...Hunter Biden’s beyond a mere prodigal son – he’s a catastrophe of Biblical proportions, compounded by Hairplug One thinking it was super-duper savvy to brag about helping his snorterrific son on video. The media will try and hide it. The Democrats will declare it – have already declared it – out-of-bounds and irrelevant, but they can’t gate-keep that question from being asked forever. And the answer to the question is that our liberal elite is terminally corrupt.Read more here.
Monday, September 30, 2019
"Our liberal elite is terminally corrupt!"
Kurt Schlichter writes in Town Hall,
Indoctrinated liberals
In his Deplorable Touchdown blog, Fletch Daniels writes,
It is in the American university where the battle is being lost. Parents sacrifice for and encourage their sons and daughters to attend these universities with the best of intentions, thinking they are the gateway to a better life. The university returns them as Bernie Sanders acolytes who think Beto O’Rourke whispers words of wisdom.Read more here.
This also explains the increasing media radicalization. These propagandists are the product of these same universities. Conservatives who think media bias is the biggest threat in the country aren’t quite right. These media representatives are a product of academia. They were propagandized first before becoming mouthpieces themselves. Just about every candidate on stage was radicalized at an American university. Every K–12 teacher in America also has a liberal arts university degree, which again explains how so many schools have morphed from educational institutions into propaganda factories.
These universities are doing all in their power to ensure they reach all the students with their propaganda and social engineering. Even engineering and science majors are forced to take classes from these propagandists in the interest of producing “well rounded students,” a euphemism for indoctrinated liberals. There are only a handful of colleges left that aren’t infected with this disease.
This is why every Democrat on a debate stage sounds like he or she despises America. These candidates, many of them shifting left with the political winds, are chasing increasingly propagandized voters who are a product of colleges and universities. They are radicals chasing a growing number of radicalized votes.
Are the Democratic candidates abortion-loving radicals or just willing to play one?
In his Deplorable Touchdown blog, Fletch Daniels writes an excellent essay on abortion.
All the Democrat candidates still allowed to debate are petrified to cross Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups meaning they either are abortion-loving radicals or are willing to play one. In terms of the overall effect, there is no meaningful difference. The media representatives are doing everything in their power to mask this fact, even as Planned Parenthood and the candidates complain about it.Read the whole thing here.
Trump's record of accomplishment
Fletch Daniels tells us in the American Thinker,
...Trump kept his promises to his voters. His record of accomplishment on the full gamut of issues that his voters care about is impressive. He has been the best Republican president of the modern era on what matters the most (energy independence, unleashing the economy, appointing Constitution-minded judges, keeping the U.S. from further foreign entanglements, advancing the pro-life cause, the Second Amendment, etc.).Read more here.
Republican voters are no longer going to tolerate globalists or Weekly Standard–reading foreign adventurists. That era is gone. Those voters are all too aware of the rigged system that was passed off as free trade, even as the U.S. and working-class Americans were ripped off.
Long term, Trump wins!
In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes,
Why is it that the House is controlled by Democrats, yet its leadership is not pushing through any of the policy proposals voiced so openly on the Democratic primary stage?Read more https://www.amgreatness.com/2019/09/29/impeachment-coup-analytics/
Why aren’t progressive representatives introducing bills to pay reparations to African Americans, to legalize infanticide in some cases of late-term abortion, to offer free medical care to illegal aliens, to confiscate AR-15s, to extend Medicare for all, to impose a wealth tax and raise top rates to between 70 and 90 percent, to abolish student debt and ensure free college for all, or to grant blanket amnesty to those currently living in the country illegally?
Simple answer: none of those issues poll anywhere near 50 percent approval. And no Democratic candidate would expect to beat Trump as the emissary of such an agenda.
If the economy was in a recession, if we were embroiled in another Iraq-like or Vietnam-sort of war, and if Trump’s polls were below 40 percent, then the Democrats would just wait 13 months and defeat him at the polls.
But without a viable agenda and because they doubt they can stop Trump’s reelection bid, they feel they have no recourse but to impeach. If Trump were to be reelected, not a shred of Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” would be left, and the strict constructionist Supreme Court would haunt progressives for a quarter-century.
...Impeachment, remember, will make the Kavanaugh hearings look like a seminar on etiquette, and so everything and anything can happen once dozens of unhinged leftists are unbound.
...We are starting to see the outlines of a progressive fantasy on the horizon: Biden will be sacrificed. The party will unite around Warren. The left-wing media narrative will be, “We took out one of our own, now it is your turn to depose Trump.” Chaos overload for two or three weeks might keep Trump’s polling low.
Short-term, Trump may lose traction due to the media frenzy. He lost some of his ongoing momentum that had recently seen his polls steadily creeping up. He gave a fine speech at the United Nations and sounded presidential in his talks with foreign leaders—all overshadowed or now forgotten due to the impeachment psychodrama.
Trump’s critics have become emboldened, Left and Right. The Drudge Report has flip-flopped and is as anti-Trump as Vox or Slate. Many at National Review call for or anticipate impeachment without much regret. Likewise, some at Fox News—Shepard Smith, Andrew Napolitano, and Chris Wallace—are nonstop critics of Trump and hardly disguise their contempt.
Long-term, however, Trump wins.
We still have a number of government audits coming from Michael Horowitz, John Durham, and John Huber—and the targets are not Trump. The Senate will not convict the president under any foreseeable circumstances. The full story of the whistleblower has not been told, but there are a lot of narratives to come about the sudden rules allowing hearsay, DNC involvement, and who knew far in advance about the complainant’s writ. Once the Democratic debates continue, the candidates’ screaming and hysterics return, and the impeachment hearings descend into a Kavanaugh-esque farce, the public will begin to get scared again by the Left’s shrieking Jacobins. Schiff’s “parody” is a small foretaste of what’s to come. Voters soon will surmise that the only thing between their 401k plans and socialism is Donald J. Trump.
...Warren or her possible facsimile is a weaker candidate than even the enfeebled Biden. Her lack of viability will be of enormous advantage in NeverHillary-fashion to Trump. His fundraising, already ascendant, will hit the stratosphere. The idea that the new and old NeverTrumpers will be on the side of socialism will finally discredit them. Wall Street and Silicon Valley will keep trashing Trump, but privately write checks to stop Warren’s wealth tax that would be only the beginning of her Venezuelization of America.
So if Trump’s health holds out, if we don’t have a recession, if there is not an optional war, and Trump endures the next few weeks of 360-degree, 24/7 targeting, 2020 will be far more favorable than ever imaginable for him.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
"the floodwaters are rapidly receding and the malodorous muck and detritus that has been left behind are already being subject to the sanitizing scrutiny of people who don’t like being lied to.
In American Greatness, Roger Kimball tells us,
Impeachment frenzy cascaded over airwaves and displaced every competing story, even the exploitation of that sick child crusader Greta Thunberg, for about 48 hours. But the floodwaters are rapidly receding and the malodorous muck and detritus that has been left behind are already being subject to the sanitizing scrutiny of people who don’t like being lied to.Read more here.
...The whoops of the impeachment war dance are echoing in an otherwise silent and most severe chamber. All this frenetic activity—the screaming front-page headlines, the salivating attacks on Trump in the now-routinely anti-Trump Drudge Report—all that, as Lifson says, is but the “prelude to the coming time bombs about to explode in their faces.”
The bombs in question, Lifson points out, have names: Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general whose report on malfeasance in the FBI and the “intelligence community” is due any day; John Durham, the U.S. attorney looking into the origins of the attempted coup against Donald Trump; and John Huber, the U.S. attorney who is looking into the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page and connections between the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium One scandal.
...Donald Trump won the presidency in a free, open, and democratic election. And yet a sliver of the population—the Antifa thugs, the Hollywood brats, the media sissies, the beautiful people with expensive degrees, and, of course, the radical fringe of the Democratic Party—all refused to accept the results of the election.
...What has been happening these last three years is not just an effort to destroy Donald Trump. That, indeed, is merely incidental to the larger project of destroying the fundamental American consensus. I do not think it will succeed. But I am sufficiently disillusioned to realize just how grave a threat these forces pose to what we used to be able to call, without irony, the American dream.
Want to be miserable? Move to one of these cities!
Where are the fifty most miserable cities in America? Business Insider has the story here, documented with photos from each city.
No urinals in newly remodeled public building in Portland.
Portland, Oregon has a public building called the Portland building. City officials are remodeling it at a cost to taxpayers of $195,000,000 million dollars. There will be no urinals, but there will be much more pee on the toilet seats. Read all about it here.
The Impeachment process
In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance outlines the impeachment process. Here are some excerpts.
Chairman Nadler (Judiciary) almost certainly already has his Obstruction articles assembled using prior testimony, depositions and relying heavily on the Mueller report.Read more here.
However, Chairmen Schiff, Cummings and Engel will be more urgently assembling the Corruption articles based on the purposefully constructed Trump-Ukraine whistleblower leak and subsequent document production. Hence, the depositions during the break.
The Democrats are going to act fast. Remember, by design Speaker Pelosi has this set up so that Republicans don’t even participate in the impeachment process. There are no republicans participating in the assembly of the articles of impeachment. Stunningly, and as an outcome of those earlier rule changes, there is no minority voice in this process.
When the 116th congress returns from their break on October 15th, 2019, the Articles of Impeachment will have already been assembled: [House Calendar Link]
...speaker Pelosi has to give the media some reference point to say the republicans were included in the process, so she will likely have mid to late October destined for the committee chairs to have committee debate on their pre-assembled articles. This will give the impression of minority participation, but it will be for optics only.
Democrats are keen optical strategists and narrative engineers; and as you know they coordinate all endeavors with their media allies. The narrative assembly and usefulness by media to drive a tactical national political message will hit heavily in this mid/late October time-frame. This will allow the executive suites (media) to capture/stir-up maximum public interest and make the most money therein.
There will likely be more articles other than just “obstruction of justice” (Muh Rusia) and “corruption of office” (Muh Ukraine), but those two are easily visible. Emoluments may also play a role.
The articles of impeachment will then be voted out of each committee; and after a significant dramatic pause for maximum political value, Speaker Pelosi will present days of House debate on them.
The media will construct television sets to broadcast the house impeachment debates, and the Democrat candidates will use this time to spotlight their angelic policies and anti-corruption agenda. Big Dollar Democrats will bring in their activist groups from around the nation to celebrate the impeachment of President Trump.
Then, once Pelosi is certain the maximum political benefit has been achieved, she will announce the date for the Full House Vote on Articles of Impeachment. We can be certain the date will be filled with maximum drama and made-for-tv effect complete with Speaker Pelosi bringing back the big gavel for a grand presentation and a full house vote.
The same people who will stand jaw-agape as this House Impeachment process is happening are the same people who denied it was likely when CTH originally showed the rule changes, road-map, and impeachment schedule in January.
Now…. having said all that, perhaps… just perhaps…. Bill Barr is well aware of the Machiavellian scheme constructed and executed by Nancy Pelosi.
Perhaps, just perhaps, that is why the IG Horowitz report has been delayed…. As in, hold it back until Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Cummings fire their impeachment cannons.
Maybe…
It seems awful Trusty plan-like for me; but it’s possible.
Perhaps the ultimate counter to protect and defend the office of the presidency from this pre-planned, Lawfare assisted, impeachment effort… is to wait until the Democrats are going to launch their tactical impeachment nukes,… and then fire for effect with the declassification documents etc.!
Hey, I’m trying to provide an optimistic ending here.
"A partisan hit job does not make you a whistleblower just because you go through the Whistleblower Protection Act."
Stephen Miller is one of Trump's best staffers, in my opinion. "I know the difference between a whistleblower and a deep state operative. This is a deep state operative! This is about, do you want a democracy in this country or do you want a deep state!"
But Chris Wallace wants to know "why Trump used three private lawyers to get information on the Bidens' activities in Ukraine. Why didn't he use any of the agencies of government that are under his command?" What difference does it make, Chris? Stephen begins to answer Chris Wallace's question but immediately Chris interrupts him. I have heard Giuliani explain several times that he was asked by top State Department officials to look into the corruption in Ukraine.
Stephen: "The President is the whistleblower here! The real scandal here is three years of deep state sabotage! If you are going to quote a particular Ukrainian prosecutor, you cannot pick and choose his quotes. It is not a buffet!"
But Chris Wallace wants to know "why Trump used three private lawyers to get information on the Bidens' activities in Ukraine. Why didn't he use any of the agencies of government that are under his command?" What difference does it make, Chris? Stephen begins to answer Chris Wallace's question but immediately Chris interrupts him. I have heard Giuliani explain several times that he was asked by top State Department officials to look into the corruption in Ukraine.
Stephen: "The President is the whistleblower here! The real scandal here is three years of deep state sabotage! If you are going to quote a particular Ukrainian prosecutor, you cannot pick and choose his quotes. It is not a buffet!"
Taking the long view
Biden is losing some momentum to Elizabeth Warren. He is hopeful of doing well on Super Tuesday to catch up. When is Super Tuesday? March 3, 2020!
Debunking Howard Zinn
In Legal Insurrection, Leslie Eastman tells us about a book by Mary Grabar that debunks Howard Zinn's A People’s History of the United States.
If you have kids, they probably have already been exposed to Howard Zinn's anti-America screed. Consider purchasing Grabar's book for them to read in order to counter Zinn's anti-American and anti-capitalist revisionism.
Read more here.
If you have kids, they probably have already been exposed to Howard Zinn's anti-America screed. Consider purchasing Grabar's book for them to read in order to counter Zinn's anti-American and anti-capitalist revisionism.
Read more here.
I wish I could write satire like this!
Today, Oregon Muse links to this blurb at Amazon from Frank Fleming's book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything.
It's hard to remember the dark days before 2008. It was a time of hatred, racism, violence, obese children, war, untaxed rich people, and incandescent light bulbs -- perhaps the worst days we had ever seen. And at the heart of it all was a thuggish, thoughtless man, George W. Bush, who lashed out angrily at whatever he didn't understand -- and he understood so very little. Then there was that laugh of his -- that horrible snicker that mocked everything intelligent and nuanced. Also, he looked like a chimp.
It seemed like the end for the United States of America. We would crumble in the hands of vicious, superstitious dimwits determined to hunt "ter'ists" or other figments of Bush's rotten mind. There was nothing left to do but head to Whole Foods to prepare our organic, sustainable, fair-trade last meal as the country ended around us. Despair had overtaken us, and we wondered aloud whether we could ever feel hope again.
And then a man emerged who firmly answered, "Yes we can!"
Oh, but Barack Obama was no mere man. He was a paragon of intelligence and civilized society. A savior to the world's depressed. A lightbringer. A genius thinking thoughts the common man could never hope to comprehend. And his words -- his beautiful words read from crystal panes -- reached down to our souls and told us all would be well. With the simple act of casting a ballot for Barack Obama, we could make the world an immeasurably better place -- a world of peace, of love, of understanding, of unicorns, of rainbows, of expanded entitlements. This was his promise. And now, having had him as president for more than two years, we can say without reservation that he has delivered all his promises and more and is the best president this country -- or any country -- has ever had or could even imagine to have.
..."it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person; freedom of religion; freedom of property; and freedom of the press."
In Human Events, Brad Patty writes,
Politicians do not like to feel threatened, but the power of the people to overthrow them is philosophically legitimate and has historically been an important mechanism for both advancing liberty and ensuring stability.Read more here.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the state and federal constitutions of his day held that:
…all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, both fact and law, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person; freedom of religion; freedom of property; and freedom of the press.
...the lesson here is that the citizenry may not rightly be subjugated by other, lesser, officers of the state.
“The Right of the People” is the first right. All our efforts at security must prioritize the primacy of the citizen, and that means seeing the class of citizen as a high honor. It matters that citizens, and only citizens, serve certain functions. It matters that citizens be trained to believe in and support the American project. It matters who the citizens are, in other words, just as it matters who the President is.
Citizenship is fundamental to America and to the survival and flourishing of human liberty. But citizenship is duty as much as it is an entitlement—a duty that demands that Americans be at all times armed against the encroachment of tyranny.
The shrews are due!
In Town Hall, Kurt Schlichter is thinking Elizabeth Warren might become the Democrat candidate in 2020. However,
...grown men and women neither need nor want some National Nag pestering them to be better people. For one thing, we’re already manifestly better than the cast of weirdos, losers and pinko mutations that make up Warren’s motley base.Read more here.
At least Joe Biden seems to know how to deal with normal people, or at least he did before he began his Botox’d strange-o act over the last few months. Regardless, the regular guy act was always a front – the real Joe Biden is just another DC insider who plowed the field for his ultra-achiever son Snortie to occupy a seat on some Ukrainian oligarch’s gas company at north of 50K a month when he wasn’t face-planted in a heap of Bolivia’s Best and/or working his bro’s widow.
But at least Gropey J could fake being a guy you might conceivably have a beer with. When Warren starts talking about having a beer it's enough to make you give up drinking. She makes me repelled by the thought of a cold, frosty brew – cold turkey inspired by a cold turkey. This is not a great candidate.
And she’s from Massachusetts, for Pete’s sake. For 50-plus years, the state with the Dropkick Murphy’s soundtrack has produced a non-stop series of electoral losers. Mike Dukakis? He managed to lose because someone told him he’d look butch in a tank. John Kerry. Sheesh, he managed to lose to W. Oh, and who can forget Mitt Romney? That Irish Setter-tormenting Fredocon nerd managed to lose to Candy Crowley even before he lost to Barack “I Bought a Mansion by the Seashore Because Climate Change Is a Hoax” Obama. The last guy from Boston who pulled it off was JFK, but at least he had scoring with Marilyn Monroe going for him.
Maybe the Democrat base thinks that after losing with their last unlikeable shrew, the shrews are due. But Elizabeth Warren is so uniquely unlikeable to Normal Americans – you know, ones who don’t wander about blue coastal cities introducing themselves with their pronouns – that this would be a McGovernesque rout if states like California, New York and the cold one up in the corner with the maple syrup weren’t so full of idiots. The fight is going to come down to a handful of states that liberals typically fly over and that are filled with people liberals despise. You know, the people who actually do the work that keeps us warm, fed and safe…the enemies of the Democrat Party.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Cashing in
In the New York Post, David Harsanyi asks,
...Was Biden really the only person available to pressure Ukrainian officials while his son was raking in the cash? Does anyone really believe Biden’s claims that he never once spoke to his 49-year-old son about business in the two years they spent working in the same country?Read more here.
...Was Biden really the only person available to pressure Ukrainian officials while his son was raking in the cash? Does anyone really believe Biden’s claims that he never once spoke to his 49-year-old son about business in the two years they spent working in the same country?
"Be the best human you can be. Fully. And enjoy it. The left really hates that."
Sarah Hoyt has some ideas about what we can do when interacting with Leftists.
this is where the culture war has got us. The left has turned a vast number of people into despicable creatures, incapable of doing anything good, but more importantly, DESIROUS of tearing down everything that anyone else does or achieves.Read more here.
Which of course also explains why they want to tear down civilization and take us back to before great humans created and fought and worked for centuries so their children wouldn’t die in infancy in the mud.
And why they are fascinated with the end product of their own digestion, in “culture” and “art.”
Oh, and with sex, that appetite we share with dogs.
They truly, absolutely, passionately hate anyone or anything who does things they’ve declared to be impossible: create, build, care for others, lift others up, do the best they can or die trying. They hate that with a bloody purple passion.
Let’s make them mad.
Go out there create, build, be! Show that there is more good than bad in this human creature. You can’t be perfect, and no one is asking you to be perfect. But you can TRY to be good. And it’s okay, you know, even a minimal amount of good is enough to drive the left into frothing rage.
So hold your middle fingers aloft to them — metaphorically — as you pass and do the things they say are impossible.
Be the best human you can be. Fully. And enjoy it. The left really hates that.
What a great Daddy!
Ok folks, this is by far the best thing your going to see on Twitter today
— 💜CORY💜 (@Cory__1077) September 27, 2019
Yaayyyy for great #DADS 🥰❤️😂 pic.twitter.com/ZMbKcQt140
Is the rise of killer robots unstoppable?
In the Telegraph, Robin Pagnamenta reports,
The rise of killer robots is now unstoppable and a new digital Geneva Convention is essential to protect the world from the growing threat they pose, according to the President of the world’s biggest technology company.Read more here.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, said the use of 'lethal autonomous weapon systems' poses a host of new ethical questions which need to be considered by governments as a matter of urgency.
He said the rapidly advancing technology, in which flying, swimming or walking drones can be equipped with lethal weapons systems – missiles, bombs or guns – which could be programmed to operate entirely or partially autonomously, "ultimately will spread… to many countries".
The US, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia and the UK are all developing weapon systems with a significant degree of autonomy in the critical functions of selecting and attacking targets.
Why is a good man so hard to find?
In the New York Post, Stephanie Gutmann asks, Why is a good man so hard to find? Blame the war on boys and men! Read more here.
Teaching us about Lenin
In the New Criterion, Gary Saul Morson writes,
...Lenin did more than anyone else to shape the last hundred years. He invented a form of government we have come to call totalitarian, which rejected in principle the idea of any private sphere outside of state control. To establish this power, he invented the one-party state, a term that would previously have seemed self-contradictory since a party was, by definition, a part. An admirer of the French Jacobins, Lenin believed that state power had to be based on sheer terror, and so he also created the terrorist state.Read more here.
...For us, the word “politics” means a process of give and take, but for Lenin it’s we take, and you give. From this it follows that one must take maximum advantage of one’s position. If the enemy is weak enough to be destroyed, and one stops simply at one’s initial demands, one is objectively helping the enemy, which makes one a traitor. Of course, one might simply be insane. Long before Brezhnev began incarcerating dissidents in madhouses, Lenin was so appalled that his foreign minister, Boris Chicherin, recommended an unnecessary concession to American loan negotiators, that he pronounced him mad—not metaphorically—and demanded he be forcibly committed. “We will be fools if we do not immediately and forcibly send him to a sanatorium.”
...for Lenin maximal violence was the default position. He was constantly rebuking subordinates for not using enough force, for restraining mobs from lynchings, and for hesitating to shoot randomly chosen hostages.
...Dmitri Volkogonov, the first biographer with access to the secret Lenin archives, concluded that for Lenin violence was a goal in itself. He quotes Lenin in 1908 recommending “real, nationwide terror, which invigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.”
...Lenin worked by a principle of anti-empathy, and this approach was to define Soviet ethics. I know of no other society, except those modeled on the one Lenin created, where schoolchildren were taught that mercy, kindness, and pity are vices. After all, these feelings might lead one to hesitate shooting a class enemy or denouncing one’s parents. The word “conscience” went out of use, replaced by “consciousness” (in the sense of Marxist-Leninist ideological consciousness).
...the Leninist concept of the Party:
According to Lenin, the Communist Party is based on the principle of coercion which doesn’t recognize any limitations or inhibitions. And the central idea of this principle of boundless coercion is not coercion itself but the absence of any limitation whatsoever—moral, political, and even physical, as far as that goes. Such a Party is capable of achieving miracles and doing things which no other collective of men could achieve. . . . A real Communist . . . [is] a man who was raised by the Party and had absorbed its spirit deeply enough to become a miracle man.
Coincidence?
It's a full court press against Trump, Johnson, Netanyahu. It's like watching some kind of world war break out. Or it could be coincidence.
— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) September 27, 2019
Friday, September 27, 2019
Do you think he caught up with her?
Never steal from an Indonesian woman 😂 pic.twitter.com/VqyZl3hgiL
— Julia Macfarlane (@juliamacfarlane) September 21, 2019
"When Trump pressures a foreign leader for a favor it’s to investigate corruption, not to get a prosecutor off his son’s back."
Ann Coulter writes,
Trump has been justly criticized for hiring his daughter and son-in-law at the White House. But at least when he pressures a foreign leader for a favor, it’s to investigate corruption, not to get a prosecutor off his son’s back. Maybe Biden's son was guilty, maybe he was innocent. But it is a fact that Joe Biden held up foreign aid to a desperately needy ally in exchange for their halting prosecution that implicated his son. It's not Trump's fault that Biden is now running for president.Read more here.
I'll give the Democrats this: They've gotten so good at trying to remove Trump from office that, instead of three years, their insane accusations blow up in their faces within a week.
You are nobody!
Guest post by Suzann Darnall
The Democrats want to erase individual rights. They want it to be all about government. They show this with every move they make. They do not consider citizens to be of any importance. Beyond paying taxes, they seem to consider citizens useful idiots or downright annoyances. Depends on which side gets your votes. Heck, it is almost as if they don’t even actually need voters anymore. They have such a system of voter and election fraud in place that it sometimes amazes me that Republicans are still able to win elections anywhere!
Unfortunately, their Leftist base plays right into their agenda and increases the dangers to our American way of life. Freedom is very much on the endangered species list. They are going after Freedom of Speech and the Second Amendment gun rights with everything they’ve got. The term “hate speech” is a convenient excuse to shut down opposing opinions and it is an infringement of free speech. Any laws that deny access to firearms to anyone is an infringement of the right to defend ourselves. A right that is not only supposed to be constitutionally protected, but is actually a God-given right!
The new gender wars are a direct attack on individual rights at many levels. Pushing to both add additional genders and erase gender entirely is a war on individuality. Gender is a huge part of identity. A loss of honest gender identity is a loss of individualism. A person who is genderless is easier to force into a position of being a nonentity. They become less and less important. Soon just a nobody. They no longer matter ‘cause they aren’t really real. They are something made up out of whole cloth. As invisible as the emperor’s new clothes.
The new movement for gender neutral babies and children is horrifying for this reason. The term “theyby” instead of “baby”? Creepy!!! Why would a parent want to deny their children even the simplest of identities such as being a baby? Why would you not wish to celebrate the unique individual who is your child by announcing his or her gender? They are turned into something subhuman when you deny them gender and individual identity markers. Just as if you refer them to as “it”, you have relegated them to a position less than those of other people. It is as if you are saying they are just not quite worthy of being acknowledged as a person.
Of course, the Democrats and their Leftist cohorts are really anxious to simply deny many of the babies life at all. This is evident with their constant push for more abortions on any pretext and at any stage. Some even think killing a newborn baby is acceptable. After all, if a child is not really an individual with a unique identity after birth, how can a fetus possibly be considered a person prior to birth, right?
The Left seems to not just believe in the rights of the collective over the individual, they seemingly wish to erase the individual altogether. And, they seem to be doing it by waging war on the most vulnerable to start. Fetuses, babies, children, girls, women, and elderly top the list of those the Left are targeting. If you do not believe me, just look into the activities of the Left in regards to abortions, the Gender Equality Act, and denial of healthcare options for elderly citizens.
Believe me, to the Democrats and the Left, if you do not toe their line, support their agenda, fit into their narrative, and have worth to them, you are a nobody. And, nobody is gonna matter to them a darn little bit if they get their way!!!
The Democrats want to erase individual rights. They want it to be all about government. They show this with every move they make. They do not consider citizens to be of any importance. Beyond paying taxes, they seem to consider citizens useful idiots or downright annoyances. Depends on which side gets your votes. Heck, it is almost as if they don’t even actually need voters anymore. They have such a system of voter and election fraud in place that it sometimes amazes me that Republicans are still able to win elections anywhere!
Unfortunately, their Leftist base plays right into their agenda and increases the dangers to our American way of life. Freedom is very much on the endangered species list. They are going after Freedom of Speech and the Second Amendment gun rights with everything they’ve got. The term “hate speech” is a convenient excuse to shut down opposing opinions and it is an infringement of free speech. Any laws that deny access to firearms to anyone is an infringement of the right to defend ourselves. A right that is not only supposed to be constitutionally protected, but is actually a God-given right!
The new gender wars are a direct attack on individual rights at many levels. Pushing to both add additional genders and erase gender entirely is a war on individuality. Gender is a huge part of identity. A loss of honest gender identity is a loss of individualism. A person who is genderless is easier to force into a position of being a nonentity. They become less and less important. Soon just a nobody. They no longer matter ‘cause they aren’t really real. They are something made up out of whole cloth. As invisible as the emperor’s new clothes.
The new movement for gender neutral babies and children is horrifying for this reason. The term “theyby” instead of “baby”? Creepy!!! Why would a parent want to deny their children even the simplest of identities such as being a baby? Why would you not wish to celebrate the unique individual who is your child by announcing his or her gender? They are turned into something subhuman when you deny them gender and individual identity markers. Just as if you refer them to as “it”, you have relegated them to a position less than those of other people. It is as if you are saying they are just not quite worthy of being acknowledged as a person.
Of course, the Democrats and their Leftist cohorts are really anxious to simply deny many of the babies life at all. This is evident with their constant push for more abortions on any pretext and at any stage. Some even think killing a newborn baby is acceptable. After all, if a child is not really an individual with a unique identity after birth, how can a fetus possibly be considered a person prior to birth, right?
The Left seems to not just believe in the rights of the collective over the individual, they seemingly wish to erase the individual altogether. And, they seem to be doing it by waging war on the most vulnerable to start. Fetuses, babies, children, girls, women, and elderly top the list of those the Left are targeting. If you do not believe me, just look into the activities of the Left in regards to abortions, the Gender Equality Act, and denial of healthcare options for elderly citizens.
Believe me, to the Democrats and the Left, if you do not toe their line, support their agenda, fit into their narrative, and have worth to them, you are a nobody. And, nobody is gonna matter to them a darn little bit if they get their way!!!
Hearsay, rumor, and gossip now okay!
Sean Davis again, this time in the Federalist.
Federal records show that the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing.Read more here.https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/27/intel-community-secretly-gutted-requirement-of-first-hand-whistleblower-knowledge/
...The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed.
The complaint alleges that President Donald Trump broke the law during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. In his complaint, which was dated August 12, 2019, the complainant acknowledged he was “not a direct witness” to the wrongdoing he claims Trump committed.
...A previous version of the whistleblower complaint document, which the ICIG and DNI until recently provided to potential whistleblowers, declared that any complaint must contain only first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing and that complaints that provide only hearsay, rumor, or gossip would be rejected.
Another coordinated media and intelligence community hit against President Trump?
Sean Davis writes in the New York Post,
An old adage holds that while history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. Not so in the case of the latest manufactured anti-Trump “scandal.” The anonymous whistleblower’s allegations of corruption involving President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, appear to be a note-for-note reproduction of the discredited “dossier” of 2016.Read more here.
The template for a coordinated media and intelligence community hit against the president was first perfected in the dossier. British ex-spook Christopher Steele compiled the bogus allegations at the behest of the Democrats. Yet it formed the basis for secret wiretaps, human informants and a sprawling, multi-year special-counsel probe of the president.
...“I was not a direct witness to most of the events described,” the whistleblower wrote. Just like Steele’s dossier, the complaint is riddled with third-hand rumors, gossip and hearsay gathered from similarly anonymous officials.
“I was told that a State Department official” did this or that. “I heard from multiple US officials” that such and such. “Officials have informed me. …” And so on. Much like Steele, the Ukraine informant lacked first-hand access to evidence he claimed proved Trump’s guilt. It must have been hard to blow an accurate whistle when the whistleblower wasn’t even in the same room.
The questionable use of media sources to buttress hearsay claims is also consistent across both documents. After Steele compiled his dossier, he peddled the allegations to numerous reporters, who then dutifully reported them as fact. The Obama administration then cited those articles, which were sourced directly to Steele and his dossier, as proof of the validity of the allegations. One article was given to a federal intelligence court to justify wiretaps on a Trump campaign affiliate. The information it alleged was false.
Reporters, lawmakers and others who fell for the collusion hoax might blame naiveté. But that excuse won’t work this time around, not when the remix sounds exactly the same as the original song. Those who go along with this charade the second time around — be they in media, Congress or any of the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies implicated in the collusion hoax — have no such alibi.
"In theory, American citizenship remains the same; in reality, it is disappearing fast."
Victor Davis Hanson writes in PJ Media,
We still have a Bill of Rights, but many of our constitutional protections are being rendered impotent. If a rural family cannot find ammunition at the local Walmart or gun store due to organized boycotts and threats to such establishments, then the constitutional right to bear arms is not always exercisable in a practical sense.Read more here.
Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, audited and confirmed by the Senate as a Supreme Court justice. But if the New York Times and cable news can relentlessly charge without proof that nearly 40 years ago he was a teenage sexual pervert, then a distinguished judge can be rendered impotent without legal impeachment.
If a student cannot safely express opposition to abortion on demand, question the global warming narrative, or object to safe spaces, trigger warnings and race-based theme houses on campuses, does it matter that there is in theory still a First Amendment?
...In theory, American citizenship remains the same; in reality, it is disappearing fast.
Impeachment links in the Morning Report
JJ Sefton introduces to his impeachment links in his Morning Report in the Ace of Spades blog:
Among the highlights or lowlights if you will, despite the threat to the nation the House will still go on a two-week recess. I assume to lick its wounds. Turns out the so-called "whistleblower" was a spy for the traitor Brennan, the complaint that was written has ties to a Soros-backed investigative group and Buzzfeed (sound familiar?), Swallowswell gets demoted from President to Congresswoman, Rancida Taliban works her way up from foul-mouthed toad to crude and classless slag, and lastly the question is will the GOP-e globalists actually vote to convict and oust Trump if it ever gets to the Senate? That really would mean the end of the nation right there and then. That is if we aren't past that point already.Read the links here.
The plot thickens
In the Federalist, Erielle Davidson shows how there is a Romney connection to the latest Biden scandal.
According to web archives, top Mitt Romney adviser Joseph Cofer Black, who publicly goes by “Cofer Black,” joined Burisma’s board of directors while Hunter Biden was also serving on the board.Read more here.
According to The New Yorker, Hunter joined Burisma’s board in April of 2014 and remained on it until he declined to renew his position this past May. Meanwhile, according to Burisma’s website, Black was appointed in February of 2017 and continues to serve on its board.
...Black joined the CIA in 1974 and eventually climbed the ranks to become director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed him ambassador at large and coordinator for counterterrorism. He later worked at Blackwater as a vice-chairman before joining Romney’s campaign as a “special adviser” on Romney’s Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team in October of 2011. In 2017, Black joined the board of Burisma.
It’s looking increasingly probable that Burisma, the subject of a series of corruption allegations in the past, has been smartly buying Western complacency by slapping a few famous names on its board.
"We are the press! We need to be protected!"
The Des Moines Register sort of made an apology to Iowans and fired a shoddy "journalist." That got Ace of Spades to thinking about the state of journalism today.
they're a Guild who asserts the Absolute Right to attack and destroy any non-journalist citizen in the world, but which shrieks "We are the press! We need to be protected!" when the same treatment is suggested for them.Read more here.
They're currently shrieking merely about criticism -- true criticism, as they full well know. They know they're liberal. But if high-ranking Republicans say they're crusading liberal partisans -- which they know they are; they give each other awards in recognition of this -- they shriek that we're "endangering the press" and trying to "chilling the First Amendment."
And meanwhile, they just keep adding to their bloody pile of citizen scalps.
They really do believe -- and intend to codify it as law -- that the First Amendment exists only for the credentialed liberal professional class. They're just hesitant to say it until they're sure they have the power to impose that law.
"I heard!"
In National Review, Victor Davis Hanson scoffs at the whistleblower impeachment hearsay.
After nearly three years of this, we know the delivery system that ensues. Along with the sensationalized initial media hype, the promised “smoking gun” leak usually follows. But when the “overwhelming” evidence or “walls are closing in” documents are released, there is no criminal act to be found other than occasional art-of-the-deal bluster from Trump. And then on to the next crude coup attempt, since the line of wannabe Glen Simpsons, Bruce Ohrs, Andrew McCabes, and John Brennans seems endless.Read more here.
...Any president has a perfect right to tell a foreign head of state and recipient of major U.S. aid that his corruption-plagued country has played a destabilizing but still murky role in recent American elections and in scandals that have affected the American people, and in particular the current president of the United States — and that it would be a good thing to get to the bottom of it.
Americans, left and right, would like to know the exact nature of Ukrainian-Russian interference and the degree, if any, to which CrowdStrike played a role in the Clinton-email imbroglio and why CrowdStrike (which analyzed the server that the DNC refused to turn over to the FBI) was apparently exempt from FBI investigation.
That Biden is now a Democratic front-runner does not provide immunity or excuse the fact that he was vice president of the United States tasked with Ukrainian affairs when his problem-plagued son, without any energy or foreign-policy experience, made a great deal of money for apparently nothing more than lending his Biden name to benefit a corrupt Ukrainian-Russian-related company. Nor should we overlook that Joe Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid — $1 billion — to Ukraine if it did not within six hours fire the too-curious prosecutor who was looking into the mess. And that prosecutor was fired. And that $1 billion in aid was not cut off. And Hunter Biden was no longer a target of any investigation. And he made a great deal of money.
The VP emeritus had the temerity, in Biden signature mock-heroic style, to boast of his intervention — he was impressing a foreign-policy symposium with his seasoned clout. “Well, son a b****, he got fired,” he bragged, prompting laughter from symposium attendees. Note that he was also emphasizing his own absolute exemption from any legal repercussions for such a blatant and explicit quid pro quo gambit.
...These episodes are not just designed to drive down polls or crowd out coverage of real achievement on economic growth, energy development, low unemployment, judicial appointments, deregulation, tax reform, and clarity overseas on Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea. They are veritable coups aimed at aborting a presidency before a scheduled election, either out of unhinged hatred for Trump or out of desperation that an extremist counter-agenda, as witnessed in the first three Democratic debates, is apt to turn off most voters.
And there is a monotony in the scripts. So often we hear from a whistleblower who claims to have a superior moral conscious — “higher loyalty” Jim Comey, or the anonymous “Resistance” fighter who wrote the 2018 New York Times op-ed, or boy scout Andy McCabe forced to initiate a veritable coup to surveille and catch the president in an incriminating statement, or an outraged John Brennan or James Clapper or Bruce Ohr coming forward with “damning” information on Trump. Then the requisite Democratic senate staffer or administrative-state bureaucrat takes action, often with the help of some congressional official, Fusion GPS factotum, or Lawfare busybody, but not before the accusation is leaked and blared on cable news, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, etc. and billed as the magic bullet that will finally bring down the Trump monster.
...When the entire nature of the whistleblower, his handlers, and his media enablers is fully known, when attention turns, as it already has, to Biden’s real legal exposure, two things will follow:
Biden will get snappy, befuddled, and indignant to questions, to the extent he will even entertain them — all the while losing ground to Elizabeth Warren. Trump will be the eventual beneficiary of Warren’s more likely and more alienating candidacy. And, even if impeached, Trump will be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as growing stronger for enduring ever shriller and more monotonous attacks.
The Five Commandments
Victor Davis Hanson writes in National Review,
One theme of the Democratic debates is collective furor — at whom or what is not always clear, other than at Americans who voted for Trump. Or perhaps at America itself for failing the expectations of our moral betters? Yet such rage is so deeply embedded in hypocrisy that it is not merely hard to take; it’s even harder to believe it’s serious.Read more https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/privileged-scolds-should-lead-by-example-before-lecturing-others/
Note that the Democratic party has mostly abandoned the middle class and is largely demographically a reflection of the very wealthy who fund it and the dependent poor who are taken for granted. The former seeks greater power and influence; the latter depends on redistributive social programs and identity-politics set-asides.
...Given these realities can we ask for a brief manifesto from our affluent scolds in Washington and Hollywood?
How about just five simple commandments to see us through until November 2020?
I will not lecture on the evils of gun ownership if I own a handgun or if anyone in my security details carries one. Given Joe Biden’s advice just to rely on a few random blasts of a shotgun on the front porch, perhaps his private security guards could do the same.
I pledge not to sermonize on the unfairness of wealth distribution or carbon-emission greed if I own more than one home, and if any of my homes is larger than 2,500 square feet.
If I continue to virtue-signal about the Green New Deal, I promise that, from this day forth, I will not fly on a private jet, not own a heated swimming pool or hot tub, not own or ride in an SUV, and not own or use air conditioning. The green future starts now, with me!
I swear not to rail about the failure of the public schools in general, the evils of non-union and charter schools, and in particular the asymmetries in the quality of our education system — if I place my own children in private academies and prep schools or if I attended a private school myself.
Finally, I will cease pontificating about “white privilege” and “white supremacy” if I live in a nearly all-white, non-diverse neighborhood and my children have ever attended a wealthy, predominately white school.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Ethically improper or even illegal?
Tonight John Solomon has written in the Hill a lengthy report on Biden's actions in stopping Ukraine's prosecution of his son. He concludes:
Today, two questions remain.Read more here.
One is whether it was ethically improper or even illegal for Biden to intervene to fire the prosecutor handling Burisma’s case, given his son’s interests. That is one that requires more investigation and the expertise of lawyers.
The second is whether Biden has given the American people an honest accounting of what happened. The new documents I obtained raise serious doubts about his story’s credibility. And that’s an issue that needs to be resolved by voters.
Phone addiction or digital detox
In the L.A. Times, Jessica Roy writes,
Worldwide Google searches for “digital detox” have been rising steadily over the last five years. At the same time, rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health issues among teens and young adults — the group that collectively spends the most time on their phones — have spiked.Read more https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-09-23/digital-detox-phone-addiction
But in any case, a world of coaches, books, podcasts, wellness programs, camps and retreats have sprung up to help those of us who need a little external assistance to guide our “digital detox.”
He just keeps on keeping on!
In Hot Air, Ed Morrisey brings us the news that President Trump has reached an asylum agreement with Honduras to go along with agreements with Guatamala and El Salvador.
...just the last link in a fence that might end up mooting much of the asylum debate in Congress. While most of the attention today has focused on Ukraine, the White House announced a new agreement with Honduras to take any refugees seeking asylum first rather than the US. That makes three nations with safe-third-country agreements in Central America that effectively blocks the land route for asylum seekers from south of Mexico:Read more here.
Scott Adams addresses young people with some wisdom about climate.
I’m sorry adults have frightened you about climate change and how it might affect your future. You might be less afraid if you knew some facts that adults intentionally do not explain to you. I’ll tell you here.Read more here.
...Adults sometimes like to use children to carry their messages because it makes it hard for the other side to criticize them without seeming like monsters. If adults have encouraged you to panic about climate change without telling you what I am telling you here, they do not have your best interests at heart. They are using you.
...We adults respect your passion and your energy on the topic of climate. But it isn’t fair for us to deny you the basic facts while at the same time scaring you into action. I hope this letter helps you sleep better. We adults have this problem under control, or will soon, and you’ll help us finish the job. So get some good sleep tonight. Together, we got this.
Are you planning to send your kid off to college?
Louis Profeta is an emergency room doctor who has some good advice in Linked In.
We need to encourage our kids to slow it down, to take a longer path to college, perhaps. Expose our kids to real education—the kind of education that comes with a W-2, a boss, getting up early and working late and interacting with people who can’t afford a higher education. Make them appreciate the life experiences that come with nailing a 2 x 4, washing dishes, wheeling people to X-ray, picking up garbage, answering telephones. Make them earn their spending money BEFORE college and decide on their own if they’d rather use it on alcohol, weed, a four-block Uber ride, or laundry and food.Read the whole thing here.
Some very informative charts!
In the Federalist, David Harsanyi publishes eye-opening graphs on global poverty, child mortality, life expectancy, battle death rates, genocide, fatality rates due to weather, emissions of air pollutants, climate and non-climate-related deaths, traffic fatalities, school shootings and mass shootings, guns per person and gun homicide rate, literate and illiterate world population, primary school enrollment, GDP per capita, U.S. median income, growth of the upper-middle class, homeownership rate, and more here.
An emphatic no, then quickly backs up
FLAG: Senator Elizabeth Warren appears uncharacteristically flustered when asked if her ethics plan would allow her Vice President's son to serve on the board of a foreign company: "No," she said. "I don't know. I mean I’d have to go back and look at the details." #nhpolitics pic.twitter.com/EksLlMEsew
— Nicole Sganga (@NicoleSganga) September 25, 2019
Bad news for Biden
This is bad news for Biden pic.twitter.com/A4JfbQqOV3
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 26, 2019
Causes of death in the U.S.
Average # of deaths per day in US:
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 1, 2019
Abortion: 2,408
Heart disease: 1,773
Cancer: 1,641
Medical error: 685
Accidents: 401
Stroke: 401
Alzheimer's: 332
Diabetes: 228
Flu: 150
Suicide: 128
Opioids: 115
Drunk driving: 28
Underage drinking: 11
Teen texting-and-driving: 8
All Rifles: 1
Trafficking of aborted baby body parts
In the Federalist, Madeline Osburn reports,
New details about the trafficking of aborted baby body parts emerged over the last two weeks, as witnesses and Planned Parenthood employees testified during hearings for undercover journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.Read more here.
Daleiden and Merritt of the Center For Medical Progress face 13 felony counts of illegal videotaping and one count of conspiracy to illegally videotape after they released undercover videos in 2015, exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in aborted baby body parts. The preliminary hearings held in San Francisco courtrooms last week were intended to determine if there is probable cause to charge Daleiden and Merritt, but ultimately revealed more about the violent crimes of abortion industry titans Planned Parenthood and StemExpress.
Here is more about what was revealed on the witness stand.
1. Beating Fetal Hearts Used In Research Are Harvested From Living Babies
...Daleiden said he contacted Dr. Theresa Deisher, an expert in stem cell research with a doctorate in molecular and cellular physiology, who told him that “the fetus would have to be alive at the time the organs were harvested” for use in a Langendorff apparatus, Daleiden said.
Deisher also testified last Wednesday, the last day of hearings, where she said that a heart requires energy to relax after contracting, and if it contracts after it “runs out of energy,” it is unusable for research.
“It has to be beating and immediately go on the Langendorff,” Deisher said, or “be arrested in a relaxed state while it was still beating and subsequently put on a Langendorff.”
Deiser said it was very clear the abortionists’ tactics were intentional. “They want those babies coming out with beating hearts,” she said.
2. StemExpress Admitted to Selling Whole Fetuses And Attached Baby Heads
The CEO of StemExpress, who was infamously recorded in Daleiden’s undercover videos discussing her company’s lucrative partnership with Planned Parenthood, took the stand during the first week of hearings. She admitted that StemExpress provided completely intact embryos, fetuses, beating hearts, and babies with their heads still attached to their bodies to Stanford and other universities for research.
3. Abortionist Said Planned Parenthood Has Grossly Deficient Ethical And Medical Standards
Dr. Forrest Smith is one of the longest-practicing abortionists in the United States. He has performed anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 abortions throughout his career, over the course of 50 years. Smith testified to the ways abortions performed at Planned Parenthood facilities put women at risk and were modified to result in live births.
Why Ukraine?
In FrontPage Magazine, Daniel Greenfield thinks you might be wondering
How did a minor country intersect with three presidential campaigns, those of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, the Mueller investigation and the business dealings of the Biden clan?Read more here.
Ukraine’s government is a dysfunctional oligarchy that exists in a state of permanent conflict between billionaires, energy interests, nationalists, Russian front groups, European front groups and street thugs. To make matters more confusing, some of those categories overlap and sometimes shift back and forth.
The Ukraine is one of the poorest countries in the region. Its per capita income is miserable. Its life expectancy is slightly higher than that of Syria. Its real prize is a complex energy sector interwoven with those of Russia and the European Union. Every reason why Ukraine has been in the news comes back to that energy sector and its role in the power balance between Russia, Europe and the United States.
Without that energy sector, the Ukraine would have wallowed quietly in a morass of corruption. Instead its scandals touch off explosions in Moscow, Brussels and Washington D.C. because they originate there.
That’s why the origin of the latest Ukraine scandal begins, unsurprisingly, with an energy company.
Burisma Holdings, the energy company, paid Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, $50,000 a month to sit on its board. That’s not a commonplace arrangement. But energy companies in that part of the world are never just private companies. They’re closely linked to political interests and political leaders.
The company that was paying Biden’s son a cool $50K a month was founded by a businessman who had been the Minister of Natural Resources in the Yanukovich government. The Yanukovich government, which was pro-Russian, was forced out by nationalist and pro-EU activist protests. Yanukovich fled to Russia and Putin responded to the fall of his government by invading the Ukraine and annexing Crimea.
And Crimea is all about the pipelines.
Yanukovich’s party employed American political consultants from across the spectrum including Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary’s campaign chair, Tad Devine, Bernie Sanders’ chief political strategist, and Paul Manafort, briefly Trump’s campaign chair. While Podesta won’t be charged and Devine got off, Manafort had the book thrown at him because our political class and the Russian and Ukrainian political classes have more than a few things in common. And the similarities are only growing.
The Manafort case was collateral damage from the infighting between Ukraine’s old government and its new government. But Democrat operatives seized on the Ukrainian scandals because of their potential usefulness to their anti-Trump cause, ignoring Podesta and Devine, while focusing on Manafort.
...Ukraine is an energy industry battlefield. So is America.
Some of the biggest backers of impeaching President Trump are in the green energy business. Trump’s backing for oil and coal lit a fire under our economy, but it’s been bad news for the folks who make money from subsidized renewables and, even more shamefully, carbon credits. If Trump loses, they win.
A crime, or not a crime?
On last night's Tucker Carlson Tonight show on Fox, Tucker brought back Trump supporter Joe diGenova to discuss whether Trump's phone call to the head of Ukraine constituted a crime, as Judge Napolitano said when talking with anti-Trump anchor Shep Smith. YouTube has not yet made it into a separate clip, but you can view it here.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Is a closed door meeting of her caucus a "formal" impeachment hearing?
Ann Althouse asks,
How is it a "formal impeachment inquiry" when it was a "closed-door meeting" of only the Democratic Congress?Read more here.
I'm trying to understand the terminology, as reported in The Washington Post, in "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry of Trump, says his actions were a ‘betrayal of national security.'"
What does "formal" mean? Pelosi made an announcement "after a closed-door meeting with her caucus." Shouldn't formality entail an open proceeding, with participation of all members of the House?
See what you missed?
Barbie manufacturer Mattel has launched a range of 'gender inclusive' dolls
— ITV News (@itvnews) September 25, 2019
Read more: https://t.co/xU6L2ZhsnD pic.twitter.com/stkzBn7GnW
"They bought the Vice President of the United States!"
Rudy Giuliani: "I don't get intimidated by bullies! I never knew the depth of Joe Biden's corruption. If I played a role in getting that out, I did a service to my country and I'm proud of it! These people abuse power because the crooked press corps do not cover them like they cover Republicans. They go after Republicans if they say something wrong. They allow Democrats to steal millions and they don't care. If Biden gets away with the $1.5 billion, then we don't have justice in America. We've lost the FBI. Their inability to investigate this is astounding! Why did I do it? Because the FBI didn't do their job!"
George Conway continues his anti-Trump hatred, while his wife continues to stand by Trump!
I am just amazed that George Conway continues to spew hatred at his wife's boss, President Trump, yet Kellyanne continues to be a spokesperson for Trump. George's latest abomination is to agree with predictions that some Senate Republicans will vote to impeach Trump. Amazing! Read more here.
Simon on impeachment
In PJ Media, Roger L. Simon takes a look at the impeachment talk.
And indeed the whole spectacle might be amusing in a macabre sort of way if there weren't important things going on in the world. The president is engaged in negotiations of tremendous significance with the Chinese and trying to neuter as much as possible the violent mullahs of Iran, but the Democrats don't care. In fact, they would prefer he fail, and seem to be doing everything in their power to make it so. To call that un-American is an understatement. Actually, it's despicable and deeply immoral, not just for the citizens of this country, but for the world. What children!Read more here.
Impeachment
Let's see what impeachment talk brings out in Instapundit's commenters.
Skep 41 writes,
ffarkle wrote,
Skep 41 writes,
First the high profile flub on Russian Collusion after years of minor botches like Chesty McDaniels and now the Dems have put all their chips on one spin of the wheel. But recently the Dems have staggered from one crushing screw-up to the next; they are a party of narcissistic bunglers whose immunity from media criticism has given then the false impression that they never make a mistake.
A bad position to be in against a wily and unconventional opponent whom they obviously have misunderstood from Day One.
ffarkle wrote,
The House of Representatives must initially commence impeachment.Read more here.
Members of the House vote on this action, and if approved, it moves to the Senate.
The Senate will then carry out a trial to determine the final acquittal or impeachment of individual in question.
The Senate acts as the jury in that it decides whether the accused is guilty or not guilty. A two-thirds majority is necessary for conviction.
Trump hosts President of Ukraine
Guess which foreign leader Trump will be meeting with today! President Zelenskyy of Ukraine!
On the same day the transcript of the call between both leaders has been released. Of course, Sundance has the transcript of their phone call here.
Do they really want to push impeachment even if it means they lose in 2020?
In his Morning Report today, JJ Sefton writes, Suffice it to say, that barring something completely out of the blue, after post-natal infanticide, disarming of the citizenry and open borders with welfare and healthcare for foreigners, impeachment will not only insure Trump is reelected a scant 13 months from now, but by a huge margin.
Do they really want to push impeachment even if it means they lose in 2020? Sefton links to an article in FrontPage Magazine by Daniel Greenfield that answers that question in the affirmative.
Do they really want to push impeachment even if it means they lose in 2020? Sefton links to an article in FrontPage Magazine by Daniel Greenfield that answers that question in the affirmative.
So why the unpopular impeachment push that can’t succeed because of the composition of the Senate?Read more here.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/disturbing-reason-why-dems-really-want-impeach-daniel-greenfield/
The purpose of Random Treason Accusation #17 has always been justifying the use of surveillance, espionage and secret evidence ld against the political opposition. Or Watergate to the power of ten.
...Elections are a humiliating process that force lefties to lie to voters, hide their agendas, and appeal to the people they despise to be allowed to rule them. Even when they win, a sour taste lingers afterward.
The Left desperately wants impeachment proceedings because it wants to exercise direct power.
Impeachment is not just meant to be a trial of President Trump, but of the voters who chose him. Its outcome, whatever the composition of the Senate, is meant to be an argument for remaking the system of elections, whether by abolishing the Electoral College or tampering with the judiciary, that would take the power further out of the hands of the voters and concentrate them with the right sorts of people.
Outside the media and social media, where the purges of cancel culture are a daily event, the Left lacks the power to regularly drag its political enemies before its bar, to put them on trial and break them. And yet it craves that terrible power above all else. All its obsessions, political correctness, cancel culture, political protests, demonization and impeachment bend toward that consuming evil obsession.
The Mueller investigation enraptured lefties with its spectacle of police state tactics, night raids, prolonged interrogations, eavesdropping, and then finally trials that bankrupted their opponents.
Nothing else, not even winning in 2020, excites the Left as much as the prospect of more show trials.
That’s why it must have impeachment even if attaining it will destroy its chances of victory.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Trump rises to the occasion
Because Michael was in the news today after it was revealed that Fox News has banned him, I wanted to listen to his podcast today, but he didn't mention the controversy.
Michael alleges that Joe Biden has no regard for the truth. Lies have a price. More than half of young people believe humanity will be wiped off the earth within 10 to 12 years. The climate change movement is a religious movement. It is religion for the Left; people who have abandoned religion for atheism. Now they have their own apocalypse, their own sacraments, their own disciplines, their own secular saints. If you criticize any of this, they will come after you with a fury. The challenge for conservatives is not to make fun of them for being cultists. The challenge is to persuade. We all intuit our own brokenness, our own imperfect nature. Our challenge is to turn them back to a truer metaphysical reality.
Trump went to the United Nations yesterday and made clear that "the future does not belong to the globalists. The future belongs to patriots! The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations."
Climate change hysteria is socialism by the back door. No one pays attention to the science; only the politics and their climate change religion.
In January 2016, Obama invited the leaders of Ukraine to the White House, setting the stage for Biden, through the White House, to pressure Ukraine to drop the inquiry re: his son. Collusion! The Left accuses you of doing what they, themselves, are doing. If you are colluding with a foreign government, you accuse your opponent of colluding with a foreign government!
It may be convenient to give in to lies, to give in to cynicism, and to disregard the truth. It is always convenient in the short run, but in the long run, it's all you've got!
Michael alleges that Joe Biden has no regard for the truth. Lies have a price. More than half of young people believe humanity will be wiped off the earth within 10 to 12 years. The climate change movement is a religious movement. It is religion for the Left; people who have abandoned religion for atheism. Now they have their own apocalypse, their own sacraments, their own disciplines, their own secular saints. If you criticize any of this, they will come after you with a fury. The challenge for conservatives is not to make fun of them for being cultists. The challenge is to persuade. We all intuit our own brokenness, our own imperfect nature. Our challenge is to turn them back to a truer metaphysical reality.
Trump went to the United Nations yesterday and made clear that "the future does not belong to the globalists. The future belongs to patriots! The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations."
Climate change hysteria is socialism by the back door. No one pays attention to the science; only the politics and their climate change religion.
In January 2016, Obama invited the leaders of Ukraine to the White House, setting the stage for Biden, through the White House, to pressure Ukraine to drop the inquiry re: his son. Collusion! The Left accuses you of doing what they, themselves, are doing. If you are colluding with a foreign government, you accuse your opponent of colluding with a foreign government!
It may be convenient to give in to lies, to give in to cynicism, and to disregard the truth. It is always convenient in the short run, but in the long run, it's all you've got!
Trump's dizzying schedule
Can you believe how active President Trump is in meeting with leaders of other countries? It is hard for me to keep up! After meeting overseas with several leaders, he has welcomed to America the leaders of Australia, India, Singapore, South Korea, Egypt, Poland, and Pakistan. Just in case he missed anybody, Trump and Pence went over to the United Nations for the first-ever request by a U.S. President to discuss religious freedom!
Also, he goes to California to check on the building of the wall, and holds rallies in Houston and New Mexico!
Also, he goes to California to check on the building of the wall, and holds rallies in Houston and New Mexico!
"Concerning in the extreme!"
In the Conservative Treehouse, Sundance writes,
Read much more here.
A Judicial Watch FOIA Lawsuit has resulted in the release of a May 16, 2017, memo written by then Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. [Link Here] Current media are focused on Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein willingness to wear a wire into the Oval Office to record the President; however, the memo content actually reveals much more.
There are three aspects to the McCabe memo that warrant attention: (1) Rosenstein’s willingness to wear a wire. (2) Evidence that Rosenstein took Mueller to the White House on May 16, 2017, as a set-up to interview Mueller’s pending target; and (3) the CURRENT redactions to the memo indicate CURRENT efforts by the CURRENT AG Bill Barr to protect the corrupt intent of Rod Rosenstein. While all three points are alarming; the last aspect is concerning in the extreme.
...….The problem for Attorney General Bill Barr is not investigating what we don’t know, but rather navigating through what ‘We The People’ are already aware of…. (link)
Read much more here.
In defense of Michael Knowles
In Red State, Brandon Morse strongly comes to the defense of the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles. Knowles criticized Leftists for using a mentally ill child to make the case for climate activism. The child, Greta Thunberg, has been diagnosed as having Asbergers and OCD. Fox News has caved to pressure and has banned Knowles from future appearances. Read Morse's defense of Knowles here.
Monday, September 23, 2019
Biden's "demonization or depersonalization of some silent other."
In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes, "Joe Biden reminds us that losers sometimes compose history." Read the devastating critique here.
Michelle Malkin is a woman of great courage.
Not many people are as brave as Michelle Malkin. If you click here, you can see her Stand with Ice rally in Colorado. She is speaking in Portland on October 1, where you know that the Antifa people will be looking to commit some acts of violence against her.
"A genuine love"
In the New York Post, Miranda Devine writes very favorably about Melania Trump and the Trump marriage.
Health care and obesity
Betsy McCaughey writes in the New York Post,
This nation educated the public about the dangers of smoking and convinced millions to stop. We can do it again to combat reckless eating. Persuading Americans to shed their excess pounds, for their own health, is not body shaming.Read more here.
What’s a shame is how much American taxpayers and insurance consumers are paying in added health costs because of the obesity epidemic.
Another thing to cause panic among Leftists
Ivanka Trump has a new haircut. Arwa Mahdawi, writing in the Guardian, thinks it should make us afraid, very afraid.
"global cooling," followed by "global warming," and then "climate change" and "anthropogenic climate change."
Laura Hollis writes in Creators.com,
Ill-informed politicians, shrill consumer advocates, inflammatory reporting, overzealous regulatory agency appointees, conflicting data, defamatory accusations leveled against American companies ... does any of this sound oddly familiar?Read more here.
It should. Because it's precisely what we've seen with "global cooling," followed by "global warming," and then "climate change" and "anthropogenic climate change."
It's not a sin for science to be wrong. That's all part of the process. What is stupid is to rush the process by politicizing it, or clamoring for regulations and billions of dollars in wasteful expenditures before we know precisely what the problems — and solutions — are.
How the mainstream media downplay left-wing violence
In Commentary, Warren Henry writes about reporter Andy Ngo and how the mainstream media downplay left-wing violence. Read it here.
"The level of disrespect in this is off the charts."
In PJ Media, Roger L. Simon asks,
Why do liberals and Progressives lie to blacks? ...The obvious is that they are fishing for votes. Warren has a putative weakness with African American voters. Tom Steyer is unknown to them (as he is to a lot of people). Harris is sinking fast and needs to shore up her rep and Julián Castro's campaign has barely been registering enough to keep him on the debate stage.\Read more here.
But beneath this are more disturbing beliefs, one of which is on the edge of disgusting and actually racist: that African Americans prefer to be lied to than told the truth. The corollary to this is that they are easily lied to if you stir them up. The level of disrespect in this is off the charts.
"Not only is Weld batshit crazy, he’s also clueless on the law."
In Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds writes,
In the comments, rjarango wrote,
The only thing worse than the dems are apostate GOPers like Weld and Romney--fortunately, McCain is dead.
TheDarkHelmet commented,
Pure distilled essence of TDS from Weld. Pathetic.
Enemies of Trump may really regret pushing the whole Ukraine thing. Once we get past whatever it was Trump said in a phone conversation to whatever it was the Bidens actually DID the situation could be quite uncomfortable for Slow Joe & Son. At least one of the players involved seems to have received large amounts of money from the Ukraine. It doesn't appear to have been Trump.
Just another wonderful example of "You can tell what nefarious stuff the Dems have been up to, because it's what they accuse the Republicans of doing." Very Clintonesque. Joe' s slow learner, but he's had a long time to learn.
WHY IS IT THAT THE PEOPLE WHO ADVERTISE THEMSELVES AS A SANER ALTERNATIVE TO TRUMP ALWAYS SEEM TO TURN OUT TO BE BATSHIT CRAZY? GOP Challenger Bill Weld Floats Death Penalty For Trump Over Ukraine: ‘The Only Penalty for Treason is Death.’
Not only is Weld batshit crazy, he’s also clueless on the law. Nothing he accuses Trump of amounts to treason, and the statute doesn’t have death as the only penalty. Weld was counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and was head of the Criminal Division at Justice as well as a US Attorney. Either he needs to be checked for dementia, or those institutions are in even sorrier shape than I thought.
In the comments, rjarango wrote,
The only thing worse than the dems are apostate GOPers like Weld and Romney--fortunately, McCain is dead.
TheDarkHelmet commented,
Pure distilled essence of TDS from Weld. Pathetic.
Enemies of Trump may really regret pushing the whole Ukraine thing. Once we get past whatever it was Trump said in a phone conversation to whatever it was the Bidens actually DID the situation could be quite uncomfortable for Slow Joe & Son. At least one of the players involved seems to have received large amounts of money from the Ukraine. It doesn't appear to have been Trump.
Just another wonderful example of "You can tell what nefarious stuff the Dems have been up to, because it's what they accuse the Republicans of doing." Very Clintonesque. Joe' s slow learner, but he's had a long time to learn.
Open them all!
Brant S. Mittler MD, JD, writes in MEDPAGE TODAY,
With about 800,000 acute heart attacks occurring in the U.S. every year, and heart disease being the number one killer, you would think that a new clinical trial showing benefits from opening up all significantly blocked heart blood vessels in addition to the blocked artery responsible for the acute attack would merit big headlines.Read more here.
Think again. You would be wrong.
Not only were there no big headlines, there was no coverage at all.
Instead of headlines, all major U.S. mainstream media left a complete news blackout of the COMPLETE clinical trial. That's right, completely ZERO coverage. Just like it never happened.
"Complete" refers to complete revascularization of all the other significantly blocked coronary vessels in addition to the main culprit lesion responsible for the heart attack, which in this study was limited to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). About 50% of STEMI patients have more than one blocked artery in addition to the culprit acute blockage.
"It is a story out of a horror movie: A garage full of baby parts, a sketchy rural abortionist and a culture that avoids hard questions.
Ace of Spades brings us the story of the abortion doctor who lived in Illinois but practiced baby-killing in Indiana.
The Abortion Hoarder: Thousands of Dead Babies Found on Property of Ghoulish Doctor;
Media Completely Uninterested
—Ace of Spades"
The brave firefighters once again rush in to deprive a story of oxygen.
Ace links to a USA Today report:
There’s something sick in America’s abortion industry. What else would account for a doctor who collected thousands of dead babies in some kind of twisted hobby that he hid from his allegedly unsuspecting wife?The writer asked the Media Research Center to look into how much coverage this story had been given. The answer will not surprise you.http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=383415
Two thousand two hundred and forty-six fetuses were found "medically preserved" in Ulrich Klopfer’s garage last week after he died on Sept. 3. And now the attorneys general of Illinois and Indiana are investigating how the human remains got from Klopfer's network of Indiana abortion clinics to his rural Illinois home and what laws might have been violated.
Like Gosnell, Klopfer’' clinics shut down after state inspectors found worrying medical and record-keeping problems.
While Klopfer is not alleged to have been a murderer, his ethical standards appear not to have been very high. In defending himself and his clinics against state allegations, the Illinois physician recounted how he performed an abortion on a 10-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle, never reporting the crime to police and, as a result, helping her parents cover up the atrocity by a family member. State officials cited the sickening defense as part of their reason for stripping him of his medical license. He was previously charged with failing to report performing abortions on two 13-year-olds.
According to a complaint filed by the Indiana Medical Licensing Board, Klopfer worked in clinics in South Bend, Gary and Fort Wayne from 2012 to 2015.
With thousands of ghoulishly stored dead bodies straight out of a horror movie, medical malpractice and a multistate mystery, you’d think the news media would be all over this story. Not so much.
Should women be required to cover up in public?
Sally Zelikovsky writes in the American Thinker,
...apparently, it’s not enough that our breasts are unrestrained in the privacy of our own homes. The nipple liberators have set their sights on the public square. They are determined to make the days of hiding in secrecy behind latex, spandex, and Playtex on Main Street U.S.A. a thing of the past.Read more here.
Turns out, these bare-chested ladies have already successfully challenged a Fort Collins, Colorado ordinance prohibiting public toplessness! They must have quite the war chest because, after spending over $300,000 defending the ordinance and losing at the 10th Circuit, the city of Fort Collins decided it could not afford to continue to defend the law and threw in the towel. So much for all of that pot tax revenue…
...With all of the chest-beating, Fort Collins didn’t have the stomach to continue the fight for the majority of its residents. But they should have. The 10th Circuit ruling affects Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming. It’s hard to see how the majorities in those conservative and religious states will be content to abide by such a ruling. But there may be some good news on the horizon. According to NBC, New Hampshire is now in the crosshairs of the hooter tooters and the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a challenge to New Hampshire’s ban on public toplessness.
If the high court takes the case, I’m fairly confident it will uphold the right of the states and localities to regulate attire in public places, including a requirement that women cover their bosoms. The question the Court will have to address is whether there is a legitimate state interest in regulating this activity and a rational connection between the regulation and the purposes for the regulation. I don’t foresee the majority of justices, including some of the progressive females, finding anything but that it is constitutional for localities and states to regulate their backyards in accordance with community standards, including requiring women cover up in public.
We’ll just have to stay abreast of where things go from here.
"Nobody wants a stopped heart!"
In the American Spectator, Anne Hendershott writes,
The popular pro-life bumper sticker that proclaims “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” may no longer be true if StemExpress, the alleged harvester of human fetal hearts, is allowed to continue the practice of removing the still-beating hearts of unborn babies in the process of an abortion. The revelations of the removal of the hearts from babies following an abortion were part of the testimony of Dr. Theresa Deisher, an expert in adult stem cell research, during a San Francisco court proceeding on September 18.Read more here.
But it is not StemExpress that is on trial. The criminal proceedings were part of the preliminary hearing of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, investigative journalists from the Center for Medical Progress, who were charged with revealing the heinous practice in 2015. Both have been charged with 14 felony counts of videotaping conversations without consent in connection with exposing the role Planned Parenthood and StemExpress played in the scandal over the selling of baby body parts.
Are the tech monopolies a threat to our freedom?
Ned Ryun writes in American Greatness,
...what has been called “advertising” through the tech companies is really just highly targeted customer acquisition. That isn’t advertising at all. It’s building long-term assets for a company.Read more here.
...what has been called “advertising” through the tech companies is really just highly targeted customer acquisition. That isn’t advertising at all. It’s building long-term assets for a company.
The tech monopolies are a very real and present threat to our freedom. It cannot be stated strongly enough: if the tech monopolies are left in their current form, our republic and our freedoms are over. Anything and everything that will break their power, including antitrust suits, should be pursued.
But remember, it wasn’t something sexy that brought down Al Capone, one of the most notorious gangsters in our history. It was tax violations. The same approach could be used with the tech companies: all Steve Mnuchin must do is issue a Treasury edict that makes this issue of building intangible assets a Tier 1 audit issue, which means every auditor must look at advertising expenses not as deductions, but as long term capital assets.
These tech monopolies were allowed to come into existence because of gray areas and advantages created in law and tax regulations. Only law and regulation can bring them to heel.
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