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Ruth King

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Framing Flynn The “Kill Shot” sets up a showdown at Deep State Corral. Lloyd Billingsley

By on October 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/framing-flynn-lloyd-billingsley/

“Lawyers for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn reportedly filed a motion on Thursday in which they allege that the Department of Justice manipulated a document to frame their client and is withholding exculpatory evidence,” reports Joel Pollack at Breitbart.

Flynn’s legal team, headed by Sidney Powell, alleges that Peter Strzok’s FBI partner Lisa Page substantially altered the notes of Flynn’s interview. The Flynn team also flags former FBI general counsel James Baker as the source of leaks to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. The filing also alleges that former National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the reporter to “take the kill shot on Flynn.” Clapper’s team denied it, but the kill shot was hardly the only concern.

Attorney General William Barr tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate those 2016-17 events, and last week it emerged that Durham’s probe is now a full-blown criminal inquiry. As Fox News reports this means “Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries.” Some of the potential witnesses boast a high profile.

Former CIA boss John Brennan, who voted for the Stalinist Gus Hall in 1976, is reportedly one of those Durham would like to interview. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who thought that ISIS was a secular organization, is another. This pair, along with others in the “intelligence community,” are reportedly seeking counsel.

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Dems Refuse to Credit President For Baghdadi Kill Trump’s devastating strike against international terror leaves Democrats angry and rattled. Ari Lieberman

By on October 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/baghdadi-killed-dems-refuse-credit-president-ari-lieberman/

Trump’s devastating strike against international terror leaves Democrats angry and rattled.

A United States Special Forces team undertook a risky operation on Saturday night in Syria’s northwest Idlib province to track down and kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations. Baghdadi was the lead commander of the infamous Islamic State, aka ISIS, the group responsible for mass genocide, torture and rapes throughout much of Iraq and Syria, and the beheadings of several Westerners including U.S. citizens. ISIS was formed in 2013 in the shadow of Obama’s order to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq and at its zenith, controlled an area the size of Ohio.

The operation was approved by President Trump a week prior. On Saturday, at 9:23 p.m., he cryptically tweeted, “Something very big has just happened!” Trump was referencing the success of the mission. Baghdadi, who had a $25 million price tag on his head, had been liquidated.

During the nighttime raid, U.S. Special Forces stormed a compound confirmed by intelligence sources to be his hideout. A firefight erupted and several of Baghdadi’s men were either killed or surrendered. Baghdadi then ran into a tunnel, taking three of his family members with him. The SF team and its specially trained canines pursued Baghdadi. Once realizing that he was trapped with no chance of escape, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, which also took the lives of the three who accompanied him. Eleven women and children were safely evacuated by the team, which remained in the compound for two hours gathering valuable intelligence on ISIS operatives and operations. Forensic tests conducted on what remained of Baghdadi’s body confirmed his identity. Two of Baghdadi’s wives, who donned suicide vests, were shot before they had a chance to detonate. There were no U.S. casualties, though a dog which chased Baghdadi into the tunnel was unfortunately injured by the blast.

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Balanced Trade advocate Raymond Richman dies at age 101 By Howard Richman and Jesse Richman

By on October 28th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/balanced_trade_advocate_raymond_richman_dies_at_age_101.html

EE THE VOLUMES WRITTEN BY THIS DISTINGUISHED MAN- SOME WITH HIS SON AND GRANDSON:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=HOWARD+RICHMAN&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

One of the first advocates of balanced trade, Dr. Raymond L. Richman, died on October 23 at age 101. A commentary that he wrote in 2003 (The Great Trade Debate) recommended the very policy that President Trump is carrying out today — the negotiation of bilateral agreements that balance trade.  He concluded that commentary:

Is there any way to balance our trade? Let’s take a clue from the fact that barter is always beneficial to both parties. Instead of “Free Trade” as the slogan, how about the slogan, “Free and Balanced Trade”? We could announce to countries with whom we have large chronic deficits that their exports to us in the future will be limited to, say, 110 percent of what we bought from them last year. If you want to trade with us, you’ll have to buy from us. Let’s barter!

I’m sure the countries given this ultimatum will protest to the World Trade Organization (WTO) but there is precedent for bilateral agreements. We have a bilateral agreement with Japan now that limits the number of autos it can export to us.

The rules of international trade discriminate against the U.S. but the discrimination is not the cause of the deficit. The average level of U.S. tariffs is lower than that of any other large industrial nation. We have some barriers in the form of quotas but they affect a small proportion of our trade. The definition of dumping under WTO rules allows countries to rebate value-added taxes. Since we have no value-added tax and income taxes cannot be rebated, goods from many countries sell for less in the U.S. than in the countries in which they are produced. We could replace the corporate income tax with a value-added tax and subsidize exports by rebating the tax. Or we could change the rules to deny countries the right to rebate the value-added tax.

While such actions would do some good, the principal cause of chronic trade deficits was and continues to be capital flows from abroad. The U.S. went from being the world’s leading creditor nation in 1970 to become the world’s biggest debtor.

The situation calls for dramatic action. Stop the bleeding! Blue-collar workers have been bearing the burden of so-called “free trade” long enough. Let’s have balanced trade.

He was a well-respected economist who received a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957 with Milton Friedman his dissertation advisor. Then he worked as a consultant for the OEEC, the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Asian Development Bank. When he retired from the University of Pittsburgh in 1982, he became Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs.

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Baghdadi Bagged by Mark Steyn

By on October 28th, 2019

If I had to distill American strategic defeat and loss of purpose in the Middle East into a single image, it would be the Iraqi-Jordanian border post in June 2014. As I wrote in The [Un]documented Mark Steyn:

Eleven years ago, a few weeks after the fall of Saddam, on little more than a whim, I rented a beat-up Nissan and, without telling the car-hire bloke, drove from Amman through the eastern Jordanian desert, across the Iraqi border, and into the Sunni Triangle. I could not easily make the same journey today, but for a brief period in the spring of 2003 we were ‘the strong horse’ and even a dainty little media gelding such as myself was accorded a measure of respect by the natives. The frontier is a line in the sand drawn by a British colonial civil servant and on either side it’s empty country. From the Trebil border post, you have to drive through ninety miles of nothing to get to Iraq’s westernmost town, Rutba – in saner times an old refueling stop for Imperial Airways flights from Britain to India. Fewer of Her Majesty’s subjects swing by these days. I had a bite to eat at a café whose patron had a trilby pushed back on his head Sinatra-style and was very pleased to see me. (Rutba was the first stop on a motoring tour that took me through Ramadi and Fallujah and up to Tikrit and various other towns.)

In those days, the Iraqi side of the Trebil border was manned by US troops. So an ‘immigration official’ from the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment glanced at my Canadian passport, and said, ‘Welcome to Free Iraq.” We exchanged a few pleasantries, and he waved me through. A lot less cumbersome than landing at JFK. I remember there was a banner with a big oval hole in it, where I assumed Saddam’s face had once been. And as I drove away I remember wondering what that hole would be filled with.

Well, now we know. That same border post today is manned by head-hacking jihadists from the ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’.

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MARK STEYN’S OBSERVATIONS ON CANADA’S ELECTION

By on October 27th, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9798/scheer-genius

A few random thoughts on a grey morning after:

~According to the deranged dominion’s useless and government-subsidized media, Canadians’ priorities in this election were climate change and indigenous reconciliation, and the breakout star of the campaign was NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

Back in the real world, Mr Singh’s party lost over a third of its seats, and twenty per cent of its vote, and is no longer the third biggest caucus in the House of Commons. And, whatever voters may tell pollsters about global climate concerns and indigenous reconciliation, the real consequences of the last four years are a resurgent Québécois nationalism and Albertan alienation. Both are testament to what Justin’s “sunny ways” boil down to in practice.

~As has often been said, Canadians rarely deny a party promoted to majority a second majority. The last time it happened was in 1935 – to R B Bennett’s Tories. However, to the best of my recollection, during the ’35 campaign old flickering silent movies did not surface of milord Bennett capering about in blackface with a banana stuffed down his trousers. As I pleaded three weeks ago:

Couldn’t we have contemplated the sheer weirdness of Canada’s head of government a while longer? On the election debate stage, [Trudeau] will be the only blackface devotee. Likewise at the G7 summit. And indeed at the G20. And Nato. If I’m not entirely confident about making the same claim of the Commonwealth Conference, it’s only because Her Majesty’s biennial beano has commanded the presence of some rum coves over the years, but nevertheless I am certain that Justin with his thrice-confessed blackface has worn it more than all the other prime ministers combined.

And yet Andrew Scheer couldn’t lay a glove on the guy – notwithstanding that he’s micro-managed and minded by some of the sleaziest low-down bare-knuckled dirty-tricksters in Canada, from Hamish Marshall even unto Warren (Catsmeat) Kinsella. These are self-proclaimed mean motherf**kers. But not apparently mammyf**ckers. If you can’t make hay while the Sonny Boy shines, what’s the point?

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Clappered-out credibility-The View from Australia

By on October 27th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/

It was June  17, 2017, and the cream of Canberra journalism was clotted at the National Press Club to have preconceptions and prejudices about the Trump administration burnished by James Clapper (above), who was in town to pick up some quick pocket change for a FIFO gig at ANU. With the Russiagate hoax in full swing, the hacks  were keen to absorb the alleged insights of the man who served as Barack Obama’s national security adviser and, as he put it, spoke with the authority of an operative with “fifty-plus years in the intel business”.

Things were crook in Washington, Clapper told his audience, what with this Trump creature upsetting apple carts and doing the Russians’ bidding. That was when Mark Kenny of what was then the Fairfax press wondered what would become of America and Australian-US relations with such a rogue in the White House. Clapper replied:

…Watergate pales really, in my view, compared to what we’re confronting now.

I will add at least this American isn’t walking away, put it that way. I will just speak for myself.

Two years on, the Mueller probe having found nothing and with US federal investigators now looking into the origins and perpetrators of the Russiagate hoax which inspired it, Clapper is still speaking for himself, albeit in a somewhat shaken and lost-for-words manner.

Appearing on CNN mere minutes after the news broke that probers are poised to drag him and others into a criminal investigation, with the distinct possibility of grand jury appearances, perjury risks and charges being laid, the confident Clapper seen in Canberra was not in evidence.

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What We Call National Health Care or Single-Payer Is a Crime Against Humanity By David Solway

By on October 27th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/what-we-call-national-health-care-or-single-payer-is-a-crime-against-humanity/

When Bernie Sanders visited Canada’s national health care system on a fact-finding mission, he came away mightily impressed. “Somehow or another in Canada,” he said, “for a number of decades, they have provided quality care to all people without out-of-pocket expenses…And they do it for about 50 percent per capita of the cost that we spend.” His claims are not only debatable, they are fraudulent. Anyone who cites the Canadian model as a medical paradigm is guilty of special pleading.

For one thing, “quality care” does not exist in Canada; indeed, such “care” closely approximates Third-World levels, as we will see below.  For another, according to a 2018 Canadian government survey, out-of-pocket expenses constitute about $36 billion or 15 percent of health care spending. As we know, government reports regularly underestimate in their projections. Out-of-pocket expenses are far higher, not only for dental and many pharmaceuticals—the Canadian system does not cover essential medications—but with regard to value-added surcharges.

For example, in Quebec where I lived for many years, health care consumes 45 percent of all provincial program spending, which did not prevent government tacking on an extra $200 annually as a “solidarity tax.” In Ontario I paid exorbitantly for non-prescribed drugs, including a whopping mandatory payment every June. In British Columbia where I now make my home, every person pays an extra $37.50 monthly, which for my wife and me amounts to $900 per year over and above extortionate ancillary expenses and a massive tax gouge. In more than one way, Bernie is out in left field.

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The President’s Best Ukraine Defense: Not an Impeachable Offense By Andrew C. McCarthy Part 2

By on October 27th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-presidents-best-ukraine-defense-not-an-impeachable-offense/

Stop insisting there was no quid pro quo and cut to the chase.

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-column series this weekend, dealing with recent developments in the impeachment inquiry House Democrats are conducting in connection with President Trump’s dealings with the government of Ukraine.

Yesterday, in part one of this two-part series, I reiterated my argument that it has been a strategic error for President Trump and his supporters to claim that there was no quid pro quo in his administration’s dealings with the government of Ukraine. That is not just because quid pro quo terms are a staple of negotiations between sovereigns; nor is it just because the evidence is strong that President Trump did pressure Ukraine by seeking investigative assistance in exchange for what Ukraine’s president sought — the release of $400 million in foreign aid and an Oval Office visit.

The “no quid pro quo” claim is misguided because it is largely irrelevant to an impeachment inquiry. As explained in part one, we are not here talking about a criminal court prosecution in which a prosecutor must prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. If a majority of the Democratic-controlled House was satisfied (or at least said they were satisfied) that an egregious abuse of power occurred, they could vote an article of impeachment even if a corrupt quid pro quo could not be proved to criminal-law specifications.

More important, the president’s camp should stick with and relentlessly argue his best point: The president’s actions in conducting Ukrainian relations do not establish an impeachable offense under the circumstances. Let’s consider the relevant issues.

1/ No harm, no foul. The president’s hold on defense aid was temporary, and Ukraine got all of it. The Zelensky government did not have to commence or assist any investigations to get it. The delay caused no material harm.

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CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

By on October 27th, 2019

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/10/25/stunning-potentially-game-changi

Stunning, Potentially Game-Changing, Court Filing by Flynn Defense Lawyer Sidney Powell…

In a lengthy court filing surrounding the issues of Brady discovery material, Mike Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, drops some serious evidentiary bombshells on the court. Ms. Powell brings Lady Justice to the courtroom, and her revelations are stunning. [Full pdf’s below]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/10/larry-c-johnson-bill-barr-has-pulled-the

Larry C. Johnson: Bill Barr Has Pulled the Trigger and Altered the Landscape – The Deep State Does Not Truly Understand the Peril They Now Face by Jim Hoft

I do not believe in coincidence. I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that these three events occurred late last night:

1. The investigation of the roots of the plot to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency is now a criminal matter.

2. A letter from Inspector General Horowitz announcing that his report on the FISA fraud would be out shortly with no major redactions.

3. The Government caved to Honey Badger Sidney Powell and allowed her to fully expose criminal conduct by Michael Flynn’s prosecutors.

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Climate Stalinism Today’s radical green movement demands submission to an elite governing class—and its views are entering the mainstream Joel Kotkin

By on October 27th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/radical-green-movement

The Left’s fixation on climate change is cloaked in scientism, deploying computer models to create the illusion of certainty. Ever more convinced of their role as planetary saviors, radical greens are increasingly intolerant of dissent or any questioning of their policy agenda. They embrace a sort of “soft Stalinism,” driven by a determination to remake society, whether people want it or not—and their draconian views are penetrating the mainstream. “Democracy,” a writer for Foreign Policy suggests, constitutes “the planet’s biggest enemy.”

Today’s working and middle classes are skeptical about policies that undermine their livelihoods in the promise of distant policy goals. Even now, after a decade-long barrage of fear-mongering, a majority of Americans, Australians, and even Europeans doubt that climate change will affect their lives substantially. A recent UN survey of 10 million people found that climate change ranked 16th in concerns; most people in the developing world, notes environmental economist Bjorn Lonborg, “care about their kids not dying from easily curable diseases, getting a decent education, not starving to death.”

Like other people in high-income countries, most Americans want to improve the environment and many, if not most, are concerned about the potential impact of climate change. But they still rank climate as only their 11th leading concern, behind not just health care and the economy but also immigration, guns, women’s rights, the Supreme Court, taxes, income, and trade. A recent Harris-Harvard poll found that three-fifths of Americans reject the portfolio of Green New Deal policies, including a third of Democrats and half of people under 25.

Simply put, once the current green agenda is understood in terms of its impact on jobs and energy prices, it does not play well. In recent Australian elections, voters soundly rejected a progressive agenda that targeted suburban residents and the country’s large fossil-fuel industry. Opposition was particularly strong in primarily blue-collar areas like Australia’s Queensland. The results in Australia led local celebrities and pundits to brand their fellow citizens as unremittingly “dumb.”

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