Posts Tagged ‘Comcast’

BidenWatch for August 17, 2020

Monday, August 17th, 2020

The Virtual DNC starts today, voters are not sold on Slow Joe, Team Obama thinks he’s an idiot, he hates the Second Amendment, and we harvest a week’s worth of Kamala Harris bashing. Plus a whole bunch of the Babylon Bee. It’s this week’s BidenWatch!

  • The virtual Democratic National Convention starts today. Finally, a political event that combines the dignity of a Zoom meeting with the raw excitement of a Zoom meeting.
  • Swing voters are not sold on Biden.
    • Many of these voters prioritize the economy as their #1 issue in this election and continue to trust Trump on that issue, saying the economy was doing well before the pandemic.
    • In addition to improving the economy and trying to bring more jobs to the U.S., Jeff O. said he’s picking Trump because “I don’t think that Biden is mentally capable of being president.”
    • Matt T. described Biden as “up there in age” and “showing signs of dementia” as well as “a puppet” who is “controlled by a lot of people in the deep state.” He went on to define that term as “the lobbyists, the people that have the big money, the people that have influence on a lot of the politicians.”
  • Just who is running against Trump?

    As we enter the final 90 days of the November presidential campaign, a few truths are crystalizing about the “Biden problem,” or the inability of a 77-year-old Joe Biden to conduct a “normal” campaign.

    Biden’s cognitive challenges are increasing geometrically, whether as a result of months of relative inactivity and lack of stimulation or just consistent with the medical trajectory of his affliction. His lot is increasingly similar to historical figures such as 67-year-old President William Henry Harrison, William Gladstone’s last tenure as prime minister, Chancellor Hindenburg, or Franklin Roosevelt in late 1944—age and physical infirmities signaling to the concerned that a subordinate might assume power sooner than later.

    Snip.

    So we are witnessing a campaign never before experienced in American history and not entirely attributable to the plague and quarantine. After all, the fellow septuagenarian Trump, with his own array of medical challenges, insists upon frenetic and near-constant public appearances. His opponent is a noncandidate conducting a noncampaign that demands we ask the question, who exactly is drafting the Biden agenda and strategy? Or, rather, who or what is Biden, if not a composite cat’s paw of an anonymous left-wing central committee?

    When Biden speaks for more than a few minutes without a script or a minder in his basement, the results are often racist of the sort in the Black Lives Matter era that otherwise would be rightly damned and called out as disqualifying. If his inner racialist persona continues to surface, Biden’s insensitivities threaten to expose a muzzled BLM as a mere transparent effort to grab power rather than to address “systemic racism” of the sort the exempt Biden seems to exude.

    Biden needs the minority vote in overwhelming numbers, as he realized in his late comeback in the primaries. But the continuance of his often angry, unapologetic racialist nonsense suggests that his cognitive issues trump his political sense of self-control.

    The inner Biden at 77 is turning out to be an unabashed bigot in the age of “cancel culture” and thought crimes that has apparently declared him immune from the opprobrium reserved for any such speech.

    For Biden, if any African American doesn’t vote for him, then “you ain’t black”—a charge fired back at black podcaster with near venom. Biden more calmly assures us, in his all-knowing Bideneque wisdom, that Americans can’t tell Asians in general apart—channeling the ancient racist trope that “they all look alike.”

    In his scrambled sociology, blacks are unimaginatively monolithic politically, while Latinos are diverse and more flexible. Biden seems to have no notion that “Latino” is a sort of construct to encompass everyone from a Brazilian aristocrat to an immigrant from the state of Oaxaca, and not comparable to the more inclusive and precise term “African American.” Moreover, while the black leadership in Congress may be politically monolithic, there are millions of blacks who oppose abortion, defunding the police, and illegal immigration.

  • Not to put too fine a point on it, but Team Obama thinks Joe Biden is an idiot:

    You could certainly see technocratic eye-rolling at times,” said Jen Psaki, the former White House communications director. Young White House aides frequently mocked Biden’s gaffes and lack of discipline in comparison to the almost clerical Obama. They would chortle at how Biden, like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving, would launch into extended monologues that everyone had heard before.

    Former administration officials treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.

    Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, who was known for his mind-meld with the president, wrote in his memoir that “in the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile.”

    Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”

    Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”

  • More on the same subject: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Kamala Harris on the Ticket Is an In-Kind Donation to Trump-Pence 2020“:

    What Harris Brings to the Ticket

    Baggage, for starters. Enough baggage to fill a fleet of 747s. Tyler goes over much of it here and here.

    Harris has been a, shall we say, problematic candidate from the get-go. Her tenures as both the district attorney in San Francisco and the attorney general of California left a lot to be desired. I wrote in a post early last year speculating that she may be her own toughest obstacle because of this:

    Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is not only running against an ever-growing field of fellow Democrats for the 2020 presidential election, but also against what may prove to be a couple of far more formidable opponents: her own records as the district attorney of San Francisco and later the attorney general of California.

    What’s problematic for Harris is that the people who have the most problems with her records are the very progressives she seeks to secure as her base.

    A Capitol Hill friend of mine joked that Harris on the ticket might put California in play for the Republicans, which serves as a humorous segue to the next point here.

    Conventional wisdom dictates that the out-of-power party’s nominee chooses a running mate that can deliver votes from a part of the country that the candidate needs.

    Spoiler alert: California’s electoral votes were already Biden’s.

    From a practical, electoral vote standpoint, Harris brings nothing to the ticket. The deep blue states that were already going to vote for der Bidengaffer are still going to vote for him. Does anyone really think that she is going win over hearts and minds in swing states?

    Let us not forget that Harris is available for this gig because she was the biggest flop of the “top-tier” (her words) candidates to have to leave the race (no, Beto was never top-tier). She may have lasted until December of 2019 but I was already doing a Kamala campaign deathwatch in September on the Morning Briefing after the big Dem donors fled her in droves.

  • “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deploy the Charlottesville hoax to stir up racial pain and anger.”

    I saw in a tweet that he was forefronting the Charlottesville “fine people” hoax. On his first day of campaigning with his running mate, he led with that. I say “he,” but I don’t really believe it’s him. I think it’s more likely that he’s a foggy-minded figurehead, and other people have decided to frame the message like that. I consider these people — whoever they are — despicable. They have chosen quite deliberately to commit to a lie that is intended to make black people feel hated and they are doing it for political gain.

    As my earlier post about the tweet says, I blogged in April 2019, “If Biden does not come forward and retract [a video relying on the Charlottesville hoax] and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President.” Now, more than a year later, Biden has done the opposite. He’s doubled down on the lie and he’s making it the centerpiece of his campaign!

  • The truth about Biden is getting out:

    Somehow, despite the press blockade, word about Joe Biden has gotten out. Rasmussen got this stunning poll result: 59% of respondents don’t think Biden will be around to finish a four-year term, should he be elected. And it isn’t only Republicans who doubt that Biden will be well enough to serve out a term in office. Forty-nine percent of Democrats agree that if Biden wins, it is likely his vice-president will assume the office within four years. No wonder Biden’s handlers are pondering his Veep selection carefully!

    Bear in mind that it is only August. Most people haven’t yet begun paying attention to politics. The public’s perception that Joe Biden is more or less incapacitated will only grow as voters see him in action and begin following events more closely. Of course, the Democrats want to make this year’s election a referendum on President Trump, whom they think they have fatally weakened with non-stop smears over the last four years. They might be right. But I seriously doubt that a majority of Americans will vote for a candidate whom they rightly see as suffering from seriously diminished capacities. Which raises once again the question whether Biden will actually be on the ballot in November.

    Slow Joe is going to stay in hiding for as long as possible.

    Joe Biden isn’t leaving his Delaware home for the campaign trail anytime soon.

    The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is gearing up to step into the spotlight when he announces his vice presidential pick and accepts the party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention this month. But don’t expect a dramatic shift from Biden away from what Republicans tease is his “basement bunker” strategy to that of a news-cycle warrior in the months before Election Day.

    When the coronavirus pandemic first shut down normal life in March, political observers immediately wondered how Biden would be able to campaign effectively while cooped up in his basement. A few months later, after he secured a new in-home studio, started a steady stream of digital events, and rose in the polls, Democrats warmed to his low-key campaign while letting President Trump deal with negative press. Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said in June that Biden is “fine in the basement.”

    There was a sense, though, that eventually, in the heat of the fall campaign season, Biden would assume a higher profile in the daily news cycle.

    But there are indications that the low-key style could be here to stay.

    Snip.

    His style is so understated lately that journalists have started hinting annoyance that Biden is not participating in tough national interviews. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said on-air last month that Biden is due for more press exposure. Following a tense interview Trump did with Axios’s Jonathan Swan, several journalists questioned whether the campaign would allow Swan to interview Biden.

    So far that’s a big N O from Slow Joe’s campaign…

  • The Biden campaign raised $26 million in fundraising in the 24 hours after the Harris veep pick. The donor class loves it when Biden follows the script…
  • Kurt Schlichter unloads on the Harris pick:

    All across America, little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, who have been endlessly told by unspecified haters that they can never be nominated to be vice president, were inspired at Kamala Harris’ selection by whoever selected her on behalf of Grandpa Badfinger. Yes, if they hook up with a powerful married Democrat man, that initial connection can fuel their rise to power too.

    Take that, all you modern-day Bull Connors (Connor was a Democrat, but shhhhhhh)! “I won’t cotton to them little girls of alternatively Tamil and Afro-Caribbean descent, depending on which is most politically useful at the moment, thinkin’ they can be vice president someday,” they drawl as they twirl their mustaches. Well, Kamala showed all the haters. Girls of that oddly specific demographic can be nominated to be vice president, and let’s take it one step further – they don’t even have to hook up with a powerful married Democrat man and fuel their rise to power via that initial connection to do it! Well, sure Kamala did, and so did the ethnically uninteresting Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit, but those little girls can do it themselves. Well, maybe if they are Republicans.

    And speaking of Sarah Palin, it’s great to see that it’s once again bad to criticize a woman running for vice president.

    Now, criticizing Kamala (pronounced “i wil pr?’ nouns h?r nam ene wa i dam wel plez”) Harris has been officially declared racist and cisgender and sexist, as well as sexist, cisgender, and racist, by The New York Times, all of pinko Twitter, and the Fredocons, so we better not criticize her. Got that? No criticism. You must just sit back and let the tsunami of excitement created by the nomination of this avaricious grasper wash over you.

  • A recap of how Biden got here. “Biden will be the oldest nominee either party has ever had, and would be the oldest occupant of the White House ever on the day he took the oath. But the younger voters who preferred [Bernie] Sanders did not turn out in significant numbers during the primaries, a fact Sanders himself acknowledged.”
  • Here’s a detailed breakdown of Biden’s hostility to the Second Amendment, including banning import of some AR-pattern rifles and regulating existing rifles.
    

  • Harris doesn’t want you to own a gun either.
  • Reminder: Harris wants to eliminate private health insurance.
  • More on the “Crooked Cop” theme:

  • “Rose McGowan Calls Out Kamala Harris Over Harvey Weinstein: ‘How Many Predators Bankroll You?‘ “Kamala Harris accepted $2,500 from Harvey Weinstein for her re-election campaign for California attorney general in 2014. Three years later, she received another $2,500 donation from Weinstein for her bid for the U.S. Senate.”
  • CNN is all in on Kamala Harris.

    After nearly four solid years of CNN screeching about “speaking truth to power,” network staffers are poised to slink back into their usual habit of acting as pro bono spokespersons for the Democratic presidential ticket.

    Pour out a cold one for the Golden Age of Journalism.

    Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, campaigned together for the first time this week, promising followers in a socially distanced gymnasium that they will return honor and order to the United States.

    CNN employees responded to the campaign event with overwhelmingly positive reviews, singling out Harris’s performance as especially praiseworthy. Some hailed the senator’s allegedly extraordinary rhetorical talents. Some proclaimed the moment an especially historic one in American politics. Some theorized that President Trump must really be scared now. Others marveled simply at what a wonderful smile Harris has.

    This is all on top of the fact that many of these same CNN staffers are already awestruck by how incredible and historic it is that Biden picked a woman of color to be his running mate.

    “I thought Kamala Harris gave a fantastic speech,” said CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson. “She absolutely nailed it. I think this is one of the finest performances I’ve seen her deliver in terms of a speech. She has tremendous range as a speaker.”

    It goes on like that for quite a while, each sentence more reverential and cloying than the last.

    All true. But did any expect otherwise? I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any member of the Democratic Media Complex who’s expressed the slightest reserve about Harris. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Heh:

  • No campaign surrogates on Sunday news shows before the “convention.”


    

  • Never forget that Kamala Harris was a ringleader in the attempted Bret Kavanaugh chracter assassination.

    Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., used the Kavanaugh nomination in 2018 as a springboard for her failed presidential campaign. Focusing on her support for abortion and position on the Senate Judiciary Committee that handled the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Harris strongly opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination within moments of it being announced, and long before she had a chance to review his record.

    She joined other Democratic presidential hopefuls on the steps of the Supreme Court the next day to further express her opposition. She ran 3,600 different advertisements on Facebook before the second round of hearings began in late September 2018.

    “Her performance during the Kavanaugh circus stood out as particularly demagogic, cynical & abysmal,” wrote TownHall political editor Guy Benson.

    Within a few seconds of the first hearings being gaveled to order, Harris interrupted the proceedings in an attempt to shut them down on procedural grounds, part of a coordinated attack that included attempts by hundreds of compensated activists to get arrested.

    Harris, a former prosecutor, led a line of questioning that was an obvious attempt to put Kavanaugh in a perjury trap, albeit a trap he was able to avoid. Harris began by asking Kavanaugh if he had ever discussed Robert Mueller, the special counsel then investigating the Trump presidential campaign, with anyone.

    (Hat tip: Sean Davis.)

  • Biden’s positions on tech. He gives lip-service to the corpse of net neutrality, but he has no problem sucking up to donors who hate it (like Comcast). Doesn’t sound like he wants to keep Trump tariffs on China either, which I’m sure will also please many big business donors…
  • Talcum X 2018: “No way I’m supporting Harris & Biden.” Talcum X 2020: “Man, I love me some Harris and Biden!”
  • Bernie Sanders’ national press secretary is not enthused at the Harris pick:

    Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former National press Secretary Briahna Joy Gray criticized 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for selecting Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate.

    After the news broke that Biden selected Harris to be his running mate, Joy Gray labeled Harris as America’s “top cop” and blasted the Democratic party.

    “We are in the midst of the largest protest movement in American history, the subject of which is excessive policing, and the Democratic Party chose a ‘top cop’ and the author of the Joe Biden crime bill to save us from Trump. The contempt for the base is, wow,” Joy Gray said.

    Of course, the Social justice Warriors only think they’re the base. The fact Sanders got his ass kicked by Slow Joe proves otherwise…

  • Ouch!

  • “Beautiful golden hair on the Delaware Biden!”

  • Cruel but fair:

  • Heh:

  • Heh 2:

  • I chuckled:

  • “Concerns Raised As President Xi Seen Wearing Biden-Harris 2020 Shirt.
  • “Party Of The Poor And Oppressed Nominates Old, Rich, White Man And Cop.”
  • “‘I Don’t Need A Cognitive Test!’ Biden Screams At Pigeon.”
  • “Kamala Harris Sneaks Into White House To Plant Weed On Mike Pence.”
  • “Report: Kamala Harris Already Vetting VP Picks.”
  • “Biden: ‘A Black Woman Will Become President Over My Dead Body.'”
  • Zing!

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    Tax Cut Passes, Millions Not Dead

    Thursday, December 21st, 2017

    So tax cut bill finally passed the House and the Senate and is headed to President Donald Trump’s desk to sign.

    Not a single Democrat voted for the bill, House or Senate.

    It’s not a perfect bill, but there are a lot of good features:

  • “Lower Individual Tax Rates. The framework lowers rates for almost every tax bracket. The current seven brackets remain, but with new, generally higher income thresholds and lower rates.” Here’s a table from Business Insider:

  • Larger Standard Deduction. The standard deduction is almost doubled, consolidating the additional standard deduction and personal exemptions into one larger deduction. For married joint filers, the deduction will be $24,000; for single filers, it will be $12,000. The expanded deduction simplifies tax filing by cutting the percentage of tax filers who will need to itemize their deductions in half. Approximately nine of 10 taxpayers will simply claim the new standard deduction.”
  • Lowered corporate tax rate to 21% down from a highest-in-the-world 35%.
  • Short-term business expensing incentives:

    Temporary Expensing. The bill expands the current-law 50 percent bonus depreciation for new short-lived capital investments to 100 percent or “full expensing” for five years and then phases out over the subsequent five years. Expensing allows companies to deduct the cost of investments immediately and removes a current tax bias against investment.

    The bill also expands expensing for small businesses under Section 179 by raising the cap on eligible investment from $500,000 to $1 million. The phaseout increases from a $2 million cap to a $2.5 million cap on total equipment purchases. In 2022, businesses will no longer be able expense their research and development costs; this is a step in the wrong direction toward longer write-off schedules rather than toward expensing.

  • “For a vast majority of Americans, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will lower their federal tax bill in 2018. This is accomplished through lower tax rates, a larger standard deduction, and an expanded child tax credit. Most of the individual tax changes revert to current law before 2025 to meet political constraints and Senate budget rules. Although temporary tax policy is never ideal, the expirations give Congress an incentive to revisit the tax code in the coming years to provide more far-reaching and permanent reform.”
  • The hated ObamaCare mandate has been eliminated.
  • The not-great part:

    Many Special-Interest Subsidies Remain. A large subsidy for domestic manufacturing is eliminated, but most other credits and deductions marked for repeal in the original House bill remain in the conference report. Among the surviving subsidies are tax credits for electric vehicles, wind-energy production, energy-efficient buildings, historic rehabilitation, orphan drugs, new market investments, and employer-provided child care. The conference report also adds a new tax credit for employers who provide paid family and medical leave.

    The tax foundation estimates that taxes will go down for almost every household.

    The reaction from various businesses was swift: AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Boeing all announced they’ll be handing out raises and bonuses in the wake of the bill’s passage.

    Despite predictions to the contrary, America still seems to be intact and millions have not been slain in the wake of its passage.

    LinkSwarm for April 26, 2015

    Monday, April 27th, 2015

    Did you miss the riots in Baltimore on Saturday? You know, the ones CNN and other media outlets didn’t cover because they were too busy covering the White House Correspondent’s Dinner? Because mere rioting by the uncouth peasantry must wait while the overclass is engaged in glad-handing celebration of itself.

    In other news:

  • This was a big story last week: Wisconsin Democratic prosecutors raid houses of those accused of Republicanism. And more on the same theme.
  • Q: What do you call a 13-year who was the victim of a Muslim pedophile sex ring? A: “Racist.” (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)
  • Lutfur Rahman, the corrupt muslim Labour Mayor of Tower Hamlets, was convicted of election fraud. The Labour crew behind Tower Hamlets became so notorious for rigging elections and turning in results late that they became a running joke in UK political circles. (Hat tip: Ditto.)
  • Three Muslims charged with killing a woman in Houston because she helped convert a relative to Christianity.
  • Boko Haram is now the Islamic State in West Africa.
  • “I would describe today’s meeting as a complete breakdown in communication with Greece.” Oh, I think Greece is communicating loud and clear: They’re completely broke, and they demand the right to continue spending other people’s money indefinitely without reforming their welfare state. What’s unclear?
  • And Greeks themselves are not so happy about capital controls. Well, Greeks voted for a government dedicated to the idea that the welfare state is far more sacred than the capitalism that underpins it, and now they’re starting to reap the rewards of that choice…
  • Tech stock growth: Positive or negative? Depends on whether you include Apple or not.
  • The Comcast/Time Warner merger is officially dead. Good. Perhaps both of them should consider offering customer service that ranks higher than “abysmal” now…
  • Michael Totten reviews ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.
  • Dwight Howard, gun collector.
  • Building an affordable survival rifle.
  • Actors quit play about Ferguson because the objective truth of the screenplay (based on the actual grand jury testimony) conflicts with their preexisting beliefs. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Mayonnaise loyalty.
  • Pets looking at food. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)