RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&i

Before getting off my current Bidens kick, I want to take just a one more moment to consider Joe Biden’s most recent response when he was asked by a radio interviewer in New Hampshire whether he had discussed with his son Hunter the son’s service on the board of Ukrainian gas producer Burisma. The interview aired on October 10 on a program called New Hampshire Today, with interviewer Jack Heath. Go here to listen to the full interview; or there is a summary here at the Washington Examiner.

Asked by Heath whether he had discussed the service on the Burisma board with Hunter, Joe initially uttered his previous oft-repeated talking point on the subject, namely that he “never” discusses the business endeavors of his family members because he wouldn’t want to make political or policy decisions that appear nepotistic. But then Joe remembered the one time that the subject came up:

“At one point that it came out that [Hunter] was on the board [of Burisma]. I said, ‘I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing.’ Period. I said that.”

While I am letting that sink in with you, let me lay out again some of the relevant background.

Ukraine split off from Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Burisma was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky in 2002, and began producing gas in Ukraine in 2006. Zlochevsky was close to at least several of the Ukrainian Presidents between 2002 and 2014, when he fled Ukraine for Russia along with his then-patron Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/no_longer_an_impeachment_now_its_a_railroading.html

Under pressure to make their Soviet-style impeachment to overturn the results of the 2016 election “fairer,” Trump-maddened Democrats have put on an “impeachment resolution” public relations show in a bid to legitimize their secret basement hearings.

According to CNN (transcript of resolution here): 

The resolution provides the procedural details for how the House will move its impeachment inquiry into its next phase, and it also represents the first time that the full chamber will take a vote related to impeaching the President. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has argued that the vote is not being taken to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry, as Republicans have demanded, but will help “to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives.”

Just one problem: They made it even less fair.

Here’s how bad it is:

The resolution now involves shutting some of the sharpest Republicans out of the hearings, such as Rep. Jim Jordan who’s on the House Oversight Committee as well as all the Republicans (and Democrats) on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.  We all know that they don’t like Jordan, a kick-ass interrogator, in the impeachment room asking uncomfortable questions of their handpicked Deep-State witnesses and blowing apart their “narratives.”  It’s also worth noting that shutting out the Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees keeps a lot of vulnerable Democrats in swing districts (or being primaried by the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “Justice” Democrats, who are committed to ousting moderate Democrats in blue districts and replacing them with extremists), uninvolved in the kangaroo-court spectacle.  House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Eliot Engels is one of these, so the political convenience is obvious.  

https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/news-opinion/pathologist-says-jeffrey-epsteins-autopsy-more-consistent-with-homicide-than-suicide

A forensic pathologist has claimed evidence from Jeffrey Epstein’s autopsy suggests the disgraced financier may have died by homicide, not suicide, the New York Times reported.

Dr. Michael Baden, the private pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother, announced his findings on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning, saying that Epstein’s autopsy revealed evidence of a number of injuries that “are extremely unusual in suicidal hangings and could occur much more commonly in homicidal strangulation.”

Baden pointed to “three fractures in the hyoid bone, the thyroid cartilage,” which he said were “very unusual for suicide and more indicative of strangulation — homicidal strangulation.”

Baden’s findings dispute the official cause of death declared by New York chief medical examiner, Dr. Barbara Sampson, who ruled Epstein’s August death a suicide.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/finance/markets/us-economy-holds-up-with-19-25-growth-on-consumer-strength/ar-AAJzqQX

A resilient American consumer helped the U.S. economy expand more than forecast in the third quarter, assuaging concerns for now of a more pervasive slowdown tied to weakening business investment and faltering export markets.

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.9% annualized rate, according to Commerce Department data Wednesday that topped forecasts in a Bloomberg survey that called for 1.6% growth. Still, that’s down from 2% in the second quarter and is the lowest since the end of 2018.The gain mainly reflected strength in consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, which increased at a 2.9% rate and exceeded projections for a 2.6% rise. For businesses, nonresidential fixed investment fell the most since late 2015.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/30/democrats-retreat-from-subpoenas-to-schedule-impeachment-vote/

So Democrats are now abandoning any effort to seek court enforcement of past subpoenas issued under Rep. Adam Schiff’s Ukraine charade?

Almost six weeks into the Ukraine impeachment farce, Democrats find themselves maneuvering into a “strategic repositioning” (translation: “retreat”). One of the “main talking points to rebut impeachment,” as the Washington Post characterized it, is that the “House Democrats’ inquiry isn’t legitimate because the members didn’t vote to start one.” A “talking point” is what corporate media calls an argument for which it has no ready response.

The Post article cited a Democrat House aide who said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has no intention of taking a vote, no matter what demands President Trump makes. This aide called the “full vote” argument “pathetic” and “bogus.”

Pelosi doesn’t need a full house vote, Ramsey Touchberry insisted in in Newsweek. Legal experts assured Touchberry, “President Trump is wrong in saying that it is not a legitimate impeachment inquiry without a floor vote.”

The New York Times “fact checked” the claim that past presidential impeachment inquiries have always started with a House vote, writing, “This is misleading. Though the full chamber voted to start impeachment inquiries against Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard M. Nixon, nothing in the Constitution or House rules requires it.” “Misleading” is code for “true but we don’t want it to be.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/30/democracy_dies_in_derangement_too_141613.html

Because our country is so deeply split and so distrustful of its basic institutions, it needs solid, dispassionate reporting now more than ever. We are not getting it.

Americans know this, and we’re angry about it. Polls show we don’t trust the media any more than we trust Congress, the president, universities, or big business. And we don’t trust them at all. That’s deeply troubling since those institutions should be the secure foundations of our public life. Only one is still trusted by more than half the population — the military. Our men and women in uniform certainly deserve our trust and respect, but it’s grim news for a democracy when only the armed forces merit it.

The media has added to this sulfurous climate of distrust and division. Take the country’s most important newspaper, the New York Times. After badly misjudging voter sentiment during the 2016 election, the Times publicly promised to reevaluate its biases, take occasional trips across the Hudson, and try harder. That lasted about a week.

The Times soon joined every other media organization in the race to discredit Donald Trump’s election, imply it was the product of Russian interference, and paint him as an illegitimate intruder in the White House. Although they were right to investigate Russian interference, they were wrong to pump up a thinly based conspiracy story that served their political aims.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/cracks_in_the_impeachment_wall.html

Is the solid Democratic front in favor impeachment beginning to crumble? It’s probably more correct to say that it never existed at all.

We got two clear signs this week that rank-and-file enthusiasm for the Pelosi/Schiff effort to rid the country of the Orange Menace is, shall we say, well-controlled.

New Jersey Democrat Jeff Van Drew stated that he was likely to vote against Pelosi’s resolution to “formalize” the impeachment inquiry when it comes up Thursday, or Friday, or sometime before the end of the Holocene.

Van Drew told NBC reporter Alex Moe that “I would imagine that I’m not voting for it.” 

To go straight to the point, Van Drew’s district was won by none other than Donald Trump in 2016, and Van Drew knows exactly which side his political toast is buttered on – that is, the one that hits the ground when dropped.

There are evidently at least a dozen other Democratic reps in much the same situation as Van Drew, though none of these has spoken up yet.

Steny Hoyer , the House Majority Whip, refused to commit to an actual vote on the matter, even though Mrs. Pelosi insists that it is, in fact, happening on Thursday. “We’re going to have to consider whether or not it’s ready to go on Thursday,” Steny said. “I hope that’s the case.”

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/i-killed-my-parents-and-now-i-ask-for-mercy-on-the-grounds-that-im-an-orphan/

I killed my parents and now I ask for mercy because I am an orphan….

That’s the canonical definition of chutzpah — shameless effrontery — and it summarizes the Democratic position on the attempted impeachment of President Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, assembled out of bits handed to ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele from his Russian intelligence sources, and the FBI used this concoction to obtain FISA warrants to bug the Trump presidential campaign. Now, THAT’S foreign interference. And those facts aren’t in dispute. When the Trump administration tries to get the truth out of foreign governments about their involvement in nefarious activities in the U.S., the Democrats scream, “Impeachment!”

The Wall Street Journal editors got this exactly right:

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.

Nothing less than the American republic is at stake here. It’s time for every American patriot to rally around the president. Some of my neo-conservative ex-friends are cheering for the wrong side. Shame on them.

For the record, I don’t care whether there was quid pro quo with Ukraine or not. If President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate foreign subversion of our political system, he was doing his job as commander-in-chief to protect this country from its external enemies. The parade of striped-pants cookie-pushers from the State Department feeding information to closed-door Democratic Party kangaroo courts in the House of Representatives is irrelevant. Trump is fighting a mutiny by the U.S. intelligence community. If the mutineers succeed, it will be the end of the republic. If a cabal of bureaucrats nestling in the bowls of our $80 billion a year intelligence bureaucracy can bring down an elected president of the United States, the republic is finished.

The impeachment issue is a load of baloney, period. No less a constitutional scholar than Prof. Alan Dershowitz wrote (on the website of the Gatestone Institute):

So, the question remains: did President Trump commit impeachable offenses when he spoke on the phone to the president of Ukraine and/or when he directed members of the Executive Branch to refuse to cooperate, absent a court order, with congressional Democrats who are seeking his impeachment?

The answers are plainly no and no. There is a constitutionally significant difference between a political “sin,” on the one hand, and a crime or impeachable offenses, on the other.

Even taking the worst-case scenario regarding Ukraine — a quid pro quo exchange of foreign aid for a political favor — that might be a political sin, but not a crime or impeachable offense.