Votes Are No Indication of Support When Media Is Counting

We have an instructive contrast between how the mainstream media treats a candidate whose positions it supports and how it treats a candidate whose positions it loathes.

Both of our candidates have remarkable similarities. They’re outsiders who parachuted into the political arena and have never previously held office. Both are scornful of the entrenched political elite and promise big changes if they’re elected.

And while the net worth of the candidates varies considerably, both rely on extensive free media coverage to increase their exposure while at the same time reducing the need for expensive media budgets.

Finally, both candidates prefer rallies and crowd–generating events to the traditional grind of going door–to–door to engage the public and mobilize support.

So wouldn’t an ideal test of political relevance and candidate support among the general public be the number of votes amassed on Election Day?

Well yes. And no.

If the election confirms the media’s pre–determined bias, then THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! If the election doesn’t go the media’s way, then who cares what a bunch of yahoos think?

Which brings us to DeRay Mckesson and Donald Trump.

But to learn more about our couple, you’re going to have to click on the link below to get the complete story.

http://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/candidate-mainstream/2016/07/12/id/738312/

 

Maine’s Unpretentious First Lady Takes a Real Job

This summer we have an interesting contrast between first ladies at the state government level.

Ann LePage, wife of Maine Gov. Paul LePage is waiting tables, while Maureen McDonnell, wife of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, is waiting to see if she can avoid going to jail.

Maureen McDonnell explains how she lost 40 lbs. by having her portrait painted.

The other difference is how members of the political class achieve their desires.

Ann has her heart set on owning a new Toyota RAV 4 and she’s getting it the old fashioned way — by earning the money. Ann is working at McSeagull’s where according to WGME she’s hoping to average the same $28/hr. her daughter earned last summer. On an annual basis that’s $58,240 a year – far in excess of the $15/hr. “living wage” that produces only $31,200 and penalizes initiative. The amount is even close to her husband’s state salary of $70,000.

LePage is charmingly unpretentious and obviously doesn’t suffer from a Hillary–sized ego. I’ve been peering intently at all the photos accompanying the coverage and can’t find a single state trooper or other “security detail” member lurking in the background.

It’s only Ann bustling from table to table.

I’m sure this strikes many as too bourgeois for words. A governor’s wife working in a tourist trap instead of a “think tank” or corporate “community outreach” was obviously so novel it interested the Washington Post.

The next thing you know that wacky Ann will be browsing the aisles at the Dollar Store.

A smart political operator — a “two for the price of one” first lady — would’ve started the LePage Foundation to “make the world a better place.” Initial contributions could have gone to buy something more fitting for a governor’s wife, say a nice black Mercedes SUV, so Ann, as foundation president, could have a stylish way to get around town.

Instead she’s now one of the state’s 10,000 seasonal employees and hoping McSeagull’s owners don’t pull a Trump and replace her with H–2B visa worker from Carjackistan.

I’d like to think Ann is sincere in wanting to work and not engaged in a domestic drama, but it is a fact husband Paul has pushed for a higher salary. He was either feeling the economic pinch or the status pinch, because the mister proposed giving himself an $80,000 raise.

In Virginia the governor makes $175,000, but even that isn’t enough for some.

Take Maureen McDonnell. She had a wish list, too, but her tastes were more upper crust, preferring Bergdorf Goodman and Rolex to Toyota and the “Lobster Chicken Bomb.” Maureen’s sweating out a jail sentence because she decided to get her goodies the old backroom way by swapping political influence for money.

During only one term as first lady, Maureen persuaded an “old family friend” dating back to a few days before the inauguration — to give her and the McDonnell brood almost $200,000.00.

The Post has the totals:

$6,500 Rolex watch

$15,000 Bergdorf Goodman shopping spree

$10,000 wedding gift to daughter Jeanine

$15,000 catering for daughter Cailin’s wedding

$50,000 no–doc loan to Maureen

$70,000 no–doc loan to Bob

Maureen raked in this amazing total and didn’t have to replace a single insole, so take that Ann!

Of course in prison they supply the shoes, so Maureen still won’t be buying Dr. Scholl’s even if the appeal is unsuccessful.

Not all political wives and politicians have Ann Leave’s strong moral compass, so here’s some advice for those tempted to keep up with the Trumps by accepting favors from “old friends” whose arrival coincided with your election.

Your life may not be as lavish, but on the other hand you won’t be sharing a toilet with Maureen McDonnell:

1. Don’t take a gift from any ‘old friend’ you made after you left high school unless it comes with a receipt, preferably from Walmart.
2. Don’t buy stock in a ‘friend’s’ hot company if you didn’t know him in high school.
3. Don’t take a gift from any ‘friend’ who owns a company the SEC, FEC, IRS, FDA or the PTA is investigating.
4. Don’t hitch a ride on an airplane, yacht or submarine owned by a stranger you met after high school, unless you all chip in for gas.
5. Don’t accept free vacation housing from a ‘friend’ you met after high school, unless it’s a tent.

Meanwhile let’s close on Laurie Green’s thoughts regarding Ann LePage as told to AP, “I really hate a lot of our politicians nowadays that have the wealth, the money. They have no clue what the average person out in the world is doing.”

But Ann does.

John Paul Jones Is a Stranger in Today’s Navy

“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

Captain John Paul Jones USN

 

The US Navy’s Combined Task Force 56 had two fast boats capable of speeds up to 50 MPH and fairly bristling with armament — two remote-controlled 25 mm chain guns and six crew operated .50 caliber machine guns — yet when they blundered into harm’s way both vessels surrendered to a rag–tag collection of bass boats manned by Iranian pirates.

The subsequent capture photos are telling. A handful of US sailors on their knees looking utterly defeated while some scruffy Iranian in a Jiffy Lube jumpsuit shouts orders.

We’ve come a long way since John Paul Jones and the journey hasn’t been edifying.

This humiliating episode could not matter less to the first female occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama, but it sends a dangerous message regarding national purpose to the rest of the world and sets a dispiriting example for that portion of the military that still has some pride.

You can plot the curve of the Navy’s decline starting with a recruiting campaign that was evidently aimed at social workers instead of sailors. See what I’m talking about by clicking on the link below.

http://www.newsmax.com/MichaelShannon/gunboats-surrender/2016/07/06/id/737378/

Obama Insults the Bereaved in Dallas

It takes a special kind of president to travel to Dallas, ostensibly to speak at a memorial service for five assassinated police officers, and instead deliver a Black Lives Matter convention speech. A president completely oblivious to the purpose of the occasion and what decency requires.

Obama delivered a speech the Daily Caller said was almost entirely his composition, so sympathizers can’t go to the default excuse and blame it on the staff.

This was Obama letting Obama be Obama.

Less than half the speech can generously be attributed to honoring the officers who gave their lives.

The rest was an insulting travesty that combined Obama’s usual self–referential adulation (45 mentions of “I”) with his faculty lounge race–baiting and hectoring of a society that after almost eight years still doesn’t deserve him.

It was a slap in the face to every member of the Dallas police family when Obama made excuses for Black Lives Matter and included sympathetic references to Alton Sterling who was shot resisting arrest in Baton Rouge: “And I understand these protests — I see them…Sometimes they can be hijacked by an irresponsible few. Police can get hurt. Protesters can get hurt.

“…But even those who dislike the phrase “black lives matter,” surely, we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family.” Maybe later, but certainly not at the Dallas service.

There is no sentimental equivalence between the deaths of five police officers killed while protecting people expressing their dislike of cops and the death of a career criminal.

Obama justifies this bizarre show of mortuary equivalence by explaining that in addition to his criminal career, Alton was the black male answer to Paula Dean, “We should — when we hear a friend describe him by saying that, whatever he cooked, he cooked enough for everybody, that should sound familiar to us, that maybe he wasn’t so different than us. So that we can, yes, insist that his life matters.”

Yes, nothing says loving like something from the oven. If only Sterling expressed an equal love for the law.

Dallas cops gave their lives trying to keep the peace, Sterling lost his life running a low–class hustle where he sold pirated CDs and DVDs to a customer base that has as much respect for intellectual property as China.

Examined in the light of his overall criminal career, Sterling’s activities that night were almost benign, except for brandishing the gun at the person who called 9–1–1. The individual Obama eulogized on the Dallas stage was a convicted pedophile, domestic abuser, burglar and thief with previous gun convictions.

That’s enough to get you banned from the NFL, but if a cop shoots Sterling as he reaches for the illegal gun in his pocket, it rates a shout out from the president.

Hands down, I want to shoot!

The speech would’ve been a perfect time for Obama to point out it’s not only whites who fall prey to racial bigotry and that the nation as a whole would be better served if we resisted the urge to jump to conclusions before all the facts where known. And to give some credit, he did say painting all cops as criminals, serving a corrupt justice system, was wrong.

And then Obama turns around and gives Black Lives Matter, the group doing just that, absolution for the climate of cop hatred it created!

 

“We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn’t simply vanish with the law against segregation…So that if you’re black, you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested; more likely to get longer sentences; more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime…we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid.

“…To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members, again and again and again, it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.”

So maybe these Dallas cops were innocent, but keep an eye on the rest of those crackers.

During an occasion that called for truth Obama endorsed a racial shakedown movement based on the lie that Michael Brown was shot down in cold blood while on his way deliver cigars to orphans.

It was a travesty. It was offensive. And it was a disservice to the families of the slain police officers.

Black lies matter, Mr. President. If you don’t believe it, call the chief in Dallas.

Comey & FBI Blink After Email Investigation

FBI Director James Comey’s news conference on the conclusion of the Hillary Clinton investigation reminded me of another staged media event in a hostile environment almost 50 years ago. During the Vietnam War Commander Jeremiah Denton had been shot down on a bombing raid and was being held in a Hanoi prison camp.

In May 1967 Denton was marched out by his captors to face a battery of television cameras. The goal of the propaganda event was to “prove” to gullible leftist journalists that the prisoners were well–treated in Hanoi.

Hillary Rodham Nixon

During his forced testimony Denton fooled his captors by blinking out the Morse code letters that spelled TORTURE. This was the first proof the Pentagon had that POWs were being tortured.

Denton paid the price for his courage by suffering more beatings.

In some ways the stakes at Comey’s event were as momentous as those at Denton’s: Potential duress, hostile leftist environment, psychological pressure and anxiety about his future. And although the final conclusion let Hillary off the hook, for a while it looked as if Comey was trying undermine the general tone of exoneration by using facts to contradict her lies and the administration’s pre–determined outcome for the investigation.

(For those of you who don’t believe it was pre–determined, note the timing: Comey recommends no indictment on the same day Obama travels with Hillary to Charlotte for a public endorsement.)

Comey’s stated the felony portion of the investigation was to determine if classified information was mishandled “either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way.”

He then methodically proved Clinton had been lying to the American public for months, which is not usually the script for a government whitewash.

1. Instead of a single email server for “convenience” Hillary “used several different servers and administrators…and used numerous mobile devices to view and send e-mail.”
2. Although the Nixon–like Hillary has denied ever sending classified email, the FBI found 110 messages containing classified information when Hillary sent or received the email. Classification varied from Top Secret, to Secret, to Confidential.
3. Hillary assured the public — a statement not covered by perjury law — that all non–yoga email had been returned to the State Department. Comey said “thousands” of work–related email had been withheld from investigators.
4. During the tooth–extraction like process that characterized Hillary’s return of official business communication, she promised the public her legal team “read” every email to see if it was official or yoga. Comey found the Clinton team “did not individually read the content.”
5. Even after finding thousands of email messages not returned to investigators, Comey explained, “It is also likely that there are other work-related e-mails that they did not produce” and will never be produced because her lawyers erased the server in a manner that left the email impossible to recover.

Just offhand it seems to me we have obstruction and conspiracy, in addition to the other offenses. Comey then, as if waking from a trance, returned to the official line that there was no intent to violate the law, just “extreme carelessness.”

So how does one distinguish between the earlier “gross negligence” and “extreme carelessness”?

Easy, with the same set of facts if you’re just another government employee it’s “gross negligence,” but if you’re the Democrat presidential nominee, it’s “extreme carelessness.”

Anyone whose ever gotten a speeding ticket for unknowingly going faster than allowed knows ignorance of the law is no excuse, unless you’re a Clinton. Comey knows this and maybe it bothered his conscience, briefly, hence the damning details.

But he recovers fast. The conclusion he delivered exonerated Hillary in this instance and confirmed that henceforth under Democrat rule we will have a two–tier system of justice. One for Hillary and administration favorites and another for us little folks. That’s why NBC’s David Gregory can violate DC gun laws and face no consequences and Katie Couric can violate federal gun laws and not even get a call from ATF.

While David Daleiden who went undercover to videotape the damning Planned Parenthood organ selling scandal is now the one under indictment.

Even Comey recognizes that now the law “defers to the great” as he sheepishly explains, “this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.”

Maybe Comey thought pointing out the lies and laying out the evidence was enough to absolve him of blame for this travesty. But it most certainly was not.

When faced with a career–defining test Jeremiah Denton did all he could do, I’m not sure Comey did the minimum he could do.