TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2016
Today’s Good News And Bad News
From Our Local Political Junkie We’ll Call “Cincy Dave”
OLYMPICS ADS
Hillary is spending at least $5.5 million with NBC on ads during the Olympics. In 2012, the Olympics drew an average of 31 million viewers, but this year viewership is way down, so she may be wasting money. She is hoping to reach more men, which she is having trouble with, and young people. The Donald is not spending any money on Olympics ads, for whatever reason.
GEORGE BUSH ENDORSES TRUMP
No, not W. Bush, or Papa Bush, it’s George P. Bush, the son of Jeb, who is currently the Texas Land Commissioner, whatever the hell that is. This is a very unexpected endorsement given the facts that George P. is half-Mexican (his mother, Jeb’s wife, is a Mexican immigrant) and that Jeb himself is adamantly not backing Trump, partially because of Trump’s tirades against Mexicans. One can only conclude that, for George P., future political ambitions mean more than family. We just hope that he made sure his mother’s papers are in order, in case Trump becomes president.
BAD NEWS FOR TRUMP
Governor Kasich went on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday to say that “it will be really, really difficult’ for Trump to win Ohio. Left unsaid was that he isn’t going to help at all because he is really looking forward to taking another shot at becoming the nominee in 2020. We suppose he would be a better candidate than Ted Cruz, A.K.A. Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger.
More Bad News for Trump
Fifty prominent Republican foreign policy and national security experts — many veterans of George W. Bush’s administration — have signed a letter denouncing Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and pledging not to vote for him.
The letter, first reported by The New York Times Monday, warns: “We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.”
GOOD NEWS FOR THE VERY WEALTHY
Trump unveiled his new tax plan yesterday. In a shocker, Trump’s new tax plan will reduce the tax rate for the wealthy from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. (see yesterday’s story about Trump’s so-called Economic Advisers). However, because his earlier tax plan would only tax the wealthy at 25 percent, many in the media are reporting this as an “increase” in taxes for the rich. It will be an increase all right but only for most of the rest of us instead of the millionaires and billionaires. As in all tax proposals, the devil is in the details. More on this tomorrow.
RIGGED ELECTION?
Fox News is going all out on Trump’s claim that the election is going to be rigged. They don’t say exactly how it will be done, or explain how Hillary controls enough states, counties, or precincts to rig anything but they are running with it anyway, thinking that the claim will somehow help Trump.
It has long been claimed that the election of 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon was stolen when the Illinois vote was fixed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, but this can easily be shown to be false because, if the Illinois EV were given to Nixon instead of Kennedy, Nixon still would have lost. However, there were at least 3 elections in history where the candidate with the most votes didn’t become president, and in each case, the victim of the “rigging” was the Democrat Candidate.
In 1824, Andrew Jackson received the most votes and the most electoral votes but didn’t get a majority of the EV, therefore the House of Representatives decided in favor of John Q. Adams, a former president’s son. This was a crooked deal where the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, convinced his followers to vote for Adams, who then made Clay his Secretary of State. Jackson got revenge the next time around by thoroughly beating Adams.
The election of 1876 pitted Samuel Tilden against former Cincinnatian, Rutherford Hayes. Tilden won a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the EV but there were disputes in 3 Southern states where both parties claimed their candidate had won. Although it was extremely unlikely that Hayes, the Republican, had won in any of the Southern states, the dispute ran on for months with no resolution until a congressional commission finally reached a compromise where the Republicans agreed to pull all federal troops out of the former Confederate States in exchange for the presidency. This allowed the Southern states to begin implementing the Jim Crow laws and many other forms of discrimination against their former slaves.
And of course, everyone remembers how W. Bush became president when the Supreme Court decided (by one vote) that they would stop a recount in Florida, because, well, – just because they could. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor later regretted her decision, as did most of the voters, who had given Bush’s opponent the majority (by about ½ million) of the popular vote.
What does all of this history have to do with this election? Very little, except to say that elections can and have been stolen (not rigged), but it’s usually done at the federal level and it’s the Red Team that usually does the stealing. In the extremely unlikely event that the election of 2016 goes to the House of Representatives because neither candidate received a majority of the EVs, as happened in 1824, Republicans will have control and Trump would become president.
BAD NEWS FOR HILLARY
Two parents of sons killed in Benghazi have sued Hillary for wrongful death, negligence and defamation. They and everyone else know that there is zero chance of winning such a suit but their purpose is just to create headlines in order to damage Hillary’s campaign. This is also a counter to Trump’s blunder in fighting with the Khan family. In the end, it will be buried in a blizzard of competing attack ads from both sides. If Hillary or any of her spokespersons even comment on the lawsuit when asked to, it will only be to point out that congressional Republicans have already gone over this issue many times and found nothing.
TODAY’S MEANINGLESS STATE POLLS
DJT had better hope the Georgia Poll is meaningless, If he is really losing in Georgia, a normally solid Republican state, it is all over for him. The last Democrat to win Georgia was named – uh – Clinton.
More Good News And Bad News Tomorrow
