RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-vs-schiff-is-a-clash-of-one-titan-11575672861?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Hearings were hardly necessary to show that Donald Trump, in all too characteristic a fashion, took interest in his administration’s Ukraine policy only when he saw a chance to lard on Ukrainian announcements that he could throw back in the face of domestic critics who questioned his 2016 legitimacy.

So why does Adam Schiff feel the need to stretch every truth beyond the breaking point in a House Intelligence Committee impeachment report released this week?

A media transcript plainly shows that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was not referring to a Ukraine quid pro quo when he said politics will influence foreign policy and that critics should “get over it.” Ambassador Gordon Sondland merely “presumed” that Mr. Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine. Why falsely characterize these men’s statements, as the Schiff report does, when doing so is unnecessary to convince anyone that Mr. Trump nevertheless envisioned a quid pro quo?

Mr. Schiff claims Mr. Trump delayed “critical military aid” to Ukraine, but offers no evidence that the aid was critical. (The missiles discussed in Mr. Trump’s supposedly incriminating call with Ukraine’s president were not even part of the holdup.) He insists Mr. Trump’s dealings undermined U.S. national interests, but a president is perfectly entitled to differ with Mr. Schiff over what constitutes the national interest. With a casualness you expect only from the media, he relies on the fallacy that wishing to examine Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election is tantamount to denying Russian meddling.

Mr. Schiff must gild the few lilies in his possession to distract from a glaring omission in his own proceedings. “Fact witnesses” were called to discuss whether there was a quid pro quo, but none were called to give evidence on whether the “quos” Mr. Trump sought from Ukraine were unfounded or illegal.

Don’t underestimate this sign of Mr. Schiff’s disingenuousness. However much the media lies about it now, a Ukrainian official allied with the then-Poroshenko government spoke openly to the Financial Times in 2016 of his work to ensure Mr. Trump’s defeat.   CONTINUE AT SITE

https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/05/rep-rashida-tlaib-headlined-anti-semitic-fest/

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib was the featured attraction at a Chicago conference last Friday that was congested with anti-Semitic voices and organized by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

Tlaib, a member of the Democratic “squad,” known for her inflammatory statements about Israel, was the keynote speaker at the American Muslims for Palestine  summit that focused on her ability to influence the 2020 elections. Anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, was also in an attendance, the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.

The AMP views Israel as an enemy and its work is well-documented by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization  that documents groups and individuals who foster and disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda. The ADL describes the AMP as promoting “extreme anti-Israel views” and creating “a platform for anti-Semitism.”

Tlaib is well-acquainted with fringe groups that market an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic agenda. The congresswoman supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that seeks to undermine Israel. Because of her support for the movement, Israel refused Tlaib entry to the country.

The representative was also an editorial contributor to a Nation of Islam publication run by the notoriously anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan. Maher Abdel-qader, who peddles conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel, vigorously fundraiser for Tlaib’s congressional campaign and acted as her scheduler in the 2018 midterm elections.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-jobs-report-breaks-expectations-unemployment-at-50-year-low/

The U.S. Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday showed accelerated hiring and unemployment at a 50-year low.

Employers added 266,000 jobs for the month of November, surging past expected gains and continuing growth from October, which saw 156,000 new hires.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the same as in September of this year and matching the lowest rate since 1969, according to the Labor Department’s report.

“It’s a significant surprise because economists were ready to go with the idea that payroll growth was slowing down because the job market had gotten tight,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist for broker-dealer Amherst Pierpont, told Bloomberg. “The whole tenor has changed in terms of job growth. We’re back at steady-as-she-goes at a robust pace.”

November was the first full month after the United Auto Workers union called a 40-day strike at General Motors factories. The end of the strike saw over 41,000 workers added to auto manufacturing jobs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/adam-schiff-attack-on-free-press/

Even if John Solomon’s reporting on Ukraine was misleading or destructive, it wouldn’t warrant being unmasked by the government.

Where are all the self-styled champions of the free press now that Adam Schiff has used the surveillance powers of the state to smear not only his political rivals but a journalist?

With the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report Tuesday came the revelation that Giuliani and his Ukrainian affiliate Lev Parnas, whose metadata Schiff apparently subpoenaed, had exchanged calls with former The Hill columnist John Solomon, ranking Intelligence Republican Devin Nunes, and attorney Jay Sekulow. Even if we allow that the California congressman had genuine national-security concerns when he subpoenaed metadata from AT&T so he could snoop on his political opponents, what possible national-security concerns would justify unmasking them?

This was an impeachment inquiry, not a criminal investigation. If Nunes had conducted himself similarly with Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyers, the D.C. press corps would have exploded into a raging panic. Rest assured, if Schiff had unearthed anything meaningful — and the subpoenas reportedly went out before the impeachment inquiry even began — he would have shared the evidence during the inquiry rather than using it as partisan chum in a post-inquiry report.

None of those unmasked by Schiff were the target of the inquiry, and, as far as we know, none of their conversations he exposed were unlawful. Nor were any of these conversations relevant in making a case for the impeachment of Donald Trump, especially without information beyond the time, dates, and lengths of the phone calls.

Schiff’s decision to unmask a journalist, though, was especially disconcerting. It meets none of law enforcement’s typical standards.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/november-jobs-report-employment-data

U.S. hiring surged in November, as the economy added 266,000 jobs and unemployment returned to a half-century low, a sign the U.S. is powering through a global slowdown.

The payroll number easily topped the estimate of 180,000 from economists surveyed by Refinitiv, who also saw the unemployment rate holding steady from October’s 3.6 percent.

It marks the 110th month of straight gains.

Unemployment ticked down slightly to 3.5 percent as more people were looking for work, matching a 50-year low. The labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.2 percent. Average hourly earnings, meanwhile, rose by 3.1 percent over the past year to $28.29.

Revisions, meanwhile, added 41,000 jobs for the prior two months, bringing the three-month average to 205,000, a 10-month high. (September increased by 13,000 to 193,000, and October jumped by 28,000 to 156,000). Still, job growth on average is slower than it was in 2018: The 2019 monthly average is 180,000 jobs per month, compared with an average gain of 223,000 last year.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/05/foggy-bottom-has-the-sadz-and-thats-a-very-good-thing/

The real “crisis” for former State Department bureaucrats and their colleagues who have been recycled back to the Ivy League campuses from whence they came is not that Trump poses an existential threat to national security—it’s that he poses a legitimate threat to their professional sinecures.

As House Democrats invited Ivy League shrews to publicly grind their Trump-hating axe during Wednesday’s disastrous impeachment charade, President Trump returned home after confronting our allies again about their lagging financial support of NATO. The stale pact turns 70 this year and like too many Boomers these days, NATO is out of fresh ideas and still listening to worn tracks of “Back in the U.S.S.R.” while the rest of the world is listening to Drake.

Also like so many Boomers, NATO members have made financial promises they won’t keep, stacking up IOUs for someone else to pay and hoping no one notices. But Trump, a Boomer himself, is having none of it.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struggled to explain his country’s failure to fulfill the alliance’s agreement to earmark two percent of gross domestic product for defense spending—according to a NATO report, Canada only spent 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense in 2018: The United States spent nearly triple that amount. (While dismal, Canada’s expenditure last year is an improvement over 2014 when it only spent 1 percent.)

So Trump used a press conference to challenge Trudeau. “We’ll put Canada on a payment plan, I’m sure the prime minister would love that,” Trump jabbed when asked by a reporter about Canada’s reneging on their NATO pledge.

After Trump pressed for a percentage—Trudeau had to refer to an aide for the exact number—the Candians claimed they were at 1.4 percent. “They’ll get there. They know it’s important,” the president added.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dream-team-redux/

If Nadler had any sense, he would simply fold his tent and stop the damage he is doing to House candidates in 2020.

There was a lot of pre-hearing hype about the Democrats’ supposedly stellar academic experts, sort of analogous to the giddiness about the “dream team,” “all-stars,” and “hunter-killer” legal eagles that Robert Mueller supposedly had assembled to pick apart the Trump carrion — and they likewise proved a complete dud.

There were a number of errors that reminded us why Pelosi had originally outsourced the impeachment gambit to the duplicitous but cunning Schiff rather than to the bumbling and clueless Nadler and his Judiciary Committee, who has now all but blown up his inquiry in just its initial hours.

1) By stacking the witnesses 3–1 and ignoring Jonathan Turley, the Democrats only hyped the writ against them that they are biased and unfair. Worse still, the Republicans’ witness Turley, former Bush administration critic who had voted against Trump, came across as the far more disinterested. Could not the Democrats have found one pro-Trump professor who had soured on him and now favored impeachment? Does the self-described “snarky” Karlan have any common sense at all — or even an associate with common sense who might have warned her that her canned, preplanned smear of Barron Trump was not just boorish, but a public relations disaster?

2) We are reminded that, outside small captive audiences on campus, academics are not very good public speakers and usually argue on the basis of presumed authority rather than facts and analysis. The three partisans came across as nasal, whiney, emotional, biased, and self-referential — and their past anti-Trump tweets, and partisan careers, clips, and interviews only confirmed the current stereotypes. On Ukraine, they said the same old, same old thing in mostly the same old ways.

And the three came off like those talking academic heads in documentaries, who sometimes wish to make the most of their 2 minutes of fame by turning up the volume and animation. Turley, in contrast, is a cool veteran of televised news analysis. His op-eds are sober and judicious. And he is a skilled public debater, who knows how to keep calm and analytical. He quickly eviscerated the three with apologetic ease — and deferential smiles. So whose bright idea was it to allow three partisan mediocrities to gang up against Turley, whose  rapier thrusts are well known? Americans love underdog odds, but Turley didn’t even break a sweat in leaving gaping holes in almost every argument advanced by the experts and House panel. He may have given the best solo congressional witness performance in modern memory.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/trump-impeachment-hearings-presidential-misconduct-historical-perspective/

If you think Trump’s behavior is the worst in American history, you might be insane.

This week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee trotted out a trio of dispassionate legal experts to explain why the impeachment of Donald Trump was justified. They were there to bring a veneer of gravitas and erudition to what’s been, until now, a highly partisan affair.

But however smart people such as Michael Gerhardt, distinguished professor of constitutional law at University of North Carolina, might be, they aren’t immune from peddling partisan absurdities. Once Gerhardt argued that Trump’s conduct was “worse than the misconduct of any prior president,” we no longer had any intellectual obligation to take him seriously on the topic.

Because while I’m certainly not a distinguished professor, I am very confident that history began before 2016. Which means that, even if I concede Gerhardt’s framing of Trump’s actions — bribery, extortion, etc. — I can rattle off at least a dozen instances of presidential misconduct that are both morally and constitutionally “worse” than Trump’s blundering attempt to launch a self-serving Ukrainian investigation into his rival’s shady son.

Let’s ignore for a moment that American presidents have owned their fellow human beings, and focus instead on the fact that in 1942, the president of the United States signed an executive order that allowed him to unilaterally intern around 120,000 Americans citizens of Japanese descent. Not only was the policy deliberately racist, it amounted to a full-bore attack on about half the Constitution that he had sworn to uphold. Such an attack was a specialty of FDR’s, despite the all the hagiographies written about his imperial presidency.

Woodrow Wilson — who regularly said things like, “a Negro’s place is in the corn field” — didn’t merely re-segregate the civil service, personally firing more than a dozen supervisors for the sin of being black; he first pushed for, and then oversaw the enactment of, the Sedition Act. Wilson threw dissenters and political adversaries into prison, instructed the postmaster to refuse delivery of literature he deemed unpatriotic, and a created an unconstitutional civilian police force that targeted Americans for political dissent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-schiff-is-watching-11575591692?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Fanatics can justify any action, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff this week demonstrated where that mindset leads. In his rush to paint Donald Trump as a lawbreaker, Mr. Schiff has himself trampled law and responsibility.

That’s the bottom line in Mr. Schiff’s stunning decision to subpoena the phone records of Rudy Giuliani and others. Mr. Schiff divulged the phone logs this week in his Ukraine report, thereby revealing details about the communications of Trump attorneys Jay Sekulow and Mr. Giuliani, ranking Intelligence Committee member Devin Nunes, reporter John Solomon and others. The media is treating this as a victory, when it is a disgraceful breach of ethical and legal propriety.

If nothing else, Mr. Schiff claims the ignominious distinction of being the first congressman to use his official powers to spy on a fellow member and publish the details. His report also means open season on members of the press. Mr. Giuliani over months has likely spoken to dozens of political figures and reporters—and the numbers, dates and length of those calls are now in Democrats’ hot little hands. Who gets the Schiff treatment next? If you think politics is ugly now, imagine a world in which congressional partisans routinely track and expose the call lists of their political rivals and disfavored media.

If we’ve never had a scandal like this before, it’s in part because it is legally dubious. Federal law bars phone carriers from handing over records without an individual’s agreement. The statute makes some exceptions, including for federal and state law-enforcement agencies.

But not for lawmakers. “There does not appear to be any basis to believe that a congressional committee is authorized to subpoena telephone records directly from a provider—as opposed to an individual,” former Attorney General Michael Mukasey tells me. CONTINUE AT SITE