Presumptuous Politics

Thursday, June 23, 2016

U.S. Senate Cartoon

Trump and Clinton trade fire, insults in hard-hitting speeches

Donald Trump delivered a blistering attack Wednesday on Hillary Clinton's record as secretary of state, accusing her of milking oppressive regimes of tens of millions of dollars to benefit the Clinton Foundation and calling her a “world-class liar."
Clinton had the chance to throw it back at Trump at a campaign
appearance in Raleigh, N.C., but saved her counterpunching for the end of her speech -- in terms she’s used before. She accused him of peddling "empty promises" and having "no answers."
The dueling speeches only served to sharpen the tone of an already brutal 2016 race.
Speaking at his New York City hotel, Trump said Clinton “perfected the politics of personal profit” and “doesn’t have the temperament ... or the judgment to be president.”
He specifically took her and Bill Clinton to task for taking millions from Saudi Arabia and other countries that criminalize homosexuality. Trump suggested Clinton as president would be influenced by all the lobbyists, CEOs and foreign governments who paid the Clintons to give speeches over the years.
"They totally own her and that will never, ever change," he said.
Hours later, Clinton fired back. She mostly stuck to policy until the end, when she turned her attention to Trump. In his criticism of the Clinton Foundation operation, she accused him of attacking a “philanthropic foundation” that saves lives.
“The Clinton Foundation helps poor people around the world get access to life-saving AIDS medicine,” she said. “Donald Trump uses poor people around the world to produce his line of suits and ties.”
Clinton said he has no strategy for creating jobs and, "He has no plan for rebuilding our infrastructure ... apart from his wall."
The criticism follows an address Tuesday in which Clinton claimed a Trump presidency would throw the country into recession.
Trump’s New York address served as a rebuttal of sorts. Trump also made an early appeal to Bernie Sanders’ supporters, saying he would be able to understand their frustration with politics and a “rigged process.”
“The insiders wrote the rules of the game to keep themselves in power and in the money,” Trump said. “That’s why we’re asking Bernie Sanders’ voters to join our movement so together we can fix the system for all Americans. Importantly, this includes fixing all of our many disastrous trade deals.”
Trump hit Clinton hard on her handling of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012 that led to the death of four Americans, including Chris Stevens.
“He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed -- that's right, when the phone rang at 3 o'clock in the morning, she was sleeping,” Trump said. “Ambassador Stevens and his staff in Libya made hundreds of requests for security. Hillary Clinton’s State Department refused them all. She started the war that put him in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die.”
He added, “To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death.
Trump also suggested that the Clinton Foundation took money from governments that have abysmal human rights records.
He accused Clinton of taking $25 million from Saudi Arabia, “where being gay is also punishable by death.”
He added that she “took millions from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and many other countries that horribly abuse women and LGBT citizens.”
The Trump campaign is hoping his speech will resonate with Republicans who may still be on the fence regarding Trump’s White House run. The plan is to get Republicans to focus their ire on Clinton.

Clinton IT specialist invokes 5th more than 125 times in deposition

Hillary Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano invoked the Fifth more than 125 times during a 90-minute, closed-door deposition Wednesday with the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, a source with the group told Fox News.
The official said Pagliano was working off an index card and read the same crafted statement each time.
“It was a sad day for government transparency,” the Judicial Watch official said, adding they asked all their questions and Pagliano invoked the Fifth Amendment right not to answer them.
Pagliano was a central figure in the set-up and management of Clinton’s personal server she used exclusively for government business while secretary of state. The State Department inspector general found Clinton violated government rules with that arrangement.
He was deposed as part of Judicial Watch's lawsuit seeking Clinton emails and other records. A federal judge granted discovery, in turn allowing the depositions, which is highly unusual in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The judge cited "reasonable suspicion" Clinton and her aides were trying to avoid federal records law.
Pagliano’s deposition before Judicial Watch is one of several interviews with high-profile Clinton aides, taking place as the FBI separately is continuing its federal criminal investigation.
A federal court agreed to keep sealed Pagliano’s immunity deal struck with the Justice Department in December, citing the sensitivity of the FBI probe and calling it a “criminal” matter.
The next Clinton aide to testify is Huma Abedin. In an earlier deposition, lawyers for senior Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, during a nearly five-hour deposition in Washington, repeatedly objected to questions about Pagliano’s role in setting up the former secretary of state’s private server.
According to a transcript of that deposition which Judicial Watch released, Mills attorney Beth Wilkinson – as well as Obama administration lawyers – objected to the line of questioning about Pagliano.
“I'm going to instruct her not to answer. It's a legal question,” Wilkinson responded, when asked by Judicial Watch whether Pagliano was an “agent of the Clintons” when the server was set up.
A transcript of the Pagliano deposition will be reviewed and is expected to be released next week.
Clinton could also be deposed in the Judicial Watch lawsuit.
There was no immediate comment from Pagliano's attorney.

House passes $1.1B Zika bill despite protests from Democratic leaders

WASHINGTON – The House has passed a $1.1 billion House-Senate measure to combat the Zika virus, but the GOP-drafted measure is a nonstarter with Senate Democrats and the Obama White House.
The measure was unveiled late Wednesday and approved by the House early on Thursday morning by a 239-171 vote that broke along party lines.
The vote came after Democrats hijacked the House floor for virtually all of Wednesday and well into Thursday, protesting GOP inaction on gun legislation in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando. GOP leaders called the vote abruptly, permitting no debate, and immediately adjourned the House through July 4.
The rapid turn of events of Zika ignited another round of the partisanship that has dogged the measure from the start and raised questions about whether lawmakers will manage to pass anything on Zika in the short time left before exiting Washington in mid-July for the political conventions.
Now, the House-passed compromise measure advances to the Senate, where Democrats promise to filibuster it to death.
Thursday's measure splits the difference between earlier House- and Senate-passed versions. It matches a bipartisan $1.1 billion figure adopted by the Senate last month to combat the Zika virus, which can cause grave defects and can be transmitted by mosquitoes and sexual contact.
The House was largely satisfied in their demand to pair the Zika funding with about $750 million in offsetting cuts to spending, including $543 million in unused funds from implementation of Obama's health care law and $107 million in cuts to leftover Ebola funding.
But Democrats erupted in opposition, citing provisions that effectively blocked Planned Parenthood from delivering birth control services under a $95 million grant program and a watered-down version of a provision backed by the House that would ease rules on certain pesticide permit requirements for battling the mosquitoes that can spread Zika.
"This plan from Congressional Republicans is four months late and nearly a billion dollars short," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion four months ago to fight Zika. Republicans initially displayed little urgency to respond to the request, and forced the administration to devote more than $500 million of unspent Ebola funding to fight Zika.
Democrats also opposed cutting unspent money to pay for the Zika measure, saying said it is wrong to require spending cuts to pay for a response to a public health crisis while not requiring them for past emergencies such as wildfires, floods and Ebola.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said the offsetting spending cuts would "set a precedent that will hinder our ability to respond to the next public health crisis, natural disaster, or national security event."
But Republicans said that the cuts were in fact relatively innocuous. For instance, the $543 million cut to "Obamacare" was to a pot of money aimed at helping territories set up health insurance exchanges under the law. None of them did so. And Democrats privately signaled they could live with the additional $100 million-plus cut to overseas Ebola aid.
Democrats on the Appropriations Committee had engaged in talks about the offsetting cuts, but top Democrats like Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada adopted a harder line that ultimately prevailed. Reid and his top lieutenants issued statements blasting the GOP measure, and appear comfortable at the prospect of killing it.
What might happen if Senate Democrats are united behind a filibuster is uncertain. But time to pass the measure to provide money to battle the virus, which can be spread by mosquitoes common in much of the U.S., is slipping away as Congress is slated to recess for the party political conventions in mid-July.
The Zika funding was attached to an $82 billion measure funding the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects. That measure is among the most popular of the 12 annual appropriations bills, and Republicans held out hope that its popularity might break free enough Democrats for it to squeak through the Senate.
More than 2,200 cases of Zika infection have been reported in the U.S. and its territories, especially Puerto Rico— including more than 400 pregnant women at risk of babies with major deformities like microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with smaller brains that might not have developed properly. Thus far, there have been no cases of mosquito-borne Zika in the U.S., but public health official fear isolated outbreaks, especially in the South.
The veterans funding portion of the measure also contains a modified provision to permit combat veterans whose wounds have left them unable to conceive children to seek in-vitro fertilization treatments. But it would not permit the use of donor eggs and sperm to help veterans with the most severe injuries to their sexual organs have children.
GOP leaders also orchestrated removal of a House-passed provision that would ban the display of the Confederate flag over mass graves in VA cemeteries. Top Republicans such as Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California had initially supported the idea.

Democrats' calls for gun control vote ignored as House adjourns until after July 4

House Democrats demanded but didn’t get a vote on gun control legislation Wednesday or early Thursday morning, despite an hours-long sit-in on the House floor.
Rebellious Democrats shouted down Speaker Paul Ryan when he attempted to restore order as their protest stretched into the night. As Ryan stepped to the podium to regain control of legislative business at around 10 p.m., he was met with chants of “No bill, no break!”
Democrat leaders were also singing “we will pass a bill someday” to the tune of the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”
The scene presented a radical, almost shocking departure from the normal orderly conduct of the House. Around 3:15 a.m. Thursday Republicans adjourned the House until after July 4th over Democrats' protest and ignoring their demands, but Democrats stayed on the floor into the wee hours of Thursday morning.
Republicans hoped to present themselves as soberly attending to business and Democrats as disruptive. Democrats said they would stay until Republicans yielded to their demands to hold votes on bills to strengthen background checks and prevent people on the no fly list from getting guns in the wake of last week's massacre in Orlando, Florida.
"Are they more afraid than the children at Sandy Hook?" asked Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., referring to the 2012 shooting that killed 26 people, including 20 elementary school children, in Newtown, Connecticut. "What is so scary about having a vote?"
Rep. John Lewis, a veteran civil rights leader, asked what Congress has done, then answered his own question: "Nothing. We have turned a deaf ear to the blood of innocents. We are blind to a crisis. Where is our courage?"
Some lawmakers brought pillows and blankets to the house as the protest stretched toward midnight.
Rep. Elizabeth Esty of Connecticut had a sleeping bag, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts brought Dunkin' Donuts for her House colleagues who were staying awake.
Other lawmakers also brought snacks, including some who broke House rules to eat on the House floor.
Despite the protests, the House still managed to pass a $1.1 billion Zika House-Senate measure. The legislation passed by a 239-171, but is expected to be intensely filibustered once it hits the Senate floor.
A spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the Democrats' protest as a "publicity stunt" and said Republicans "have plowed ahead to do what is needed to responsibly address" the Zika crisis.
Spokeswoman AshLee Strong said the House "is focused on eliminating terrorists, not constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. And no stunts on the floor will change that.”
Ryan dismissed the protest earlier Wednesday as "nothing more than a publicity stunt," and made clear the House would not vote on any legislation that he said would "take away a citizen's constitutional rights without due process."
By evening, 168 of the 188 House Democrats and 34 Senate Democrats joined the protest, according to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office. Scattered around the House floor were signs reading "Disarm Hate." Visitors watched from the galleries. A crowd of several hundred gun control advocates gathered outside the Capitol and cheered as Democrats addressed them.
Republicans had staged a similar protest in 2008. Democrats controlling the House at the time turned off the cameras amid a GOP push for a vote to expand oil and gas drilling. Republicans occupied the floor, delivering speeches after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the House on its August recess. Pelosi ordered the cameras turned off.
Republicans ultimately forced the drilling provision to be attached to a stopgap spending bill.
C-SPAN, a cable and satellite network that provides continual coverage of House and Senate floor proceedings, does not control the cameras. They're run on authorization by legislative leaders.
Although the cameras were turned off Wednesday, lawmakers relied on social media to transmit video, using Facebook, Twitter and Periscope. C-SPAN broadcast live video streamed on Periscope and Facebook from lawmakers' accounts. Democrats posted the Capitol's main telephone number, which was overwhelmed, and urged constituents to call and request a vote. They also encouraged tweeting under the hashtag "NoBillNoBreak".
Democratic senators joining the protest included Minority Leader Harry Reid, Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who had waged a nearly 15-hour filibuster last week to force votes in the Senate on gun legislation. Those votes failed Monday night.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Crooked Hillary Cartoons

Carlson: Clinton attacks on Trump's economic policies are 'ludicrous'

Clinton attacks Trump

Tucker Carlson told viewers Tuesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that it’s “ludicrous” for Hillary Clinton to attack Donald Trump’s economic plans.
“It’s always amazing to watch liberals lecture anyone else on debt,” said Carlson.
Clinton attacked Trump's economic policies during a speech delivered Tuesday.
Carlson explained the irony of the claims Clinton made during her speech.
“The boldest part of this address today was her claim that Trump is somehow a handmaiden to the rich,” said Carlson. “This is someone who’s running to continue Barack Obama’s economic policies, under which 95 percent of economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent.”

After DNC attack, hacker Guccifer 2.0 claims Hillary Clinton 'dossier' leak

A hacker who goes by the name ‘Guccifer 2.0’ claims to have published a dossier of Hillary Clinton-related documents accessed during the recent attack on the Democratic National Committee’s computers.
In a blog post Tuesday, Guccifer 2.0 described the haul as “a big folder of docs devoted to Hillary Clinton that I found on the DNC server.”
The files include a “HRC Defense Master Doc” outlining criticism and defense points on issues such as U.S. military intervention in Libya, the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack and the Clinton email server controversy.
“The DNC collected all info about the attacks on Hillary Clinton and prepared the ways of her defense, memos, etc., including the most sensitive issues like email hacks,” explained Guccifer 2.0.
The authenticity of the documents is unclear. The DNC has not yet responded to a request for comment on this story from FoxNews.com.
Last week Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the DNC hack. In a June 15 blog post Guccifer 2.0 touted documents purportedly accessed in the attack, which included opposition research on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Guccifer 2.0 also posted files purportedly showing Democratic Party donors and claimed to have extracted thousands of documents from the DNC networks.
Experts have been looking for clues about the mysterious self-described hacker, and suspicions still linger that the Russian government played a role in the hack.

More on this...

Cyber firm CrowdStrike, which is working on the DNC’s investigation into the hack, says the attack was conducted by groups affiliated with the Russian government. CrowdStrike identified the ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘Cozy Bear’ groups as likely perpetrators.
The company stood by its analysis after Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the hack. In a blog post June 15 CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch identified “two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016.”
After studying the DNC malware, Fidelis Cybersecurity backed up CrowdStrike’s analysis. “Based on our comparative analysis we agree with CrowdStrike and believe that the COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR APT groups were involved in successful intrusions at the DNC,” explained Fidelis Cybersecurity senior vice president Michael Buratowski, in a blog post Monday. “The malware samples contain data and programing elements that are similar to malware that we have encountered in past incident response investigations and are linked to similar threat actors.”
The DNC has also pointed its finger at Russia, but says financial and personal information does not appear to have been accessed by the hackers.
Last week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russian government involvement in the DNC hacking incident.

Media freakout over Trump's poor fundraising: How bad is the problem?

The pundits are going nuts over Donald Trump’s anemic fundraising.
They are stunned, shocked and horrified that his campaign raised just $3.1 million last month, and he had to lend the enterprise $2 million to cover costs.
“Trump Starts Summer Push with Staggering Money Deficit,” says the New York Times.
“Trump Getting Crushed by Clinton Money Machine,” says Politico.
“The real estate mogul's meager cash flow spotlighted the urgent need for him to dramatically ramp up the fundraising he is doing in conjunction with the Republican National Committee,” says the Washington Post.
So: The numbers are bad. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. The split in the party means Republican donors are sitting on the sidelines.
Now the media usually overestimate the importance of money in politics. If big bucks were the determining factor, Jeb Bush, with his $100-billion campaign, would be the nominee.
Much of the money that general election candidates raise goes to TV ads. But the primaries showed that commercials mattered less this cycle than in decades, and with such well-defined nominees, that could again be the case.
And given Trump’s uncanny ability to dominate news coverage, I believe he could beat Hillary Clinton while raising half as much money.
But not while raising one-tenth as much money. His tiny campaign outfit was victorious with a media-driven primary campaign, but you’ve got to have a basic infrastructure to compete in a 50-state election—even on such basics as turning out your voters.
Trump began June with just $1.3 million cash on hand, according to federal reports.
By that measure, Clinton is $41 million ahead. And she raised more than $28 million in May. Her 700-person staff is 10 times the size of Trump’s. Of course, the real estate mogul has boasted to me and others that this means his operation is more efficient.
Trump told the “Today” show that he spent $55 million of his own money in the primaries and “may do that again in the general election,” though it would be “nice to have some help from the party.”
But Trump at one point was talking about having to raise a billion for the general election. He can’t foot that bill himself, even if he has mused about having “to sell a couple of buildings” to come up with some cash. And if he suddenly wrote the campaign a mega-check, wouldn’t that discourage donors from opening their wallets?
Here’s the difference between Trump’s ultra-lean staff, with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski now out, and Clinton’s sizable machine.
The Hillary camp barrages reporters with emails every day, often including negative excerpts about Trump from Republicans and from media reports. Trump, who doesn’t have a communications director, sends occasional emails that sometimes contain statements from the candidate but are mostly about scheduling.
When Clinton decided to give a speech yesterday ripping Trump on the economy, here’s what she did in advance.
Her campaign notified the press of a new website (“Art of the Steal”) with an elaborate attack on Trump’s business record, and posted an online video, which got some cable airtime, attacking that record.
Then the Hillary camp leaked details of the speech, and made Jake Sullivan, her top policy adviser, available to such outlets as the Times, the Post and Politico. Campaign manager Robby Mook previewed the speech on Sirius XM.
That’s what a big campaign apparatus does for you. Trump often seems a one-man band by comparison.
But this time, for the first time I can recall, Trump had a rapid-response operation ready. He fired up a tweetstorm and responded with an Instagram video. And his campaign sent out a barrage of releases.
More important, these statements weren't just insults from Trump, but contained policy arguments on his behalf and against his Democratic opponent. They had titles such as “THE CATASTROPHIC ECONOMIC RECORD UNDER CLINTON-OBAMA POLICIES” and “TRUMP ECONOMIC PLAN WILL CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS & TRILLIONS IN NEW WEALTH.”
Maybe the campaign is turning a corner. Although the contrast was stark when Trump wanted to promote an address planned for today, doing so with a single tweet: “I will be making a big speech tomorrow to discuss the failed policies and bad judgment of Crooked Hillary Clinton.”
In the end, money isn't all that matters in winning elections. But Trump’s challenge now is to make sure a lack of money doesn’t cripple his campaign.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.

Republican senator seeks bipartisan support for gun deal

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine

A moderate Republican senator sought broad bipartisan support Tuesday for a compromise to block gun purchases by some suspected terrorists, a day after the chamber split along party lines to derail far more sweeping proposals.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he would allow a vote on the proposal by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, but stopped short of endorsing the measure itself. The package seemed to face an uphill climb for the 60 votes it would need, thanks to the hurdles of election-year politics and opposition from the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America.
Flanked by eight senators — three Republicans, four Democrats and a Democratic-leaning independent — Collins told reporters that mass shootings in Orlando, Fla., and San Bernardino, Calif., were "a call for compromise, a plea for bipartisan action."
"If we can't pass this, it truly is a broken system up here," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
On Monday, the Senate rejected rival Democratic and Republican proposals for keeping guns from known and suspected terrorists. President Barack Obama criticized the stalemate Tuesday, tweeting: "Gun violence requires more than moments of silence. It requires action. In failing that test, the Senate failed the American people."
The government's overall terrorist watch list has 1 million people on it. Collins' measure would let federal authorities bar gun sales to two narrower groups: the no-fly list with 81,000 people and the selectee list with 28,000 people. Selectees can fly after unusually intensive screening.
All but a combined total of around 2,800 people on those lists are foreigners, who are mostly unable to purchase firearms in the U.S.
Under Collins' proposal, Americans denied guns could appeal their rejections to federal courts. The FBI would be notified if someone who's been on the broader terrorist watch list in the past five years buys a gun, but could not stop the purchase.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., praised lawmakers involved with Collins for having "serious bipartisan talks," but didn't endorse her plan. Other top Democrats seemed to revel in the divisions Collins' proposal were causing between the NRA and the GOP, whose members usually cast strong gun-rights votes.
"What potentially is happening here is Republicans are finally breaking" from the NRA, said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., his chamber's No. 3 Democratic leader. "I'm glad it's happened, whether it's politically advantageous or not."
Prospects for the GOP-run House considering a similar proposal seemed dim. One Republican leadership aide said it would be premature to comment because no bill had been introduced there or passed the Senate. The aide was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was too early to say if the administration would back the measure, but said support seemed likely if it would "at least prevent some suspected terrorists from being able to buy a gun."
Chief NRA lobbyist Chris W. Cox criticized Collins' plan, saying, "Keeping guns from terrorists while protecting the due process rights of law-abiding citizens are not mutually exclusive." That seemed aimed at Collins' provision allowing people to appeal to federal courts after they've been denied a gun, not before it happens.
Michael Hammond, legislative director for Gun Owners of America, said Collins' plan "allows a highly politicized official to take away constitutional rights by fiat."