RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/06/six-questions-for-impeachment-fans/

Advocates for impeachment are invited to answer six questions that should shed more light on the perplexities of their case.

I don’t understand. Former Vice President Joe Biden asked Ukraine to fire a prosecutor so Donald Trump needs to be impeached? I need somebody to connect the dots. Before we go any further down the road of impeachment, I’m challenging advocates of impeachment to answer these six questions.

Should Joe Biden be immune from consequence if, as suspected, he threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine to enforce his demand to remove the prosecutor investigating his son’s Ukrainian company?

This is more than a “conspiracy theory.” Joe Biden bragged openly about having the prosecutor fired. And contrary to the reporting that the investigation went dormant, we just learned from investigative reporter John Solomon that Ukrainian authorities “raided the home of the oligarch who owned the gas firm and employed Hunter Biden, a signal the long-running corruption probe was escalating in the middle of the U.S. presidential election.” Solomon went on to report that Burisma specifically invoked Hunter Biden’s name in its efforts to enlist U.S. diplomatic help to stop the investigation.

Most Americans agree that we cannot afford to have our foreign policy guided by these side-deals between foreign interests and the relatives of politicians and diplomats charged with representing U.S. interests. Americans have a lot of questions about why certain policies are promoted by the establishment in spite of public opinion to the contrary. This is a serious problem of experts ignoring elections and subverting the will of the American people.

With Hunter Biden receiving an outsized salary and his father using U.S. aid to get the prosecutor fired, why shouldn’t U.S. authorities look into that?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/democrats-tyranny-and-sophistry-bruce-thornton/

The Democrats are furiously busy with preemptive damage control of the ongoing investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham. As well they should. This and other investigations of the origins of alleged Russian electoral interference has morphed into a criminal probe that likely will implicate members of the Obama administration’s FBI, DOJ, and CIA, and tear off the veil of misdirection that the Democrats and their lackeys in the media have draped over the dirty tricks they employed during the 2016 campaign and Trump’s first years in office. If this happens, the Democrats’ equally dicey attempts to impeach the president will crumble.

Once again, we are being subjected to progressive double standards and “projection” of their own sins onto others. But something more ancient and dangerous is going on: The links between tyranny and sophistry.

With the hoax of Trump’s collusion with Russia to wound his rival Hillary Clinton debunked by the Dems’ hand-picked special prosecutor and his team of partisan Democrats, California Democrat Representative Adam Schiff has been attacking Durham and AG William Barr. Schiff’s joint statement with Jerry Nadler (D. NY), his accomplice in the House impeachment show-trial, is a masterpiece of jaw-dropping hypocrisy:

These reports, if true, raise profound new concerns that the Department of Justice under AG Barr has lost its independence and become a vehicle for President Trump’s political revenge. If the Department of Justice may be used as a tool of political retribution, or to help the President with a political narrative for the next election, the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage.

The glaring double-standard––this description more accurately fits Obama’s self-described “wingman,” AG Eric Holder, more than AG Barr–– is laid out in a Wall Street Journal editorial:

Democrats know that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump, and Fusion hired former British spook Christopher Steele, who compiled a dossier of allegations about Mr. Trump from Russian sources that turned out to be false. Worse, Fusion funneled the dossier to the FBI, which used it to persuade the secret FISA court to issue a warrant to eavesdrop on Trump official Carter Page. Democrats now want to discredit any attempt to hold people accountable if crimes were committed as part of this extraordinary dirty trick.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-obama-apply-his-clinton-rules-to-the-bidens-11573069621

It’s not clear whether the Ukrainian company Burisma got its money’s worth when it paid handsomely to add Hunter Biden to its board. But the company’s representatives used the family name in attempting to influence the U.S. Government while Joe Biden was Vice President.

If an American business made a similar effort with the son of a government official overseas, it would likely attract a U.S. Department of Justice investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. So why shouldn’t the United States urge that other countries also examine such arrangements?

The Journal’s Jessica Donati reports that a consulting firm hired by Burisma mentioned that “Joe Biden’s son served on the Ukrainian gas company’s board so the firm could leverage a meeting with the State Department, according to documents and a former U.S. official.”

The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Southeastern Legal Foundation on behalf of its client John Solomon. Ms. Donati adds:

The documents—email exchanges between State Department staff members made public this week—show that the consulting firm, Washington-based Blue Star Strategies, used Hunter Biden’s name in a request for a State Department meeting and then mentioned him again during the meeting as part of an effort to improve Burisma’s image in Washington.
Mr. Biden was appointed to the Burisma board in 2014, when the company and its owner faced allegations of corruption, and he remained there until April of this year… Hunter Biden served on Burisma’s board when his father, then the vice president, was overseeing U.S. efforts to get Ukraine to reduce corruption.

Ms. Donati reports that the 2016 Burisma meeting included a State Department undersecretary named Catherine Novelli.

What are the odds that, having learned that she was being lobbied by a foreign company which was under a corruption investigation and which happened to employ the son of the sitting Vice President of the United States, Ms. Novelli never mentioned this fact to anyone else?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/06/trump-derangement-is-destroying-political-analysis/

Coverage of a new poll out from Monmouth beautifully illustrates how Trump Derangement destroys what should be simple political analysis. The poll was brutal for impeachment fans in the media, but they didn’t report that.

The last four years of political punditry and analysis have been objectively wretched. Regardless of your feelings about the present political moment, precisely no one can defend the quality of the analysis that dominates the airwaves and pages of our corporate media.

They told us throughout the 2016 campaign that the notion of Donald Trump winning the presidency was a joke. The mockery increased as election day drew near. From the Washington Post: “Donald Trump’s chances of winning are approaching zero.”

At 10:20 P.M. on election night, The New York Times assured us that “Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance of winning.” They gave Hillary a 95 percent chance of winning Michigan, a 93 percent chance of winning Wisconsin, and an 89 percent chance of winning Pennsylvania. They declared, in other words, that the probability of Trump winning all three of those states, which he did, was 0.04 percent.

Their numerical confidence colored their reporting throughout the campaign in ways that materially supported their political cohorts, chiefly Hillary Clinton. Then they responded to their humiliating failure to understand the electorate by rolling into a series of delusional conspiracy theories they claimed explained his victory.

While failing to understand the country you’re paid big bucks to understand is humiliating, admitting their failure would have been a better alternative to the spiral of Trump Derangement that grips many of our media and continues to make their political analysis a sad joke.

Our low quality of punditry and analysis is on display in the crime-less impeachment that they are currently pushing to mixed success. Democrats and other Resistance members are absolutely on board. The rest of the country? Not so much.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/06/testimony-transcript-shows-william-taylor-never-talked-to-trump-wasnt-even-on-july-25-phone-call/

A top anti-Trump witness for House Democrats admitted he wasn’t on the July 25 phone call and had never even spoken with Trump about Ukraine military aid.

A key Democratic witness against Trump admitted in congressional testimony last month that he was not part of the July 25 phone call between the U.S. and Ukrainian presidents, that he didn’t see a transcript or readout of it until late September when it was declassified and released, and that he has never even spoken to President Donald Trump.

William Taylor, the charge d’affairs of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, told lawmakers in secret testimony two weeks ago that his opinions about an alleged quid pro quo demanded by Trump were formed largely from conversations with anti-Trump staffers within the diplomatic bureaucracy.

“[Y]ou’ve never spoken to Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani?” Taylor was asked.

“No, no,” he replied.

“Has anyone ever asked you to speak to Mr. Giuliani?”

“No,” Taylor said.

“And if I may, have you spoken to the president of the United States?” Taylor was asked.

“I have not,” he said.

“You had no communications with the president of the United States?”

https://www.city-journal.org/brooklyn-anti-cop-protests-fare-evasion

A large demonstration, numbering around 1,000 people, marched through downtown Brooklyn Friday evening to protest alleged police brutality in the subway system. Protesters chanted familiar slogans such as “No justice, no peace/Fuck these racist police,” and the message was intensified by calls for violence. Choruses of “punch a cop in the face/every nation, every race,” were echoed by large banners reading, “Ante Up! Punch that cop!” Vehicles were tagged “NYPD KKK,” and eggs and garbage were thrown at a police cruiser.

The “#FTP” (fuck the police) action was inspired by two recent incidents where police made arrests on subway platforms. In one case, an early-morning melee spilled underground, and cops were filmed using force to break up the fighting and subdue people resisting arrest; one teenager shoved a cop and was punched in the face; he’s suing the city for $5 million. In another instance, a group of police swarmed Adrian Napier, whom they believed was carrying a gun; they found no weapon but arrested him for jumping the turnstile. The incident, captured on video, received national attention. “Officers should be working to deescalate,” former HUD secretary Julian Castro commented, “not putting dozens of lives at risk over $2.75.” But Napier was apprehended after fleeing the police and escaping into the subway; his arrest was not precipitated by jumping a turnstile.

These incidents took place in the context of a campaign against fare evasion, which has accelerated dramatically following the announcement that local prosecutors would no longer pursue “theft of service” charges against arrestees. Arrests for turnstile-jumping are down about 40 percent since last year. The NYPD now largely writes tickets for the violation, reserving arrest for serial evaders.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-11-5-running-out-of-other-peoples-money-new-york-and-federal-versions

I’m old enough to remember a time when government officeholders thought that a significant part of their job was prioritizing various options for public spending, in recognition that overspending on lower priorities would mean that nothing would be left for higher priorities. Somewhere along the line, that old-fashioned idea has fallen away. The new fad is an unending tidal wave of proposals for new government programs and spending initiatives which will, any day now, bring perfect justice and fairness to the world. Which ones will we implement? All of them!

But what about Margaret Thatcher’s famous observation that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Dramatic examples of that principle at work can be observed, for example, in Venezuela; but then, Venezuela seems to be just too far away for most Americans to pay attention. So how about looking closer to home, like in New York?

The budgeting process in New York City under the reign of uber-progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and a like-minded City Council has been one where any idea that sounds like it might be “doing good” promptly gets funded. And thus the budget for a city of 8.5 million people has gone from $75 billion in de Blasio’s first budget five years ago, to $93 billion in the current fiscal year. (That’s well over $10,000 per capita, if you want to compare it to your city’s budget.) The New York Times from June 15 provides some instances of things added in this year’s version:

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/06/the-democrats-real-impeach

The statement President Donald Trump made that rendered his impeachment inevitable was not on July 25, 2019, when he said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it.”

It was on Feb. 6, 2019, when he said to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the assembled members of Congress during his State of the Union, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

Ronald Reagan was as much an enemy of socialism as any president, but even he never looked the domestic opposition in the eye and explicitly declared war against the Democratic Party’s militant left for all the world to hear. But then, by the end of Reagan’s presidency in the late 1980s, even the oldest member of The Squad was still in high school; the few hard leftists among House Democrats were no threat to the power of their party’s leadership, as The Squad and its following are today.

In response to Trump throwing down the gauntlet, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy has been to conduct private depositions to determine the specifics of their preferred narrative, then burn it into the brains of Americans in the impeachment of this president, with an eye toward winning big in 2020 – regaining the White House, and possibly even the Senate, and retaining the House.

As they shift to public testimony, the impeachment resolution House Democrats passed last week deprives the chamber’s minority party of important powers, and the president of self-defense rights – a stark contrast to the precedents of both the Nixon and Clinton proceedings.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted it as “no due process now, maybe some later,” adding that “‘only if we feel like it’ is not a standard that should ever be applied to any American and it should not be applied here to the president of the United States.”

Using Alinsky’s Weaponry To Combat Socialism

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-michael-flynn-smoking-gun-fbi-headquarters-altered-interview-summary

As a self-proclaimed adherent to Hanlon’s Razor, I once cynically viewed the frenzied focus on FBI actions during the 2016 Russian election-meddling investigation as partisan and overwrought. Hanlon’s Razor suggests that we never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence. Having proudly served in the FBI for 25 years, I bristled at insulting accusations of an onerous deep state conspiracy. Some obvious mistakes made during the investigation of the Trump campaign were quite possibly the result of two ham-handedly overzealous FBI headquarters denizens, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, clumsily seeking to impress each other with ever-increasing levels of loathing for then-candidate Donald Trump.

FBI employees are entitled to their own political views. But senior-level decision-makers who express them on government devices, while overseeing a supremely consequential investigation into a political campaign, simply do not possess the requisite judgment and temperament for the job.

Their stunning text message exchanges and talk of an onerous “insurance policy” in the event Trump were to win prove how ill-suited they were for their positions in James Comey’s cabinet. What other steps might they have taken that have yet to be discovered? The inspector general is soon set to release a report into FBI actions in the effort to surveil the Trump campaign. Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department is conducting its own review, and U.S. Attorney John Durham recently expanded his investigation into the case as well, by converting the review into a full-blown criminal investigation. Barr has faced backlash from critics of his investigation, who ironically have referred to it as a witch hunt.

But as we anxiously await the expected reports, there recently appeared some fairly explosive allegations into potential investigator misconduct that have not received the attention they deserve. With her filing of a blistering Motion to Compel against federal prosecutors in the Michael Flynn case just made public, Sidney Powell has upended my adherence to Hanlon’s Razor. Powell is the attorney for former national security adviser and retired Army Lt. Gen. Flynn, who pled guilty to one count of lying to FBI agents during the special counsel investigation. Powell’s motion seeks to unravel a case many feel was biased from its inception.