Venezuelans Dancing To YMCA In Honor of Trump

 Liberals hate this, of course.

Congressional Approval Not Needed

The only people mad about the capture of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela are Russia, China, Iran and Democrats. Notice a pattern here?

There's a few panty waists around who whine that President Trump has to get congressional approval for this kind of operation.

Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley responds:

The Trump Legal Team Made the Case

In a morning press conference today, Rudy Giuliani and the Trump Campaign legal team layed out in detail the evidence of vote counting fraud to the American people.

It was compelling and, at the same time, astonishing. Anyone who loves this country who watched or listen to the presentation should be revolted. Anyone who parrots the lamestream media's mantra of "no evidence was presented" are either very incredibly stupid or just totally dishonest. 

There's no way in hell Biden was elected president. People involved in this must be prosecuted and jailed!

Some excerpts courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

GIULIANI:  As we started investigating, both our investigations and the very patriotic and brave American citizens that have come forward are extraordinary, extraordinary number of people, extraordinary number of witnesses. And what emerged very quickly is this is not a singular voter fraud in one state. This pattern repeats itself in a number of states, almost exactly the same pattern, which to any experienced investigator, prosecutor would suggest that there was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud, specifically focused on big cities, and specifically focused on, as you would imagine, big cities controlled by Democrats.

GIULIANI: In Pennsylvania, the margin of victory now for Biden, which is not a victory; it’s a fraud — is 69,140 votes. The reality is that we are now at a count of 682,770 ballots for which we have affidavits that there was no inspection of that ballot at the time that it was entered in the vote. It was a mail ballot. Mail ballots are particularly prone to fraud. We were warned about that by Jimmy Carter, President Jimmy Carter and Secretary Baker in a report about a dozen years ago in which they said that mail balloting is particularly susceptible of fraud, that we should very carefully consider ever doing it and that it can be taken advantage of.

Justice Souter warned us of the same thing in a comment in an election law case. And even the New York Times wrote articles about how dangerous mail voting, mail-in voting was. And this is the first time we ever did it en masse. And I think we proved that all three are problems. It’s not only susceptible to fraud, it is easily susceptible to fraud, particularly if you have a plan or scheme which sounds eerily similar to what Joe Biden told us a few days before the election that he had the best voter fraud team in the world.

GIULIANI: But they were good. I don’t know that they were that good because they made significant mistakes, like all crooks do, and we caught ’em. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors. Every state, almost every civilized country, even Tanzania and places that you wouldn’t think of have rules about inspectors, particularly for mail-in ballots. And why particularly for mail-in ballots? Because they can more easily be defrauded and —

GIULIANI: — it’s so easy. Well, you fill out an envelope like this. You put your — usually in New York would be your assembly district and precinct in which you’re voting. You fill out your name and your address and you sign it. You then use an inner envelope, and you put the ballot inside the inner envelope. You seal it all and you send it in. When it’s being counted, almost invariably in the United States up until the mass cheating that went on in this election, a Republican and a Democrat inspector, as well as others if there are other parties, is allowed to watch the unsealing of this ballot. It used to go on all over America when we conducted honest elections.

RUSH: This is an important point here, folks.

GIULIANI: Because the only time you can ever find out if it’s a fraudulent ballot is when it is looked at. The minute you approve this, it’s thrown away —

GIULIANI: — gone for eternity. The only thing left is the vote. That could have been Mickey Mouse. That could have been a dead person. That could have been not filled out properly. That could have been the same person 30 times.

RUSH: It’s a real point.

GIULIANI: And all these things have happened, by the way. That could have been nothing filled out. We’d never know. So, for example, the recount being done in Georgia will tell us nothing because these fraudulent ballots will just be counted again because they wouldn’t supply the signatures to match the ballots. So it means nothing to have counted these ballots because, for example, in Pennsylvania where we have probably our most precise evidence, 682,770 of these ballots were cast, put in, and they weren’t inspected, which renders them ballots that are null and void. Cannot be counted, have to be removed from the vote.

Why? For several reasons, not the least of which is that was basically only one of two places in the state where it was done. So in the other parts of the state there was a legitimate inspection of the ballots. So if you have two different standards in different parts of the state, one favoring one part of the state, the other disfavoring the other part of the state, that’s a classic violation of equal-protection clause of the United States Constitution, Bush v. Gore being the most recent case that teaches that.

That’s not the only fraud that went on in Pennsylvania. All of the other frauds carried out in the other states by the Democrat bosses happened there as well. For example, if you’ve made a mistake in that ballot and you lived in Philadelphia or in Pittsburgh, you were allowed to fix the mistake. But if you lived in what would be considered more Republican or Trump parts of the state, you were given no such right. One of our plaintiffs, Mr. Henry, cast an absentee ballot. And he failed to put it in the secure envelope inside. He just put it in open, naked.

GIULIANI: The ballot was —

RUSH: Naked.

GIULIANI: — cast aside because it was invalid, because that breaks the privacy of the vote.

RUSH: Sidney Powell is now at the microphone explaining her part in this, and we join the press conference now.

POWELL: — referendum came out the way he did not want it to come out. We have one very strong witness who has explained how it all works. His affidavit is attached to the pleadings of Lin Wood and the lawsuit he filed in Georgia. It is a stunning, detailed affidavit because he was with Hugo Chavez while he was being briefed on how it worked. He was with Hugo Chavez when he saw it operate to make sure the election came out his way. That was the express purpose for creating the software. He has seen it operate. And as soon as he saw the multiple states shut down the voting on the night of the election, he knew the same thing was happening here, that that was what had gone on.

Now, the software itself was created with so many variables and so many back doors that can be hooked up to the internet or a thumb drive stuck in it or whatever. But one of its most characteristic features is its ability to flip votes. It can set and run an algorithm that probably ran all over the country to take a certain percentage of votes from President Trump and flip them to President Biden, which we might never have uncovered had the votes for President Trump not been so overwhelming in so many of these states that it broke algorithm that had been plugged into the system.

And that’s what caused them to have to shut down in the states they shut down in. That’s when they came in the back door with all the mail-in ballots, many of which they had actually fabricated. Some were on pristine paper with identically matching, perfect circled dots for Mr. Biden. Others were shoved in in batches. They’re always put in in a certain number of batches, and people would rerun the same batch. This corresponds to our statistical evidence that shows incredible spikes in the vote counts at particular times. And that corresponds to eyewitness testimony of numerous people who have come forward and said they saw the ballots come in the back door at that time.

Notably, the Dominion executives are nowhere to be found now. They are moving their offices overnight to different places. Their office in Toronto was shared with one of the Soros entities. One of the leaders of the Dominion project overall is Lord Malloch-Brown, Mr. Soros’ number 2 person in the U.K. and part of his organization. There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country.

Just to give you a brief description of how this worked, I’m gonna quote from a letter that was written, and I will read that to make sure I get the quotes right. This person was objecting to the United States’ acquisition of Sequoia voting systems by Smartmatic, a foreign owned country. I believe this transaction raises exactly the sort of foreign ownership issues that CFIUS is best positioned to examine for national security purposes.

It’s undisputed that Smartmatic is foreign owned and is (unintelligible) Sequoia. They keep changing the names as they go along. Different times when a problem comes up they just create another corporation and call it a different name. But it was a voting machine company doing business in the United States. Sequoia voting machines were used to record over 125 million votes during the 2004 presidential election in the United States.

Smartmatic now acknowledges that Antonio Mugica, a Venezuela businessman has controlling interest in Smartmatic, but the company has not revealed who all the Smartmatic owners are. According to the press, Smartmatic’s owners are hidden through a web of offshore private entities. And that is in fact true. Smartmatic has been associated with the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez which is openly hostile to the United States, and of course as we all know communistic and really brutalizing its own people.

The system has been continued there by Mr. Maduro and ensured his election. Smartmatic’s possible connection to the Venezuela government poses a potential national security concern in the context of its acquisition of Sequoia because electronic voting machines are susceptible to tampering, and insiders are in the best position to engage in such –

RUSH: Attention EIB affiliates, we are sticking with this through the upcoming commercial break. We are staying with this. The American people need to hear this and nobody else is covering it.

POWELL: — Venezuelan origin and evaluate Smartmatic’s ownership to determine who could have influence and control over these other Sequoia products and services are important to the national security of the United States. This letter was written to Hank Paulson on October 6, 2006, by Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney. Senators Klobuchar and Warren have raised these concerns as recently as December 2019. Why our government has not taken them seriously is beyond my comprehension unless they have some of the three letter agencies have used them themselves in other parts of the world. We know that the technology was exported to affect an election in Argentina. That’s admitted by our friend who wrote the affidavit about Hugo Chavez and his interest in Smartmatic.

Again, in 2006, Carolyn Maloney wrote the Honorable John Snow, the secretary of the Treasury, about the issues. Speaking of Smartmatic’s leadership, one of the Smartmatic patent holders, Eric Coomer, I believe his name is, is on the Web as being recorded in a conversation with Antifa members, saying that he had the election rigged for Mr. Biden. Nothing to worry about here. And he was going to — they were going to F Trump. His social media is filled with hatred for the president and for the United States of America as a whole, as are the social media accounts of many other Smartmatic people.

**********************************

To read more of the transcript, go here.

U.S. Bans Flights To Cuba, Except Havana

Above, El Capitolio in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Trump Administration tightened the vice of travel-banning on Cuba by announcing a ban on U.S. flights to Cuba, except Havana.

CBS News reported:

Starting in December, the U.S. will ban flights to all major airports in Cuba, except for the one located in Havana. The decision, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, comes in response to Cuba's support for Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and aims to ensure that the Cuban government cannot profit from U.S. travel.

In a tweet, Pompeo said he asked Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to suspend air service so Cuba cannot profit from U.S. air travel and use the revenues to "repress the Cuban people." 

To read more, go here. 

Cuba Tourism Tanks 24%

Above, tourists in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The following article is certainly no surprise.

After President Trump clamped down on American tourism to Cuba back in June, tourism to the communist island nation plummeted.

I managed to take a cruise to Cuba with Royal Caribbean in April. At that time, there were rumblings that cruises to Cuba would soon be coming to an end.

The Japan Times reported:

HAVANA – Tourist arrivals to Cuba plunged 23.6 percent on the year in July, official data showed on Wednesday, confirming the blow dealt to the sector by the Trump administration’s tightening of U.S. restrictions on travel to the Caribbean island. 

Data from the Statistics Office had already shown a 20 percent drop in arrivals in June, after Washington that same month banned cruises to Cuba and made it harder for U.S. citizens to get an exemption from the ban on travel there. 

The sustained decline reverses a boom in arrivals and therefore the broader tourism industry in recent years following the U.S.-Cuban detente under former U.S. President Barack Obama that President Donald Trump is now unraveling. 

The Trump administration has targeted two of the few bright spots in Cuba’s otherwise beleaguered economy, tourism and foreign investment, as part of its campaign to pressure the Communist government to reform and drop support for embattled leftist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Above, our ship, Majesty of the Seas in Havana Port. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

To read more, go here. 

Cuba Cruises Banned For U.S. Citizens

Above, our cruise ship, Majesty of the Seas, in Havana Port in April. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It is now obvious that the cruise to Cuba Mitch Geriminsky and I took in April was "just in the nick of time" as President Trump has imposed new restrictions on travel to Cuba that will take effect Wednesday.

This does not come as a surprise as there were strong rumors at the time of our cruise that we may be on one of last cruises to Cuba. Our cruise was aboard the Majesty of the Seas with Royal Caribbean cruise lines.

According to Fox 17 Nashville:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed major new travel restrictions on visits to Cuba by U.S. citizens, banning stops by cruise ships and ending a heavily used form of educational travel as it seeks to further isolate the communist government. 

The Treasury Department announced that the U.S. will no longer allow cruises to Cuba or the group educational and cultural trips known as "people to people" travel to the island. 

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the measures are a response to what it calls Cuba's "destabilizing role" in the Western Hemisphere, including support for the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. 

"This administration has made a strategic decision to reverse the loosening of sanctions and other restrictions on the Cuban regime," Mnuchin said. "These actions will help to keep U.S. dollars out of the hands of Cuban military, intelligence, and security services."

Cruise ships have brought thousands of Americans to Cuba since the U.S. began restoring full diplomatic relations with the communist government in December 2014 and have provided an important economic lifeline to the island.

To read more, go here.

Restrictions On Cuba Travel

Above, our ship, Royal Caribbean's Majesty of the Seas in Havana Port. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

About the time I went on a Royal Caribbean cruise to Havana, Cuba, the Trump Administration issued new restrictions on Americans traveling to the island. Much of this has to do with the growing crisis in Venezuela.

According to an April 22 article in the New York Times:

The Trump administration said it would crack down on ‘veiled tourism’ to Cuba. Here’s what that could mean for U.S. travelers.

For Americans who want to visit Cuba, things got even murkier as the Trump administration last week said that it would further restrict nonfamily travel to the island. 

The new restrictions are part of a tougher policy toward Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba, said John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, who called the three countries “the troika of tyranny” in a speech to veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the failed 1961 attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. 

“The Department of the Treasury will implement further regulatory changes to restrict nonfamily travel to Cuba,” he said. “These new measures will help steer Americans’ dollars away from the Cuban regime.” 

The statement suggests that the government will increasingly restrict travel to the island, but it was vague enough to leave travelers wondering if their trips to Cuba would suddenly be canceled.

According to the article, permitted travel to Cuba consists of 12 categories:

The 12 categories are: family visits; support for the Cuban people; educational, religious or journalistic activities; humanitarian projects; professional research and professional meetings; activities of private foundations, research or educational institutes; public performances, clinics, workshops, athletic and other competitions, and exhibitions; official business of the United States government, foreign governments and certain intergovernmental organizations; exportation, importation or transmission of information or informational materials; and certain authorized export transactions. 

Mr. Bolton said that at least some of the travel to Cuba was “veiled tourism,” and that the government would be cracking down on it.

Above, a vintage 1950s Chevrolet in Havana. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I found the trip to Cuba to be very interesting and would recommend a trip. Obviously, my trip was 100% tourism. But anyone contemplating a trip to Cuba should keep track on current and upcoming changes on Cuban travel.

To read more, go here.

Trump Threatens Cuba With 'Full and Complete' Embargo

Above, El Capitolio, or the National Capitol Building, of Cuba last week. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

A little while ago, my "honorary sister" sent me an email saying, "Good thing you are back from that trip!" Meaning, rising tensions between the U.S. and Cuba over Venezuela may possibly cause problems with American nationals touring Cuba.

I just returned from Cuba last weekend.

Along with her email, she sent this:

According to Fox News:

As Venezuela plunged into a dramatic televised scene of chaos and violence on Tuesday, President Trump warned he would impose a "full and complete embargo" and sanctions on Cuba if its troops do not cease operations in the ravaged South American nation. 

National Security Adviser John Bolton alleged earlier Tuesday that Cuban troops were keeping Maduro in power in Caracas. 

“It’s a very delicate moment,” Bolton said, adding that "all options" remained on the table -- including, potentially, a U.S. military intervention. “The president wants to see a peaceful transfer of power." 

Trump's dramatic threat came hours after his administration resoundingly endorsed an ongoing Venezuelan opposition effort, headed by Juan Guaido and Leopoldo Lopez, to spark a military uprising against embattled President Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration also has worked to roll back Obama-era easing of Cold War sanctions on Cuba. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Tuesday that Maduro had been on his way out of the country bound for Cuba, but that Russia told him to remain. Bolton, meanwhile, warned Russia against interfering. 

The U.S. government said about 20,000 Cuban troops and agents have been working in Venezuela to prop up Maduro's government, a figure disputed by Cuba.

The next 48 hours are sure to be very interesting!

To read more, go here. 

The New Poverty Capital: California

The "Golden State" under Democrat rule, is now the socialist "Garbage State" in America. 

It has surpassed Mississippi as the poorest state in America. This did not come from some right-wing blog, but from the pages of the Los Angeles Times.

In an Op-Ed of January 14, writer Kerry Jackson spelled it out.

She wrote:

Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income. 

Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it’s worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%). 

Looking to help poor and low-income residents, California lawmakers recently passed a measure raising the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 an hour by 2022 — but a higher minimum wage will do nothing for the 60% of Californians who live in poverty and don’t have jobs. And research indicates that it could cause many who do have jobs to lose them. A Harvard University study found evidence that “higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants” in the Bay Area, where more than a dozen cities and counties, including San Francisco, have changed their minimum-wage ordinances in the last five years. “Estimates suggest that a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14% increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3.5-star restaurant (which is the median rating),” the report says. These restaurants are a significant source of employment for low-skilled and entry-level workers.

The Conservative Tribune noted in their analysis of the Jackson article:

“Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse,” Jackson continued. 

“It’s as though welfare reform passed California by, leaving a dependency trap in place. Immigrants are falling into it: 55% of immigrant families in the state get some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30% of natives.” 

Other reasons for California being the new capital of poverty? Californians spent 30 percent of their income on housing in 2015, in part because of government regulations around land use and the environment. 

“Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” analyst Wendell Cox said. “Middle-income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.” 

That’s not the only place where the state’s exigent environmental regulations have hurt the middle class and poor. Some estimates have energy prices at 50 percent more than the national average due mostly to regulations. 

The great irony at work here is that this has been the Democrat playbook for decades now. We’re told that if we give the poorest among us welfare, it will spark the economy more than tax cuts because the impoverished will put that money back into the economy. Green energy — adopted in expedited fashion due to environmental regulations — was supposed to create new industries and economic growth as far as the windmill-trained eye could see. 

Instead, what we’ve seen is homelessness, shantytowns, extreme income inequality, joblessness, deficits, and all without discernible benefit to the state and the nation at large. Which raises the question: isn’t this what they said the conservative agenda would lead to?

This is what happens when you have only one political party, filled with lunatic socialists, running a state. There is no effective opposition to stop them from turning California into another Venezuela.

To read more, go here.

Democrats' Single-Payer Healthcare Scheme Will Destroy The State

The Looney Left Report

The socialist California Democrats have unveiled a new and insane scheme to provide "free" healthcare for all under a single-payer system.

That is one sure way to destroy California once and for all. That's what happens when one party (the Democrats) virtually owns the state with no real opposition.

According to the Orange County Register:

The staggering price tag for the Democrats’ plan to provide “health care for all” would cost California $400 billion a year to create a state-funded universal health care system — more than double the $180 billion annual state budget. 

California residents will be required to pay significantly increased taxes — as much as 50 percent or more — to the state to cover health care costs, rather than individuals being able to make their own decisions to buy from private insurers who have to compete for their business. 

The real motive behind Los Angeles-area Democrat Sen. Ricardo Lara’s Senate Bill 562 is to provide health coverage to everyone in the state, whether they are here legally or not. It’s just another very expensive welfare program for people who do not pay into the system. 

Competition always produces better results — state-run health care will have no competition and no accountability. Costs will soar, and quality health care will diminish. In other words, single-payer health care is a sure way to destroy the California economy, and send more residents fleeing to lower-tax states. We’d be driving jobs and productivity out of California, while bringing those seeking free health care into California.

State Senator Ricardo Lara has to be either a Venezuelan socialist (we know how that's working out down there) or the biggest idiot who has ever stepped into the halls of the California State Capitol.

To read more, go here.

When Democrats Get Desperate, They Get Nuttier

When Democrats become desperate in an election campaign, one can always count on them to get even nuttier than they already are.

The Democratic National Committee released a Spanish-language ad comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. They didn't stop there. They lumped the late Venezuelan dictactor Hugo Chavez with them, and managed to piss off that country.

Fox News Latino reported:

It’s unclear whether the Venezuelan government is more upset that a new Democratic Party campaign ad for Hillary Clinton compared late President Hugo Chávez to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump or that they lumped the socialist leader together with fascist strongmen Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. 

What is clear is authorities from the South American nation slammed the so-called “racist arrogance” of U.S. Democrats.

Recent polls have begun to show that Donald Trump has gained on Hillary Clinton or, in some polls, passed her. This has not gone unnoticed by the DNC, which sent them into panic-mode and they put out the ad comparing Trump to some of the worst 20th Century despots.

The ad is even pretty low, even for the DNC. History has taught us that when Democrats get desperate, do even nuttier things than usual.

To read more, go here.

Tyranny In Action: Obama Intimidating GOP Donors

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez must be smiling today.

President Barack Obama is reaching back to his thuggish Chicago politics roots. He is contemplating two means of attack against potential GOP donors. Does the term "abuse of power" sound familiar? This definitely smacks of Chicago politics or Venezuela.







FoxNews.com is reporting:

Is President Obama running scared? That’s certainly one explanation for two recent efforts to squash the flow of money into GOP campaign coffers.

Not only is the White House pushing an executive order requiring would-be federal contractors to disclose political donations – a proposal so blatantly partisan that even Democrats are crying foul – but now the IRS has climbed aboard by challenging gifts to politically involved not-for-profits.

The proposal demands that companies hoping to do business with the government disclose political gifts made within two years of the contract submission. A preview statement from Chairman Darrell Issa described “bipartisan alarm” over the suggested rule, which many think could lead to a “spoils system”. (A system, for instance, that would not be out of place in Chicago.) As Mr. Issa points out, noticeably absent from the White House Executive Order is any such requirement for unions.

Scurrying to develop other ways to clamp down on GOP money-raising and influence, the Obama administration also has the IRS scrutinizing gifts made to non-profit groups that have political leanings. The tax authority has sent letters to five wealthy donors questioning, for the first time, the treatment of gifts to such advocacy groups. President Obama has long been on the warpath against such entities, that are organized as 501(c)(4)s and that have become increasingly powerful vehicles for political activists.

If the goes through with these plans, it would be an obvious executive abuse of power (wasn't Richard Nixon crucified for using the IRS against political opponents?) and should be denied re-election or, if necessary, impeachment and removal from office.

To read the full article, go here.