Moralistic Democrat Cartoons

U.S. troops begin withdrawing from Syria

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:01 AM PT — Friday, January 11, 2019

The U.S. is reportedly beginning the process of withdrawing troops from Syria. While he didn’t release details, a U.S. military official recently said equipment is being removed from the region.
This comes just three-weeks after President Trump announced he is bringing troops home. Stalling the process were fears about Turkey invading territory held by Kurdish allies to the U.S., and leaving a power vacuum in the war-torn country. However, the Kurds reached out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for help.

FILE – In this Wednesday, April 4, 2018 file photo, a U.S. soldier, left, sits on an armored vehicle behind a sand barrier at a newly installed position near the front line between the U.S-backed Syrian Manbij Military Council and the Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria. An American military official said Friday, Jan. 11, 2019 that the U.S.-led military coalition has begun the process of withdrawing troops from Syria. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

International players in the conflict have been in talks about the future of former U.S. territory in Syria. Russia is mediating talks between the Syrian government and the Kurds to ensure a smooth transition when U.S. troops leave the region.
While speaking to reporters Friday, a spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said establishing dialogue is vital to maintaining peace.The spokesperson also urged the U.S. to hand over its territory to Assad amid threats from Turkey of a possible attack on Kurds in the region.
However, Moscow has not officially picked a side in the brewing conflict as Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares to meet with his Turkish counterpart later this month.
National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have both visited countries in the region to explain the shift in U.S. policy.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, other Dems want you to embrace a socialist agenda – Here are 4 glaring examples

For decades, the Democratic Party has been steadily moving away from its roots as America’s self-proclaimed champion of the middle class, instead choosing to embrace radical identity politics and a socialist agenda. Democrats are quickly becoming the party of Karl Marx and Che Guevara, not John Kennedy.
The rise of the far left in the Democratic Party has perhaps never been more evident than since Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives in the November 2018 midterm elections. The following are just some of the most socialistic and radical plans now garnering significant support among Democrats in Congress.
Government-run, single-payer health care.
Rep. John Yarmouth, D-Ky., the chairman of the powerful House Budget Committee, recently issued a request to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to conduct an analysis of the costs of transforming the United States’ current health insurance system into a government-run, single-payer model – the plan embraced by Senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Yarmouth’s request is a signal that Democrats are in the early stages of preparing for a future vote on single-payer legislation.
AMERICA'S PROGRESSIVES ARE SO BUSY EXTOLLING VIRTUES OF SOCIALISM THAT THEY WANT YOU TO IGNORE THIS
A single-payer program in line with Sen. Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal would cost $32 trillion in its first 10 years, according to an analysis by the Mercatus Center – an amount so high Mercatus estimates that doubling existing individual and corporate taxes wouldn’t be enough to cover the costs.
Not only would putting the government in charge of health care cost trillions of dollars, but it would also force Americans to endure many of the same problems plaguing government-run health care models around the world, including long wait times for patients and rationing of care. The Fraser Institute reports that patients in Canada, which has a single-payer health care model, who require “medically necessary elective orthopedic surgery” wait on average 41.7 weeks – about 10 months – before receiving treatment. Patients requiring elective neurosurgery, including many patients who have brain tumors, wait 32.9 weeks.
If Democrats have it their way, Americans will be subjected to similar problems, and millions of people will inevitably suffer as a result.
The elimination of all fossil fuels; socialized energy.
One of the Democrats’ most controversial and destructive proposals is newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., “Green New Deal.” This far-reaching plan would eliminate all fossil fuels by 2030, including from agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and the entire electric grid.
Ending the fossil-fuel industry would potentially destroy millions of jobs and require an unprecedented investment in expensive and unreliable renewable energy sources like wind and solar power generation. Even worse, because wind and solar cost two to five times more than existing conventional energy sources, requiring huge sectors of the economy to rely on these renewables would increase the cost of all goods and services and drive countless businesses out of the country.
The “Green New Deal” doesn’t stop there, however. It would also socialize much of the newly-created renewable energy industry and require “upgrades” to nearly every building in the country – a provision that would likely cost trillions of dollars and insert the federal government into every American’s home.
Massive tax increases.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has called for increasing the top marginal tax rate for some wealthy Americans to as high as 70 percent. If enacted, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist says it would be the highest tax rate in the industrialized world.
Democrats have also proposed a dramatic increase to America’s corporate tax rate. Rep. Yarmouth has said he favors raising the corporate rate from 21 percent to 28 percent – a 33 percent increase. This would be one of the largest corporate tax hikes in recent history, and it would roll back much of the reduction to the corporate tax rate passed by Republicans and President Donald Trump as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Those tax cuts, coupled with the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks, have spurred remarkable economic growth in the United States. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 2.8 million full-time jobs were created from January 2018 to December 2018 – 688,000 more than the number of jobs created during the same period in 2017.
Increasing tax rates on corporations would likely cause a substantial economic slowdown and might even cause corporations that have expanded their operations to lay off newly-hired workers.
Abolishing the electoral college.
Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., introduced legislation to create a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the electoral college system and replace it with a model based entirely on the outcome of the national popular vote. (Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore (2000) and Hillary Clinton (2016) both won the popular vote but lost the presidential election because their challengers won more electoral college votes.)
The electoral college system for electing presidents is an essential part of our federalist system of government and was a key component to the passage of the Constitution in 1787. The electoral college enhances the power of voters in smaller states. Without the electoral college, voters in a handful of highly populated states would have significantly more power to determine the outcome of every presidential election, which is exactly what Democrats want. About three in 10 votes cast in the 2016 election occurred in just seven Democratic-leaning states: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Washington State.
If the electoral college is abolished, voters in much of the Midwest, South and Mountain West regions – especially in rural areas – will be ignored in future presidential elections.
Together, these proposals represent a remarkable shift toward socialism and the centralization of power, and away from the principles that have made the United States the most prosperous, successful nation in human history: individual liberty and free markets.
Americans everywhere must stand against these radical ideas. If we don’t, the United States will, over the next few decades, begin to look increasingly more like the Soviet Union and less like the country created by our Founding Fathers.

Michael Cohen, seeking vindication, can’t use most ammunition against Trump

Some journalists are already touting Michael Cohen as the next John Dean, casting his upcoming congressional testimony as nothing short of historic.
But they are probably jacking up expectations too high.
While President Trump’s former personal lawyer turning on him before a House committee will be a television spectacle, Cohen’s allies say he will testify under great constraints.
The larger story, they say, is how this man who tied himself so closely to Trump has been utterly devastated—and is, in a sense, seeking redemption.
Cohen is flat broke. His wife and family are under enormous emotional strain. He is getting surgery a week before his testimony for a bone spur in his shoulder that has left him unable to lift his arm. The family is living in a hotel room with insurance payments following a flood at their home.
And a month after his Feb. 7 Hill appearance, Cohen reports to prison for three years.
In short, these sources say, Cohen will offer compelling testimony, but those who expect him to be able to fire a silver bullet that would bring down the president are going to be sorely disappointed. Cohen may have important new information that he has disclosed to Robert Mueller in 70 hours of interviews with prosecutors, but if so, he won’t be able to reveal it.
The major limitation, as Cohen has said, is that he can’t discuss anything still under investigation by the special counsel. That means Cohen, who is still hoping for a reduction in his sentence, can’t answer questions about Russian collusion or the proposed real estate project in Moscow. It also means he can’t address the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer (who was recently indicted on money-laundering charges).
“I expect Michael’s testimony will be personal, not partisan, and compelling,” Lanny Davis, again acting as Cohen’s attorney, told me. “He will describe what he did for Mr. Trump for 10 years that he now looks back on, as stated in court, with shame and regret. And he will explain what caused him, on July 2, 2018, to turn and put his family and country first; recognizing the dangers to the country in Mr. Trump’s misconduct and reckless behavior.”
In the interview, Davis implied a further reason for Cohen’s desire to testify.
Given the fraud and lying charges in the two Cohen guilty pleas, Davis said he “and many others believe the length of incarceration time, compared to others who committed far worse offenses, is disproportionately excessive and unjust. I hope someone in the Justice Department focuses on the word ‘justice’ when assessing the fairness of Michael’s three-year prison term. What they need to ask themselves is, would he have received this time if he had been someone who didn’t work for Donald Trump?”
The contours of the testimony are likely to frustrate Republican members of the oversight committee, now chaired by Democrat Elijah Cummings. Some may ask why Cohen is there if he is unable to answer questions on such vital topics.
What’s more, they will point out that Cohen is an acknowledged liar and ask why he should still be viewed as credible.
The New York lawyer wants to explain why he went to work for Trump, why he is ashamed of having worked for Trump, and how he made the decision last July to turn on his longtime benefactor, who has called him a “weak person” and a “rat.”
Part of that explanation will focus on Cohen’s view that while certain behavior might be tolerable in a private businessman, the standards are very different when that person becomes president.
Cohen will offer personal anecdotes about his service to Trump and what he has termed his complicity in “dirty deeds,” the sources say. These would likely be unflattering blasts from the past but could have little to do with his record as president.
The one area in which Cohen may shed some light, since it’s part of the public record, is on the hush money payments to former porn star Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen has already said he was doing Trump’s bidding in both cases—the lawyer paid Daniels $130,000 and was reimbursed by the boss—but could fill in key details under questioning.
Dean, who was Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, broke open the Watergate coverup with his Senate testimony and wound up spending four months in jail. But he knew that conspiracy from the inside because he was a willing participant before turning against Nixon.
Cohen, having never gotten the White House job he wanted, is not in a similar position, no matter how much media hype surrounds his testimony. But like John Dean, he appears to view the appearance as a final chance to vindicate his reputation before heading off to prison.
“My heart goes out to Michael and his family,” Davis told me. “They are under great duress and strain.”

White House slams Comey, McCabe after report that FBI launched probe of Trump after Comey ouster

The White House lashed out against “disgraced partisan hack” James Comey and “known liar” Andrew McCabe on Friday after a report that the FBI -- after President Trump fired Comey as the bureau's director -- opened a secret inquiry into whether Trump had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.
The investigators working on the inquiry had to assess whether Trump’s actions could constitute a possible national security threat. The agency tried to determine whether the president was working for Russia or had fallen under the Kremlin’s influence, the New York Times reported.
The probe into Trump also looked into possible criminality, in particular the May 2017 firing of Comey and whether that could be deemed an obstruction of justice.
The White House immediately pushed back against the report, calling the insinuations of working for Russia “absurd” and pointed to the administration's record toward Russia.

"This is absurd. James Comey was fired because he's a disgraced partisan hack, and his Deputy Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the FBI."
— White House press secretary Sarah Sanders

“This is absurd. James Comey was fired because he's a disgraced partisan hack, and his Deputy Andrew McCabe, who was in charge at the time, is a known liar fired by the FBI,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.
“Unlike President Obama, who let Russia and other foreign adversaries push American around, President Trump has actually been tough on Russia,” she added.
The allegation of the FBI opening a counterintelligence investigation into Trump may cause a further rift between the bureau and the president, who in the past has criticized the agency’s senior leadership, alleging an anti-Trump bias.
Among those FBI officials accused of bias were former senior counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who was fired amid revelations of his anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton text messages with another FBI official, Lisa Page.
McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, meanwhile, was fired in March ahead of his planned retirement following a bombshell report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz that claimed McCabe lied to investigators and his then-boss Comey at least four times, three of them under oath.
The former deputy director reportedly authorized a leak to a newspaper reporter about the contents of a telephone call on August 2016 in order cast himself in a positive light in an upcoming story about an investigation involving Hillary Clinton.
According to the Times, senior FBI officials became suspicious of Trump and his alleged ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign but decided not to pursue an investigation at the time. The president’s decisions and the firing of Comey prompted the agency to launch the inquiry.
The FBI investigation has since been taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is examining the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. There’s no indication that Mueller is continuing to pursue the counterintelligence matter.
Former law enforcement officials told the newspaper that the criminal and counterintelligence elements of the investigation were combined because Trump’s firing of the FBI director could constitute both a crime and a national security threat as it would hinder the agency’s abilities to learn how the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election.
“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” James A. Baker, who served as FBI general counsel until late 2017, said during private testimony before House investigators in October, according to the Times.