hat-tip Woodsterman
Friday, January 31, 2020
Continuing to undermine the president!
In the Free Beacon, Adam Kredo reports,
Multiple lawmakers and former administration officials, including one recently departed National Security Council member who worked on Iran issues, told the Washington Free Beacon that senior officials in the administration continue to undermine President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran.Read more here.
At issue are sanctions exceptions that the State Department has now issued several times in recent years to the consternation of Iran hawks. The waivers permit foreign nations and businesses to partner with Iran on its nuclear work, including efforts to enrich uranium, the key component in a weapon. They also allow Iran to continue sensitive civil nuclear research at contested sites, including a covert military bunker that once housed the country's atomic weapons program.
Multiple lawmakers and former administration officials, including one recently departed National Security Council member who worked on Iran issues, told the Washington Free Beacon that senior officials in the administration continue to undermine President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran.
Thinking outside the box!
This man has some brilliant ideas about what nursing homes should look like. Read more here.
What we did not know about Kobe Bryant
In the Ace of Spades blog, Weird Dave brings us a Kobe Bryant story. Read it here.
No further witnesses? Are Republicans making a strategic mistake?
"...they’re not as smart as the people they mock. Not even close."
In the Ace of Spades blog, Buck Throckmorton writes,
Following the Don Lemon/Rick Wilson incident in which CNN journalists mocked working-class Trump voters as stupid people intimidated by reading and geography, Ace explained that journalists are people of average intelligence who fetishize being high IQ – because most of them are not.
I’d like to expand on that and state that the average tradesman is much more intelligent than the average journalist – especially at STEM skills. If any of those snotty journalists ever actually observed the tradesmen who make our lives possible, they would be shocked to learn how much math and science is required to do their jobs. Carpenters, plumbers, and electricians are employing science and math in their jobs all day long. Can you imagine a journalist trying to understand amperes? Of course they couldn’t. Yet because they can identify Ukraine on a map they think they’re smarter than an electrician.
Here is just one example of how a journalist can skate through college without having to be academically challenged at all in science or math: A student can get a degree in journalism at the University of Texas’ “prestigious” School of Journalism without taking a single math class nor a meaningful science class. There is a whopping requirement of one Math class (3 hours), but the journalism student has the option of substituting it with Educational Psychology, Sociology, or African Diaspora Studies. The requirement for 6 hours of Science can be satisfied with a combination of Astronomy, Nutrition, and Geography. (I verified this at the University of Texas’ Moody College of Communication web site regarding the 2019-2020 year curriculum.)
So bravo to our journalism students. While they’re making “A”s in Educational Psychology and learning how to find Ukraine on the map, nursing student are studying Physiology and Microbiology, and electricians are studying joules and volts. Oh, and let’s not forget machine operators. They’re skillfully operating backhoes, excavators, cranes and such, while the stars of CNN need assistance to change the battery in their personal groomers before going on air to insult those machine operators.
No, not only are journalists not as smart as they pretend to be, they’re not as smart as the people they mock. Not even close.
Making progress
Sundance reports in the Conservative Treehouse,
Read more here.
According to the latest data from Gallup: “Americans’ average satisfaction rating for the 27 issues Gallup has tracked consistently since 2001 is now 47%. This is up three points from a year ago and is the highest since the January 2005 poll.”
Read more here.
Where the fraud started
Sundance reports in the Conservative Treehouse,
We can see the basic outline of how a fraudulent impeachment scheme was constructed through an alliance of operatives in the National Security Council (NSC) and staff in the House committees. Our nation is currently dealing with the consequences. However, if we go back to Nancy Pelosi’s December 2018 rule changes, there is clear forethought.Read more here.
It now looks like the Lawfare network constructed the ‘whistle-blower’ complaint aka a Schiff Dossier, and handed it to allied CIA operative Eric Ciaramella to file as a formal IC complaint. This process is almost identical to the Fusion-GPS/Lawfare network handing the Steele Dossier to the FBI to use as the evidence for the 2016/2017 Russia conspiracy.
NSC resistance member Alexander Vindman constructs a false story about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call; he shares the false story with CIA operative Eric Ciaramella (a John Brennan resistance associate and former NSC member). Ciaramella then makes contact with resistance allies Sean Misko & Mary McCord working within the HPSCI.
Mary McCord (former DOJ-NSD and current Lawfare) then helps Eric Ciaramella create a fraudulent intelligence community whistle-blower complaint to submit to her former DOJ-NSD lawyer, now Intel Inspector General, ICIG Michael Atkinson.
…And that’s how this entire Impeachment operation gets started.
The “whistle-blower”, Eric Ciaramella, had prior contact with the staff of the committee. This is admitted. So essentially the “whistle-blower” had contact with Sean Misko and/or Mary McCord; and then ICIG Michael Atkinson modified the whistle-blower rules to facilitate the outcome.
There is the origination. That’s where the fraud starts.
The coordination between Misko-McCord, the Whistle-blower (Ciaramella) and Michael Atkinson is why HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff will not release the transcript from Atkinson’s testimony.
With that basic network in mind, if we go back through Pelosi’s rule changes there is a clear design to facilitate exactly this process.
Jerry has had it with Schiff!
Here's the video of Jerry Nadler getting up to answer the final question of the two day Q & A session and Adam Schiff trying to stop him 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/zYNQ1iY43I
— Shem Horne (@Shem_Infinite) January 31, 2020
Liz Sheld's analysis in American Greatness: Poor, broken House Manager Adam Schiff. His comrade Rep. Jerry Nadler did a speed waddle up to the podium to answer the last question of the night during the impeachment hearing.
“Jerry. Jerry. Jerry,” Schiff is heard saying as he took a few steps towards Nadler, but failed to stop him. One can only imagine how many hours Schiff rehearsed his final remarks which would include tears and hallucinations, I’m sure. Alas, it was not to be.
Even MSNBC had a laugh. “Adam Schiff stood. He was ready to go to the podium. He only had to do about three steps to get there. Jerry Nadler had to do about 12. It’s the fastest I’ve seen Jerry Nadler move, in the 25 years that I’ve known him,” Lawrence O’Donnell told the panel.
I guess Nadler was fed up with Schiff getting the limelight. Impeachment is supposed to originate in the Judiciary Committee but Speaker Pelosi stole that honor from Nadler and gave it to crazy Adam Schiff and the Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), most likely to allow the secrecy protection allowed to the HPSCI. Gotta keep the “whistle blower” secret.
Read more here.
Expected, not feared or taken seriously
Mollie Hemingway tweets,
Once you see the media/Democratic operation, whatever it is -- Russia collusion hoax, anti-Kavanaugh smears, impeachment gambit -- it's hard to not see it. The alleged "bombshells," tightly scripted and carefully deployed, become expected instead of feared or taken seriously.Ace of Spades adds more here.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Traumatic Brain Injury suffered by our troops
David Brockett reports in DC Dirty Laundry,
TBI (traumatic brain injury), it’s called the “signature injury” of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the DoD does nothing to prevent it.Read more here.
Today brought another update from the Pentagon on the number of troops with Traumatic Brain Injuries from the Iranian retaliatory missile strike on our base in Iraq. We’re now up to fifty, almost five times the number initially reported by the military brass.
These troops made it to shelter and were protected from fragmentation injuries, what happened? Well, the same thing that has happened to over 340 thousand other service members. They each suffered brain damage from shock waves associated with the blasts.
...A helmet can’t be designed to protect for everything
That’s the excuse the DoD has been using since 2010 when researchers published a study showing that the current helmet design was little better than no helmet at all for blast protection, and in some cases might actually increase the likelihood of a TBI. By adding a face shield, injuries could be reduced by up to 80 percent.
The next year (2011) the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory published their own study showing TBI’s could be reduced by another 30 percent with better padding in the helmets. By adding a face shield and better padding, the blast-induced TBIs could be reduced by well over 90 percent.
What’s the damned holdup?
In PJ Media, Matt Margolis explains in detail five occasions when President Obama broke laws.
They are,
5. When Obama illegally fired an inspector general to protect a sex-predatorGo here to read the details.
4. When Obama illegally offered Joe Sestak an administration job to not run for Congress
3. When Obama illegally changed immigration law via executive order
2. Obama’s illegal prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl
1. Obama’s illegal Iran ransom payment
So, what was the question Chief Justice Roberts refused to allow Senator Rand Paul to ask?
Sundance has it in the Conservative Treehouse:
“Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together; and are you aware -and how do you respond to- reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal house impeachment proceedings?“Read more here.
If Schiff doesn't know the name of the whistleblower, then how does Chief Justice Roberts know it?
Mollie Hemingway asks in a tweet,
Ace of Spades writes,
"Why was Rand Paul's question not asked? By what law or what justification was he silenced? This is extremely scary to witness and answers are needed."
Ace of Spades writes,
Paul's question did say "Eric Ciaramella," who is a known NSC Deep Stater, friends with Sean Misko and other known partisans. Roberts -- and the media -- block this name on the stated assumption that this is in fact the whistleblower, which puts lie to Adam Schiff's claim that he doesn't know who the whistleblower is (then how does Roberts know?) and also puts lie to the media's insistence that the name is a secret which must be protected.Ace then shows a Twitter rule that allows a tweet to be censored if "It's misleading about a political election." To which Ace asks,
...Everyone knows the name. This isn't about "protecting the whistleblower's identity." Everyone knows Eric Ciarmella's identity.
This is about two things:
1, It's about denying any ability to inquire into Schiff's lies, and Ciaramella's possibly-illegal leaks and conspiring, to put Operation Fusion Dossier 2.0 into effect. The Democrats/media -- they are precisely the same, including most of the personnel at Fox -- know that if you can't even identify the schemer who worked with Schiff to draft his fake whistleblower complaint, you obviously cannot call him to the Senate and ask him questions about his conspiracy.
2, And of course it's about what it's always about: The left's Show of Absolute Force and Dominion in telling you what you can and cannot say in public.
Some of these things they don't even care about -- but they very much do care about Power and Coercion, and always insisting upon their extra-constitutional POWER to control you, and punish you if you defy their control.
Twitter has already increased its powers to censor Unapproved Speech:
"Misleading information about an election?" Isn't all information about an election thought to be misleading by partisans on the opposite side?
Oh well, a friend says, I'm sure Twitter will be even-handed and nonpartisan in determining whose idea of "misleading" is right, and who are the Garbage-People Deplorables on the Wrong Side of History.
Tomorrow they could just as easily forbid you from saying "blueberry muffin." Why would they do that? For no other reason than to exert their authority and by doing so, remind you of their authority and remind you of your diminished legal status.
If you can speak at all, it's only because the Left, in all of its benevolence, has permitted it. For today, at least.
Trump's brand of prosperity and strength seems to be winning...
Today in his Morning Report, JJ Sefton writes in the Ace of Spades blog,
Good morning kids. Thursday and what a difference a day makes in the sham-peachment trial. I think. I hope. Yesterday, as I was tearing what's left of my hair out of my head over the potential for the RINOs to actually force Mitch McConnell to hand this over to Cuck Schemer and the Democrats, it seems as if Cocaine Mitch might have actually been working behind the scenes to whip the 51 votes needed to potentially shut this down as early as tomorrow. As the boss reported late yesterday, McConnell looks to have put a couple of take-it-or-leave-it poison pills into the potential deal to have witnesses that will no doubt be rejected by the Dems. We've all had a lot of negative history with McConnell over the years but the one thing you have to give him props for is his mastery of procedure as well as his fierce protection of his domain in the Senate and his turf. No way in Hell is he going to let four fools on our side screw him over. Along with massive political winds at his back and against each of the recalcitrant RINOs, a couple of huge developments shook out over the course of the day that seem to have sealed the deal.
First, we have fairly recent archival footage of John Bolton declaring that naturally he would absolutely lie about national security matters, presumably in the furtherance of his own preferred policy outcomes and more recently and crucially in relation to the phone call between Trump and Ukie prexy Zelensky, the one that the Dems and Bolton are claiming was some sort of strong arm shakedown but that Bolton described as "warm and cordial." Yeah, that's just how Pete Clemenza was when you were late with a "vig" payment. Lastly, as Teh Ted Cruz reminds us, Schiff-for-Brains and his comrades flat out rejected the idea of calling Bolton during the witness phase of this fiasco last month in the House.
Second, although Justice Julia Roberts, acting as the trial judge in this madness, barred a legitimate question from Rand Paul about Eric "Whistleblower" Ciaramella from being read, it is now coming to light that Ciaramella may very well be implicated in the same corruption involving the Ukrainian gas company Burisma with the Bribems. Add that to the fact that instead of following protocol and going to an inspector general, he went right to Schiff-for-Brains with the news of what he supposedly "overheard" on the Trump-Zelensky phone call.
Third, and most crucially, forget the RINOs, forget the battle over more witnesses, we now have several Democrat senators making noises about actually crossing the aisle and voting to acquit the President outright.
Taken all together, the tea leaves seem to indicate that mercifully for us - IF it plays out as we are now hoping - this ends tomorrow. Or at least this latest phase of the over-three-year attempt to bring Trump down, because you just know that something else is waiting in the wings either after he is acquitted... OR some heretofore underage, impregnated Lithuanian transsexual stripper comes forward to claim Trump is her father and that after forcing her to have an addadicktome, he will use her to rig the 2020 election by spreading coronavirus Joo-cooties with the Mossad in China at precisely 2:59:59PM on Friday afternoon.
Assuming the attempt to hijack the proceedings with more witnesses is foiled, that Trump is acquitted by close of business tomorrow or Monday latest with the extra scoop of "covfefe" crunch of one or more Democrats crossing the aisle and make the acquittal bipartisan (yay!), the Democrat Party and their cohorts in the agitprop media will IMHO suffer a rout that will have far-reaching effects both for them and for the rest of the nation going forward.
As the links in the politics section show, the rift between the old guard stealth socialists and the new batch of Shining Path Maoists is growing wider by the day and out in the open for all to see. Not really an aside but have you noticed over the past few days that Nancy "Palsi von Paulus" Pelosi has all but disappeared from the headlines and sound bite rosters? Yeah, I know, plop-plop-fizz-fizz oh what a relief it is, but it's telling in the extreme. If she's not in front of a camera for more than 24 hours at a stretch you know something's brewing. With this it sure seems like trouble in worker's paradise on earth. It's evident that she lost control of this and perhaps, the iron-clawed dragon lady dictator reputation notwithstanding, the party itself. Schiff-for-Brains and Nadless screwed the pooch big time. In fact, yesterday, the former said flat out you can't rely on what was investigated in the house but the latter belched up that this is an open and shut case. Besides tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber, idiots like Da Nang Dick Blumenthal and Val Demings didn't exactly help the cause. Not that there was a case to begin with.
But here again, the difference is Trump and the massive support he has and more crucially has earned both by his accomplishments and his style, which have exposed the Dems and their Media machine for the hacks and fiends they are as well as the possibilities of abandoning politics as usual for Trump's brand of prosperity and strength.
Circling back, despite the Democrats having no option but to go over the top yet again a la Ypres circa 1916, they are effectively a spent force. I mean, where do you go after impeachment? The only thing left is violence. And Bernie's Sandersnistas have already promised that Milwaukee will burn this summer if he is not nominated. As an aside, and a wheel within a wheel, now you can understand why the Left wants to take our guns away.
In any case, let your heart not be troubled, nor your shart not be bubbled. Stay tuned...
"A first step"
In News Thud, Paul Goldberg reports,
Ex Trump campaign advisor Carter Page is suing the DNC over its Steele Dossier that led to the FISA warrant and spying into him.Read more here.
A declassified FISA Court order declassified last week confirmed that two of the four FISA applications authorized for the FBI to justify surveillance against 2016 Trump campaign advisor Carter Page were “not valid.”
At the time, Loretta Lynch headed the DOJ and James Comey was in charge of the FBI.
One of the false applications was signed by James Comey, the other by Andrew McCabe.
Fox News reports former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”
He added: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”
Hillary Clinton is refusing to accept service of Tulsi Gabbard's $50 million defamation lawsuit
Paul Goldberg reports in NewsThud,
Hillary Clinton has now refused twice to be served the defamation lawsuit from Tulsi Gabbard.Read more here.
Per WashingtonExaminer, the Secret Service blocked a server from alerting Hillary Clinton about the lawsuit filed against her by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, according to the Hawaii congresswoman’s attorney.
Gabbard, 38, filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Clinton, 72, last week after the former secretary of state insinuated she was a “Russian asset.”
The lawsuit got a lot of attention, but Clinton reportedly still hasn’t been served with the paperwork because she refused to let the server through Secret Service.
NYPost reports Hillary Clinton has now twice snubbed a process server attempting to deliver the defamation lawsuit filed against her by Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, according to Gabbard’s attorney.
“I find it rather unbelievable that Hillary Clinton is so intimidated by Tulsi Gabbard that she won’t accept service of process,” the congresswoman’s attorney, Brian Dunne, told The Post. “But I guess here we are.”
Dunne said their process server first attempted to effect service at Clinton’s house in Chappaqua on Tuesday afternoon — but was turned away by Secret Service agents.
The agents directed the server to Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, who on Wednesday claimed at his Washington, DC, firm, Williams & Connolly, that he was unable to accept service on Clinton’s behalf, said Dunne.
Gabbard sued the former secretary of state for $50 million last week for calling her a “Russian asset.” Clinton has refused to retract the statement.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
New York's ridiculous new law
Alex Taylor and Ben Feuerherd report in the New York Post,
Six suspected drug dealers who are accused of running a $7 million fentanyl distribution operation out of a Bronx apartment were released without bail under the state’s new criminal justice law early Wednesday.Read more here.
The suspects — Livo Valdez, Jaslin Baldera, Frederick Baldera, Frandi Ledema, Diego Tejada and Parfraimy Antonio — were arrested Monday when officers with the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force raided an apartment on Sedgwick Avenue in Kingsbridge that was allegedly used as a heroin and fentanyl packaging mill.
They were each charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminally using drug paraphernalia.
When officers on the task force entered the apartment, they saw the six suspects bundling powder-filled glassine envelopes stamped with the word “fire,” the special narcotics prosecutor said in a press release.
Hundreds of thousands of the envelopes packed with the powder were spread across two tables and overflowing from boxes in the apartment, authorities said.
The drugs, which have a street value of about $7 million, were believed to be headed onto the streets of New York and New England, the prosecutor’s office said. Lab results on the drugs were pending Wednesday morning.
Despite the volume of the drugs seized, all six suspects were cut loose at their arraignments in Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday morning.
U.S. authorities find longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the southwest border
WMUR in San Diego reports,
U.S. authorities on Wednesday announced the discovery of the longest smuggling tunnel ever found on the Southwest border, stretching more than three-quarters of a mile from Tijuana, Mexico, into the San Diego area.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the tunnel originates in an industrial area in Mexico and extends a total of 4,309 feet (1,313 meters).
It features an extensive rail/cart system, forced air ventilation, high-voltage electrical cables and panels, an elevator at the tunnel entrance, and a complex drainage system, the agency said.
“While subterranean tunnels are not a new occurrence along the California-Mexico border, the sophistication and length of this particular tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organizations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling,” said Cardell T. Morant, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego.
Following the discovery in August, Mexican law enforcement identified the tunnel entrance and members of the San Diego Tunnel Task Force began mapping the tunnel from Mexico, the agency said.
The next-longest tunnel in the U.S. was discovered in San Diego in 2014. It was 2,966 feet (904 meters) long.
"They were very warm and cordial calls," Bolton said.
In PJ Media, Matt Margolis reports in part,
...But the Democrats have already heard from John Bolton. On August 27, 2019, Bolton gave an interview with Radio Free Europe and spoke about both of Trump's phone calls with President Zelensky.Read more here.
Bolton was asked if he planned to meet with President Zelensky, and what messages he planned to bring to him.
“Well, I will be meeting Zelensky, he and President Trump have already spoken twice. The President called to congratulate President Zelensky on his election and then on his success in the parliamentary election. They were very warm and cordial calls," Bolton said. [Emphasis added]
Bolton continued, "The success of Ukraine maintaining its freedom, its system of representative government, a free-market economy free of corruption and dealing with problems of the Donbas and the Crimea are high priorities here obviously and high priorities for the United States as well.”But the Democrats have already heard from John Bolton. On August 27, 2019, Bolton gave an interview with Radio Free Europe and spoke about both of Trump's phone calls with President Zelensky.
Bolton was asked if he planned to meet with President Zelensky, and what messaged he planned to bring to him.
“Well, I will be meeting Zelensky, he and President Trump have already spoken twice. The President called to congratulate President Zelensky on his election and then on his success in the parliamentary election. They were very warm and cordial calls," Bolton said. [Emphasis added]
Bolton continued, "The success of Ukraine maintaining its freedom, its system of representative government, a free-market economy free of corruption and dealing with problems of the Donbas and the Crimea are high priorities here obviously and high priorities for the United States as well.”
"Putin won't need a pittance of Facebook ads this time around; he's got Schiff."
Scott Jennings writes in part in CNN Opinion,
...But what's more dangerous? Predicting what Trump may or may not do, or fulfilling Putin's wish to project a belief that American democracy failed four years ago and is guaranteed to fail again? Putin won't need a pittance of Facebook ads this time around; he's got Schiff.Read more here.
Top ten worst colleges for free speech
FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, has just completed its annual listing of the top ten worst colleges for free speech. Read it here.
You want witnesses? I'll show you witnesses!
In PJ Media, Victoria Taft reports,
...A casual listener might have missed it, but Senator Lindsey Graham issued a colossal throw-down to Democrats in a brief interlude between sessions of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.Read more here.
In an interview during a media scrum on Tuesday, the South Carolina senator and Judiciary Committee leader made a "prediction" of his desired witnesses – witnesses that, you can bet, most Democratic senators would rather not hear from.
Graham said, "[I]f you go down the road of witnesses, it's not going to be one, it's going to be many."
A reporter asked Graham about whether the GOP had 51 votes to keep the president out of trouble. Graham shot back: "I'll make a prediction. They'll be [sic] 51 Republican votes to call Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, the 'whistleblower,' uh, and the DNC staffer at a very minimum."
Graham brought up the "DNC staffer" who is believed to be Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American and "contractor for the DNC" who tried to dig up dirt on Paul Manafort.
"If Romney really thought Bolton was a relevant witness, the time to say this was three or four weeks ago at least. Now he reveals himself to be the monkey to the NY Times organ grinder."
In PowerLine, Steven Hayward writes about "Joltin Bolton and Reckless Romney" here.
"They are projecting their own internal problems and laying them at your feet!"
Mark Steyn: "That's CNN flying the Democrats into the black hole!" Establishment condescension!
Acquit and move on, or mutual destruction?
Michael Goodwin writes in part in the New York Post,
Do Schumer and Pelosi want to sacrifice Biden in a bid to damage Trump?Read more here.
That’s the choice they face. Either the nation moves on to other business and the election, or the parties engage in mutual destruction over Bolton and the Bidens.
Acquittal and moving on is my hope. Mutual destruction is my fear.
So what?
Dov Fischer writes in the American Spectator,
This whole Pelosi Stillborn Impeachment is turning into a bigger circus every day. Let’s just hypothesize that President Trump said to John Bolton that he would not give Ukraine any funds authorized by Congress until they investigated Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Moe Biden, Larry Biden, Curly Biden, Sneezy Biden, Sleepy Biden, Grumpy Biden, Doc Biden, Bashful Biden, Happy Biden, and of course Dopey Biden. So what?Read more here.
Seriously, so what? As a matter of undeniable fact, Trump gave the money to Ukraine. He gave it within the time assigned to dispense it. He gave it even though Ukraine did not investigate the Biden Billion Bribery Buying Burisma. Ukraine did not even perceive that Trump had held up any money until Politico wrote it a month later. What’s the problem?
Again — it is all another Democrat smokescreen, coordinated with their Corrupt Journalist Corps. Who cares what Bolton wrote? If he even wrote it. Even if it is true. What’s the difference? Since when do we Americans put people on trial for what they were thinking? They did that in Nazi Europe and in the Soviet Union. Do we do that here? Who cares what Trump wanted to do — but never actually did? Do you know how many men in this country today would be in prison on rape or sexual harassment convictions if they could be tried for things they thought about doing or wanted to do? Jimmy Carter lusted in his heart — how many years’ imprisonment did he get? Do you know how many spouses today would be in prison for murder if they could be convicted for what they contemplated doing before, during, or after divorce proceedings? Do you know how many New York Mets fans would be in prison today if they could be convicted for what they thought of doing or wished they could do — or still would like to do — to Mets management?
...Amidst all the nonsense, Trump — because he is so utterly annoying to those whom he annoys — also inadvertently has exposed the character of people on the Republican side of the aisle. He was vicious and nasty to Ted Cruz during the 2016 primaries, even taking cheap shots at Cruz’s father and wife. What have we learned of Ted Cruz? That man is even finer than many of us perceived initially. He is a solid Trump backer. He knows what matters. He has kept his eyes on the prize. Same with Rand Paul. Trump went after him in a personal way, even after his looks. Trump went after Lindsey Graham, even revealing the guy’s phone number. Remember? And yet both of them, Paul and Graham, have emerged among the strongest of Trump allies, focused on what matters, what counts for the country’s best interests.
And then there are the others, the Grudge Holders, the moral midgets. Hillary Clinton still hates Bernie Sanders for running against her; she cannot stop her invective. John McCain did not want Sarah Palin at his funeral. And Mitt Romney — what a small, small man! When he was our alternative to Obama — not our choice, but our alternative— we nevertheless dutifully voted for him. And now Trump inherited his voters and won the presidency that Romney blew. With each passing day, we learn more and more about how small he is. As for John Bolton, many of us really valued him in many ways, so disappointment looms. Yet, in all fairness to Bolton, that jury still is out. Let us see what transpires with him. Even so, no matter how it transpires — in the end it all comes down to the same two words:
So what?
"You can't make this up!"
Paul Goldberg reports in News Thud,
Ted Cruz embarrassed Chuck Schumer after the Dems cheap stunt backfired and Lev Parnas was denied entry because his electronic ankle bracelet he has to wear because he is on bail for a bunch of felonies.Read more here.
Ted said, “Scenes from the impeachment trial: Schumer invited Lev Parnas to be his personal guest today at the trial. Minutes ago, Parnas was ejected from the gallery…because he’s wearing an ankle bracelet mandated bc he’s a criminal defendant accused of serious felonies! #CantMakeItUp
Lindsey Graham ripped the stunt as well:
“The best way to sum up this whole debacle is to understand that Senator Schumer’s desire for Lev Parnas to attend the Senate trial apparently cannot be accommodated because Mr. Parnas has an electronic ankle bracelet imposed upon him by the court. You can’t make this up.”
"Racism and classism have always been very hand-in-hand in this country."
"Their mask is dropping." "Training your audience what to think." "They are certain they are on the side of the angels." "They are delusional...not in touch with reality." "Once trust is lost, it's almost impossible to be regained."
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Credibility
In the American Thinker, Clarice Feldman writes in part,
The coronavirus appears terrifying and hard to contain, but to keep some perspective, 6600 people in the U.S. have died of influenza in the U.S. this year.Read more here.
Influenza is a greater threat to you than the coronavirus. But the coronavirus may prove a bigger threat to China’s leaders, just as the Democrats’ impeachment folly is less of a threat to the President than it is to their own credibility and power.
Using the same agent and leaking to the same reporters!
John Bolton is running the exact same revenge playbook against Trump that James Comey used. He’s even using the same agent and leaking to the same reporters. All because he’s mad Trump fired him for leaking and trying to start new wars. It’s so boring and predictable.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 27, 2020
Another scary post from VDH: He is warning us!
Victor Davis Hanson writes in part in Doug Ross @ Journal,
...So what happens in the never-ending impeachment story, once the current impeachment indictment leads to an inevitable Senate vote of exoneration?Read more here.
Another Stormy somewhere? A follow-up to Operation Crossfire Hurricane? Tax returns redux? Whistleblower 2.0? Another New York Times anonymous op-ed resister? Bob Woodward’s sequel? More leaked phone calls? Another impeachment hearing, and another impeachment vote? Schiff’s new version of a presidential call? One more Ivy League psychiatrist distance-diagnosing Trump as nuts? An emoluments clause do-over? More FISA warrants? A newly discovered Trump phone call to Poland, Romania, or Mexico? Lt. Colonel Vindman’s twin?
...The Democratic platform will likely include the “Green New Deal,” a wealth tax, Medicare for All, tuition debt cancellation, higher income taxes, veritable open borders, an end to deportation and perhaps ICE as well, reparations, and a leftwing version of Obama’s failed foreign policy.
In other words, the Democratic agenda is weaker even than the unlucky candidate who will be expected to run on it.
...The Trump effort to stop illegal immigration and thus empower entry-level American job seekers, to fast track energy development, expand deregulation, recalibrate asymmetrical trade, and avoid expeditionary wars abroad have led not just to the strongest economy of the 21st century, but to a different sort of economy based on the idea of full-employment, energy independence, and changing the role of government from obstructer to promoter of free enterprise.
...Very few politicians in memory could physically endure the invective, hate, and furor aimed at Trump and his family daily over the last three years. Much less, could any president function with 90 percent negative media coverage, moles in the executive branch monitoring his every breath, and an unhinged opposition whose reason to get up in the morning is to end Trump.
The Democrats believe that one more whistleblower, just a bit more impeachment, a little more Nadler or Schiff, a pinch more of Pelosi, or another Ukrainian or Russian liar might finally give Trump a stroke or malignancy. With Trump debilitated, they might have a chance against a more traditional Republican.
We will be down to the elemental after impeachment: if you can’t beat Trump legislatively, judicially, or electorally, and if you can’t impeach, convict him and remove him, perhaps you can simply physically destroy him.
Joe Biden's efforts to lynch Justice Thomas
You may know that a new documentary is coming out about the life of Clarence Thomas. Tyler O'Neil writes about it in PJ Media. The film also highlights the participation of Joe Biden in the attempt to lynch Judge Thomas in the hearings.
The coup attempt against President Trump
In FrontPage Magazine, Lloyd Billingsley writes in part,
The campaign against candidate Trump, and the coup attempt against President Trump, has yet to claim any lives, but it has certainly ruined a few. As the Federalist reveals, James Comey and Andrew McCabe signed off on FISA warrants that were false, which is a federal crime. These were part of more than a dozen cases in which the FBI violated FISA laws.Read more here.
"This was a process that was broken and corrupted all the way along!"
The good guys (and gal) talk to the press.
"If women behave as prostitutes online, men are going to treat them like prostitutes in real life!"
"90 percent of a woman's eggs are gone by age 30!"
Monday, January 27, 2020
"Tariffs rock!"
Don Surber reports,
The Los Angeles Times reported, "By turning back caravans, Mexico is acting as Trump’s border wall, critics say."
Duh.
I have said this since June. That was the whole point when President Trump gave Mexico the choice between tariffs and cooperation.
The story said, "One year ago, Mexico’s often chaotic southern border appeared relatively orderly: Mexican authorities processed thousands of U.S.-bound migrants for humanitarian visas, allowing them to travel north legally.
"The free-transit regimen was a drastic change of policy pushed by a new Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had denounced his predecessors for having done what he called the dirty work of Washington in deterring migrants’ northbound passage.
"But this week, López Obrador’s government greeted migrants in a more hostile fashion. Mexican National Guard troops in full riot gear blocked their way and fired tear gas canisters to disperse those seeking to breach the nation’s border with Guatemala. Hundreds of people were put on planes and buses back to Honduras, where most of the migrants in the latest caravan began their journey.
"For López Obrador, Mexico’s first avowedly leftist president in a generation and a political campaigner who pledged to welcome migrants, the last year brought a substantial shift in his view of how to handle the Central American influx.
"Detractors have accused López Obrador of bending to the Trump administration’s tactics — including threats of tariffs on goods imported from Mexico — in creating a virtual wall in Mexico’s southern boundary with Guatemala."
Tariffs rock.
Ace and his commenters weigh in on Chris Wallace
Ace of Spades writes in his blog,
From the comments: Lizzy writes,
Guy Smiley writes,
Cat Ass Trophy writes,
GnuBreed wrote,
torabora wrote,
Unhinged Liberal Chris Wallace Has Meltdown On-Air, Attacking Katie Pavlich and "Trump Defenders"
People really need to boycott this piece of shit fake "conservative" network. I think everyone's tired of this MSNBC-on-Fox bullshit.
Why does anyone watch Chris Wallace's show? Why do conservatives agree to appear as "guests"?
It sounds to me like Chris Wallace completely misunderstood what Katie Pavlich was saying, or, as the Trump Deranged tend to do, ignored what she was saying and pretended she was saying something else for which he had all the Democrat Talking Points ready to go.
From the comments: Lizzy writes,
"Get your facts straight!" is really, "You didn't get it straight from the leaker, missy, so just pipe down and let people 'in the know' handle this!"
Guy Smiley writes,
It's almost as if Pissy-Chrissy is emotionally invested in this.
From the way he very rudely snapped at a colleague in public like that, I'd have to say so.
On the plus side, his unhinged anger tells me we're winning
Cat Ass Trophy writes,
I said "Get your facts straight" therefore my facts are straight. No need to check. I mean, why would I tell someone else to get their facts straight if I didn't have MY facts straight.
GnuBreed wrote,
Ken Starr's defense of Trump was, in a word, masterful. His overview of impeachment history was most impressive.
As to Mitt Romney, I want my
2012 ballot back, so I can give it to a dog to piss on.
torabora wrote,
Some Patriot needs to put Romney in a dog crate on top of a Buick station wagon and take him cross country to see America.
"Don't build your fortress on quicksand!"
In National Review, Andy McCarthy writes,
Don’t build your fortress on quicksand.Read more here.
That’s been my unsolicited advice for President Trump and his legal team. You always want the foundation of your defense to be something that is true, that you are sure you can prove, and that will not change.
Instead, the president and his team decided to make a stand on ground that could not be defended, on facts that were unfolding and bound to change. Last night, that ground predictably shifted. In a soon-to-be-published memoir, former White House national-security adviser John Bolton asserts that the president withheld $391 million in defense aid in order to pressure Ukraine into investigating Trump’s potential 2020 election opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.
For months, I’ve been arguing that the president’s team should stop claiming there was no quid pro quo conditioning the defense aid Congress had authorized for Ukraine on Kyiv’s conducting of investigations the president wanted. Trials and impeachment itself are unpredictable. You don’t know what previously undisclosed facts might emerge during the trial that could turn the momentum against you. So you want to mount your best defense, the one that can withstand any damaging new revelations.
Here, the president’s best defense has always been that Ukraine got its security aid, and President Volodymyr Zelensky got his coveted high-profile audience with the president of the United States (albeit at the U.N., rather than at the White House). Kyiv barely knew defense aid was being withheld, the very temporary delay had no impact whatsoever on Ukraine’s capacity to counter Russian aggression, and Zelensky was required neither to order nor to announce any investigation of the Bidens.
...Prosecutors do not need someone to admit, “there is a quid pro quo” in order to prove one. And when someone says, “there is no quid pro quo,” but then acts as if there is one (under different names, such as “stalemate” and “do the right thing”), that can actually improve the prosecutor’s case.
...They could have stayed on the ground where they are strongest: Nothing happened. All foreign policy involves pressure and quid pro quo. There is a good-faith basis to suspect the Bidens were involved in corrupt self-dealing. It is ridiculous to suggest that Ukraine’s defense, let alone American national security, was in any way compromised. President Trump has done much more to protect Ukraine from Russia than President Obama and the Democrats did — indeed, some of the Democratic House impeachment managers voted against the very aid to Ukraine, the brief, inconsequential withholding of which they now feign outrage about.
Ukraine is a pervasively corrupt country. One minute Paul Manafort is a top political consultant to the regime, the next minute they have him under investigation. That is how it goes in Kyiv, where the party in power routinely persecutes political adversaries and attempts to curry favor with its Western supporters. Ukrainian investigations have no credibility. Americans might care deeply if Biden’s son is shown to have been cashing in on his father’s political influence — which such investigative journalists as Peter Schweizer have been illustrating. But Americans would put no stock in any Ukrainian investigation. As best we can tell, even if they announced they were investigating Biden today, they’d be erecting a statue of him by next month if his polls improve. Who cares?
On Monday, the president’s defense team is supposed to be arguing their main defense in the Senate impeachment trial. It should be focused on these ultimate issues. They should be in a strong position to contend that all the witnesses and documents Democrats want to subpoena cannot alter the stubborn fact that nothing of consequence happened in Ukraine — certainly nothing worthy of impeaching and removing a duly elected president nine months before Election Day.
But they decided to contest the underlying facts, where the president’s case is weakest. They decided to fight on quid pro quo . . . so now they will have to deal with John Bolton’s account and the rising demands that he be called as a witness.
Truth as a defense?
Dov Fischer writes in the American Spectator,
...After three years of Democrat phony accusations and hoax investigations by them and their Corrupt Journalist Corps into every imaginable lie and rabbit hole, followed by half a year of Pelosi-Schiff-Nadler lies over the Ukraine phone call, the moment finally came for one rare week to unfold in Washington when, like it or not, the argument for President Trump finally gets to be heard through the interference by the corrupt media. Interestingly, his defense team seems to have come up with a novel theory for putting forward the President’s case: Truth.Read more here as he gives detailed examples of truth-telling.
Really, that is all there is to the Trump defense. Truth. That’s all.
...Of course, the Corrupt Journalist Corps will lie all week, will do its most to avoid covering the Trump defense these next several days, will do its utmost to twist and pervert every word of truth presented in defense. But this will be a week like the last weeks of a Presidential election campaign when, after three years and ten months of blacking-out the President’s side of the story, the media cannot help but give that side some significant air time because the matter becomes so front-center in the American consciousness for a few days that it cannot be swept under a rug. This will be one of those weeks.
After three years of stifling mendacity, enjoy the air this week. The forecast is for three or four days of Truth before the fog returns.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Adam Schiff and CBS may have lied one-too-many times
Paul Goldberg reports in News Thud,
House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), lead manager presenting the case for impeachment at the Senate just royally screwed up. He fumbled so bad he just lost what little support he had from moderate Republican Senators who may have been willing to let him call witnesses.Read more here.
The morning news show “CBS This Morning” ran a story that caught Schiff’s attention, the only problem was, it was not true.
“CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said GOP senators were warned, ‘Vote against your president, vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike,’ Schiff stated as he closed on Friday.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” he added.
...Republican Senators were furious.
“That is completely totally false, and all of us were shaking our heads, like where did that story come from, and Adam Schiff just kept saying it,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said after the closing arguments.
“The whole room was visibly upset on our side of it. … That’s insulting and demeaning,” he added.
Republicans also said that none of what CBS News or what Rep. Adam Schiff said was true.
If Schiff was hoping to get any support from two liberal Republican Senators he just lost it.
Schiff’s arrogance just caused him to fumble on the one-yard line. One of the many things I find disgusting in this whole impeachment process is just the blatant disrespect the Democrats have for our governing body, they act like clowns in the House, disrespect our President, and mock the Senate.
One last observation, two of the most liberal Republican Senators have been very offended by Schiff and we haven’t heard one word from Senator Mitt Romeny except that he wants to vote to allow witnesses. For a man that prides himself on not engaging in rhetoric and doing things the professional “right way”, he’s awfully quiet.
Kobe Bryant dies in a helicopter crash
Paul Goldberg reports in News Thud,
In a tragic loss, Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash early this morning multiple news outlets are reporting.
Kobe is one of the all-time greats in the NBA and is number four on the all-time scoring list. His wife and children were reportedly not traveling with him.
From TMZ: Kobe Bryant died in a helicoper crash in Calabasas Sunday morning … TMZ Sports has confirmed.
Kobe was traveling with at least 3 other people in his private helicopter when it went down. A fire broke out. Emergency personnel responded, but nobody on board survived. 5 people are confirmed dead. We’re told Vanessa Bryant was not among those on board.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Kobe has famously used a helicopter to travel for years — dating back to when he played for the Lakers. He was known for commuting from Newport Beach, CA to the STAPLES Center in DTLA in his Sikorsky S-76 chopper.
Kobe is survived by his wife Vanessa, and their four daughters — Gianna, Natalia and Bianca and their newborn Capri.
You look nice today, Adam
Who did this ? 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/MwLBzc07kS
— Taking Back America 🇺🇸 (@TBA2024) January 24, 2020
al-Qaeda members captured entering U.S. from Venezuela
Steve Balestrieri reports in SOFREP,
Three members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group were stopped and apprehended trying to fly into Dallas while using passports from Colombia. The three entered Colombia via Venezuela.Read more here.
The three al-Qaeda members who are from Syria, entered Colombia in La Guajira, in northeast Colombia. The three men were able to obtain actual passports as they had documentation experts located in the country. The RCN channel was the first to break the story.
The three Syrian citizens were able to obtain a civil registry, identity card, and passport in a network detected by the Registry and already investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office. The identities of the arrested terrorists have been released.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Is Biden immune from investigation?
In National Review, Andrew McCarthy writes in part,
A trial is not a trial, not in the American tradition, if prosecutors are permitted to level a serious accusation and then deny the accused the right to mount a defense.Read more here.
Will the 9-11 hijackers get off because torture was used to get information from them?
Jerry Dunleavy reports on the lawyers' arguments in the New York Post.
Taking the fight to the Far Left
In PowerLine, John Hinderaker writes in part,
Weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents has become a go-to strategy in the Left’s playbook. The Southern Poverty Law Center is a disgraceful hate organization that eventually, one hopes, will be driven out of business by defamation lawsuits. In the meantime, government officials who use the SPLC’s partisan smears as a basis for unconstitutional actions need to be sued. Kudos to the American Freedom Law Center for taking the fight to the far Left.Read more here.
Delicacies?
Lia Eustachewich reports in the New York Post,
The Chinese market at the center of the deadly coronavirus outbreak sold live animals — including wolf pups, foxes, rats and peacocks — to eat, according to a new report.
The wild animals were among 112 items that were peddled at the Huanan Seafood Market in the central city of Wuhan, Agence France-Press reported.
Other wildlife sold at the market, which has since been shuttered, included crocodiles, giant salamanders, snakes, porcupines and camel meat.
“Freshly slaughtered, frozen and delivered to your door,” said the price list for the vendor, “Wild Game Animal Husbandry for the Masses.”
The disturbing list circulated widely on China’s internet but could not be independently verified by AFP.
Chinese health officials believe the mysterious virus — which has so far killed at least 17 people and sickened hundreds more — originated from “wild animals at the seafood market.”
It has since been confirmed to spread via human-to-human contact, as fears mount that it could become a global pandemic.
The coronavirus, which causes flu-like symptoms, has spread to four other countries, including the US, where a case was detected in Washington state.
Previous deadly epidemics, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), have been linked to Chinese consumption of civet meat.
Exotic species like the cat-like civets, rats and bats are considered a delicacy in China and other Asian countries.
Friday, January 24, 2020
China quarantines 40 million people!
Lisa Du reports for Bloomberg that 40 million people have now been quarantined in China as a proposed solution to the spread of the coronavirus. Will it work? Read more here.
Today's March for Life
Here is a time-lapse video of today's March for Life in Washington D.C.
THOUSANDS of #prolife marchers are heading up Capitol Hill!#WhyWeMarch pic.twitter.com/Mnnb5099zx
— March for Life (@March_for_Life) January 24, 2020
The vile hatred President Trump's Press Secretary has had to endure
In Breitbart, Matthew Boyle brings us details of an inundation of incredibly vulgar hate messages that have been sent to President Trump's Press Secretary, Stephanie Grisham. Then, Matthew documents how the hate has been fueled by members of the media. Read more here.
"Hey c'mon; this is the wrong black guy. Just say it!"
This is the trailer for the documentary that is coming out at the end of this month on the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Unbelievable hypocrisy!
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst points out the incredible hypocrisy of Democrat impeachment managers who voted against sending lethal aid to Ukraine after Ukraine was attacked by Russia. Obama sent blankets. Trump sent weapons they could use to defend themselves!
Sen. @JoniErnst NAILS it. pic.twitter.com/JdrF1CYHA3
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 24, 2020
Trial by Charlatons
In the American Spectator George Neumayr writes in part,
Leave it to the Democrats, the party of projection, to crucify Trump for a “high crime” they alone committed, under a Constitution they long ago disregarded.Read more here.
"the FBI is slowly being forced to acknowledge its terrible mistakes while James Comey and his crew ran the bureau."
The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal writes,
Well, what do you know. The Justice Department now believes that at least two of its four secret surveillance warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page lacked probable cause.Read more here.
That striking admission was disclosed in a Jan. 7 judicial order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that was declassified Thursday. Presiding FISA Judge James Boasberg wrote that “DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power.’”
Those were warrants sought by the FBI that we now know, thanks to reporting by our Kimberley Strassel and Inspector General Michael Horowitz, were based in major part on false information ginned up by Christopher Steele, who was financed by Democrats. Judge Boasberg’s order says Justice doesn’t “take a position” on the other two FISA warrants on Mr. Page, which could mean they are still being investigated by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Recall that the fourth warrant was approved in June 2017, after Robert Mueller was named special counsel. That could affect the legality of information he collected under the order and may have used in prosecutions. Recall, too, the media sneers at anyone who questioned the provenance of the warrants.
This is good news for Mr. Page and the country. The former adviser is getting his reputation back after three years of smears, and the FBI is slowly being forced to acknowledge its terrible mistakes while James Comey and his crew ran the bureau. Let’s hope there is more transparency and accountability to come, including the public release of much more information related to the FISA warrants and the genesis of the counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign.
Trump's March for Life speech today
Paul Goldberg has the video and full transcript of President Trump's speech today at the March for Life. View or read it here.
March for Life today
Oregon Muse has some astute observations today, as always.
When did he become pro-life?
"So today is the day of the annual pro-life march in Washington DC. It has been held every year on the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973.
"Most of you probably know about this annual march. Perhaps some of you have attended one or more of them. But those of you who have never heard of it can be excused for not knowing about it, because even though it routinely draws over a hundred thousand participants, the media, in years past, didn't report it. They just pretended that a march consisting of tens of thousands of people, men, women, and children, didn't happen. Not until recent years, when the growth of conservative media forced their hand.
"Anyway, media coverage is not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is that, for the first time in its history, the president of the United States is one of the march's scheduled speakers.
"And this is a remarkable thing. Not just that a president is doing this, but who that president is. Donald Trump, of all presidents. Who would've believed five years ago that the first president to address the biggest annual gathering of pro-life people in the country would be Donald J freakin' Trump?
"We have had other pro-life presidents. But I've been of the impression that they don't really like us all that much. I mean, those of us who consider ourselves social conservatives. They like our votes, and they do appoint mainly conservative judges, but it's not like they do much else, and it's like they're holding us at arm's length. George Bush 1 definitely didn't really want to have anything to do with us, and I think even Reagan was kind of stand-offish. Planned Parenthood routinely gets funded, year after year. It's been mostly lip service and failure theater.
"So the only president who ever diminished Planned Parenthood's funding is the thrice married, perhaps adulterous, not-known-for-being-particularly-conservative-until-his-election Donald Trump. He also sent an ambassador to the U.N. to tell the global elites, sorry no, abortion is not a human right.
"And now, perhaps even as you're reading this, President Trump is addressing the March for Life crowd. He went out of his way to be seen with us, to be identified with us, and to signal his support us in a very public way, and not just him, but his entire administration.
"How is this possible? I know this isn't a religious blog, so I crave your indulgence here, but the only explanation I have for this is that God made it happen.
"I think God is giving us what we want, only He is doing it in such a way that we can't take credit for it ourselves. Because if Trump were a SuperConservative president doing SuperConservative things because he was elected by SuperConservatives like us, we would boast in the wonderfulness of our SuperConservative policies and positions and say, look at the wonderful thing we did. But we can't do that, because Trump is no SuperConservative and heck, we didn't even LIKE the guy and only voted for him because the only alternative was a corrupt old drunk. And this is something the NeverTrumpers and the French Davidians can't understand and get all huffy because of all the support a president they despise enjoys. And so they join with the left in cursing his supporters, which, you know, is probably not going to endear you to them, but you've now burned pretty much all of the bridges, so have a nice life trying to grift from your new pals on the left. Anyway, look, Donald Trump is a very flawed man, we all can see that, but God can draw straight with crooked lines, and that's what we're seeing.
"I've always liked this quote from Ben Franklin, so it is what I'll leave you with:
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
When did he become pro-life?
I'd like to hear your stories on this, so I'll prime the pump by telling you mine: I was during my first or second year at college and I live on a "co-ed" dorm floor, and the girl next door to me had lots of boyfriends, some of a temporary nature. I wasn't one of them, but we liked to talk and one time she happened to mention that she didn't like taking the pill (I forget why), but she didn't like her boyfriends to use condoms, either, because she didn't like how they felt. So naturally, I asked her what she would do if she got pregnant. "Oh, I'd just get an abortion", she said. I was stunned. At that time in my young life, about age 20-21, I was an idiot and a hedonist who believed in nothing but doing whatever brought me immediate gratification, but something about the casual, flippant way she said she'd take a human life chilled me to the bone. That was when I decided I had to be pro-life and that was over 40 years ago.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
"Watergate was amateur hour. Obama's Spygate is Big Brother done by professionals."
In his blog, Don Surber writes in part,
What we really need is for Congress to take a sober and unflinching review of Obama's Spygate, in which an American president used the FBI to spy on a political opponent. To get that power, the FBI lied 17 times to a federal judge. Not only that, but the FBI tried to entrap Donald John Trump's son and his son-in-law at Trump Tower in June 2016. Not only that but when Devin Nunes later informed the judge the FBI lied, she ignored it.Read more here.
This is the constitutional crisis we need to address because if we fail to put in place strict penalties for using the FBI to spy, the next Democrat president will do even worse.
To be sure, John Durham is investigating but he's a Department of Justice lifer. He was supposed to start indicting in June. I am tired of waiting. I give up on him. He is the bus that will never arrive. I may as well start walking.
Watergate was amateur hour. Obama's Spygate is Big Brother done by professionals. I would like to say that they almost got away with it, but because there has been no public outcry, I must tell the truth.
They got away with it.
But I am cheered when I realize that the one constant in my life is that Good eventually triumphs over Evil. When things are at their darkest, that is when the sun begins to rise. Perhaps in a second term, enough of the guilty will be punished to protect our republic from a repeat of this treachery.
Will the American people tamper with the next election?
From the Babylon Bee:
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In his opening statement at Trump's impeachment trial, Rep. Adam Schiff reminded the Senate of their solemn duty and the gravity of just what it is they will be discussing at the trial.
Schiff warned that if Trump is not impeached, the American people may have a chance to tamper with the next election.
"If President Trump is not impeached, the American people might get a say in who is president," Schiff said gravely. "We simply can't allow that to happen. We must diligently defend our electoral process against electoral outcomes we do not like. If that means seizing power through a sham impeachment trial, so be it."
"When the Founders wrote that founding document thing, they never imagined there would be electoral outcomes that Democrats did not agree with."
Democrats also said they even have hard evidence that the 2016 election was compromised by Republicans voting for Trump.
"We know this horrible outcome could happen, because it's already happened once before."
Some hope for old guys
Do you want to be a wise guy into your old age?
Taking testosterone supplements can boost men's brain health into old age, a new research review has found.Read more here.
Co-author of the study Associate Professor Hamid Sohrabi, from ECU's Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer's Disease Research and Care, and Murdoch University School of Psychology and Exercise Science said his analysis of previous clinical trials found strong evidence that testosterone supplementation improves decision-making, judgment and problem-solving ability in older men.
Will the coronavirus be contained?
People in Shenzhen, China, waiting at a train station on Jan. 22. Photo: Costfoto/Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Jacob Knutson and Marisa Fernandez report in Axios,
25 people have died from an outbreak of a new coronavirus strain that originated in Wuhan, China, including the first outside the immediate area, provincial authorities said Thursday.
China has over 500 known cases. The U.S. has one.
Read more here.
Getting rid of cancer cells
Hank Berrien reports in the Daily Wire,
British scientists may have discovered a cure for cancer — by accident.Read more here.
As The Telegraph reports, “Researchers at Cardiff University were analyzing blood from a bank in Wales, looking for immune cells that could fight bacteria, when they found an entirely new type of T-cell. That new immune cell carries a never-before-seen receptor which acts like a grappling hook, latching on to most human cancers, while ignoring healthy cells.”
Trump breaks with his predecessors on Israel and Iran
In FrontPage Magazine, Carolyn Glick gives us some history of American policies toward Iran and Israel.
...As far as Iran is concerned, as journalist Lee Smith explained in Tablet online magazine this week, when Iranian “students” seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, they placed the Carter administration in a dilemma: If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the “students” weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the United States would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn’t want to do that.Read more here.
So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of “students” in central Tehran to free the hostages.
At the base of their decision to prefer fantasy to reality with regard to Iran was the hope that Khomeini and his “students” would be satisfied with a pound or two of American flesh and wouldn’t cause Washington too many other problems.
...Khomeini and his “Death to America”-shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, “plausibly deniable” doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies.
During the Iraq War from 2003-2011, Iran’s aggression reached new heights. Iran organized the Shi’ite militias that waged war against the U.S. forces in Iraq. It also supported Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which organized in Iran and used Iran as its logistical base for operations.
More than six hundred American forces were killed and thousands were wounded in attacks carried out with Iranian-made improvised explosive devices, (IEDs). Yet rather than confront Iran and take action against it, the Bush administration tried to make a deal with the mullahs.
Under Obama, reaching an accord with Iran was the singular goal of U.S. foreign policy. Every other goal was subordinated to Obama’s burning desire to appease Iran at the expense of Israel and the United States’ Sunni Arab allies.
This then brings us to President Trump. Trump’s decision to kill Qassem Soleimani—who as commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force was the head of all of Iran’s regional and global terror apparatuses—destroyed the Carter administration’s Iran narrative.
Soleimani was killed in Baghdad along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of one of the Soleimani-controlled Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Iraqi protesters, who have been demonstrating against Iran’s control over their government since last October, claim that Soleimani was the one who ordered al-Muhandis to kill the demonstrators. More than 500 demonstrators have been killed by those forces in Iraq over the past three months.
By killing the two together, the Americans exposed the big lie at the root of 40 years of deliberate American blindness to the reality of Iranian culpability and responsibility for the acts of terror and aggression its surrogates have carried out against America and its allies.
By killing Soleimani, Trump made clear that the blank check for aggression the previous six presidents gave Tehran is now canceled. From now on, the regime will be held responsible for its actions. From now on, U.S. policy towards Iran will be based on reality and not on escapism.
The second false narrative that has formed the basis of U.S. Middle East policy since Carter is that Israel and the so-called “occupation” are responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East. Moved largely by Carter’s hostility towards the Jewish state, his administration was the first to call Israel’s control over Judea and Samaria an “occupation.” It determined, through a 1978 memo authored by Herbert Hansell, the State Department’s legal adviser, that the mere existence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria constituted a breach of international law.
Because the Hansell memo was based on a wholly specious interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949, and had no basis in actual international law, the Reagan administration refused to adopt it.
But that didn’t stop Ronald Reagan from adopting the anti-Israel substance of Carter’s policy narrative. Just as Reagan turned a blind eye to Iran’s responsibility for the terror attacks its proxies carried out against the United States—including the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983 and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in November 1983—so he substantively accepted Carter’s anti-Israel narrative, which blamed Israel for the absence of Middle East peace.
Reagan appointed veteran diplomat Philip Habib to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace. Habib put together a “peace plan” predicated on the notion of Israeli guilt.
The first Bush administration, the Clinton administration, the second Bush administration and of course the Obama administration all held to the Carter line that blamed Israel and its control over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, and—until 2005—Gaza), for the unrest and instability of the region. Obama, of course, went full circle. He adopted the Hansell memo as U.S. official policy and enabled the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution criminalizing the existence of Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines.
The fact that the Carter narrative was self-evidently ridiculous and destabilizing made no impression on these successive administrations. PLO aggression and refusal to either disavow terrorism or accept Israel’s right to exist in any borders were brushed aside as irrelevant and unwelcome information.
Israel’s profound concessions for peace were pocketed, pooh-poohed and forgotten.
In November, the Trump administration put paid to the phony narrative of Israeli avarice with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the administration was disavowing the Hansell memo and replacing it with the accurate, international law-based assessment that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not inherently illegal.
Wednesday, while the world was awaiting Trump’s response to Iran’s failed missile attack against Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces, the Kohelet Policy Forum held a conference in Jerusalem on the legal and diplomatic significance of Pompeo’s announcement. In a pre-recorded message for the conference, Pompeo briefly explained why he decided to disavow the Hansell memo. His explanation could be equally applied to the Trump administration’s policy towards Iran.
In Pompeo’s words, “It is important that we speak the truth when the facts lead us to it. And that’s what we’ve done.”
For the American foreign policy establishment, Trump’s refusal to continue their 40-year marriage of policy to delusion is an unforgivable transgression, and a threat. Not only has he committed the crime of rejecting their collective “wisdom,” his reality-based policies might actually be working. The threat to them is obvious.
If Trump’s reality-based policies succeed, he will dismantle their foreign policy legacy. All their protestations of wisdom, all their fancy resumes and titles as former senior officials will lose their allure and market value.
Since Pompeo’s statement regarding the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria related to an issue which, while critical, is less in the headlines today than it was under Obama, aside from a few peremptory condemnations the foreign-policy aristocrats ignored it. As they saw it, once they return to power and start working with an Israeli government led by someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu, the phony anti-Israel narrative will be restored to its rightful place as the foundation of U.S. policy.
The Iran story is different. Days before the drone strike that killed him, Soleimani tried to re-enact the 1979 “student” takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran with “protesters” in Baghdad. But this time it didn’t work. And Soleimani paid with his life for his failure. Iran’s half-hearted, failed missile attack against U.S. forces in Iraq showed that the Iranian regime is terrified of Trump and their reversal of fortune.
Trump’s policies expose the mendacity and rank insanity of his predecessors’ policies towards Iran and Israel. Since Obama’s policies were particularly radical, divorced from reality and devastating, Trump has reasonably singled them out for particular rebuke and condemnation. Among other things, reasonably, Trump said the missiles Iran shot at U.S. forces in Iraq were paid for by the $150 billion in sanctions relief and $1.8 billion in cash that flowed to the coffers of the IRGC through the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Rather than keep quiet as their signature policy was exposed as a strategic disaster, Obama administration officials and their supporters in Congress and the media went into very public paroxysms of rage. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser and chief propagandist, who sold the nuclear deal to a credulous and eager media, said Trump’s move would lead to war. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the U.S. strike against Soleimani was “disproportionate,” hinting it was a war crime to kill the terrorist who had just ordered the seizure of a U.S. Embassy. She scheduled a congressional session to curb Trump’s power to confront Iranian aggression and nuclear proliferation.
On cue, a group of psychiatrists wrote an open letter to Congress insisting that Trump is crazy and must be restrained. (The same group has written several nearly identical letters since Trump took office.)
To protect and preserve their 40-year-old delusion-based policy, Trump’s domestic opponents are effectively supporting the Iranian regime against the United States. And as they see it, they have no choice. They are in a race against time. The more successful Trump’s reality-based policies towards Iran on the one hand and Israel on the other are, the harder it will be for the foreign policy establishment to restore their delusion-based policies when he leaves power. Given the stakes, we can assume that their attempts to clip Trump’s wings and debase him will increase in intensity, churlishness and irrationality as time goes by and as his successes mount.
Above the law?
Elizabeth Rosner and Tamar Lapin report in the New York Post,
Hunter Biden allegedly blew a deadline to hand over financial materials in his child support case — and now must appear in Arkansas court next week and explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt, a judge ruled Tuesday.
The son of former Vice President Joe Biden missed the Jan. 16 deadline to provide discovery, including financial disclosures, in the case brought by a former stripper with whom he has a 17-month-old, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
Lawyers for 28-year-old Lunden Alexis Roberts — who, as The Post exclusively revealed in November, was a stripper at a Washington, DC, club Biden once frequented — said he failed to submit a slew of discovery materials, including his phone number, address and the address of his 32-year-old wife Melissa Cohen Biden, with whom he is expecting his fifth child.
He also allegedly didn’t hand in a copy of his 2017 and 2018 tax returns, a list of the companies he owns, a list of all his sources of income and other financial documents.
Biden, 49, must come to Independence County Circuit Court on Jan. 29 and “show cause, if any exists, as to why he should not be held in contempt for any of the alleged violations of this court’s orders,” Judge Holly Meyer ordered.
Biden has missed two previous court dates.
Earlier this month, the judge officially deemed Biden “the biological and legal father,” of Roberts’ baby and ordered for him to be officially recorded as the dad on the kid’s birth certificate.
Biden initially denied paternity in the case until a DNA test proved he was the baby’s dad, according to court papers.
The parents are now sparring over child support.
“The defendant continues to act as though he has no respect for this court and its orders … or the needs of his child for support,” Ronberts’ attorneys wrote.
The judge has granted a request for a protective order by Biden’s attorney that would keep their client’s financial situation under wraps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)