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Ruth King

Double Standards on Ukraine By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/double-standards-on-ukraine/

Democrats in Congress and the media pretend to swoon over conduct they accepted when Obama did it.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement at today’s hearing, a grilling of National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire, was remarkable. To begin with, he recited a parody of the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that was so absurd, it would not have made it into a Grade-C mob movie. A telling decision by Schiff, a capable former prosecutor: If you have an extortionate conversation, you quote it. If you need to imagine it into something it isn’t, that means it is not an extortionate conversation.

Also telling: Chairman Schiff came flying out of the starting block describing how overwhelmingly dependent Ukraine is on the United States and its president. Of course, this fact must be forced to the fore because it is not obvious from the Trump–Zelensky conversation — again, Schiff does not have evidence that Trump extorted Zelensky for the purpose of aiding Trump’s 2020 campaign.

But more to the point, the relationship of dependency intensified in 2015 due to the flight to Moscow of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych. At that point, a new Ukrainian government more to the Obama administration’s liking, under President Petro Poroshenko, came to power. It was desperate for American help, financially and security-wise, which is why Vice President Biden was in a position to pressure it into firing the prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of Burisma, the energy company that had appointed Hunter Biden to its board and was lavishly compensating him.

Why the Impeachment Frenzy May Only Strengthen Trump By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-impeachment-frenzy-may-strengthen-trump/https:

Contrary to suggestions by some, most Trump supporters are not automatons or blind supporters. What bothers them, and should bother others, about the latest Ukraine hysterias is the familiar monotony of this latest scripted psychodrama.

The whistleblower admits to hearsay (“I was not a direct witness to most of the events described”). His term-paper report is laden with anonymously sourced rumors, e.g., “According to multiple White House officials I spoke with,” “I was told by White House officials,” “Based on my understanding,” “I learned from multiple officials,” “I do not know whether similar measures were taken,” “I do not know whether those officials spoke with or met with . . . ”

Between references to Internet news accounts and “I heard from” and “I learned from” and “I do not know” anonymous officials, there is nothing here to launch an impeachment of any president.

In the complaint are all the now-familiar tell-tale signs of pseudo-exactness, in the form of Mueller-report-like footnotes and page references to liberal media outlets such as Bloomberg, ABC, and the New York Times. There is the accustomed Steele-dossier scare bullet points. We see again Comey-memo-like disputes over classification status with capital letters UNCLASSIFIED stamped as headers and footers and TOP SECRET lined out.

Scary references abound to the supposed laws that the legal-eagle whistleblower believes were violated. In sum, there is all the usual evidence of an administrative-state bureaucrat, likely to be some third-tier Brennan or Clapper-like intelligence operative, who is canvassing disgruntled White House staffers, writing a report that imitates intelligence-department formats, combing the Internet, in “dream-team” and “all-star” footnote fashion, for scare quotes and anti-Trump stories, and then likely having it dressed up in legalese by an activist lawyer. Take all that away, and one is left with “I heard.”

Right from Wrong: From the mouths of mullahs Rouhani’s New York blitz. By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-From-the-mouths-of-mullahs-603058

The ayatollahs in Tehran must have been kvelling this week while watching their puppet, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, receive oodles of undivided attention on the global stage. Not only did Rouhani address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday, he was granted even more valuable propaganda time the previous day during a one-on-one interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace.

Both platforms enabled the key figure-head of the greatest state sponsor of international terrorism – and among the world’s worst abusers of the human rights of its own people – to make a case for his evil regime by distorting reality beyond recognition. You know, by accusing America and Israel of being the true terror-masters.

When he took to the UNGA podium, Rouhani came out of the gate running.

“At the outset, I would like to… pay homage to all the freedom-seekers of the world who do not bow to oppression and aggression, and tolerate all the hardships of the struggle for rights, as well as to the spirits of all the oppressed martyrs of terrorist strikes and bombardment in Yemen, Syria, Occupied Palestine, Afghanistan and other countries of the world,” he said. “The Middle East is burning in the flames of war, bloodshed, aggression, occupation and religious and sectarian fanaticism and extremism. And under such circumstances, the suppressed people of Palestine are the biggest victim. Discrimination, appropriation of lands, settlement expansions and killings continue to be practiced against the Palestinians.”

However, he added, “The US- and Zionist-imposed plans, such as the ‘Deal of the Century,’ recognizing Baitul Muqaddas [Jerusalem] as the capital of the Zionist regime and the accession of the Syrian Golan to the other occupied territories, are doomed to fail.”

If anyone was wondering why America and Israel would not succeed in what he implied is a pernicious plot, Rouhani explained, “In contrast to the US’s destructive plans, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional and international assistance and cooperation on security and counter-terrorism have been much decisive. The clear example of such an approach is our cooperation with Russia and Turkey within the Astana format on the Syrian crisis, and our peace proposal for Yemen.”

Will US, Iranian miscalculation bring war? BY Lawrence Haas

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/463077-will-us-iranian-miscalculation-bring-war

In the escalating, multi-dimensional conflict between Washington and Tehran, the growing risk of armed conflict centers around the same danger that plagues international relations in general: miscalculation.

President Donald Trump may believe that in sanctioning Iran’s central bank and sending more U.S. troops to the region in response to the recent suspected Iranian attack on Saudi oil facilities, he’s sending a clear message to Tehran.

But Iran’s leaders may not hear it. Instead, they may think that they can push the envelope of military action further – in light of Trump’s insistence that he doesn’t want war, his failure to respond militarily to Iran’s attack on a U.S. drone in June, his earlier empty threats of military action against Iran and North Korea, and decades of U.S. reluctance to respond forcefully to Iranian and other provocations.

The danger, of course, is that Tehran will push too far, and Trump will feel compelled to take military action, which could escalate quickly into a tit-for-tat of exchanges that lead to all-out war.

Miscalculation. It’s the danger that JFK sought to avoid as he exchanged messages with Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that George H.W. Bush sought to avoid when he signaled Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf War that Saddam’s use of chemical or biological weapons would mean the end of his regime.

How many cars are there on Mars? by Victor Sharpe

The title of this essay may seem odd at first, but read on and all will be revealed.

When President elect, Barack Obama, chose members of his new administration back in 2008, he selected physicist Steven Chu as energy secretary and Carol Browner to lead a White House council on energy and climate. Ms. Browner had headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration. Mr. Chu was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases.

Carol Browner was described as a “neon-green radical” in an early article by Michelle Malkin titled, “The Trouble with Obama’s Energy Czar.” With both Chu and Browner at Obama’s energy helm, the United States was destined to be in a world of trouble, and that too became clear when Obama later uttered the dread words: “I have come to fundamentally transform America.”

Obama’s notorious Cap in Trade policy thankfully died in the Republican controlled Congress. His baleful eight long year term of “fundamentally transforming America” finally ended but, if President Trump loses the general election in 2020 and the Left come to power, a similar and perilous version of a Cap in Trade policy is almost certain to rise from its erstwhile deathbed. It will inevitably saddle the middle class with higher taxes and cause painful job losses to Americans. 

The Transcript Is Damning — To Biden, Not Trump Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/25/the-transcript-is-damning-to-biden-not-trump/
Picture the 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee. The challenger turns to the president and charges: “You asked the Ukrainian president to investigate your opponent’s son’s shady business dealings.”

He adds, “you released the transcript of your phone call last year with him in which you said, ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’

“And then you said, and I quote, ‘Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.’”

Finally, arriving at his rhetorical crescendo, the nominee declares victoriously, “Horrible? What’s horrible wasn’t me as vice president using the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Ukraine needed to stay solvent to get the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating my son’s client fired. No, what’s horrible is a president of the United States using the power of his office to dig up foreign dirt on a political opponent.”

It doesn’t quite work, does it? In fact, it would, if you will, trump Joe Biden’s long history of verbal blunders as the gaffe of all gaffes of the entirety of his four-and-a-half decades in Washington.

Democrats — from high-ranking party operatives to rank-and-file primary voters — know this, which is why the transcript released by the Trump White House on Wednesday dooms Biden’s 2020 chances, not Trump’s.

The Dems take a swig from The Pickwick Papers Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/dems-swig-pickwick-papers-impeachment/

Compare the anodyne narrative of the transcript to the mad impeachment hysteria that has addled the brains of the anti-Trump sorority in the Democratic party.

I am not thinking of that scene at the beginning of Dickens’s novel where Mr Blotton says he regards Mr Pickwick as a ‘humbug’. That was nice, especially when Mr Pickwick angrily demands to know whether the Rt. Honorable gentleman called him a humbug in its ordinary or ‘common sense’. No, no responded Mr Blotton, he had ‘merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view’. Well, that’s all right then, rejoined Mr Pickwick, and peace and amity reigned once more among the members of the Pickwick Club.

There is a lesson in there somewhere for the Democrats, but when it comes to their virulent case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, more pertinent is the episode describing the case of Bardell v. Pickwick. The widow Bardell, ‘fat, fair, and forty’, is Mr Pickwick’s landlady. She willfully misconstrues some innocuous comments he makes. Item: ‘Dear Mrs. B., Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.’ Out such gossamer musing she constructs a proposal of marriage and, when no proposal is forthcoming sues Pickwick for breach of promise. Much hilarity, and not inconsiderable inconvenience, ensues, but it all comes right in the end, at least for Mr Pickwick.

It’s not so great for Mrs Bardell, but what happens to her is nothing like what is about to happen to the Democrats. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House was opening a ‘formal’ impeachment inquiry. Why? Because the president had a conversation with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in July. President Trump congratulated Zelensky on his recent victory and expressed the wish that the US and Ukraine would work together in a spirit of friendship. He noted that the US had an ongoing inquiry into Ukrainian-based efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election and he asked Zelensky to talk to Attorney General Barr. ‘There are a lot of things that went on,’ Trump said, and ‘I would like you to get to the bottom of it.’ For his part, Zelensky expressed the hope that Rudy Giuliani would be available to help them with the inquiry. Trump is enthusiastic about that idea and notes that ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’

Complaint From So-Called ‘Whistleblower’ Is Riddled With Gossip, Blatant Falsehoods The complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower,” released Thursday, is a mix of gossip, hearsay, and misstatements of fact contradicted by publicly available evidence. By Sean Davis

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/26/complaint-from-so-called-whistleblower-is-riddled-with-gossip-blatant-falsehoods/

The formal complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower” alleging various crimes by President Donald Trump is riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods. The document was declassified by Trump Wednesday evening and released to the public Thursday morning. The complaint, which was delivered to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.

Rather than provide direct evidence that was witnessed or obtained firsthand by the complainant, the document instead combines gossip from various anonymous individuals, public media reports, and blatant misstatements of fact and law in service of a narrative that is directly contradicted by underlying facts. A footnote in the document even boasts about its use of “ample open-source information.”

Contrary to news reports asserting that the complaint included volumes of information incriminating Trump, it is instead based entirely on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various public media reports.

“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confesses on the first page. Instead, the complainant notes, the document is based on conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.” Those officials are not named, and their positions are not identified anywhere in the letter.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Zero Population Growth (ZPG): Killing America With Kindness – hoax 48 by Linda Goudsmit

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/23290/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-zero-population-growth

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The Humanitarian Hoax series has discussed the Humanitarian Hoax of Globalism, The Humanitarian Hoax of Socialism, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change, The Humanitarian Hoax of Climate Change II, The Riddle of Climate Change, and the Humanitarian Hoax of the United Nations. Now it is time to examine the Humanitarian Hoax of Zero Population Growth and see how these hoaxes are all connected.

The humanitarian hoaxes are globalist cons designed to redistribute the world’s wealth and the world’s population to establish a new internationalized world order of one world government under the corrupt auspices of the United Nations. The 2020 American presidential election is a domestic political contest between Americanism and globalism that reflects the worldwide political contest between national sovereignty and globalism.

President Donald J. Trump stunned the world 9.24.19 with his brilliant speech to the 74th United Nations General Assembly. It was a calm, measured, powerful statement of purpose and resolve highlighting the 21st century conflict between the United States demand for national sovereignty under the Trump administration, and the United Nation’s increasing efforts to globalize the world. President Trump presented his proud, America-first leadership unapologetically and with equal respect for the national sovereignty, cultures, and religions of the nations of the world represented in the general assembly saying:

“In America, the people govern, the people rule, and the people are sovereign. I was elected not to take power, but to give power to the American people where it belongs. In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding principle of sovereignty. Our government’s first duty is to its people, to our citizens, to serve their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values. As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first.”

500 Scientists Write U.N.: ‘There Is No Climate Emergency’ Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/24/500-scientists-write-u-n-there-is-no-climate-emergency/

More than 500 scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have sent a “European Climate Declaration” to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for a long-overdue, high-level, open debate on climate change.

Just as 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York accusing world leaders of robbing her of her future, scientists were begging the United Nations to keep hysteria from obscuring facts.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration states. “Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.”

The scientists underscored the importance of not rushing into enormously expensive climate action before fully ascertaining the facts.

“There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent,” they declared. “However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.”