RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/21/new-poll-shows-independents-oppose-impeachment-by-15-point-margin/

A new Emerson poll for November found more Independent voters oppose the impeachment of President Trump, compared to October when more Independent voters supported Trump’s impeachment.

In October, 48 percent of Independent’s supported impeaching Trump, with 39 percent in opposition. Now, the tides have turned. 49 percent of Independents oppose impeachment, while only 34 percent support it. That’s a 15-point margin in opposition of impeachment among Independent voters.

According to Emerson’s newest poll, the impeachment hearings are being watched, or at least followed, by 69 percent of voters. These open-door hearings are actually making an impact on American’s perception of the impeachment inquiry.

Emerson’s data concluded voters are getting their impeachment information from the following news sources (the percentage denotes how many voters watch each outlet for impeachment coverage):

Fox News – 26%
ABC, NBC, or CBS – 24%
CNN – 16%
MSNBC – 15%
Outside source – 19%

The results from these open-door impeachment hearings are helping Trump’s case for reelection. There are two narratives circulating in the media. The first, there is no question Trump bribed Ukraine and he must be impeached. The second, this impeachment is a partisan witch hunt.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/20/nobody-expects-the-splc-inquisition/

Voltaire wrote that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Something similar could be said of the Southern Poverty Law Center—if it ever had anything to do with helping poor people in the South with their legal problems, it doesn’t any longer. (It is a center, though!)

Instead, it’s turned into the Inquisition for the True Faith of today’s leftism. It sniffs out heretics and blasphemers who are promoting the false doctrine they deem “hate” and uses smears (their own word) to “completely destroy them.” It even publishes a map to target the infidel.

This has proven an enormously lucrative enterprise for the SPLC. Rather than seizing the assets of its targets like the original Inquisition, the SPLC’s fundraising feasts on the fear of gullible liberals, amassing a hoard of close to half a billion dollars, much of it stashed in offshore accounts.

The SPLC occasionally has paid a price for its promiscuous accusations of “hate” and “extremism,” most notably in a court settlement of $3.375 million for smearing Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz as an “anti-Muslim extremist.”

But such settlements have not deterred the SPLC from its mission of cleansing society of heretics, the most notorious of which are designated as “hate groups.” My own organization, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), was placed on this list shortly after Donald Trump’s election, and the list includes a host of other mainstream conservative groups, including the Alliance for Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Liberty Counsel, The American Family Association, the Center for Security Policy, Act for America, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and many others.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/trump-impeachment-inquiry-misplaced-patriotism-damaging-to-constitutional-order/

In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election.

For most of the last three years, Donald Trump’s critics have scoffed at supposed “conspiracy theories” that claimed a “deep state” of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word “coup” is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.

Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.

Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, “Thank God for the deep state.” Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the “deep state people” for their opposition to Trump.

Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.

On the first day of the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff called his initial two witnesses, career State Department diplomats William Taylor Jr. and George Kent. Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, Taylor and Kent mostly confined themselves to three topics: their own sterling résumés, their lack of any firsthand knowledge of incriminating Trump action, and their poorly hidden disgust with the manner and substance of Trump’s foreign policy.

Oddly, both had little clue that their demeanor and thinly disguised self-importance were a perfect example of why Trump got elected — to come up with new ideas antithetical to the conventional wisdom of unelected career bureaucrats.

Taylor and Kent announced that they are simply high-minded civil servants who serve the presidential administrations of both parties without bias.

But by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives than to small-government conservatives.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-impeachment-inquiry-democratic-debate-proves-to-be-afterthought/

After three days of Adam Schiff’s impeachment inquiry, we are left with only the monotony. We know in advance all the questions, the subjective mood answers and bureaucratic mindset of the witnesses, the ensuing spin, and the congressional posturing.

In lieu of a Jaworski or Starr special prosecutor’s damning report, a White House tape, or even a blue dress, there is only “I assumed,” “I gathered,” “I presumed,” and “my personal belief is that” — without direct knowledge of impeachable wrongdoing or some smoking-gun email or document.

The next “star” witness, Ambassador Sondland, played perfectly the Janus consummate businessman — nodding first to Democrats, only then turning to grin at Republicans.

Sondland seemed at last to offer Schiff the chance to run out to announce to the captive press a proverbial MSNBC/CNN “bombshell.” But it was mostly a dud, with Sondland referencing a hoped-for Ukraine meeting in the White House (that never happened) for Ukrainian statements on corruption (that never happened), rather than a cutoff of U.S. military aid to Ukraine — at least according to Sondland’s “own presumption.” He even mentioned a “quid pro quo,” but that was focus grouped out to “bribery” days ago. (Sondland, like most major ambassadors, should be an expert in quid pro quos, given that it is a hallowed and bipartisan American tradition to sell off the most prestigious European ambassadorial slots to the most generous campaign donors.)

But then the cagey Sondland tacked back by reciting his phonecall question to the president, in which he asked the existential question of what Trump wanted from Ukraine — with Trump answering “Nothing!” Checkmate?

All day long, the grinning Sondland played Roadrunner to Adam Schiff’s Wiley E. Coyote, as he slowed and pulled up to offer up Trump — only to scoot away in a puff of dust as soon as Schiff tried to wrap his hands around him.

What we are left with so far are two inconvenient truths that won’t go away.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/radical-son-rise-chesa-boudin-paul-kengor/

On October 20, 1981, the guys and gals of the Weather Underground finally did it. They at last carried out a criminal act that not only led directly to deaths but also landed at least some of them in prison. Unlike Bill Ayers, one of several Weather Underground fugitives fleeing the FBI who would later boast, “Guilty as hell, free as a bird! America is a great country!,” the orchestrators of this incident didn’t get away with it.

This time, the plotters, including Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, pulled off an armed robbery of a Brinks truck outside the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, New York, in which two “pigs” (read: police officers) and a Brinks guard were killed, plus three other officers seriously wounded. Losing their lives that day were Brinks guard Peter Paige and police officers Edward O’Grady and Waverly “Chipper” Brown.

Brown, incidentally, was the only black officer on the force; in fact, he was the first African American member of the Nyack, New York, police department. This was ironic given that the perpetrators did the job in part to finance their war against “racism” in America, the apotheosis of which would be the establishment of a “New Afrika” in America’s southern states.

Kathy Boudin was driving the getaway truck, a U-Haul. The haters of capitalism stole away with over a million bucks they stuffed in their greedy pockets — quite literally blood money.

Boudin was no stranger to violence. She had escaped a precarious brush with death a decade earlier. On March 6, 1970, three Weather Underground troops were fatally injured in an accidental explosion at an apartment in a wealthy section of Greenwich Village in a plan that went awry. As David Horowitz has documented, the original plan had been to produce nail bombs to detonate at a military dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey, where the communist revolutionaries hoped to murder young Vietnam vets reunited for an evening of happiness with their wives. The plan backfired.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sondlands-unimpeachable-offenses-11574294949

The House impeachment hearings roll on, but the most important news is how little new we are learning about President Trump and Ukraine. The witnesses from the diplomatic and national-security bureaucracy are filling in some details—many of which are unflattering about how policy is made in this Administration—but none change the fundamental narrative or suggest crimes or other impeachable offenses***

That includes Wednesday’s testimony by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union who described what he saw and heard from May through September. His account essentially confirms that Mr. Trump had a negative view of Ukraine, was reluctant to keep supplying U.S. aid, and asked Mr. Sondland and others to work with Rudy Giuliani to press Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce that he was opening an anti-corruption probe.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/some_nasty_antipresident_quotes_to_offer_perspective.html

Here are just a few choice quotes leveled at the president (read to the end):

“The president has continued during the last week to make a fool of himself and to mortify and shame the intelligent people of this great nation.”

“He is evidently a person of very inferior character.”

“The president is a fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism, a worse tyrant than has existed since the days of Nero.”

“Those who vote for the president’s re-election are traitors.

“He is universally an admitted failure, has no will, no courage, no executive capacity.”

“There is a strong feeling among those who have seen the president, in the way of business, that he lacks practical talent for the job.  It is thought that there should be more readiness.”

Yes.  These nasty things were said about President…Lincoln. By Democrats and “NeverLincolns” of their day.  All while he won the Civil War and ended slavery. 

So keep fighting, President Trump.  While your opponents try everything they can to demean, demoralize, and depose you, the decent people of this country appreciate your tireless efforts in giving us this great economy, a stronger military, better trade deals, and a restored sense of America’s true greatness.

Seth Swirsky is a songwriter and filmmaker living in Los Angeles.

https://spectator.us/schiff-vindman-impeachment-flop/

No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’ ‘No.’

That pretty much sums up yesterday’s testimony.

‘Did you receive any indication whatsoever, or anything that resembled a quid pro quo?’

Former envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker: ‘No.’

Devin Nunes to Tim Morrison, former NSC official: ‘Did anyone ever ask you to bribe or extort anyone at any time during your time in the White House?’

‘No.’

This follows the responses of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the question of whether he was offered a quid pro quo: US aid in exchange for investigating Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings with the natural gas company Burisma: ‘No.’

Ditto Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the European Union: was there a quid pro quo: ‘No.’ (Sondland’s testimony has just begun at the time of writing: rest assured it will be more of the same.)

Last week’s hearings were preposterous, a disaster for the Democrats. This week’s hearings are shaping up to be even worse news for the partisans of the Adam Schiff Show.

Remember that old hippie slogan, ‘suppose they gave a war and nobody came?‘ It’s been updated and applied not to international conflicts but partisan intramural sniping: suppose they gave a hearing and nobody came?

For that’s the truth of the matter. The ratings for this reality TV show are in the tank. During Watergate, during the Clinton impeachment, people were glued to the news. Now, despite the screaming CNN chyrons, anti-Trump Washington Post and New York Times sermons, nobody cares.

https://spectator.us/founding-fathers-focus-group-impeachment-1787/

House Democrats are concentrating their impeachment drive on “bribery” because focus groups liked it so much better than other terms Democrats have floated.As all thoughtful citizens know, focus-group testing is the best way to deal with grave constitutional matters, as well as marketing breakfast cereals and e-cigarettes.
That’s why we are so fortunate our leading scholars have discovered the most important of focus group in American history, one dealing precisely with this topic. Adam Schiff has finally released the transcript of the 1787 meeting. I am publishing it here for the first time.

Focus-group testing is widely recognized as the best way to deal with grave constitutional matters, as well as marketing breakfast cereals and e-cigarettes. It is not surprising, then, that legal scholars are scouring focus groups throughout American history to see what light they shed on the Trump impeachment.

The most important of these earlier focus groups was that of the Founding Fathers, secretly convened in Philadelphia in 1787. Chairman Adam Schiff has finally released the much-anticipated transcript:

Speaker Pelosi: Hi, everybody. Let’s keep this informal and fun. Just call me Madam Speaker. Anybody want a cappuccino before we get started? Perhaps a vegan sandwich?

Mr Benjamin Franklin: What the hell is a cappuccino? Give me a plain ole venti with soy milk.

Mr James Madison: What the hell is vegan?

Speaker Pelosi: It’s sort of like eating grass, Mr Madison. Let’s just skip it and get to the main topic for today.

Mr George Washington: Yes. Let’s leave this grass thing up to the states. What’s the next topic?

Speaker Pelosi: What if the people are stupid enough to elect the wrong president? How can we kick him out of office?

Mr George Mason: Are they really that dumb?

Speaker Pelosi: Take my word for it. It happens. Have any of you been to Kentucky? Alabama? Just kidding. What if we really, really don’t like the president? What do you think about that as a reason for giving him the heave-ho?

Mr John Jay: ‘Really, really not liking him’ seems a little vague.