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Kim Jong Un, Astride a Pale Horse, Urges Self Reliance in Face of U.S. Sanctions North Korean leader blames his country’s hardships on ‘ceaseless sanctions’ and pressure from U.S.-led forces By Timothy W. Martin and Dasl Yoon

Posted By on October 16th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kim-jong-un-astride-a-pale-horse-urges-self-reliance-in-face-of-u-s-sanctions-11571209808?cx_testId=30&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s

SEOUL—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, riding a white horse, galloped to the top of the country’s tallest mountain and delivered a blunt message aimed at the U.S.: his people’s pain has “turned into their anger.”

Mr. Kim blamed his country’s hardships on “ceaseless sanctions” and pressure from U.S.-led forces hostile against the North, according to a Wednesday report in state media. The North Korean leader has been calling for the country to be more self reliant while sanctions batter the cash-strapped regime’s economy.

“We should neither want help from anyone nor lend an ear to any temptation,” Mr. Kim was quoted as saying. “We should choose the prosperity based on our own efforts.”

Mr. Kim’s comments suggest Pyongyang’s hardened stance on nuclear talks with Washington isn’t softening. Working-level negotiations broke off earlier this month in Sweden. The Kim regime has since threatened to end diplomacy unless Washington takes a substantial step toward Pyongyang’s position before the end of the year.

The State Department offered a different account of the Oct. 5 meeting held by Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative on North Korea, and the chief North Korean negotiator, Kim Myong Gil. The U.S. said it had brought “creative ideas” and hoped talks would pick back up within two weeks.

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Warren and Sanders, Policy Mates Their differences are mainly about rhetorical labeling.

Posted By on October 16th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warren-and-sanders-policy-mates-11571181041

Bernie Sanders wants voters to know that he—not Elizabeth Warren —is the bona fide socialist running for President in 2020. “There are differences between Elizabeth and myself,” Mr. Sanders said Sunday on ABC. “Elizabeth I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I’m not.”

As he falls in the polls, Mr. Sanders has to do something to reignite that 2016 fire. But the Vermont Senator’s problem is that Ms. Warren has co-opted more or less all of his important policy proposals. True-blue socialists might thus conclude that in Ms. Warren they can get nearly all of Bernie’s agenda from a younger (barely, at age 70) candidate without the socialist label.

Consider the policy list. She and Mr. Sanders both want Medicare for All, including the end of private health insurance. The main difference is that Mr. Sanders admits he’d raise taxes on the middle class, while Ms. Warren ducks the question. They both vilify “the top 0.1%” and promise to make wealthy Americans “pay their fair share.” Her wealth tax would hit the net worth of “ultra-millionaires” at rates up to 3% a year. His would drain “extreme wealth” with a top rate of 8% a year.

It’s almost a vaudeville joke for policy wonks. What’s the difference between a socialist and a capitalist? Five percentage points, apparently. This punch line also holds regarding their respective proposals on “accountable capitalism” (Ms. Warren) and “corporate accountability” (Mr. Sanders). She wants to make big companies give 40% of their board seats to workers. He wants 45%.

They both would force these companies to get a new federal charter requiring them to consider “stakeholders” rather than shareholders in their business decisions. They both want to reimpose the old Glass-Steagall fence between commercial banking and investment banking. “The business model of Wall Street is fraud,” Mr. Sanders likes to say. Ms. Warren also thinks bankers are crooks: “Wall Street is looting the economy.” They agree the U.S. Postal Service should become a bank that offers government checking accounts and would compete with private banks.

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Democrats using impeachment to consolidate power By Taylor Day

Posted By on October 16th, 2019

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

Rudy Giuliani told House Democrats via a letter from his lawyer that he will not be complying with their subpoenas related to their impeachment inquiry.  Last week, Rick Perry was also summoned and hints that he will also resist the Resistance Party’s subpoenas.

The letter obtained by The Hill from Giuliani’s attorney, Jon Sale, states that the subpoena is “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and seeks documents beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry.”

What should be added to that list is that they’re not really subpoenas anyway.  They are nothing more than sternly worded letters with a request calling themselves “subpoenas.”  The House must vote first to authorize a committee investigation if its members want the judicial authority to enforce these letters.  The kangaroo court that Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are running has yet to do so.  And so, because they’re not really subpoenas in any legal sense, there is zero penalty for not complying with them.  Giuliani having his lawyer send a response is already beyond what he had to do.

The Democrats are clearly planning something with the illegitimate and ever changing impeachment operation.  While they may think they’re clever and strategic, their modus operandi has never been more obvious.

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Last night’s Democrat debate: A cluster of tyrannical fantasists By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on October 16th, 2019

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

For conservatives who watched the Democrat debate, it was like visiting Earth-2, as Drunkblogger Stephen Green so cleverly put it.  Conservatives probably could not endure these debates without Stephen Green’s infusion of both facts and humor.

Each of those candidates on the stage seemed oblivious to the reality of the last three years — the fabulous economy, lowest unemployment in decades, international trade renegotiated to our benefit, millions no longer on food stamps.  Our military, eviscerated by Obama, is being repaired.  Manufacturing has been revitalized, and the border, despite the intransigence of the Democrats, is slowly being better controlled.  The wall is being built.  Everything Trump has done since being elected has been effective; he has tried to keep his campaign promises despite the Democrats’ vow to see him impeached from day one.  And no matter how vicious the Left is, those candidates on stage last night continue to opt for mindless delusion that he can be removed from office in order to prevent his re-election.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are grateful for a president willing to fight back against both parties, who have nothing but contempt for Trump-supporters, for the man who means to drain the swamp.  We must be thankful for the distinguished few in the House (the Republicans in the Senate are abject cowards) who have the courage to defend the president.  The swamp was certainly on display throughout the debate.

The Democrats are losing.  Trump and his supporters are winning — on every issue, even Turkey and Syria.  As others have observed, the Left plays checkers while Trump plays 4-D chess.  He is way ahead of his opponents on every level, every issue.  Most Americans like having jobs and like their friends and family members having jobs.  They don’t mind the fact that some people are fabulously wealthy.  Those are the people who fund the countless attractions we take for granted: museums, medical research, hospitals that specialize, university buildings, public television, and a host of other things the rest of us enjoy and take for granted.  Where would we be without the largesse of all the American billionaires and millionaires who have funded so many projects that have enriched us all?  However they attained their wealth is of no interest, nor is how they live their lives.  They have contributed to the public good beyond what any of us can adequately appreciate.

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An Afternoon with Anne Marie Waters Stuart Lindsay

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/10/an-afternoon-with-anne-marie-waters/

“The charge against the For Britain founder is that she is ‘a racist’. The evidence for this, according to those on the Left who seek to gag her, is a relentlessly articulated and witheringly explicit analysis of the harm Islam has done to every aspect of British life.”

I wanted the restaurant to be English in character but I discovered that in Spitalfield that meant spare and pricey and not oak and hearty so I settled on Dilchad, in Widegate Street. It was Bengali so there would be plenty of vegetarian (even if it, too, would be halal-certified) and when I went in at eleven o’clock to look over the wine list and book the table in the window corner, the young fellow in charge was polite and it looked safe and so I wandered back down Bishopsgate to St Botolph’s, the church where Keats had been baptised, the one the IRA had bombed in 1993, and sat in the pews and thought about what I would say to her and whether it would be awkward and, if it were, whether I could manage that kind of situation satisfactorily. She had, after all, been very generous in the way she had answered an unsolicited request from a retired Australian judge to meet her.

A wise woman buildeth up her own house.
—Proverbs 14:1

It was a Friday and Anne Marie had asked that we meet near Liverpool Street station. I had never been to that part of the East End but after arriving from Australia on the Wednesday it was already clear to me that since my last visit in 2011 London’s decline had been in free-fall and this part of it was no different. As I walked about that district and watched the sub-continental fellaheen shambling down the streets and through the monuments and relics of this most ancient ward of the capital, the expletive-laden chatter of young Threadneedle Street bankers managed to make itself heard over the din of the buses and the mini-cabs. I remembered that the City had been—it still was—the Remainers’ redoubt. I also remembered that London wasn’t all that Britain was.

But, still, this wasn’t good. Pubs were harder to find. I found out why. I talked to the owners who have kept theirs open and also to the odd brave patron. They had signs on the door and at the bar telling people not to proselytise their customers about drinking alcohol. The signs are not directed at the Salvation Army, let me tell you.

Back in Australia, I had thought that the chaos and indignity of Mrs May’s premiership might be enough for the British people to refuse to cop it sweet from their elites any longer. After such national humiliation, politics surely could not merely remain “downstream” from culture (as everybody says some deceased young media tycoon once said). Cultural imperatives would assert their former primacy in political life. They had to, I thought. If they didn’t, Britain would not survive. These things concern me deeply because I am British and because I love my country as much as I do the nation it founded on the other side of the earth.

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Schiff Just Banned A GOP Lawmaker From Attending Key Ukrainegate Deposition By Sean Davis

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/14/democracy-dies-in-darkness-adam-schiff-just-banned-a-gop-lawmaker-from-attending-key-ukrainegate-deposition/

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., just banned a key Republican lawmaker from the deposition of a former anti-Trump national security official believed to be at the center of ongoing Ukraine proceedings, sources tell The Federalist. Schiff tossed Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., out of the deposition.

Although the U.S. House of Representatives has not approved a resolution authorizing a formal impeachment investigation, House Democrats have nonetheless insisted that they have full authority to subpoena all documents and testimony they desire, even if specific committees lack the jurisdiction to demand particular information. Schiff, whom Pelosi tapped to lead her party’s anti-Trump impeachment efforts, chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), which only has jurisdiction over the federal government’s intelligence agencies and related components.

According to the Congressional Research Service, formal impeachment proceedings are typically referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Gaetz sits on that committee; Schiff does not. The House has yet to approve a resolution granting broad impeachment investigative authority to any of its committees.

Several officials told The Federalist that they believe Fiona Hill, who was subpoenaed last week to share her knowledge of allegations of wrongdoing against Trump regarding a phone conversation he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, is one of the unnamed sources for the anti-Trump whistleblower whose August 12 complaint fanned congressional impeachment fires. Hill was reportedly planning to testify about her knowledge of the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, a controversial figure who was removed from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in May.

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Schiff’s Democrats plot a secret impeachment, with leaks By Monica Showalter

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

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

The ejection of Rep. Matt Gaetz from House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s witness testimony hearings for the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, as J.R. Dunn noted here, was pretty outrageous, given the right Gaetz had to be there as a member of the House Judiciary Committee and do nothing but listen.  He wasn’t some Code Pinko type disrupting the closed-door affair by yelling obscenities and hurling bags of urine.  He was ejected because he was a Republican.

It kind of tells you about the “fairness” of this entire inquiry.

Now the Washington Post is reporting that having done that, Democrats have now gotten into a huddle, whispering together behind closed doors like Renaissance plotters, the better to accelerate the impeachment of President Trump.  Presumably, they want to get it out of the way before the next election, which of course would be to serve their own political purposes.  Those, of course, are what this whole lunacy is really about — removing Trump and not having to face the wrath of the American voters.

It’s why impeachment for them needs to be done so secretly.  And the whole thing is being done in secret now, meaning it’s not just Republicans being shut out; the entire electorate isn’t allowed to be in on it, either.  Schiff and his fellow plotters, who apparently ran an intelligence operation of their own against the White House earlier to set the whole thing up, are now setting up a trial with a predetermined outcome, making themselves spy, cop, judge, jury, and executioner, with a pliant mainstream media to give exclusively their cherry-picked propaganda output from it as news.

And they know it’s a winner of sorts — now some polls show a public that favors impeachment and removal.  Keeping it all secret and releasing just their version of events, despite the president’s transparency about the matter, seems to be the plan in action.  They’re convinced it’s working.

It’s possible it’s working, given the disturbing content of at least a few polls.  But a lot of things say it isn’t.  There was the brutal Louisiana wipeout of the Democrats just this weekend.  There also was a bad-news focus group for Democrats cited by center-left Axios, noted by J.R. Dunn here, about how Ohio swing voters aren’t happy.  Their reaction to impeachment-obsessed Democrats matches what former governor John Kasich (who’s not a Trump fan), said earlier that “nobody is talking about this” in Ohio.  Axios also had warnings from political experts a few days ago that the whole thing was bad news for Democrats no matter what.  I wrote about that here. 

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The More Public Money Gets Spent To Solve “Homelessness,” The More Homelessness There Is Francis Menton

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-10-14-the-more-public-money-spen

San Francisco is the latest American city to try to solve the problem of “homelessness” by throwing more and yet more taxpayer cash at it. Should we check in on how it’s going?

You may recall that I last visited the issue of homelessness in San Francisco about a year ago, October 2018, in a post titled “The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite.” At that time, the number of “homeless” in San Francisco was estimated at about 7000, but there was an initiative on the November 2018 ballot, known as Proposition C, calling for a new payroll tax on large employers in San Francisco, intended to raise some $300 million per year to solve this homelessness problem once and for all. On October 25, 2018, one Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, had an op-ed in the New York Times supporting Proposition C. My post noted that Benioff was only too happy to advocate that others should be forced to spend hundreds of millions on this project through a new tax, while he himself offered to put up none of his own personal fortune, estimated at $6 billion, for the purpose.

So where are we now, a year later? The payroll tax initiative passed last November with 61% of the vote, and the new tax started getting collected. Opponents then brought litigation that has prevented the spending of the money so far. (The opponents’ claim — that a special tax like this requires a two-thirds majority — was rejected by a trial-level court in July; but appeals are ongoing.)

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What Pelosi Really Wants from Impeachment Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/15/what_pelosi_really_wants_from_impeachment_141494.html

The most important thing to know about Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is this: It is not about removing President Trump now; it is about damaging him now so he can be defeated next year.

Impeachment normally seeks to remove the president (or a federal judge) from office. A successful House vote is only the first step. The Senate needs strong evidence to convict, and House leaders try to provide it with their investigation and public hearings. That’s what we learned in seventh-grade civics.

But Nancy Pelosi is not in middle school. She is teaching post-graduate courses, and she knows a Republican Senate is very unlikely to convict Donald Trump without a lot more evidence than has been brought to light along with a groundswell of public support. So, the House speaker has a more realistic goal, and it’s a purely political one. Her aim is to prevent Trump’s reelection. To do it, she has exerted tight, unilateral control over the process and handed day-to-day investigation to her California protégé, Adam Schiff, who heads the committee on intelligence. His secret hearings are in sharp contrast to the open ones held for Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton by the House Judiciary Committee.

Schiff’s closed-door sessions, his refusal to allow Republicans to call witnesses, and his prohibition of White House participation are all clear indications of Pelosi’s strategy. She and Schiff are using the investigation as publicly funded opposition research, complete with subpoena power, much like the probe that resulted in the second volume of Robert Mueller’s report.

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CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/15/the-fbi-eagerly-accepted-foreign-interference-to-give-a-third-term-to-fdr/

The FBI Eagerly Accepted Foreign Interference — To Give A Third Term To FDR
Thomas McArdle

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/trump-its-easier-syrian-christians-enter-us-now-under-obama

Trump: It’s Easier For Syrian Christians to Enter the US Now Than Under Obama
Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com

https://therightscoop.com/report-fusion-gps-founder-reveals-steele-dossier-memos-made-it-all-the-way-to-president-obama/

REPORT: Fusion GPS founder reveals Steele dossier memos made it all the way to “President Obama”
TheRightScoop.com