RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

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.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/26/multitasking-the-intelligence-community-roundup/

I am not the only one to notice that Schiff and Nadler are more and more playing to suburban dinner theaters with tiny audiences while the names William Barr, John Durham, and Michael Horowitz are front-page news wherever there is news (as distinct from propaganda)

It wasn’t so long ago that it seemed like a big deal if your shiny new personal computer could multitask: that is, it could run two or more programs simultaneously. It was then that we began to hear about “threads” and “background tasks.” It all seemed, and indeed was, pretty nifty.

Most of us, I believe, tend to ignore or forget about background tasks. We see the foreground process unfolding before us and focus on that. But in life as in computers, switching between is often but the work of a moment. The establishment news networks—those working against Donald Trump—would have us believe that the big story of the century is the impeachment of, or at least the impeachment inquiry directed at, Donald Trump.

But while Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) are busy pushing that narrative, there is a vibrant background task that is just now being promoted to foreground status. If we had the equivalent of a political “activity monitor” to assess what was happening, we would see that the process called “impeachment inquiry” is shedding resources and prominence as it heads toward idle status.

The process called “Quis custodes custodiet?” meanwhile—“Who will guard the guardians?”—is beginning to gobble up CPU resources and memory. I am not the only one to notice that Schiff and Nadler are more and more playing to suburban dinner theaters with tiny audiences while the names William Barr, John Durham, and Michael Horowitz are front-page news wherever there is news (as distinct from propaganda).

The latest flag announcing this realignment came Saturday morning, when James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence and now one of his spokesmen on CNN, was asked whether he was concerned that the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax (my term, not the interlocutor’s) might implicate senior members of the so-called intelligence community, i.e., chaps like James Clapper.

Clapper’s response was revealing, not to say hilarious. Remember, the question is: Are you “concerned” (i.e., worried, anxious) about the investigation overseen by Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/stop-claiming-no-quid-pro-quo/

The President’s best Ukraine defense has always been that any quid pro quo demand was not close to an impeachable offense.

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

Quid pro quo . . . it’s the new “by the book.”

You remember “by the book,” right? No, not “buy the book,” which I’ve been trying to get people to do since Ball of Collusion was published a few weeks back. I’m talking about by the book. That was the memorable phrase Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice emphasized in her notorious CYA memo.

Remember? The memo took the form of an email. She wrote it while clearing out of her White House office while Donald Trump was being inaugurated. It purported to summarize a meeting more than two weeks earlier, when President Obama held an Oval Office pow-wow on next steps in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Fully aware that what they were orchestrating was highly irregular (the continuation of a probe targeting the new president even as he entered office), Rice took pains to note that Obama had insisted that everything be done “by the book.” It was a flashing neon sign that “the book” was being burned. There is no “book” — no set of legit procedures and norms — that endorses the exploitation of executive investigative powers in the service of partisan politics.

That’s why the Justice Department is pursuing criminal and inspector-general probes of the matter. While we wait on those, Democrats are not idling. With the Mueller collusion caper having flamed out, they have moved on to an “impeachment inquiry” in the House, focused on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Much of the country opposes impeachment (especially in Trump-friendly districts Democrats need to win to keep control of the lower chamber), so Democrats have refused to conduct a vote to endorse their inquiry. That shows what thin gruel it is. Their theory, though, is analogous to Obama’s “by the book” practices: They allege that Trump exploited executive power for partisan political purposes.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-influence-and-double-standards-11572044626

Democrats want to impeach Donald Trump for inviting Ukraine to investigate 2020 election rival Joe Biden. But then why are they opposed to investigating whether Democrats used Russian disinformation to get the FBI to investigate Donald Trump in 2016?

That’s the double standard now on gaudy public display over multiple news reports that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the origins of the Russian fiasco of 2016 has become a criminal probe. Attorney General William Barr this year appointed Mr. Durham, a highly regarded and veteran prosecutor, to examine this part of the Russia tale that special counsel Robert Mueller chose to ignore.

Yet you’d now think, judging from the political reaction, that Mr. Durham was Rudy Giuliani. “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,” said a joint statement from Democratic impeachment investigators Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff.

“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 statement added, “the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage.”

This is called pre-emptive political damage control. 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://mailchi.mp/peaceandtolerance/adl-discovers-muslim-anti-semitism-then-hides

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League commissioned an extensive and expensive research project aiming to test levels of anti-Semitism in 100 countries.

Their findings were quite disturbing: The world’s 16 most anti-Semitic countries are all in the Middle East or North Africa, with anti-Semites there ranging from 74% to 93% of the population. According to the ADL, 55% of Muslim immigrants in Europe harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, and 34% of those in the United States do as well.

A new organization, CAIRH — the Council on Islamic Religious Hatred — placed a full-page ad (see above) inThe Boston Herald on October 4, 2019, detailing these realities.

Ironically, after having collated this data so carefully five years ago, the ADL has now fled from the implications of its own research.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/24/who-will-fall-first-trump-or-the-praetorian-guard/

The race is on to see who will survive—the duly-elected president of the United States or a modern-day Praetorian Guard comprised of former law enforcement and intelligence officials tasked with taking down that president.

Attorney General William Barr has suggested that top officials in the Obama Administration behaved like a “Praetorian Guard” in their unprecedented and possibly criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Republics have fallen because of a Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state,” Barr told CBS News reporter Jan Crawford in May. 

The Praetorian Guard originated in the Roman Empire to protect the emperor and his commanders. The elite cohort quickly grew from a few bodyguards into a massive army, complete with armor, weaponry, and a cavalry. The Guard enjoyed special privileges including a guaranteed tenure and vaunted social status. 

But the Guard became emboldened by its own power. “Over the years, the guard would become a dangerous threat to imperial power and emperors were forced to gain its favour in order to ensure their reign,” according to historian Mark Cartwright. “The body specifically created to protect the emperor’s person had become his greatest liability.”

Sound familiar?

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/467224-capitalism-on-trial-profit-is-a-good-thing-except-to-the-political-left

These are dangerous times for American capitalism. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) Accountable Capitalism Act would oblige large corporations to obtain a federal charter requiring directors to consider the interests of all stakeholders — not only shareholders and customers, but also groups representing society as a whole, such as their employees, local communities and civil society, including non-representative, anti-business NGOs.

The chief justice of the supreme court of Delaware – where more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 corporations have their legal home – has written a book arguing that corporations should be run for the benefit of their workers. The Financial Times has launched a “new agenda” campaign that intones: “Capitalism. Time for a reset. Business must make a profit but should serve a purpose too.”

None of this would have come as a surprise to Joseph Schumpeter, one of the 20th century’s great economists. No one understood better the dynamic, propulsive nature of capitalism. But, unlike most economists, Schumpeter also had a deep, subtle appreciation of capitalism’s cultural effects — that, while a system of free enterprise creates successful and prosperous societies, it also plants seeds that can lead to its own demise. “Unlike  any other type of society,” Schumpeter wrote “capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” 

And, as Schumpeter saw it, the publicly traded corporation, lacking the visceral allegiance of private property, was capitalism’s weak point: “Defenseless fortresses invite aggression especially if there is rich booty in them.” It’s a prophecy that we’re seeing come to pass. 

https://spectator.us/democrats-impeachment-doomed-desperate/

They hope that talk of impeachment will buzz about Trump’s head like a cloud of horse flies

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a ‘tipping point.’ This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal ‘bombshell’ that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given ‘devastating‘, ‘explosive’ testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid.

Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

How do we know about this devastating quid pro quo-ness? Schiff’s press outlets, from CNN to The Hill, have said so. No, you cannot examine the testimony, silly. It took place behind closed doors. For the most part, the lynching — er, the hearing — even excluded Republican lawmakers. Moreover, the bits that GOP congressmen were allowed to witness are covered (or covered up) in a shroud of ‘non-disclosure’. Still, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did mention that in a mere ‘‘90 seconds’ Rep. John Ratcliffe ‘destroy[ed] Taylor’s whole argument.’ Quoth McCarthy: ‘Adam Schiff won’t let us talk about what happened.’ But the bottom line is: ‘There is no quid pro quo…the one thing that you find out in this process is all this information is just like that whistleblower…everything is second-, third-, and fourth-hand information.’

Of course, we all know now that ‘second-, third-, and fourth-hand information’ is just the underhanded sort of hand-me-down ‘evidence’ that the Dems like to parade before a weary public in order to justify their demand for Trump’s head. Remember Christopher Steele? Just like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, it’s ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’

It’s pathetic, isn’t it? The first time around, the anti-Trump fraternity at least had the solemn imprimatur of Special Counsel Robert Mueller with the weight of officialdom and all the echoes of Watergate that that process brought with it.