votes in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she would have gotten 273 electoral votes. She then could afford to lose only the least populous of those three states, Wisconsin, and still prevail, but only if she were also awarded all seven votes of the faithless electors. In which case, Clinton would have won with a grand total of 270 electoral votes.
Government officials have assured us that Russians did not change the vote counts in 2016. Elections are conducted by the states, and each state has its own separate election system, so changing the votes would be enormously difficult. And besides, “there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized.” We were told this by no less than Obama Himself, (so it must be true).
Obama fails to see the obvious. If the Russians wanted to throw the popular vote to Trump in 2016, all they would have needed to change is the popular vote in just one state, California with its 55 electoral votes… not the entire country. Trump could have even lost his three “blue wall” states and still have won had he gotten California, and he’d have had an even greater total at 313 electoral votes.
Some progressives think we should junk the Electoral College and elect presidents with the popular vote. Other progressives think we should rejigger the College and allocate its votes in a way that is closer to the popular vote. But if one believes in federalism, the above data argues just the opposite. We can’t have the preferences of two populous coastal states being imposed on the other 48 states merely because they have some tiny majority. That’s especially so when those two states are so very different from the rest of the country. Let California have its tent cities, its free healthcare for illegal aliens, and its San Francisco values, but leave us “hicks” in the heartland alone.
Given the above, I think we can say that in 2016 the Electoral College worked as intended, and that America got the correct president, the one she needed. Even so, the electoral vote is derived from the popular vote, so there’s still the nagging little question of what the legitimate popular vote count really was.
One of the safeguards to ensuring the integrity of the popular vote is voter registration. But the states are failing at this important task. Recently, California came under fire for registering illegal aliens at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
On October 8, the San Francisco Chronicle ran “California DMV may have registered noncitizens to vote” by Melody Gutierrez, who quoted Assemblyman Jim Patterson of Fresno:
The Secretary of State has responsibility for voter registration in California. But despite the snafus in his office, Secy. Alex Padilla was re-elected in November, and in a landslide.
On October 10, the New York Times reported in its “California Today” series: “At the center of the controversy is California’s new Motor Voter program, which automatically registers eligible voters who visit the D.M.V. to renew or replace their drivers’ licenses.”
On January 7, Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reported on a settlement to a suit brought by Judicial Watch (video) in which Los Angeles County agreed to purge its voter registries of inactive voters perhaps numbering 1.5 million:
Since they’re corrupted, can California’s voter registries be used in the election of a federal official? The problem of illegal aliens on California voter registries isn’t just a problem at the DMV, as voter registration in California asks for only the last four digits of one’s SSN. California isn’t doing even the most basic vetting to comply with the requirement that voters for federal officials be citizens.
California is by no means unique, however, as none of the states really verify registrants’ citizenship, not even in Kris Kobach’s Kansas. Perhaps the Electoral College should reject a state’s votes if that state cannot demonstrate that all of its registrants and voters are citizens.
The vulnerability of our federal elections to fraud is just fine and dandy with the Democrats because they’ve been planning to steal the 2020 election anyway. Why do you suppose the Dems hate voter ID laws and love open borders? Democrats don’t want President Trump’s wall precisely because it keeps their voters out. The illegal alien vote is the Democrats’ “insurance policy.”
Jon N. Hall N OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.of ULTRACO
.
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4)
Anyone tracking the positions of the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would think there weren’t any moderates left in the party. Sen. Kamala Harris of California reiteratedat a nationally televised town hall last month that her cosponsorship of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all legislation would mean the abolition of private insurance. Five leading candidates endorsed a Green New Deal that imposes a top-down revolution of American society to mitigate the impact of climate change.
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1)Putting aside Brexit, the real issue the UK is dealing with is a lack of productivity improvement due to a lack of capital investment. This is not a new issue since Brexit. It only got worse since then. UK productivity grew at only .2%. The main reason is there had been a huge influx of cheap Polish and Eastern Europe labor over several years, so companies used cheap labor instead of technology investment. Stupid decisions by companies who now cannot compete with fully modernized American, French and German competitors. With Brexit, the Poles are no longer welcome, so maybe now the UK companies will invest in modern machinery. It is looking more likely that it will be a hard Brexit, but nobody knows how this will end. Ireland is the biggest sticking point.
Norway never formally joined the EU, but has a arrangement with the EU where they are sort of in, but not fully. Now Norway is rethinking this, and maybe considering dropping out. Far from happening, but shows the disunity now forming across the EU. Norway is unhappy about all the Muslim immigration they were forced to accept. The immigrants took jobs and held down wages, and the unions are against any further immigration. There has also been an increase in crime in Stockholm-gee, does this sound familiar.
Here are updated numbers. The top 1% pays 45% of all income taxes, and the top 10% pays 71%, and at least 50% pay zero, but this may increase as 2018 tax returns are analyzed. Sure sounds unfair to me as the Dems keep saying, except maybe it is unfair to the 1%. Cuomo admitted that a relatively small number of high income taxpayers are covering much of the state budget. Now they are moving out. In CA, Silicon Valley pays the vast majority of CA income taxes. If a lot more top people in Silicon Valley leave CA, the state would have very serious budget issues. All the illegal immigrants and homeless pay no taxes, but do take money in the form of entitlements and seats in school. Cuomo is whining that due to tax reform and SALT, NY is $2 billion short on its budget because too many rich guys moved to FL where there is no income tax. Maybe the rest of the Dems, especially the kid from the Bronx (not Queens), needs to look at the local reality of what happens when taxes are raised- the real taxpayers move away, or hide it. France lost many of its rich taxpayers when they raised income taxes which is why Macron was seeking a new way to collect taxes, which led to riots. When the rich guys leave, it is the middle and working classes who pay the price in the form of higher taxes. It is a death spiral at some point. Tax revenues go down when taxes are raised too high. That is a reality. That is why so many Californians and companies are moving to Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, and TX. The bad news is, all these left coast lefties moved to TX, and almost elected the guy with the made up name, who likes to show his teeth being cleaned. (who wants to see that) and who lost to the least liked person in the Senate, even after spending $80 million of dark money from Steyer and Soros. Dallas is becoming Democratic.
Facts are, the bulk of the tax bill has been paid for by the huge increase in profits by companies and rising incomes of rich individuals who actually pay most of the taxes. As was predicted by Mnuchin and others, the economy boomed way beyond what the Dems and CBO claimed, and the increased GDP and profits generated enough incremental tax to pay for much of the tax cuts. The deficit is not the tax reduction, but it is due to excessive spending, including the extra $300 billion demanded by the Dems in the last budget. We must deal with the spending side or we will have a massive fiscal crisis in a few years. The Dems want to increase spending including for Social Security, which is already going broke. The lack of retirement savings is due to the decline in family incomes for 8 years, slow wage growth, slow economic growth, and higher taxes under Obama, and not due to Republican tax cuts or other policies. They also blame companies for ending defined benefit plans and creating 401K plans. They ignore that these defined benefit plans were bankrupting companies, just as they are now bankrupting governments which still have these pensions for government workers. It is not the job of the employer to provide for an individual’s retirement. It is the worker’s responsibility to save, or have a 401K. The Dems answer-raise taxes on upper income taxpayers. This will soon become one of the defining policy differences between the parties. The Dems contend that there needs now to be a transfer of wealth from the rich, job creating tax payers, to the middle and lower classes because it is unfair some succeeded so well through hard work and brains. The real issue is the lack of strong economic growth and jobs under Obama. If Congress cut spending and had less regulations, the economy would grow even faster, and people could save more. If we had a major reduction in illegal immigrants, we could save hundreds of billions now spent on entitlement programs, and over- crowded hospitals, and schools with remedial language programs, especially in CA. The Dems solution- socialism.
Here is another reality. Few Dem politicians ever worked in a real job, and almost none ever had to make a payroll. Yet these bozos think they know better than corporate execs how to run their companies, and now they want to tell private companies how to allocate their capital and retained earnings, and outlaw stock buybacks and limit dividends. If that happened it would just be the start of essentially government (all those never held a job politicians) taking over the board rooms of companies. It is similar to DeBlasio saying the city should own all the real estate and decide what gets built where, and what rents should be. Rent control in NYC has been around for about 70 years, and has been a disaster. Buildings do not get renovated because you cannot charge the needed rent, so tenants get crappy apartments. However, not so bad as public housing which under DeBlasio has become a massive slum, and has been taken over by the Feds to save the kids subjected to lead paint and mold. But DeBlasio thinks the city should run all real estate. This is the Dems idea of socialism. Ask a Brit or Canadian how long he waits for a hip replacement, or other major elective surgery.
In Falmouth MA they built two wind mills for power. Spent millions. The windmills caused all sorts of health issues for people who live near them. They create some sort of sound that caused headaches, and as sun hits their blades it creates a visual disturbance for some, creating health issues. The windmills were finally shut down as a health risk and community disturbance. Next time someone suggests windmills in your town ask them to look at Falmouth.
Health- A friend of mine had pancreatic cancer and survived. 20% of patients are potentially able to have a surgical procedure that extends life He and Ruth Bader Ginsberg had it successfully. He is still playing tennis actively at 85. Unfortunately it has just recurred, but he is still playing tennis, and was told it may not spread for a long time. Ginsberg is still on the bench. For the 20%, in a few cases, there is hope.
The best the Dems could do is a sore loser to respond to Trump. She claims Republicans crushed the middle class—I guess family inflation adjusted real incomes rising for the first time in ten years, near historic low unemployment, rising 401K and home values, and GDP growth nearly double what happened under Obama, translates to being “crushed” after the years of declining family income and almost no GDP growth under Obama. Minority unemployment is at historic lows. Funny, but consumer confidence polls are near all time highs. Seems like they missed the feel crushed memo and went shopping instead.
The latest bloviations from the kid from the Bronx clearly demonstrate what the result is when history and economic history are no longer taught in college. Or maybe she really is just as dumb as the things she says.
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2)
The Hijacking of a Presidential Election
In January of 2017, the Federal Election Commission reported that in the 2016 general election Mrs. Clinton received 65,853,516 votes and Mr. Trump received 62,984,825 votes. Clinton therefore beat Trump by 2,868,691 popular votes.
President Trump has said that if the illegal votes were deducted that he would have won the popular vote. If one looks at that FEC report, one sees that in California, the state with the most illegal aliens, Clinton got 8,753,788 votes, while Trump got 4,483,810 votes. So Clinton beat Trump in California by 4,269,978 votes.
What’s interesting is that Clinton beat Trump by more votes in California than she did nationwide, precisely 1,401,287 more votes. Though Trump’s claim that illegal voting threw the popular vote to Clinton is sheer speculation, we can say that if we exclude California that Trump did in fact win the popular vote in the rest of the nation, and by exactly 1,401,287 votes.
Because Trump didn’t get any electoral votes in California and New York, when we subtract the electoral votes of those two states, Clinton won just 143 electoral votes in the rest of the nation while Trump’s electoral total remains unchanged at 304. In the Electoral College, which is what we use to elect our presidents, Trump beats Clinton by more than 2-to-1 when California and New York are excluded. Even if the votes of the seven faithless electors were given to Clinton, Trump would still have trounced Clinton by more than 2-1 in the 48 states of “real America.”
It takes a bare minimum of 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Had Clinton received all 46 electoral votes in the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, she would have gotten 273 electoral votes. She then could afford to lose only the least populous of those three states, Wisconsin, and still prevail, but only if she were also awarded all seven votes of the faithless electors. In which case, Clinton would have won with a grand total of 270 electoral votes.
Government officials have assured us that Russians did not change the vote counts in 2016. Elections are conducted by the states, and each state has its own separate election system, so changing the votes would be enormously difficult. And besides, “there is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized.” We were told this by no less than Obama Himself, (so it must be true).
Obama fails to see the obvious. If the Russians wanted to throw the popular vote to Trump in 2016, all they would have needed to change is the popular vote in just one state, California with its 55 electoral votes… not the entire country. Trump could have even lost his three “blue wall” states and still have won had he gotten California, and he’d have had an even greater total at 313 electoral votes.
Some progressives think we should junk the Electoral College and elect presidents with the popular vote. Other progressives think we should rejigger the College and allocate its votes in a way that is closer to the popular vote. But if one believes in federalism, the above data argues just the opposite. We can’t have the preferences of two populous coastal states being imposed on the other 48 states merely because they have some tiny majority. That’s especially so when those two states are so very different from the rest of the country. Let California have its tent cities, its free healthcare for illegal aliens, and its San Francisco values, but leave us “hicks” in the heartland alone.
Given the above, I think we can say that in 2016 the Electoral College worked as intended, and that America got the correct president, the one she needed. Even so, the electoral vote is derived from the popular vote, so there’s still the nagging little question of what the legitimate popular vote count really was.One of the safeguards to ensuring the integrity of the popular vote is voter registration. But the states are failing at this important task. Recently, California came under fire for registering illegal aliens at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
On October 8, the San Francisco Chronicle ran “California DMV may have registered noncitizens to vote” by Melody Gutierrez, who quoted Assemblyman Jim Patterson of Fresno:
“There is much more to see here than what the DMV is admitting to,” Patterson said. “They have either been hiding the truth from the public or are completely unaware of this voter registration disaster -- either should be a startling realization for this governor and the public... We cannot trust the current management to fix the very problems they created.”(But what does Patterson know, he’s an Anglo. He might even have a MAGA hat.)
The Secretary of State has responsibility for voter registration in California. But despite the snafus in his office, Secy. Alex Padilla was re-elected in November, and in a landslide.
On October 10, the New York Times reported in its “California Today” series: “At the center of the controversy is California’s new Motor Voter program, which automatically registers eligible voters who visit the D.M.V. to renew or replace their drivers’ licenses.”
On January 7, Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times reported on a settlement to a suit brought by Judicial Watch (video) in which Los Angeles County agreed to purge its voter registries of inactive voters perhaps numbering 1.5 million:
Judicial Watch said it targeted Los Angeles after finding the county’s total voter population was higher than the number of people the Census Bureau estimates to be citizens of voting age in the county. That’s true for the state overall, which Judicial Watch said has a 101 percent registration rate for its eligible adult population.Here’s the thing about California’s voter registries: a federal law enacted 23 years ago mandates that only citizens can vote for federal officials. It was called the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.” For the operative language, see SEC. 216 on page 26 of the pdf of the entire act, or if you want the short sweet excision, click 18 U.S. Code § 611. Voting by aliens.
Since they’re corrupted, can California’s voter registries be used in the election of a federal official? The problem of illegal aliens on California voter registries isn’t just a problem at the DMV, as voter registration in California asks for only the last four digits of one’s SSN. California isn’t doing even the most basic vetting to comply with the requirement that voters for federal officials be citizens.
California is by no means unique, however, as none of the states really verify registrants’ citizenship, not even in Kris Kobach’s Kansas. Perhaps the Electoral College should reject a state’s votes if that state cannot demonstrate that all of its registrants and voters are citizens.
The vulnerability of our federal elections to fraud is just fine and dandy with the Democrats because they’ve been planning to steal the 2020 election anyway. Why do you suppose the Dems hate voter ID laws and love open borders? Democrats don’t want President Trump’s wall precisely because it keeps their voters out. The illegal alien vote is the Democrats’ “insurance policy.”
Jon N. Hall N OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.of ULTRACO
.
4)
Democrats Are Boosting Trump’s Reelection Prospects
Their top 2020 presidential hopefuls are embracing socialist-minded economic policy, from a Green New Deal to single-payer health insurance. It’s playing right into the president’s hands.
Anyone tracking the positions of the leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would think there weren’t any moderates left in the party. Sen. Kamala Harris of California reiteratedat a nationally televised town hall last month that her cosponsorship of Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all legislation would mean the abolition of private insurance. Five leading candidates endorsed a Green New Deal that imposes a top-down revolution of American society to mitigate the impact of climate change.
But when you look at the polls breaking down the actual Democratic electorate, you’ll find limited support for such socialist-minded schemes. Broaden out to the overall electorate, and it’s easy to see how Democrats could be giving President Trump a lifeline to a second term despite his widespread unpopularity.
“We are on an out-of-control roller-coaster going 100 miles per hour, and we have no functioning brake,” said one liberal Democratic strategist who is alarmed by the rising tide of socialism within the party. “No one is leading, and that void could not be more clear.”
What’s so remarkable about this rapid leftward shift is that it’s working against the party’s best interests—both for the individual candidates and their chances of defeating Trump next year. So many candidates are trying to fill the most progressive lane of the party that they’re splitting that share of the vote evenly. At the same time, there’s plenty of evidence that many rank-and-file Democrats are looking for a pragmatist who can actually win the presidency.
One of the most valuable deep dives into the American electorate is the Pew political typology survey, which in 2017 broke down the various constituencies within both the Republican and Democratic parties. Among the Democrats, it identified four groups: Solid Liberals (19 percent of the overall electorate), Opportunity Democrats (13 percent), Disaffected Democrats (14 percent), and the Devout and Diverse (9 percent). Only the Solid Liberals were down-the-line progressives. The remaining two-thirds of Democrats held ideologically diverse views, with some unapologetic free-marketers alongside others holding more traditional cultural viewpoints.
The most telling questions came in the economic portion of the survey. It found most Democrats agreed on a generous social-safety net but were split on the meritocratic view that Americans can get ahead through hard work. The party was also divided on whether to raise taxes on wealthier Americans making $250,000 a year. (Only 23 percent of Solid Liberals said taxes on the wealthy should be kept the same or lowered; at least 45 percent of every other Democratic constituency agreed.)
The strain of economic pessimism is coursing through mainstream Democratic dogma, from Stacey Abrams’s State of the Union response to the various soak-the-rich economic plans seeking to redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom. This, despite economic data showing historically low unemployment and rising American wages. If there isn’t an economic downturn within the next 18 months, the doom-and-gloom rhetoric will sound downright retro—out of the Walter Mondale 1984 playbook against Ronald Reagan.
At a broader level, there is still a significant share of moderate and conservative Democrats in national and state surveys. Gallup found 47 percent of Democrats identify with the centrist wing of the party. FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon Jr., in a compelling breakdown of Democratic moderates, found at least a quarter of Democrats identified as moderate or conservative in every single primary where exit or entrance polls were conducted.
What’s so intriguing about Bacon’s analysis is the demographic diversity of the self-identified moderates. Separate Pew Research Center polling found that they run the gamut from African-American and Hispanic voters (43 percent) to blue-collar whites (30 percent) and college-educated whites (16 percent). Bacon rightly concludes that it could be difficult for one pragmatic candidate (save for perhaps former Vice President Joe Biden) to cobble a coalition with such disparate interests.
At the same time, it underscores the self-destructive approach that the two leading nonwhite candidates (Harris and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey) are pursuing. By virtue of their compelling biographies, Harris and Booker could easily run to the middle and win over both nonwhite liberals and the majority of Democratic moderates who aren’t blue-collar whites. It’s a broad, potent constituency. Instead, by pandering to the activist Left, they’re creating an opening for someone like Biden or Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to run a more mainstream campaign—and make a popular pitch for electability.
The Democratic march leftward is reminiscent of the nihilistic tea-party lurch after Barack Obama’s election. The grassroots energy helped Republicans win back the House but hobbled the GOP’s attempts at a united front against Obama in his 2012 reelection. Democrats are now worried they are facing a similarly destructive dynamic—and their leading presidential candidates are all too eagerly following suit.
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