Day: July 16, 2018

Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen Denies Tweet ‘Where is Our Military Folks? The Commander in Chief is in the Hands of Our Enemy!’ Was Call for Military Coup Against President Trump

Tennessee Star Staff

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) denied this afternoon that his tweet earlier in the day in which he stated “Where is our military folks? Commander in chief is in the hands of the enemy” was a call for a military coup against President Trump. Where are our military folks ? The Commander in Chief is in the hands of our enemy! https://t.co/3eF7OLKEdN — Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) July 16, 2018   Cohen attempted to “clarify” what seemed to many to be a call for a military coup against President Trump on Twitter about an hour later in response to a tweet from Christopher D. White of the Daily Caller News Foundation, but did not appear to do so successfully. “I assume you mean: why aren’t members of the military sounding off on this? Not. Why isn’t the military taking up positions to take out the POTUS? Because it’s not totally clear,” White asked. “Of course,” Cohen responded. — Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) July 16, 2018 White pushed back. “Of course *what*? Which is it?” he tweeted. Cohen did not respond.   Of course *what*? Which is it? https://t.co/x31k59eWSG — Christopher D. White (@ZanderKelly30) July 16, 2018 Just last week, Cohen attempted to walk…

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Corker Goes Off The Rails On President Trump Over Putin Meeting

John Bryant
Bob Corker, Donald Trump

Outgoing Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) went off the rails over President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland today, saying, “I just felt like the President’s comments made us look as a nation more like a pushover. I was disappointed in that. When he had the opportunity to defend our intelligence agencies, who work for him, I was very disappointed and saddened with the equivalency he gave between them and what Putin was saying.” And his criticism, which the Left loves, didn’t stop there: “Sometimes the President cares more about how a leader treats him personally than forcefully getting out there and pushing against things that we know have harmed our nation,” Corker said. “I thought that’s what we all experienced today.” He continued to say that Putin gained a “tremendous amount” from Trump’s clear approval, and that it would help Russia rebound from being “ostracized.” He added that Putin is probably “having caviar right now.” Video of Corker’s remarks are making the rounds on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/xRsz5bGdfR — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 16, 2018 A frequent critic of President Trump, Sen. Corker is currently one of the most unpopular Republicans in the the history of Tennessee Politics. In…

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Dershowitz: Democrat Cohen’s Insult to Purple Heart Recipients ‘Low Point’ of Anti-Trump FBI Lovebird’s Congressional Testimony

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Maria Bartiromo, Alan Dershowitz, Steve Cohen

Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s ‘Mornings with Maria‘ on Fox Business Friday to discuss the public hearing of anti-Trump FBI lovebird Peter Strzok. However, the two wound up spending much of the segment on Rep. Steve Cohen’s (D-TN-09) deeply insulting suggestion that the embattled Strzok should receive a Purple Heart – an award established by George Washington himself nearly 236 years ago for soldiers wounded in battlefield injuries that dates back to the country’s founding. “Well it was a disaster. Everyone looked terrible,” Dershowitz said, when Bartiromo asked what his main takeaway from the day’s events was. Dershowitz added, “The low point, of course, was when a congressman said he deserved a Purple Heart. A Purple Heart you get when you put your life at risk, not for answering some questions in from of some congress people.” He continued, “It proves the point I make in my book [The Case Against Impeaching Trump] that there should have been a neutral, non-partisan, 9-11-type of commission investigating all of this.” As Dershowitz spoke, viewers could see the Harvard Law Professor become more outraged as he completed each sentence. “The 2016 election was filled with problems – Russia…

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73 Percent Increase in First Day of Primary Early Voting in Williamson County Compared to 2014

Tennessee Star Staff
early voting 2018 primary

FRANKLIN, Tennessee–A total of 911 ballots were cast on the first day of primary early voting in Williamson County on Friday, a 73 percent increase from the 526 ballots that were cast in the county on the first day of early voting in the August 2014 primary. The Brentwood HomePage provided these details: There are only two locations open for early voting in the county—the Election Commission’s office in Franklin and the Brentwood Library. At the library 340 people voted, while 505 people voted at the office in Franklin. After adding in votes from absentee ballots and nursing homes, there were 911 people voted Friday. . . Republicans made up the vast majority of voters. The Williamson County Commission reports that 606 people voted in the Republican primary while 297 voted in the Democratic primary. Eight people voted only in the general election. Supporters of several candidates, including State Senator Dr. Mark Green (R-Clarksville) , Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN-07) , and Jeff Ford,  stood under a tent just beyond the 100 foot boundary with signs for their candidate of choice at the Williamson County Administrative Building in Franklin. Green is running unchallenged in the Republican primary to replace Blackburn as…

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Joe Carter Explainer: What You Should Know About Democratic Socialism

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by Joe Carter   While many left-leaning American politicians tend to avoid the labels “liberal” or “progressive,” two popular Democrats—Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—proudly self-identify as a “democratic socialists.” Here’s what you should know about democratic socialism. What is democratic socialism? In Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey, Donald F. Busky explains the term this way: Democratic socialism is the wing of the socialist movement that combines a belief in a socially owned economy with that of political democracy. Sometimes simply called socialism, more often than not, the adjective democratic is added by democratic socialists to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialists . . . democratic socialists wish to emphasize by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism. What type of socialist is Bernie Sanders? Sanders refers to himself as a democratic socialist, but a more fitting term would be “New Deal socialist.” Although Sanders frequently points to Nordic countries when explaining how socialism can work, his desire is to expand and continue the American style of socialism advocated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whether FDR should be considered a socialist is debatable, but Sanders seems to think he was—at least…

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President Trump Moves to Protect Home Care Workers from Union Shakedown

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senior citizen health care

By Richard McCarty   The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has proposed rolling back an Obama-Era regulation that allowed union dues to be deducted from Medicaid checks. If the proposed regulation takes effect, only deductions specifically allowed by law, such as court-ordered wage garnishments or child support payments, will be permissible. Of course, any caregivers who wish to join or stay in a union could still do so. They would just need to make arrangements to pay their dues, which could easily be done by authorizing the union to draft money from their bank account. For years, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has skimmed money off of Medicaid checks sent to in-home personal care workers. Many of these people care for relatives or friends and did not want to join a union. In Minnesota, 27,000 caregivers were unionized after an election in which fewer than 6,000 voted and SEIU received less than 3,600 votes. Unsurprisingly, some had no idea when the unionization election was being held and were surprised when they noticed that money had been deducted from their Medicaid checks without their authorization. Of course, SEIU does little for…

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Early Voting Turnout Heavy in Maury County

Jason M. Reynolds
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Voters hit the polls heavily in the first two days of early voting in Maury County. The polls opened Friday at the Maury County Election Commission for early voting in the 2018 Tennessee general and primary election, The Daily Herald reported. On Friday and Saturday, at least 1,100 votes were cast even as Maury County candidates lined both shoulders of the road leading to the polling location. Maury County has 43,000 registered voters. Normally, about 30 percent of voters cast ballots early. During early voting in the 2016 presidential election, which included local races, more than 3,200 residents participated in early voting. The Tennessee Secretary of State’s office, which oversees elections, lists the advantages of early voting on its website: “being able to choose a day during the early voting period that best fits the voter’s schedule and the voter being able to change his or her address of registration and vote in the same voting location.” Each county’s election commission office may be found online here. Early voting will be from July 13-28. In Maury County, early voting will be held at the county’s election commission office at 1207A Tradewinds Drive in Columbia. The Secretary of State’s office also…

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San Francisco’s New Mayor Says Her City Is Drowning In Human Waste: ‘There’s More Feces … Than I’ve Ever Seen’

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by Andrew Kerr   San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the streets of her city are flooded with the excrement of the homeless in an interview Friday. Breed, a Democrat who was inaugurated as the San Francisco’s mayor Wednesday, urged homeless advocacy groups that receive money from the city to teach homeless people to “clean up after themselves.” “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed told KNTV. “That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.” The streets of San Francisco are littered with a “dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces”, KNTV’s investigative team reported in February after surveying the city’s streets. “We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” preschool teacher Adelita Orellana told KNTV. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.” There are about 7,500 homeless people living in San Francisco according to the city, which will spend nearly $280 million this year on…

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Diane Black Wins Davidson County GOP Straw Poll For Governor

Jason M. Reynolds
Diane Black, Bill Lee, Randy Boyd

Gubernatorial candidate Diane Black won a straw poll at the Davidson County Republican Party picnic Saturday, a blog reported. U.S. Rep. Black (R-TN) received 116 votes in the governor’s primary straw poll, according to a blog called “A Disgruntled Republican in Nashville.” Rod Williams is the author. Second place went to Bill Lee, 106 votes. Other results were: Beth Harwell, 28 votes, Kay White, 11 votes and Randy Boyd, 2 votes. Williams says it appears many of the candidates brought their voters to the picnic at the Centennial Park event shelter. “Still, I was surprised that Randy Boyd only got two votes,” Williams said. About 300 people attended. Black spoke at the gathering, while other candidates’ representatives also spoke. The picnic straw poll is merely the latest forecasting in the Tennessee gubernatorial race. Boyd led Black by 32 percent to 27 percent among likely Republican gubernatorial primary voters in a Tennessee Star poll released June 29. The battle for the Republican nomination for governor is a three-way race, the poll showed, with Lee surging into a strong third position, with 20 percent. Harwell is no longer a factor in the Republican gubernatorial primary, coming in a distant fourth position with only 7…

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US Ambassador To Russia: Trump Is ‘Most Experienced Negotiator Ever Elected To The Presidency’

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Jon Huntsman

by Evie Fordham   U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman called President Donald Trump “the most experienced negotiator ever elected to the presidency” ahead of Trump’s summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on “Fox & Friends” on Sunday morning. “I can tell you that in the president, we have the most experienced negotiator ever elected to the presidency,” Huntsman said. “You have a lot of presidents who have never had a negotiation before, unbelievable as that sounds, before they were elected president. So the president has pretty good instincts on these kinds of things.” Huntsman discussed U.S. strategy going into the talks in Helsinki, Finland, on the show. The summit will be the first time that Trump and Putin have had a one-on-one meeting. “We need to reduce the tension in the relationship,” the ambassador said. “We need to take the danger to the American people out of a bilateral relationship, a relationship that contains 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons … You have to build trust in a relationship that has none.” Watch the latest video at foxnews.com He listed some of the challenges Trump will face at the summit. “[The U.S. and Russia are] not talking with…

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Commentary: #NeverTrumpers Make It Plain They Enjoy Being Lonely Outside the Party

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George Will, Max Boot, Donald Trump

by Jeffery Rendall   Are #NeverTrumpers loners or are they really just lonely? The question came to mind recently as the nebulous allegedly “conservative” anti-Trump group appears to be losing adherents and friends at an alarming rate. It’s not that President Donald Trump has suddenly become so popular that it’s no longer fashionable to oppose him; maybe it’s because the #NeverTrump group has just run out of things to criticize the president for. Whatever the reason more conservatives have taken to kicking the GOP intra-party opposition where it hurts with many a commentator treating #NeverTrump with the same contempt as they would Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. Nerdy bespectacled intellectual George Will perhaps triggered the bash-#NeverTrump revelry a couple weeks ago when he encouraged conservatives to vote Democrat this November instead of for Trump-enabling Republicans. The #NeverTrump suicide-fest continued last week with several more establishment Republicans declaring independence and urging the ultra-disgruntled to do the unthinkable: go Democrat. Then one-time highly respected right-leaning (neoconservative) writer Max Boot took his turn at pleading for the minority party. Boot wrote last week at The Washington Post, “No one anticipated Trump’s takeover. It’s possible, these [#NeverTrump] Republicans argue, that we might be equally surprised by his downfall. Imagine…

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California Dems Snub Feinstein, Endorse Liberal Challenger For Senate

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Dianne Feinstein, Kevin de Leon

by Will Racke   California Democrats have declined to endorse Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bid for re-election in 2018, rebuking a powerful senator the party’s activist base sees as too conservative for the famously liberal state. Instead, the state party’s executive committee voted late Saturday to endorse her challenger, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, in the general election. Currently the 51-year-old leader of the state senate, De Leon is held in high esteem by the party’s far left as the principal author of SB54, California’s controversial sanctuary state law. De Leon won 65 percent of the 333 board members, easily clearing the 60 percent threshold needed for an endorsement. Another 28 backed a “no endorsement” option, while just 7 percent voted for Feinstein. Prior to Saturday’s vote, Feinstein’s team had urged party delegates to support the “no endorsement” policy in a nod to party unity. Feinstein recruited Democratic heavyweights to plead her case, including Gov. Jerry Brown, Sen. Kamala Harris and two former state party chairmen. The push was not enough to sway the executive committee, which has been moving away from Feinstein’s brand of center-left politics for years. Although the board represents a small fraction of a state party with…

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Autopsy Finds Ohio Police Chief Died of a Fentanyl Overdose

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by Steve Birr   The recent death of an Ohio police chief was the result of a fentanyl overdose, an autopsy report released Friday by a local coroner determined. Authorities in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, found Kirkersville Police Chief James Hughes Jr. dead in the bathroom of his home on May 25, along with a plastic sandwich bag containing cocaine residue and two syringes that later tested positive for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid roughly 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. Hughes was police chief for little more than two months before his death, reported WCMH. The autopsy report, issued by the Franklin County Coroner’s Office, said Hughes died from “acute intoxication by fentanyl,” which they found to be the result of an accidental overdose. Hughes’s death is the second tragedy to befall the Kirkersville Police Department in the past year. The community lost Chief Steven Eric DiSario in May 2017 after he was fatally shot while responding to a hostage situation. The coroner’s report underscores the dire nature of the opioid crisis spreading across the state. Ohio currently has the second largest drug overdose death rate in the country, trailing only West Virginia. Nearly 40 in 100,000 people die from drug-related overdoses in Ohio. The state lost 4,329 residents to drug overdoses in 2016, a 24 percent increase…

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Commentary: Paul Manafort Is a Political Prisoner

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Paul Manafort

By Printus LeBlanc   Paul Manafort is in a fight for his life, literally. He is currently facing up to 305 years in prison if he is convicted of all the crimes he is alleged to have committed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort is currently in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day now as terrorists at GITMO are live better than he does. For what? Did this man murder, rape, or commit an act of violence? No. Surely, he is a mastermind behind a criminal organization spanning the globe? No. Paul Manafort is in jail for one reason and one reason only, he worked for President Trump during his election campaign. The trial of Paul Manafort makes participation in the political process illegal. The Mueller investigation has been tainted from the beginning. Robert Mueller staffed the investigation with over a dozen partisan lawyers and investigators. Many of the investigators also have disturbing conflicts of interests while others have horrendous records at the DOJ. It is easy to call the investigation phony because Mueller’s team hasn’t investigated anything to do with Russia collusion. The team has not taken control of the DNC server to prove Russia hacked the server. The Russian lawyer…

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Statewide Early Voting Numbers Are Starting with a Bang

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early voting

In the first two days of early voting there are signs that turnout may be higher than normal in both the Democratic and Republican primaries. Early voting started on Friday and continued on Saturday, though the locations and schedule for the Saturday voting was limited in several counties. Additionally, some counties have only reported their Friday totals at this point. Nevertheless, 30,262 votes have already been cast in the Republican Primary and 12,205 in the Democratic Primary. Early voting continues until July 28 with Election Day on August 2. There were 668,039 total GOP Senate Primary votes cast in August 2014.  That election featured a contested primary between Senator Lamar Alexander (331,705 votes) and Joe Carr (271,324). Alexander prevailed by a closer than expected 49-40% margin. A third Republican, Dr. George Flinn received a little over 34,000 total votes. That race may give guidance in predicting final turnout as we move through the early voting period. Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill expects the turnout to increase dramatically over the next few weeks. “Not only do we have a hotly contested Republican Primary for Governor, in which we will see perhaps $10 million in spending in the next few weeks…

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