Kid Rock Cartoons

Kid Rock tables US Senate run, stresses voter registration

Musician Robert James Ritchie (aka Kid Rock) left his fans, as well as political junkies, guessing Wednesday about whether he will actually run for a U.S. Senate seat in his home state of Michigan – something the artist teased in a series of tweets July 12.

In a statement released on his website, kidrock.com, the rocker announced a new initiative to create a “non-profit organization for the promotion of voter registration,” while he continues to explore the idea of challenging incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich, in 2018.

“As part of the excitement surrounding this possible campaign, I decided to take a hard look to see if there was real support for me as a candidate and my message or if it was just because it was a fresh new news story,” Rock said. “The one thing I've seen over and over is that although people are unhappy with the government, too few are even registered to vote or do anything about it.”

“The one thing I've seen over and over is that although people are unhappy with the government, too few are even registered to vote or do anything about it.”

Rock added he will hold a news conference in roughly six weeks “to address this issue amongst others, and if I decide to throw my hat in the ring for US Senate, believe me … it’s game on m***********.”
Stunt? Maybe not
Democrats, who were blindsided by Donald Trump’s presidential election upset, have been cautious about dismissing the prospect of a Rock candidacy as a publicity stunt.
“I know a lot of people are thinking: this is some sort of joke, right?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in an email, the Boston Herald reported.
“Well,” she continued, “maybe this is all a joke — but we all thought Donald Trump was joking when he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his campaign, too.”
Warren’s email links to a fundraising page for her own reelection campaign, as well as that of Stabenow.
Critics of Trump initially thought that revelations of his past, including vulgar talk in an “Access Hollywood” video with former NBC host Billy Bush, would be detrimental to his presidential campaign, but Trump’s victory in November proved them wrong.
Leading in polls
So, the idea of a rocker with a salacious past of assault and provocative comments, plus a partying persona, running for a Senate seat in a largely blue-collar state might not be that farfetched.
In fact, a mock poll by Delphi Analytica found Rock would defeat Stabenow by four points in the 2018 election.
Of the 688 Michigan residents polled, the majority were undecided at 44 percent. However, when asked to choose Rock or Stabenow, Rock won by 54 percent to 46 percent.
Wednesday’s announcement didn’t provide much clarity on whether Rock will actually run for Senate. But if he does run, Trump has already prepared the Democratic Party to expect the unexpected. 

Scaramucci on White House leaks: 'We're going to let people go if we have to'

White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci vowed Wednesday to take a hard line against leaks from the West Wing, telling Fox News' "Hannity," "we're going to let people go if we have to."

"One of the big problems that I’m discovering," said Scaramucci, who was named communications director Friday, which led to the resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer, "is that senior people are really the guys doing the leaking and they ask junior people to leak for them.

"I’m very proud to be reporting directly to the president so I can hermetically seal off the [communications] team from this sort of nonsense," Scaramucci added.
WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ASSISTANT PRESS SECRETARY MICHAEL SHORT RESIGNS
Scaramucci spoke to Fox News' Sean Hannity one day after the resignation of senior assistant press secretary Michael Short, who claimed he offered to step down of his own accord. Short's departure came as sources told Fox News that Republican National Committee officials who followed Spicer and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to the White House feared for their jobs.
"We let somebody go yesterday, but I’ve told people that if there’s a civil war, and people are fighting internally, we have to dial that down," Scaramucci said. "I don’t think you can let people go ... just for the sake of letting them go. I think we have to give them ... some level of amnesty to see if they’ll stop and work together.
"But I’ll move very quickly if they cannot do that, because I have the president’s authority to do so."
Earlier Wednesday evening, Scaramucci tweeted that he planned to contact the FBI and the Justice Department, claiming that his own financial disclosure information had been leaked. But the tweet was later deleted.
Scaramucci also claimed that some leaks from other executive agencies came from what he called "political holdovers from the Obama administration that want to put a hurt on the Trump administration." In response, he said he was planning to meet with communications people from those agencies in an effort to "curtail leaks on their side."
After Scaramucci appeared on "Hannity," Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores issued the following statement:
"We have seen an astonishing increase in the number of leaks of classified national security information in recent months. We agree with Anthony that these staggering number of leaks are undermining the ability of our government to function and to protect this country. Like the Attorney General has said, 'whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,' and we will aggressively pursue leak cases wherever they may lead."

New Audit Shows IRS Paid Out $24B in Potentially Improper Refunds

OAN Newsroom
The IRS is paying out more than $24 billion in potentially fraudulent refunds claimed under controversial tax credits.
An audit of the agency in 2016 says $17 billion were payments made on improper claims under the earned income tax credit.
It estimates another $8 billion in wrong payments between the additional child tax credit, and a higher education tax credit.
$118 million were also paid to people not authorized to work in the U.S.
The audit suggest the IRS follow a 2015 law delaying refunds claiming those credits so agents have more time to flag suspicious returns.

Wasserman-Schultz Aide Arrested While Trying to Flee the Country

Democrat

OAN Newsroom
The FBI arrests an aide of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as he was trying to flee the country.
37-year-old Imran Awan, an IT staffer for Schultz, had been under investigation for bank fraud.
Federal agents say Awan was headed to Pakistan, and had no intention of returning to the United States.
In a Washington D.C. court on Tuesday Awan pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges, and was released on high supervision.
He must wear a GPS tracking device, and is restricted to the 50 mile radius around his Virginia home.
Awan will be back in court August 21st.

Moderate Republican Cartoons

Sessions to announce investigations into intelligence leaks: source

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will soon announce several criminal leak investigations, Fox News has learned.

A U.S. official familiar with the discussions said Tuesday that the planned announcement surrounding stepped-up efforts on leak investigations has “been in the works for some time and will most likely happen sometime in the next week.”

The news comes in the wake of days of intense pressure on Sessions, with President Trump lashing out and expressing his “disappointment” with the attorney general, through tweets, interviews and news conferences.
The investigations will look at news reports that publicized sensitive intelligence material, according to officials who have been briefed on the matter.
Meanwhile, it appears that Sessions has no plans to step down at this point.
A source familiar with the conversation tells Fox News that Sessions’ chief of staff, Jody Hunt, recently told White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus that the attorney general had no intention of resigning.
Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's new communications director, said Tuesday that he was prepared to "fire everybody" to stop unauthorized information coming from the press office.
Speaking to reporters, Scaramucci said that he was "not doing an investigation. I'm just going to get the leaking to stop." He stressed that he had "the authority from the president to do that."
"You're either going to stop leaking or you're going to get fired," Scaramucci said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report 
Jake Gibson is a producer working at the Fox News Washington bureau who covers politics, law enforcement and intelligence issues.

Senate Republicans who defected on health care test vote

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, left, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., were the only Republicans to vote against Tuesday's motion to proceed  (AP)

Vice President Mike Pence was needed in the Senate Tuesday to cast the tie-breaking vote on a motion to move forward with a bill to overhaul ObamaCare after two Republicans voted "no."

The votes by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., eliminated the GOP's margin of error on the motion. Every other Republican senator voted "aye," while every Democratic senator joined Collins and Murkowski in voting "no."

Collins and Murkowski are among several moderate Senate Republicans concerned about possible Medicaid cuts in any ObamaCare overhaul. In separate statements last week, both women opposed an attempt by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to pass legislation repealing ObamaCare without new legislation in place.

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Murkowski — who backed a Senate bill repealing ObamaCare in 2015 that was vetoed by then-President Barack Obama, the law's namesake — said the Senate should "take a step back and engage in a bipartisan process to address the failures of [ObamaCare] and stabilize the individual markets."
Collins, who did not vote for the 2015 repeal, said that ObamaCare is "so interwoven in our health care system that to repeal it completely with no idea what it's going to be replaced with is not the right approach."
As for potential political consequences of their votes, Murkowski is not due to come up for re-election until 2022. Collins' turn will come in 2020, though she has not ruled out stepping down to run for governor of Maine next year.