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October 2019

On Brexit, Boris Johnson and the U.K. Attorney General Refuse to Surrender By John O’Sullivan

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/brexit-boris-johnson-geoffrey-cox-refuse-to-surrender/

On the afternoon of this past Wednesday — following the U.K. supreme court’s ruling that the prorogation of Parliament by Her Majesty’s Government was unlawful, null, and void, had never happened at all legally, and would have to be reversed — the U.K’s chief legal officer, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, rose to speak to a largely hostile House of Commons. In addition to feeling the government’s general travails, Cox seemed to be in a sticky position personally because it was he who had advised the cabinet that prorogation was indisputably legal — to the point that anyone who denied it could have only political motives for so doing.

Cox was therefore defending himself as much as the government.

When he sat down a short time later, the Tory benches were buoyant, cheering for the first time in weeks. Cox had knocked Labour MPs, ex-Tory dissidents, Liberal Democrat scolds, and the entire anti-Brexit Coalition of Incompatibles around the Commons chamber with the kind of robust theatrical performance that only a top Queen’s counsel (a kind of super-lawyer) can put across with easy conviction.

While respecting the supreme court’s judgment, he said he did not agree with it. He refused to apologize for the legal advice he had given the cabinet, which reflected what the law was before the supreme court’s judgment. He responded forcefully and even dismissively to successive critics on the Opposition benches, telling one Labour MP that he ought to beg the forgiveness of his voters for betraying them over Brexit. And overall, he denounced the opposition parties for cowardice and obstructionism:

Five Observations on the Politics of Impeachment By Sean Trende

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/02/five_observations_on_the_politics_of_impeachment.html

As the House initiates an official impeachment inquiry and moves toward a likely vote to impeach, here are five observations on the politics of the moment:

Our previous impeachments shed little light on this one. It’s generally unwise to make confident predictions without a relatively large data set to draw upon. Here, we have only had four examples of serious impeachment proceedings.

The first two – John Tyler and Andrew Johnson – do not help us understand our present politics. Both involved presidents who had weak relationships with their respective parties and who had succeeded to the office after presidents of the opposing party had died while serving. Perhaps more importantly, both took place in the mid-1800s, long before the arrival of reliable public opinion polling.

The other two examples are more relevant, but in both cases it is nearly impossible to isolate the specifics of impeachment from the broader political context. Richard Nixon’s case would seem to offer a good example for Democrats, as his job approval suffered an astonishing decline from 67% at his second inauguration to a mere 24% as he left office after being told by GOP leaders that he would not survive a Senate trial. Republicans were crushed in the ensuing midterm elections, and Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, lost to an inexperienced Southern Democrat named Jimmy Carter two years later.

It is not, however, clear how much of this is attributable to impeachment itself. Nixon had the advantage of running for reelection amid 5% economic growth, which doubtless juiced his job approval numbers. But the economy began turning against Nixon at the beginning of his second term. The easy money policies pursued by the Federal Reserve began to catch up with the country, as the monthly inflation rate brushed up against 1% in March 1973 and almost hit 2% in August. Overall inflation for the year was almost 9%, and the federal funds rate hit 11%. In 1974, inflation surged to over 12%.

At the same time, in October of 1973, OPEC instituted an embargo of oil to the United States, causing widespread gas shortages. The country entered a serious recession, which lasted until 1975 – the longest recession the country had experienced since the Great Depression.

Hillary Clinton Labels Trump an ‘Illegitimate President’ By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hillary-clinton-labels-trump-an-illegitimate-president/

Hillary Clinton said that Donald Trump is an “illegitimate president” during a Wednesday appearance on ABC’s “The View.”

The former presidential candidate made the comment after host Joy Behar asked what she made of Trump leading “lock her up!” chants at campaign rallies.

“I do think that [Trump] knows that he’s an illegitimate president,” said Clinton to applause from the studio audience. “Because of that, he’s very insecure about it.”

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✔ @dcexaminer

“He knows that he’s an illegitimate president and because of that — he’s very insecure about it.”

Clinton’s campaign met with harsh public backlash after she was accused of using a private home server to receive classified emails from the State Department in violation of federal laws governing the handling of classified information. After an F.B.I. investigation, then director James Comey announced that the agency would not press charges against Clinton, but referred to her actions as “extremely careless.”

The investigation into her use of a private server for classified emails became a key issue in the 2016 elections, with Trump and supporters shouting “lock her up!” at rallies and alleging that Clinton had overstepped the bounds of the law.The State Department is continuing its own investigation into the matter.

During the 2016 election season, Trump hinted that he would not accept the election results if he were to lose. Clinton herself went on to question the legitimacy of the results in a 2017 interview with in Mother Jones.

Later in the Wednesday interview, Clinton accused Trump of “being helped a lot” in the 2016 elections, presumably referring to the Kremlin’s efforts to sway the election in his favor.

Do Republicans See the Strategy to Discredit the Barr Investigation? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/do-republicans-see-the-strategy-to-discredit-the-barr-investigation/

Democrats and their media friends are attempting to paint the Barr investigation, in the public mind, as a corrupt extension of a down-and-dirty Trump 2020 political campaign.

In the weekend column, I observed the media-Democrat complex’s politicized reporting of the July 25 conversation between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart:

Trump detractors hyper-focus on the president’s request that President Zelensky provide Attorney General Barr with any information Ukraine might have about Biden twisting arms to quash an investigation involving his son’s cashing in on dad’s influence. I say “hyper-focus” because there was a lot more to it than that. Long before the conversation came around to the Biden topic, the “favor” that Trump asked for was Zelensky’s assistance in Barr’s ongoing investigation of the genesis of the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Virtually all mainstream-media reporting and Democratic commentary on the conversation now fits this pattern. It is noted that Trump, immediately after the “quid pro quo” set-up — “I would like you to do us a favor though” — invoked the attorney general, the nation’s top federal law-enforcement official. Studiously omitted is the context of this invocation: a wholly appropriate request by the president, to the head of state of a country in possession of relevant evidence, for cooperation with a legitimate investigation being conducted by our country’s Justice Department.

Instead, the coverage skips a few hundred words. It cuts directly to Trump’s suggestion that Zelensky look into whether there was any impropriety in former vice president Biden’s having purportedly “stopped the prosecution” that might have arisen out of a Ukrainian investigation involving his son.

Schiff’s Heads-up By Rich Lowry

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/schiffs-heads-up/

The New York Times reports what many on the right suspected — Schiff got a heads-up about the whistleblower complaint, indeed knew about it before it was filed. This affected how he handled the matter, which got the ball rolling on what ultimately became the impeachment inquiry:

By the time the whistle-blower filed his complaint, Mr. Schiff and his staff knew at least vaguely what it contained.Mr. Schiff released a letter seeking the complaint and suggested it could involve Mr. Trump or others in his administration. Mr. Schiff followed up by subpoenaing Mr. Maguire to testify before the intelligence committee.

Mr. Schiff’s intense push took Mr. Maguire and his aides by surprise, current and former intelligence officials said. In other cases of lawmakers seeking classified material that the intelligence agencies were reluctant to share, including whistle-blower complaints, both sides usually tried to resolve the matter by holding quiet discussions.

Officials in Mr. Maguire’s office, who did not know the details of the complaint, were puzzled why Mr. Schiff went public right away, eschewing the usual closed-door negotiations.

Jews, Fight Back! Rabbi Aryeh Spero

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/…/jews_fight_back_.html

The rash of physical attacks against Jews in Brooklyn and even Manhattan began almost a year ago. We have cell phone and street camera footage of many of the attacks, and they are coming from assailants bellowing Alah Akbar and from younger Black and Hispanic men often yelling dirty Jew. They sneak up on Jewish-garbed citizens using bricks, stones, breaking bones, smashing eyes and do so, at times, as groups. There was no mainstream media discussion about any of this until a few weeks ago and the major Jewish establishment organizations were basically silent as well. Even now, none of these Jewish organizations are flexing their muscles or evincing anywhere near the type of outrage we should expect.

You can be sure that if the attackers were white or Jewish or if the victims were Black, Muslim or Hispanic, the establishment alphabet Jewish organizations (ADL, AJC, NYF, JCRC, Conference of Presidents, and Federations) would be the very first organizing protests against racism, accusing America of systemic racism, and pontificating about something rotten within American society. Thus far, their response has been tepid and without any passion or urgency.

My grievance is not why general society is doing little, since most American citizens have no clue about what is happening in places called Boro Park, Williamsburg or Crown Heights. But the major secular Jewish organizations do know! Nor am I perplexed about why this is not at the top of the bucket list of many office holders and politicians. After all, the “machers” from the Jewish organizations are not knocking down their doors nor raising Cain, something Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, CAIR, and Ocassio-Cortez would certainly do if their people were being assaulted by outsiders.

Swedes are Fleeing by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14894/swedes-are-fleeing

As a consequence of taking in so many migrants within a relatively short time span, not only during the extraordinary migration crisis in 2015 but generally in the years 2012-2017, municipalities are fighting high unemployment, a rise in child poverty and rising social welfare expenditures, according to Jim Frölander.

“I have tried to defend Malmö,” Emma Zetterholm said, “But the more time passes and you notice that there is no improvement, you eventually lose your resilience”.

“As a parent, you become angry, desperate… The result is that those who can, and can afford it, move…. To a quieter part of the country or abroad. Those who do not have the same opportunities [to move] remain where they are. It’s devastating…” — Former Minister of Labour Sven Otto Littorin, who now lives and works in Dubai, on Facebook.

“About 13 percent of the population in Sweden experience problems in their own residential areas with crime, violence or vandalism. It is one of the highest proportions in Europe.” By comparison, the other Nordic countries were placed among the countries with the lowest percentage of the population who experience such problems….” — Statistics Sweden, April 25, 2019.

Swedes are on the move. Problems in many municipalities are prompting Swedes to leave for other areas with fewer socioeconomic problems. The issue has recently gained the attention of the Swedish mainstream media.

Take the small, picturesque town of Filipstad (population 10,000), for example. Swedish television recently made a documentary about the town, which finds itself in both a financial and an existential crisis. “We are experiencing a population exchange. You can think of that what you want… But it is simply a statement of fact that this is actually what we are going through and we have to deal with it”, Jim Frölander, integration manager in the Filipstad municipality, says in the documentary. Between 2012 and 2018, 640 native Swedes left the town, and 963 foreign-born people moved into the town. Those leaving are people of working age (20-64), which means that the municipality’s tax revenues are shrinking, exacerbating town’s financial crisis.

‘Don’t Go Wobbly’ on Iran by Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14946/wobbly-on-iran

Iran has, indeed, seen its economy crumble, inflation and unemployment soar, and its oil exports rapidly fall to under 200,000 barrels a day from more than two million.

In short, through a combined policy of military restraint and economic pressure, the Trump administration has shifted the entire discussion on Iran.

No longer is preserving the JCPOA the issue, but rather jettisoning it and perhaps starting over. No longer is the use or abuse of American military power the focus of debate, but rather Iran’s terrorist activities — not just against America and Israel — but against the entire world’s energy sources.

Since the Islamic Republic of Iran was created in 1979, the regime in Tehran has been at war with the United States and its allies, revealing itself to be an expansionist nation, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, and having “blood lust for its enemies.”

The 2015 signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which Iran did not sign — and otherwise bafflingly known as the “nuclear deal with Iran,” was falsely claimed by its supporters in the West to prevent the ayatollah-led regime from obtaining nuclear weapons, even though its most salient feature was its “sunset clause” enabling Iran to have as many as it liked in just a few short years. As the Israeli government repeatedly warned, the JCPOA actually “put Iran on a glide path” towards a nuclear-weapons capability.

Furthermore, the Iranian government refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect sites at which there was suspected nuclear activity for military purposes. It was not until the Israeli Mossad retrieved a trove of documents from a warehouse in Tehran in mid-2018 that concrete evidence of such activity was shown.

The Tragedy of Communist China

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-tragedy-of-communist-china/90852/

Communist China’s 70th anniversary, with its spectacle of violence against demonstrators for democracy in Hong Kong, is a moment to mark a profound truth: There is no difference between political liberty and economic liberty. They cannot be separated, nor can one be put before the other. It turns out that economic liberty and political liberty are the same thing — warp and woof of the fabric of freedom.

This became evident in Asia in the 1970s, when our defeat in Vietnam ushered in an era in which the so-called non-aligned nations began to assert themselves. Their conceit was that communism and capitalism were both bad. So non-aligned countries set up authoritarian regimes pursuing Western style development by focusing on business. They delayed political freedom until, in theory, they could afford it.

That theory, though, was upended in those Asian lands where democracy managed to emerge — Japan, Free Korea, and the Free Chinese Republic on Taiwan. It wasn’t easy; real democracy almost got defeated in, say, South Korea and took some time to emerge in, say, Taiwan. Eventually, though, the countries that chose multiparty democracy, freedom of religion, and the rule of law emerged as winners.

This was always recognized in America — and not just by Republicans. One of the clearest expressions of it was given by President Carter. That was in May 1977, when he spoke at Notre Dame. Said the 39th President: “The great democracies are not free because we are strong and prosperous. I believe we are strong and influential and prosperous because we are free.”

By then, though, that truth was already being betrayed. That started in the United Nations. Free China was one of its founders and — with America, Russia, Britain, and Free France — a permanent member of the Security Council, with full veto powers. Yet on a motion of one of the world’s worst tyrannies, Albania, the UN in 1971 gave China’s seat to the communist camarilla.

Nixon’s trip to Peking followed. Then President Carter, at Free China’s expense, and with Congress providing the hechsher, formally recognized the communist regime. This was challenged in the Supreme Court by Senator Goldwater. The justices took the case, but refused to hear arguments, and ordered a lower court to dismiss Goldwater’s claim as non-justiciable.

MAXINE WATERS ON DONALD TRUMP

“Top Dem Maxine Waters: impeach Trump, he belongs in solitary confinement”