U.S. troops block Russian forces from capturing a Syrian oil field

Did you know that U.S. troops prevented Russian troops from capturing a Syrian oil field last Saturday? Ben Wolfgang reports the story for the Washington Times here.

Are more Americans unhappy than ever before?

In American Greatness, Dennis Prager shares some things that are disturbing.

Though people have more money, better health care, better health, better housing, and more education, and live longer than at any time in history, they—especially young people—are unhappier than at any time since data collection began.

Why has this happened?

There is a number of reasons. Increased use of illicit drugs and prescription drug abuse, and less human interaction because of constant cellphone use are two widely offered, valid explanations.

But the biggest reason may be the almost-complete loss of values and meaning over the last half-century.

Let’s begin with values.

Read more here.

President Trump to attend and speak at the March for Life Friday

In News Thud, Paul Goldberg reports that this Friday President Trump will be the first president in history to attend and speak at the March for Life. Read more here.

Liars come in handy to lawyers trying to get an acquittal for their client.

In the Federalist, Caroline Court writes about a woman who lied in order to get on the jury hearing the case against Harvey Weinstein. Caroline imagines here that Weintein's lawyers are happy about that.

Today President Trump and Melania celebrate their 15th wedding anniversary.

The facts about Biden's corruption in his dealings with Ukraine

Superb investigative reporter John Soloman writes,

Joe Biden’s ‘conspiracy theory’ memo to U.S. media doesn’t match the facts.

Here are the facts, with links to public evidence, so you can decide for yourself.

Fact: Joe Biden admitted to forcing Shokin’s firing in March 2016.

Fact: Shokin’s prosecutors were actively investigating Burisma when he was fired.

Fact: Burisma’s lawyers in 2016 were pressing U.S. and Ukrainian authorities to end the corruption investigations.

Fact: Federal Ethics rules require government officials to avoid taking policy actions affecting close relatives.

Fact: Multiple State Department officials testified the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine created the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Fact: Hunter Biden acknowleged he may have gotten his Burisma job solely because of his last name.

Fact: Ukraine law enforcement reopened the Burisma investigation in early 2019, well before President Trump mentioned the matter to Ukraine’s new president Vlodymyr Zelensky.

Soloman backs up each of these facts here.

Where are they going to put people?

Paul Goldberg reports in News Thud that over one hundred thousand requests have been received for tickets to a Trump rally next week in New Jersey. The arena only holds 7,500 people! Read more here.

"history gave way to histrionics."

In the New York Post, Michael Goodwin does not think much of what Senator Schumer had to say in the impeachment trial.

Schumer’s bare-knuckle approach immediately dashed the faintest hope that the proceedings would reflect the gravity of the moment and explain the unprecedented effort to remove a president in an election year.

Instead, Schumer picked up exactly where the House left off, injecting venom into every sentence and inflating his accusations far beyond what is contained in the actual articles of impeachment.

Read more here.

"Democrats haven't impeached Trump. Instead, they've impeached impeachment."

Oregon Muse writes this morning in his Morning Rant column in the Ace of Spades blog,

"As I ranted on Monday, with Pelosi walking around in an impeachment skin and demanding respect, she doesn't seem to know (or care) that her fellow Democrats haven't impeached Trump. Instead, they've impeached impeachment.
"The Democrats have completely diluted 'impeachment' down to nothing. It's not going to be Trump's presidency that has an asterisk, it will be impeachment itself.

"Remember this, next time they try to pretend they were “prayerfully” or “reluctantly” impeaching Donald Trump. They weren’t.

"It's just like the Iran deal. There was never any deal. There was no vote in the Senate, no treaty produced, Iran didn't sign anything. It was just the Obama administration trying to appease the crazed mullahs. They wanted an agreement with the force of a treaty even though one was never signed. Because that requires hard work and a Senate vote.

"Just like an actual impeachment trial requires actual crimes, actual evidence, and actual witnesses, none of which the Democrats actually have. With this trifecta of suck the only thing they've got going for them, their strategy appears to be simply demanding that the impeachment be settled by a summary judgment and a complete restoration of the status quo ante, i.e. Trump gone, and a return to the unquestioned comfortable corruption, incompetence without consequence, and inexorable march toward some sort of shabby socialism and a diminished America where prices are high, gains are low, and Jim Acosta is taken seriously as a journalist."

Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton

Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation because Hillary accused her of being a Russian asset. Read all about it here.

2017: Today's "Whistleblower" talking about "taking out" Trump

Neon Nettle reports in News Thud,

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff‘s Ukraine “whistleblower” – whose complaint led to impeachment proceedings against the president – was allegedly overheard discussing how to “take out” Donald Trump in 2017, according to a bombshell new report.

Read more here.

"adopting a whole new approach centered entirely on the well-being of the American worker."

Don Surber brings us remarks made by President Trump today in Davos Switzerland at the World Economic Forum.

President Donald John Trump's address at Davos this morning was a lesson on governance by a man who entered politics less than 5 years ago.

Our president said, "America’s newfound prosperity is undeniable, unprecedented and unmatched anywhere in the world. America achieved this stunning turnaround not by making minor changes to a handful of policies, but by adopting a whole new approach centered entirely on the well-being of the American worker."

That is incredible. A billionaire spoke to fellow billionaires, fellow world leaders, and academics not about the swell digs they were staying at or the lush cuisine they enjoyed.

President Trump talked about actually serving the people who entrusted them with power.

He said, "Every decision we make on taxes, trade, regulation, energy, immigration, education and more is focused on improving the lives of everyday Americans. Only when governments put their own citizens first will people be fully invested in their national futures."

The president went through all the economic numbers. 3.5% unemployment. Consumer confidence up. Records shattered in the stock market. But his remarks on governing -- words that the press will largely ignore -- underscored the point that he indeed is the people's president.

Read more here.

100 years ago

2020 is the Centennial of two correlated events. Do you know what they are? Prohibition and Suffrage! Go here to read Buck Throckmorton's explanation of how the two historical events are correlated.

Avenatti not happy in prison

Michael Avenatti does not like prison, even though he was given the same cell previously enjoyed by billionaire El Chapo who is now in supermax in Colorado. Read more here.

Unifying forces and heroes

Dov Fischer writes in part in the Spectator,

We now know why Nancy Pelosi delayed submitting the articles of her Stillborn Impeachment. Her delay, her obstruction of Congress, her abuse of power, had not made much sense. But then we divined that she simply was waiting for the shipment of her commemorative pens. You cannot sign off on an impeachment without the Royal Pen — and without several dozen identical ones to hand out as Christmas gifts and birthday party favors. The Doddering Dowager obviously had ordered her pens during the height of Christmas season and, like so many other mid-December orders submitted by procrastinators, hers presumably was back-ordered. They finally arrived. That allowed her to make a short doddering speech, explaining the somberness of the moment, the sorrow and the pity, and then to bring out the ice cream, the cake, the noisemakers, and the souvenir pens. Meanwhile, the Homeless who line the sidewalks of her district freeze during the very cold California nights, starve, shoot up their veins, defecate on the streets, and urinate on so many public walkways that new meaning is given to The Golden State. Hopefully her homeless hordes will not be forgotten by their House Representative so that each of them, too, will get his or her own personal pen to urinate on in San Francisco.

Dov then goes on a rant about the British monarchy that is a must-read, but he concludes,

On second thought, then, maybe we do not need this in America after all. Besides, we already have our own uniquely American royal leeches. Chelsea Clinton hired by NBC for $600,000 a year as a “special correspondent,” then another $9 million in stock shares for sitting on the board of a company run by her parents’ friend. Hunter Biden, despite being thrown out of the armed forces for drug use and being an overall mess-up, now litigating against his once-beloved pole-dancing stripper whose child-support obligation now seeks some of that $50,000–$83,000 a month (annualized at $600,000–$1 million per year) that Hunter got for sitting on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while Veep Daddy Joe was in charge of deciding when and whether to give Ukraine $1 billion of our tax money. So that is the other side of royalty. Yes, it would be nice to have a public unifying figure in this country, but we have no Babe Ruth today. No Eleanor Roosevelt. When the great “hero” of basketball in fact is a gutless coward, the great “hero” of football cheats on pumping up the football, the great “heroes” of baseball cheat by using new technology to steal opposing teams’ signs, perhaps we need to turn elsewhere for our national heroes and unifying forces.

So take the picture of the Suchess of Dussex and of Prince William or Harry or Charles or George, and run it through the shredder. Print out a picture of Pelosi with her pen, of Chelsea and her money, of Hunter and a pole, and run it through the shredder. And then look at your husband or at your wife, at your mom or your dad — or at all of them. In the America that I love, those are our gilded unifying forces and heroes.

"The attempted coup and the concomitant attempt at impeachment means we have a political party and movement that will stop at nothing to attain power."

In the Ace of Spades blog, JJ Sefton introduces his Morning Report with some remarks about the shampeachment circus.

Good morning kids. Tuesday and along with yesterday's massive and massively successful pro-second amendment rally in Richmond, the big story is of course the trial phase of sham-peachment begins today. At the risk of being repetitive, it should be noted that impeachment is not a criminal proceeding; it's an entirely political process, intended by the founders/framers as an extremely rare means by which a provably criminal president could be removed from office by Congress. The other salient point is that those who would have him removed needed not only a clear bipartisan consensus for both impeachment in the House and then conviction and removal in the Senate, but most importantly the overwhelming support of the people in order to even proceed. American politicians have respected those prerequisites to the extent that only twice in 227 years (Nixon resigned before the process ever got going) have they ever resorted to attempt to remove a siting president. That is until the coming of Donald J. Trump.

The case to remove President Trump is so utterly lacking in any specific, actual and verifiable actions that even remotely in this or any other universe resemble "high crimes or misdemeanors," bipartisan support and most crucially the support of an overwhelming majority of the American people. Yet the only reason that the Democrat Party alone is going down this road to hell is because Donald Trump is, in point of fact, "guilty" of two things: winning the 2016 presidential election and surviving (even thriving) the ongoing attempted coup against him. So, precedent, the Constitution, the orderly transfer of power, and the will of the people be damned. The Democrat Party is so utterly bereft of any sense of decency, shame and self-awareness. Drunk on a toxic mix of craving power at any price as well as the Kool-Aid about who they think they are, we and Trump are and their general weltanschauung about this country, where it's been and where they demand it goes, they have crossed yet another Rubicon and a pretty damned big one at that.

I have to wonder, would we be going down this road if instead of Trump, it was a President Cruz, Paul, Rubio or Bush III? Obviously, there's no way knowing but I don't think so. The reason is that Trump is and remains an outsider. He is transformational, and his transformation involves stopping the 100-plus-year march to dismantle America as founded. From the economy to immigration to foreign affairs to the resetting of the judiciary to the intangibles of his personality and the will to fight back twice as hard that have exposed America's internal enemies to those who have eyes to see and minds to reason, I don't think any of the aforementioned would have ever come anywhere near to the Trump benchmark. They would have amounted to little more than what other elected Republicans since the end of World War Two (with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan) have ever been; seat-warmers until the next Democrat won the presidency with strict orders never to hit the brakes let alone throw it into reverse.

So here we are. On a granular level, I cannot imagine the Democrats succeeding in peeling away not just two or three but 20 GOP senators in order to reach a two-thirds majority for conviction and removal. Despite the Democrats attempt to paint McConnell as a Russian agent and/or rigging the trial in Trump's favor, this too like everything else before will blow up in their face. And yet, they will continue with more smears, more charges and more attempts to sabotage the President and sway voters from now all the way to November. That's all they have. They have no candidates or positions that even remotely reflect the politics of the average American citizen. They know it and we know it. The only thing left is to either replace the American people with illiterate peasantry from south of the border or, failing that, round us all up and put us in gulags or mass graves.

The big question remains whither America in a post-Trump (that is, post 1/20/25) landscape? The attempted coup and the concomitant attempt at impeachment means we have a political party and movement that will stop at nothing to attain power. And that means absolute power going forward. The Constitution when it is to be observed will be used as both shield and cudgel, or more than likely abandoned entirely. There is no way to use legal methods and regular order or precedent to thwart them. It is refreshing to see anecdotal things like Martha McSally calling out Manure Raju, Lindsey Graham calling out the Dems' lust for power during the attempted high tech lynching of Justice Kavanaugh, and more substantively Mitch McConnell going pedal to the metal to confirm as many Trump judicial picks as possible. I hope it's a bellwether of things to come, and of a dam bursting wide open with an unrelenting torrent of same from now on. Because, sure as G-d made little green apples, the next time the Democrats gain the White House, it'll be lights out for sure.

Ugh.

Read his links here.

Virginians support Second Amendment

Neon Nettle writes a comprehensive report about yesterday's Second Amendment rally in Richmond. It was a diverse crowd. Read more and watch videos here.

Only two sexes?

Jon Caldera has been fired as a columnist for the Denver Post. His crime?

"My column is not a soft-voiced, sticky sweet NPR-styled piece which employs the language now mandated by the victim-centric, identity politics driven media," he said in a Facebook post. "What seemed to be the last straw for my column was my insistence that there are only two sexes and my frustration that to be inclusive of the transgendered (even that word isn’t allowed) we must lose our right to free speech."

Read more here.

Wouldn't you like the presidential debates to be more fun?

From the Babylon Bee:

Every election, The Babylon Bee editorial board sees fit to endorse the very best choice for the nation. In 2016, back before Seth Dillon bought the site and stopped us from doing Christian satire, we endorsed Kirk Cameron. In 2018, we endorsed the cast of The West Wing for Congress. This was ultimately a mistake because it turns out they are actors and not actual politicians. Oura culpa.

This year, we are taking the unprecedented step of endorsing someone who's not even running: that lady who screamed during Trump's inauguration.

We feel that this hopelessly triggered androgynous human yelling at the sky in an act of protest against some perceived persecution is the perfect encapsulation of the modern Democratic Party, and thus, she would be the ideal candidate to take on President Trump in 2020.

While others only have empty policy proposals and expensive healthcare plans, Screaming at Sky Lady has the ideal solution for everything: just screaming at the sky. Other candidates' ideas could harm the country and send us plummeting into a socialist nightmare. Screaming at the sky, by way of contrast, never hurt anyone and is fun to watch.

Or take an issue like the border crisis: President Trump wants to build a hateful wall. Other Democrats want to welcome immigrants with open arms. Screaming at the Sky Lady will just scream at the sky. The end result is the same, of course, but again, at least we'll get to laugh instead of addressing the issue.

Also, just think about how fun the presidential debates would be.

The rally in Virginia was peaceful, much to the dismay of the media

22,000 peaceful people attended a Second Amendment rally today at the Virginia capitol in Richmond. Sundance has photos and a report here.