Archive for the ‘Las Vegas’ Tag
It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @DEMOCRATAMAZING
THE THREE NAMES BEEN BOUNCED ABOUT IN THE DUCK CAMP TONIGHT FOR HIS VP PICK ARE: DARK VADER CHENEY, MR. HANDSOME ALDESON AND HOT LIPS NO BRAINS PALIN. BRING IT ON DUCK TRUMP AND WE CAN’T WAIT FOR THE FUN AND GAMES TO BEGIN IN EARNEST.
“LIKE” US ON FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/AMAZINGDEMOCRATS
WEST PALM BEACH — Over the years, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has been called many things by many people as he has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into GOP presidential campaigns.
But, as a Wall Street Journal reporter discovered, there’s one invective he won’t abide: “foul-mouthed.”
Adelson’s attorneys will appear in federal court today in an attempt to block the reporter from questioning a Palm Beach architect about whether one of the richest men in the world has a tendency to use foul language.
Reporter Kate O’Keefe, who is based in the journal’s office in Hong Kong, wants to depose architect Nikita Kukov as part of her defense to a libel lawsuit Adelson filed against her over a 2012 article in which she described the gaming giant as “a scrappy, foul-mouthed billionaire from working-class Dorchester, Mass.”
In the lawsuit now pending before the High Court of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Adelson claims the description of him as “foul-mouthed” is defamatory and untrue. Further, the 81-year-old claims, as founder and chairman of the two largest gaming companies in the world, one of which is based in China, the characterization has caused him considerable business distress.
“Referring to a businessman as ‘foul-mouthed’ is particularly damaging in many overseas markets, such as Hong Kong,” his Miami attorneys Daniel Blonsky and Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney, wrote in court papers. “It is also an egregious falsity.”
To test the veracity of those claims, O’Keefe’s attorneys want to depose those who have worked for Adelson, including Kukov. The Columbia University-educated architect, who has served on Palm Beach’s landmarks and architectural commissions, was hired in 1989 to design a new convention center for Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Hotel. The assignment ended less than a year later when he was fired for allegedly shattering the project’s budget, according to O’Keefe’s attorneys.
Kukov sued for breach of contract and was awarded $1.3 million by a jury. The case was ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount.
“Upon information and belief, during frequent interactions with Adelson, Zukov personally witnessed Adelson use foul and otherwise offensive language,” O’Keefe’s attorneys wrote.
Adelson’s attorneys counter that any statements Kukov would make about Adelson’s choice of words are ancient history. “O’Keefe does not rely on Zukov as a basis for the defamatory statement in her article and, in any event, O’Keefe did not publish to the world that Mr. Adelson is believed to have used foul language in 1989 — a wholly different statement than the insults she hurled at him in her defamatory article,” they wrote. “The Zukov subpoena is simply misguided and ill-intentioned, and it should be quashed.”
O’Keefe’s attorney have showed no signed of backing down. In addition to their suspicions about Zukov’s interactions with Adelson, they say they have discovered other evidence of Adelson’s tendency for profanity. Asked in a 2012 deposition in a Florida lawsuit about what could potentially hurt his reputation, he responded: “Murder, rape dismembering, punching wise-ass attorneys in the face,” he said. “All of that might hurt my reputation. Might.”
Marco Rubio is playing to win The Sheldon Adelson Primary. The Florida senator, who has relentlessly sought the billionaire casino mogul’s backing for 2016, co-sponsored a bill yesterday afternoon to ban online gaming. It is not only Adelson’s top legislative priority, it could significantly boost his company’s bottom line. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another presidential hopeful who has assiduously courted Adelson over their shared hawkishness on foreign policy, is the lead Republican author on the legislation for a second year in a row.
By Paul Steinhauser (NH1 News).
CONCORD – Jeb Bush narrowly sits atop a very crowded pack of Republican presidential candidates and contenders in a new New Hampshire poll, with real estate mogul Donald Trump in second place.
According to the Suffolk University survey released Tuesday morning, 14 percent of those likely to vote in next February’s Granite State GOP presidential primary say they’d back Bush for their party’s nominee, with Donald Trump at just under 11 percent. The survey was conducted last Thursday through Monday, in the days following the official announcements from Bush and Trump that they’re running for the White House.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s in third, at 8 percent, with Sen. Marco Rubio Florida at 7 percent, famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 6 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie under 5 percent, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 4 percent, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina each just under 4 percent, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Ohio Gov. John Kasich each with roughly 2 percent.
Former New York governor George Pataki and former Texas governor Rick Perry are each around 1 percent, with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal all registering less than 1 percent support.
The poll’s sampling error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, which means there’s no real frontrunner in the battle for the GOP nomination in the first-in-the-nation primary state. Nearly three in ten voters polled were undecided.
“There are two types of contenders right now in New Hampshire — those that are widely popular, and those that have some popularity with higher negatives but loyal followers,” Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos told NH1 News.
The popular crowd, he said, includes Rubio, Bush, and Walker. The candidates with a committed base of supporters, but a higher unfavorable rating overall, include Trump, Paul, Huckabee, and Christie.
“In the short run, these candidates are competitive because their negatives are spread out among many others. But in the long run it will be harder to grow voters as the field of candidates is reduced and the negatives become more visible and a disqualifier,” said Paleologos.
While Bush tops the list, 62 percent strongly disagree with his position on immigration, with another 18 percent saying they somewhat disagree. Bush’s stance on immigration policy, as well as his backing of Common Core educational standards, put him at odds with much of the conservative base.
The poll also sends some mixed signals for Trump. While roughly 11 percent say they’d vote for him in the GOP primary, his favorable/unfavorable rating is underwater: Thirty-seven percent said they have a favorable opinion of the real estate mogul and reality TV star, with 49 percent saying they see him in an unfavorable light – the highest unfavorable rating of any GOP presidential contender.
Still, 60 percent of Republican voters surveyed said they would like to see him on the debate stage.
The Suffolk University phone poll of 500 likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters was conducted June 18-22, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.
By Katie Zezima (The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — Republican Presidential candidates are all seeking the endorsement of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and with good reason — he and his wife Miriam poured $92 million into the 2012 presidential race.
Thursday, someone else paid to spend time with Adelson.
A lunch with Adelson was auctioned off at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala here. Auctioneers wanted the bidding to start at $100,000. No one raised their paddle. So they brought it down to $50,000. And someone immediately said yes.
Adelson pledged $1 million to the organization that put on the gala, the World Values Network. It’s run by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, spiritual adviser to the stars, author of books including “Kosher Sex” and sage of reality television. In an interview with northjersey.com Adelson said Boteach is “one of the smartest guys I’ve met.”
Adelson told a packed ballroom here that he doesn’t just pledge money — he gives it. Quickly. If a gift is promised Monday and he’s in the office the check will go out Tuesday. Two people in the room were likely paying close attention: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is running for president, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is expected to run.
But he’s not really the one with all the cash, he said.
“I don’t have the money. My wife’s got all the money,” Adelson said.
Boteach recommended that the organization, which launched a $25 million campaign, should auction off Adelson.
“Who wants to buy Sheldon Adelson? That’s not cheap,” Boteach said
by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times)
The symbolism was too powerful to ignore. As anyone who watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech last week in Congress knows, one of the people prominently seated in the House gallery was the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a primary financial backer of both the Republican Party and Netanyahu. As The Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz reported, at one point Adelson’s wife, Miriam, accidentally knocked her purse off the House gallery railing and it hit Representative Brad Ashford, a Nebraska Democrat seated below. The Post noted that Adelson had given $5 million to the G.O.P.’s Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which had spent $35,000 in a failed effort to defeat Ashford in his 2014 race against Representative Lee Terry. Ashford later joked to The Omaha World-Herald: “I wish I’d opened the purse. Do you think she carries?
We certainly know that Mr. Adelson does. And when it came to showering that cash on Republican presidential hopefuls and right-wing PACs trying to defeat President Obama (reportedly $150 million in 2012), and on keeping Netanyahu and his Likud party in office, no single billionaire-donor is more influential than Sheldon. No matter what his agenda, it is troubling that one man, with a willingness and ability to give away giant sums, can now tilt Israeli and American politics his way at the same time.
Israel has much stricter laws on individuals donating to political campaigns, so Adelson got around that in 2007 by founding a free, giveaway newspaper in Israel — Israel Hayom — whose sole purpose is to back Netanyahu, attack his enemies in politics and the media, and enforce a far-right political agenda to prevent any Israeli territorial compromise on the West Bank (which, in time, could undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy). Graphically attractive, Israel Hayom is now the biggest-circulation daily in Israel. Precisely because it is free, it is putting a heavy strain on competitors, like Yediot and Haaretz, which both charge and are not pro-Netanyahu.
Adelson then bought the most important newspaper of the religious-nationalist right in Israel, Makor Rishon, long considered the main backer of Netanyahu’s biggest right-wing rival, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. Last March, in an interview with Israel Army Radio after the Makor Rishon sale, Bennett said: “It saddens me. Israel Hayom is not a newspaper. It is Pravda. It’s the mouthpiece of one person, the prime minister. At every junction point, every point of friction between the national interest and the interest of the prime minister, they chose the side of the prime minister.”
The Washington Post said that last November at a conference of the Israel American Council, a lobbying group Adelson has funded, he joked in a public discussion with another wealthy Israeli: “Why don’t you and I go after The New York Times?” Told it was family owned, Adelson quipped, “There is only one way to fight it: money.” At this same conference Adelson was quoted as saying that Israel would not be able to survive as a democracy: “So Israel won’t be a democratic state,” he added. “So what?”
Last March in Las Vegas Adelson organized his own private Republican primary. Politico wrote at the time: “Adelson summoned [Jeb] Bush and Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin to Las Vegas. … The new big-money political landscape — in which a handful of donors can dramatically alter a campaign with just a check or two.” When Christie, in his speech before Adelson, described the West Bank as “occupied territories,” some Republican Jews in the audience were appalled. So, Politico reported, Christie hastily arranged a meeting with Adelson to explain that he had misspoken and that he was a true friend of Israel. “The New Jersey governor apologized in a private meeting in the casino mogul’s Venetian office shortly afterward,” Politico reported. It said Adelson “accepted” Christie’s “explanation” and “quick apology.”
When money in politics gets this big, when it can make elected officials bow and scrape in two different countries at the same time, it is troubling. I’m sure Adelson cares deeply about Israel, but he lacks any sense of limits in how he exercises his extraordinary financial power — power he is using to simultaneously push Israel and America toward eliminating any two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, toward defunding the Palestinian Authority and toward a confrontation with Iran, not a diplomatic solution. People need to know this.
The most important bonds between Israel and America always emerged from the bottom up — a mutual respect between two democracy-loving peoples. Money can’t buy those bonds, but it can threaten them by going to excess — by taking Israel’s true good will in America and using it to help one party “stick it” to the president, one big donor drive his extreme agenda, one party appear more pro-Israel than the other for electoral reasons or one Israeli politician win re-election. People who go “all the way” like this will one day go over a cliff. They will regret it. So will the rest of us.
The Amazing Democrats 