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| August 26, 2020 |
Thank you for contacting the White House. We are carefully reviewing your message. President Donald J. Trump believes the strength of our country lies in the spirit of the American people and their willingness to stay informed and get involved. President Trump appreciates your taking the time to reach out. For more information about the steps President Trump is taking to keep the American people safe, strengthen our Nation, and preserve liberty and prosperity, please click here.
Sincerely,
The Office of Presidential Correspondence
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In his youth, David Horowitz was a radical. As he matured and aged he became a conservative. In his new book he outlines the following below.
I hope his words reach God's ears because the Devil is afoot and has captured the Democrat Party.
+++
Hillary and Obama want Trump defeated.
It's payback for 2016.
David Horowitz says they will fail.
Trump has a secret plan . . .
Never in the history of America have such brutal attacks been mounted on a sitting president of the United States.
So says David Horowitz, a famed New York Times bestselling author, in his new book BLITZ: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win.
And:
https://spectator.org/helmut-
And::
RUSSIA and the Never Trumpers
In the collusion racket, too many pundits were ‘traitors to themselves.’
By Holman Jenkins, Jr
When Donald Trump entered presidential politics, many in the conservative commentariat naturally were concerned with their own personal brands. They had worn their Republican affiliations on their sleeves for years. They hoped their audiences perceived them as the party’s intellectual vanguard. They feared being tainted by Mr. Trump’s character or engulfed in any failure of his administration
Their concern was understandable but many became hopelessly stuck in their self-protective rut. Where they could have done better is when the Russia farce unfolded. They would have seen they were not meting out a defeat to Vladimir Putin, but serving his interests. As Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society pointed out in a careful 2018 study, “overstating the impact of [Russian propaganda and manipulation in the election] actually helps consolidate their success.”
All the more so as we came to understand our own intelligence community’s role in the 2016 election, as much blundering as it was possibly corrupt. The FBI may well have caused Mrs. Clinton’s defeat. It certainly helped promote the unfounded slur that Mr. Trump was a Russian agent.
Even more when the press showed itself to be completely dysfunctional. A paid foreign agent peddles implausible, unsourced and unsubstantiated allegations about a U.S. presidential candidate. The job of the press is to find out what’s going on, not to enlist in the paid agent’s cause.
Most of all, the Never Trump pundits had a duty to put away childish preoccupation with themselves and realize that every circumstance contains the possibility of better and worse outcomes. Mr. Trump is not a principled politician in whatever limited sense the word applies in Washington. He is hardly a Republican. He is not ideological. The potential for new coalitions to get interesting things done was obvious with his arrival, but it’s hard not to suspect the Russia hoax was exactly and deeply what many of Mr. Trump’s fans said—a defense by a reckless elite of its own status unrelated to any policy or philosophical goal. And playing a supporting role were lousy judgment and a colossal failure by many pundits to do the job of pundits and appreciate what’s interesting about the times they are living in.
And it was interesting. When Mr. Trump came down the escalator, I was surprised by the effectiveness of his presentation and urged colleagues by email to tune in. Two months later, in response to a variety of online signs and portents, I had no trouble believing Mr. Putin’s trolls were getting behind the Trump boomlet. Why wouldn’t they? First of all, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg is a moneymaking operation. Mr. Trump was a click magnet. Without instruction, its trolls would also have known his rise was the kind of outlandish, apparently disreputable democratic phenomenon Mr. Putin would want to hype.
I was not shocked and still am not. Since czarist times, the Russian government has played such games, and was hardly going to adopt a self-denying ordinance now that the internet was making them costless and effortless.
Mr. Trump entered the race with the idea of making himself more famous but now a truly democratic phenomenon was in danger of running away with the country. His voters selected for him a role that he couldn’t have defined for himself. This is interesting too—and reducing it all to a Russian plot was dishonest by Democrats and evidence only that many journalists aren’t up to their jobs.
And yet Russia, which we heard about incessantly for three years, went all but unmentioned at last week’s Democratic convention. Adam Schiff, the public face for three years of the Democratic critique of Mr. Trump’s alleged Russia ties, a daily presence on cable TV, was unseen at the convention. He did not speak. Hillary Clinton spoke, including about her loss in 2016. Down the memory hole, however, went the Russian conspiracy that for years she and her acolytes had promoted to suggest Mr. Trump was an illegitimate president.
By the way, this is not a criticism of the Republican worthies, some of whom deserve your respect and some of whom are notorious attention seekers, who last week issued a pledge to vote against Mr. Trump. If there is a right time for expressing yourself on the character of the commander in chief, it’s an election. At the same time, they didn’t need to be his admirers or supporters to know that Russia collusion was a lie and damaging to the country.
+++
And:
Trump’s Unlikely Path to Victory
He could still scrape together an Electoral College majority in the Midwest.
By William A.Galston
Some Republicans are looking to 1988 as a model for turning around a sinking candidacy and surging to victory. George H.W. Bush, who trailed Michael Dukakis by as much as 17 points after the Democratic convention, ended up beating the Massachusetts governor by more than 7 points in November.
The parallel is less than perfect. Mr. Bush was not an incumbent president with a record to defend, and Mr. Dukakis was not well-known to the electorate. The Bush campaign defined Mr. Dukakis before he could define himself. By contrast, Mr. Trump has a substantial and controversial record, and former Vice President Biden is a familiar figure. Then-Vice President Bush was liked and respected across party lines; Mr. Trump’s character and conduct has raised concerns among even some of his supporters.Mr. Biden’s campaign is gaining momentum. A CBS/YouGov survey conducted right after the Democratic convention suggests that it strengthened Mr. Biden’s hand. Before the convention, some 49% of Biden voters said they were voting for him to oppose Donald Trump. That figure has fallen to 42%. Meanwhile, some 38% said they were supporting Mr. Biden because they liked him, up from 29% before the convention.As President Trump prepares to address the Republican convention on Thursday, he trails the Democratic presidential nominee by about 9 points. No incumbent in the past half-century has been so far behind at the start of the conventions.
Still, a Trump victory is far from impossible. Although the Democratic convention was successful, it did open up some political vulnerabilities. The convention did not focus on Mr. Biden’s policy agenda. A plurality of Americans told CBS/YouGov that they thought the recent focus on discrimination against minorities had gone too far, an impression the convention did nothing to dispel. There was little outreach to white working-class voters who are reconsidering their support for Mr. Trump.
The president hasn’t done much to expand the narrow base that gave him only 46% of the popular vote in 2016, but this is not necessarily a formula for defeat. As an analysis by Brookings Institution demographer William Freyshows, more than 60% of the 2016 non-voters in the “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were whites without college degrees. Compared with 2004, when George W. Bush won re-election, turnout rates among these voters, fell by 7 percentage points in Wisconsin, 5.7 points in Michigan, and 2.7 points in Pennsylvania. Restoring their turnout to 2004 levels could allow President Trump to repeat his 2016 Midwestern success, even if Democrats do better in the suburbs and large cities. He could eke an Electoral College majority even if he loses Florida, where he now trails Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump has other strengths. The sharp economic downturn has reduced but not eliminated the advantage he holds over his challenger on the management of the economy. While his support among African-Americans has not increased, his tough immigration policies and unyielding social conservatism may have improved his standing in some parts of a diverse Hispanic community.
The president’s second-term agenda as announced at the Republican convention may also help. Reducing America’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing will appeal to voters across party lines, as will requiring new immigrants to support themselves financially. On balance, defending the police will play better politically than calls to defund them.
The Democratic Party’s newfound unity is a mixed blessing. The Biden campaign was compelled to accept compromises with forces well to the former vice president’s left, exposing him to charges that his agenda is unaffordable, even if he raises taxes by trillions of dollars, which may itself be a political liability.
The same is true for Mr. Biden’s decades of public service. Most people think that he has the experience to be president. But Mr. Biden has voted for policies that turned out poorly, such as the Iraq war, and he has changed his mind on issues such as the Hyde amendment that forbids public funding of abortion. Although he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, his record on important foreign policy issues is hardly impregnable.
On the eve of the 2016 election, analyst Nate Silver was ridiculed for giving Mr. Trump a 3 in 10 chance of winning. As of today, he puts the odds of a Trump victory at 26%. That seems about right.
+++
And:
Mail-In Voting Could Deliver Chaos
Delays will play havoc with federal Electoral College deadlines. Entire states could be disenfranchised
By and
If the 2000 election provoked a constitutional crisis, the 2020 one is flirting with disaster. Debate over voting by mail has focused mostly on the potential for fraud and logistical difficulties. But there are also legal problems with it, which carry the seeds of chaos before Inauguration Day and continuing instability after.
Under federal law, the presidential election must take place on Nov. 3, and the electors chosen on that day must vote on Dec. 14 to select the new president and vice president. These dates can’t be changed without an act of Congress, and the 20th Amendment sets Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Article II of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Congress has done so by enacting laws mandating that “the electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” and that the Electoral College must meet and vote on “the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.” As the Supreme Court held in Foster v. Love (1997), taken together the relevant constitutional and statutory provisions mandate “holding all elections for Congress and the Presidency on a single day throughout the Union.”
It follows that although state statutes permit the use of certain mail-in ballots sent on or before Election Day, no ballot cast after Nov. 3 is constitutionally valid. That implies that counting unpostmarked mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day would be unconstitutional, as there would be no way to tell if they were cast in time. In addition, the winner of each state’s electoral votes must be determined by Dec. 14, or those votes cannot be cast.
These requirements create a six-week window during which the electors must be chosen and certified, leaving little time for errors or challenges to the results. The delays inevitable in widespread voting by mail would make it difficult or impossible for some states to meet the Dec. 14 deadline, even without challenges to the results—which are certain this year if the election is close.
The deadline is even tighter thanks to another federal statute, which requires that any controversy over the electors a state has appointed must be resolved, under pre-existing state law, at least six days before the Electoral College meets. If a dispute isn’t resolved by the Dec. 8 “safe harbor,” the state legislature has until Dec. 14 to determine how the electors are to be selected or forfeit its electoral votes. If a state meets the Dec. 8 deadline, the result is conclusive and Congress must accept it.The U.S. Supreme Court stopped the biased Florida recount on Dec. 12, 2000—that year’s safe-harbor deadline. Time had run out to remedy the equal-protection and due-process violations in the recounts that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered. The state court had earlier concluded that the Florida Legislature intended its electors to “participate[e] fully in the federal electoral process.” Thus, the high court concluded, the safe harbor had to be met.
We can assume no state would want its electoral votes to go uncast. As a result, there is only a very short window for mail-in-ballots to be received and counted. State actions and litigation—which are already being pursued with gusto—establishing an overlong period for counting such ballots will endanger a state’s electoral votes, impeding the Constitution and federal election statutes. And, as the Supreme Court said in Ex parte Siebold (1880), Congress’s election regulations “are paramount to those made by the State legislature; and if they conflict therewith, the latter, so far as the conflict extends, ceases to be operative.”
Proponents of universal mail-in-voting argue that reliance on traditional in-person voting will disenfranchise many Americans because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even if that’s true, the established constitutional and statutory requirements must be met. Drawing out the tabulation of large numbers of ballots received after Election Day would make this nearly impossible.
At best, the result would be electors chosen by state legislatures. At worst, states would be disfranchised in the Electoral College—or send rival slates of electors to vote on Dec. 14, leading to a bitter dispute in Congress over which votes to recognize. Any victor who emerged from such chaos would serve under a cloud of illegitimacy, promising four more years of political instability.
One of America’s greatest constitutional imperatives is the smooth and timely transition of power from one duly elected president to the next. That is now in doubt not because of the absurd notion that President Trump will refuse to leave office on Jan. 20 if the voters reject him on Nov. 3, but because the push for mail-in voting may overload the system, making an orderly election impossible.
Messrs. Rivkin and Casey practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. They served in the White House Counsel’s Office and Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
+++
Finally:
Remember the Trump Economy?
His pre-Covid-19 record gives him a clear edge over Obama-Biden.
The Editorial Board
Joe Biden is running on his record in the Obama Administration of staging a turnaround after an economic crisis, and last week we reminded readers there’s less to that record than the spin. Conversely, there’s more to President Trump’s economic achievements in his first three years than his detractors admit, and this debate is crucial to how well the economy recovers after Covid-19.
Mr. Biden and the economic left claim Mr. Trump inherited a long expansion, and nothing much changed. But recall that Mr. Trump was able to win in 2016 in part by running against the “secular stagnation” that liberals said was inevitable. The Obama-Biden recovery was the slowest in decades, and by the second half of 2015 it was losing steam and came close to a recession in 2016.
***
Mr. Trump promised to spur growth again, and his win immediately revived animal spirits. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, which had languished below 100 for all but one month of President Obama’s tenure, jumped 10 points to nearly 106 in December 2016. The OECD’s Business Confidence Index showed a similar flip from pessimism through most of 2015 and 2016 into growing optimism. The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence survey quickly exceeded its Obama-era high
In its first two years, Mr. Trump pursued two major policy shifts. Instead of raising taxes as Obama-Biden did, he cut them. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by a GOP Congress restored global competitiveness to the U.S. corporate tax code, years after even European governments cut their marginal rates. Rationalizing taxation of overseas profits encouraged companies to repatriate foreign earnings to fund investment, increase wages, or return to shareholders for other uses.
Tax reform also encouraged business investment by allowing immediate 100% expensing of capital spending. The result of these measures was a capex surge, with job creation and productivity gains in its wake.
The other track was deregulation. The Administration eased restrictions on new energy pipelines, opened new areas to exploration, and rationalized emissions rules in the energy industry. This spurred a boom in gas and oil production. America is now a net exporter of petroleum products, allowing Washington new freedom to advance American interests in the Middle East and elsewhere.The Trump Administration also freed banks of the more pointless elements of post-2008 regulation, such as investigations into racial discrimination in auto lending based solely on borrowers’ last names. And wouldn’t you know, the financial system still looks set to survive the Covid-19 shutdown. Republicans killed another 16 Obama-era rules through the Congressional Review Act.
And:
These policies delivered what they promised, which was a burst of growth. From the end of 2017 through September 2018 the economy grew by more than 3 Median weekly earnings of full-time workers by race and ethnicity, quarterly averages seasonally adjusted Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Wage growth, adjusted for inflation, accelerated after years of stagnation. The improvement was especially pronounced among low-skilled and minority workers left behind by the Obama economy. Median weekly full-time earnings for blacks increased 19% in Mr. Trump’s first three years, to $806. That followed a period of 11% growth during Mr. Obama’s seven post-recession years in office. (See the nearby chart.)
The Obama-Biden policy mix of easy monetary policy, higher taxes and hyperregulation skewed economic gains toward highly educated workers in industries such as tech and finance at the expense of other workers; toward asset owners at the expense of labor income; and toward larger companies at the expense of smaller. These inequities began to unwind under the Trump Administration.
Mr. Trump’s main policy mistake has been trade, which added costs by disrupting supply chains, raising tariffs and adding uncertainty. Tariffs on industrial inputs such as steel bogged down what could have been a bigger manufacturing boom. He made Nafta marginally worse but didn’t blow it up. Economists differ on the costs of this trade friction, but a Federal Reserve study put it at about 1% off annual GDP.
Mr. Trump deserves credit for challenging Chinese trade abuses and intellectual-property theft. But he has been less effective by refusing to build trade alliances, not least his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that excludes China. His immigration restrictionism has also hurt an economy that needs more workers to grow.
It’s easy to forget this record after the hell millions of Americans have suffered in recent months, and Democrats hope you do. Never before has a government suddenly shut down an entire economy, and Mr. Trump shares the blame. At least he soon reversed course and urged a reopening, while Mr. Biden still says he might lock the country down again.
Amid the Covid nightmare, Mr. Trump has also gone along with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demands for Keynesian income supports for individuals to survive the shutdown. But income transfers are no more than a palliative, and the deficits and debt will hang over the economy for decades.
The issue for the election is which candidate and party can best lead America to a sustained post-Covid expansion. Both will rely too much on easy monetary policy. But Mr. Biden would return to the Obama-Biden policy mix, with a Bernie Sanders lurch left: Much higher taxes, much more regulation, trillions in more spending with perhaps a little less protectionism.
Mr. Trump is no free-marketeer, but he’ll try to make his tax cuts permanent, block further regulation, and wouldn’t nationalize health care or the energy industry. He prefers faster growth to raise wages instead of income transfers or welfare. If voters look past the ravages of Covid-19, Mr. Trump has the better case.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Problematic...
And:
From a friend and fellow memo reader:
To answer all of those who would say “I can't believe you would vote for Trump." Well folks listen up! I'm not just voting for him. I'm voting for the second Amendment. I'm voting for the next supreme court justice. I'm voting for the electoral college, and the Republic we live in. I'm voting for the Police, and law and order. I'm voting for the military, and the veterans who fought for and died for this Country. I'm voting for the Flag that is always missing from the Democratic background. I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored. I’m voting for secure borders. I’m voting for the right to praise my God without fear. I’m voting for every unborn soul the Democrats want to murder. I’m voting for freedom and the American Dream. I’m voting for good and against evil. I'm not just voting for one person, I'm voting for the future of my Country! What are you voting for?
I’m voting for America!
I’m voting for America!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Out of the mouth's...:
For those who love football: Sunset Acres Village
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I need not recite all perfidious acts by hypocrite politicians, you know them. Law abiding Americans are being impacted by cowards mistakenly believing we must tolerate acts of appeasement.
Should the battle ultimately be lost to those seeking to destroy our nation, America will never be the same because we allowed radicals to destroy our freedoms without a fight. Democrat officials buckled as they rushed to do the bidding of the rioters who demanded we de-fund entire police departments etc.
This is today's America. It became so because a Chinese pandemic tested our cohesiveness and patriotism, four police apparently acted outside the scope of their authority making a justified arrest, hatred of a legitimate election drove Democrats and the mass media to disrupt governance and , you know the rest.
A prominent Founding Father's said : ' we have a republic if we can keep it' 244 years later we are learning how fragile our republic is as several thousand radicals effectively challenged authority, ending law and order replacing it with chaos , burning, looting and killing.
It has come down to a 2020 election where the Democrat Party has been taken over by radicals and the election process is being altered, using the pandemic as an excuse, in order to lay the predicate should Trump win he did so unfairly and by fraud.
Once again America will suffer mightily if the losing party and their mass media defenders refuse to accept their defeat gracefully.
Out of the mouth's...:
Talked about a contest he was asked to judge.
The purpose of the
Contest was to find the most caring child.
The winner was:
*********************************************
1. Teacher Debbie Moon's first graders were
discussing a picture of a family. One little boy in the picture
had a different hair color than the other members. One of her
students suggested that he was adopted.
A little girl said, 'I know all about
Adoption, I was adopted..'
'What does it mean to be adopted?', asked
another child.
'It means', said the girl, 'that you grew
in your mommy's heart instead of her tummy!'
************************ *********************
2. On my way home one day, I stopped to
watch a Little League base ball game that was being played in a
park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-
base line, I asked one of the boys what the score was
'We're behind 14 to nothing,' he answered
With a smile.
'Really,' I said. 'I have to say you
don't look very discouraged.'
'Discouraged?', the boy asked with a
Puzzled look on his face...
'Why should we be discouraged? We haven't
Been up to bat yet.'
*********************** **********************
3. Whenever I'm disappointed with my spot
in life, I stop and think about little Jamie Scott.
Jamie was trying out for a part in the
school play. His mother told me that he'd set his heart on being
in it, though she feared he would not be chosen..
On the day the parts were awarded, I went
with her to collect him after school. Jamie rushed up to her,
eyes shining with pride and excitement.. 'Guess what, Mom,' he
shouted, and then said those words that will remain a lesson to
me....'I've been chosen to clap and cheer.'
*********************************************
4. An eye witness account from New York
City , on a cold day in December,
some years ago: A little boy,
about 10-years-old, was standing before a shoe store on the
roadway, barefooted, peering through the window, and shivering
With cold.
A lady approached the young boy and said,
'My, but you're in such deep thought staring in that window!'
'I was asking God to give me a pair of
shoes,'was the boy's reply.
The lady took him by the hand, went into
the store, and asked the clerk to get half a dozen pairs of socks
for the boy. She then asked if he could give her a basin of water
and a towel. He quickly brought them to her.
She took the little fellow to the back
part of the store and, removing her gloves, knelt down, washed
his little feet, and dried them with the towel.
By this time, the clerk had returned with
the socks.. Placing a pair upon the boy's feet, she purchased him
a pair of shoes..
She tied up the remaining pairs of socks
and gave them to him.. She patted him on the head and said, 'No
doubt, you will be more comfortable now.'
As she turned to go, the astonished
And:
in his eyes, asked her.
'Are you God's wife?'
For those who love football: Sunset Acres Village
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In 6 months a once free people have allowed feckless mayors and governors to permit hooligans to roam our streets, destroy property, challenge enforcement of law and order and ban religious attendance.
A Soros supported district attorney banned a couple from defending their home as rioters broke through private property fencing. The homeowners were charged with a felony. This was not in Russia or China. This was in a suburb of St Louis.
If that is not bad enough, corporate America caved and began funding radical organizations sworn to destroy our republic claiming they were addressing past wrongs. Actually, they were patronizing those who claim America is an evil, racist nation and demanded reparations.
I need not recite all perfidious acts by hypocrite politicians, you know them. Law abiding Americans are being impacted by cowards mistakenly believing we must tolerate acts of appeasement.
Should the battle ultimately be lost to those seeking to destroy our nation, America will never be the same because we allowed radicals to destroy our freedoms without a fight. Democrat officials buckled as they rushed to do the bidding of the rioters who demanded we de-fund entire police departments etc.
This is today's America. It became so because a Chinese pandemic tested our cohesiveness and patriotism, four police apparently acted outside the scope of their authority making a justified arrest, hatred of a legitimate election drove Democrats and the mass media to disrupt governance and , you know the rest.
A prominent Founding Father's said : ' we have a republic if we can keep it' 244 years later we are learning how fragile our republic is as several thousand radicals effectively challenged authority, ending law and order replacing it with chaos , burning, looting and killing.
It has come down to a 2020 election where the Democrat Party has been taken over by radicals and the election process is being altered, using the pandemic as an excuse, in order to lay the predicate should Trump win he did so unfairly and by fraud.
Once again America will suffer mightily if the losing party and their mass media defenders refuse to accept their defeat gracefully.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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