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50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Merrick Garland Ducks the Hunter Biden Questions The AG demonstrates why appointing a special counsel was a bad idea.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-special-counsel-david-weiss-hunter-biden-6377c505?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Shortly before the Trump Administration left office, Attorney General William Barr declined Republican calls to appoint a special counsel for Hunter Biden. We agreed with him. As we warned, a special counsel can bury a case in secret for years, and an AG can duck questions by saying that’s the special counsel’s job.

Merrick Garland essentially made that point for us on Wednesday. In contentious testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, President Biden’s Attorney General wouldn’t even say whether he talked to U.S. Attorney-turned-special counsel David Weiss about Hunter’s case.

The answers Republicans seek, Mr. Garland suggested, will be addressed “in the public report that will be transmitted to the Congress.” Given that a special counsel’s report typically comes at the end of an investigation, that means that Congress and the American people aren’t likely to get these answers before the 2024 election.

Mr. Garland portrayed himself as independent of both the White House and the details of Mr. Weiss’s investigation. But he didn’t have to ask President Biden what he wanted. In May the President publicly signaled to prosecutors that there should be no indictments when he told MSNBC “my son has done nothing wrong.”

Communism, Fascism, Globalism — What’s the Difference? By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/communism_fascism_globalism__whats_the_difference.html

Monarchy: A system of government where supreme power is vested in a single genetic lineage — a dictatorship passed through family inheritance.

Communism: A system of government in which the State plans and controls the economy and a single, authoritarian party holds power — a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Fascism: A system of government marked by the centralization of authority under a dictator in which an economy is subject to stringent governmental controls and political opposition is violently suppressed.

Globalism: A system of government marked by the elimination of national sovereignty and the centralization of authority within international organizations such as the United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Economic Forum — all run by a small group of wealthy elites.

Monarchy, communism, fascism, globalism — what’s the difference?  At the end of the day, we are talking about a system of government in which centralized power belongs to a small group of elites who use their control over economic, military, and intelligence-collecting institutions to rule over everyone else.  Whether it is a government run by Mussolini, a king, the self-described “proletariat,” or an international cabal of central banks and corporations — it is a dictatorship all the same.

Let’s not pretend that raw “democracy” is significantly different.  As early-twentieth-century sociologist Robert Michels laid out in his treatise, “Political Parties,” an “iron law of oligarchy” guarantees that a small group of elites eventually rise to “rule over” any form of democratic organization.  Representative democracy, Michels argued, is a “facade” that legitimizes the continuing “rule” of some elite class. 

Administrators, bureaucrats, and political leaders love to talk about “democracy” because doing so buttresses their pretense that the people are actually in control.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  It is the “ruling class” that hoards power, and the more any elite member speaks of “democracy,” the more certain you can be that the elites are actively betraying the overall will of the people.  No matter how much this hurts, remember, you asked for it — because this is a “democracy”!

Note that a member of the “ruling class” or one of its controlled institutions (such as Wikipedia) could easily use the above paragraphs to vilify “populism.”  Think about the doublespeak tightrope that the “ruling class” now walks:

Democracy: A system of political government controlled by the common people.

Populism: Political ideas and policies that are supported by the common people.

What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Is Innocent Is it plausible that the real rainmaker of Biden, Inc. was the only one who didn’t get paid? by David Catron

https://spectator.org/what-we-must-believe-to-believe-biden-is-innocent/

It’s hardly a surprise that the corporate media have rushed to the defense of President Biden pursuant to the impeachment inquiry announced last week by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. More surprising is the absurdity of the arguments they offer on his behalf. For years, his denials notwithstanding, Biden knew his son ran an international enterprise whose only real service was selling access to the Vice President of the United States to foreign entities who hoped to procure favorable policy decisions from the Obama administration. This operation generated at least $20 million that was doled out to nine Biden family members, yet we are asked to believe that the “Big Guy” didn’t get a cut.

This situation is, to coin a phrase, worse than Watergate.

CNN, for example, insists there is no evidence that he “personally received any money.” The network’s fact-checkers evidently need to see a cancelled check made out to “Joe Biden” by an Oligarch who has helpfully written “bribe” on the memo line. The public is more sophisticated. A significant plurality of voters believe that Biden has accepted bribes. A recent Yahoo/YouGov survey asked this question (48F): “Do you believe that Hunter Biden funneled millions of dollars to his father in a long-running scheme to help Joe Biden profit off of his position?” Fully 45 percent of registered voters answered, “Yes.” These aren’t “MAGA extremists.” Indeed, 41 percent of Independents answered, “Yes.”

Moreover, they have many sound reasons for doubting the President’s veracity and suspecting him of engaging in impeachable offences. On August 24, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released a list of 16 instances of Biden lying to the American people about his knowledge of his family’s influence peddling schemes. Last week, Chairman Comer released an additional list of evidence showing that Joe Biden’s involvement in these illegal schemes was anything but passive.

The Biden crime family is our own reality-TV mafia show You cannot make this saga up. And you don’t have to Roger Kimball

https://thespectator.com/topic/the-biden-crime-family-is-our-own-reality-tv-mafia-show/

I have been meaning to weigh in on [cue scary music] Special Counsel David Weiss’s sham indictment of Hunter Biden on felony gun charges for a few days. I am glad I waited. 

It’s not that I have changed my mind about the indictments, or company man Weiss. Everyone knows he is on the job as an interior decorator, whose primary task is to produce window dressing for the Department of Injustice so that its two-tier deployment of police power is not too obvious to the casual onlooker.

Weiss has supposedly been investigating Hunter Biden for the last five years. Wouldn’t you know it, the statute of limitation on many of the tax charges is passing by like that herd of cows outside your train window even as I write.  

Biden fils might have gotten away with the kit, cat and caboodle had not District Judge Maryellen Noreika noticed how fishy Weiss’s original glucose-saturated plea bargain really was. “What, this deal calls for immunity from all criminal charges now and forever, so help you crack?” Yep. And no jail for the forgetful laptop owner either. You can bet your .38-caliber Colt Cobra Special Gauleiter Garland’s myrmidons would not try to sneak something like that past a judge on your behalf.  

No sooner was Weiss’s three-count indictment announced than alert (i.e., non-lackey) commentators savaged it as the Potemkin-village piece of theater it is. 

As Impeachment Inquiry Looms, Half Say Biden’s Been Dishonest About Foreign Deals: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/20/as-impeachment-inquiry-looms-half-say-bidens-been-dishonest-about-foreign-deals-ii-tipp-poll/

President Biden will soon be officially scrutinized by Congress for evidence he committed impeachable acts while serving as Barack Obama’s vice president and possibly after. But even before that investigation begins, a plurality of voters already don’t believe Biden’s repeated denials of involvement in son Hunter’s far-flung business affairs, the I&I/TIPP Poll found.

“How honest has Biden been about his involvement in the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden with foreign entities?” the national online I&I/TIPP Poll asked 1,351 Americans from Aug. 30-Sept. 1. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

The response will likely give little comfort to either Biden or the Democratic Party at large.

Among those responding, 48% called Biden either “not very honest” (14%) or “not at all honest” about his business dealings with Hunter, compared to the 36% who believed Joe Biden has been either “very honest” (19%) or “somewhat honest” (17%). Another 15% said they were “not sure.”

As might be expected for such a hot-button question, the political schism on the answers was very large. Just 16% of Democrats responded Biden was “not very honest” or “not at all honest.” That compares with 85% of Republicans and 53% of independents.

Meanwhile, just 10% of GOP followers and 22% of independents described Biden as honest when it comes to his business affairs, versus 68% of Democrats.

The Irrelevant United Nations The annual gabfest in New York underscores its global failures.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/united-nations-general-assembly-iran-china-russia-ukraine-biden-administration-fc4aa8c?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

New York City this week is full of dignitaries and functionaries from around the world for the United Nations General Assembly, and President Biden chipped in with his annual speech on Tuesday. The Lady Godiva question no one wants to ask is: Why?

Amid the mountain of words this week, what will be accomplished? In the emerging world order of rogue regimes and multi-polar power centers, what good does the U.N. do anymore?

The Presidents of Russia, China and France and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom didn’t even show up. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made an appearance to lecture about American perfidy. In a show of its respect for the U.N., Iran expelled the U.N.’s most experienced nuclear-weapons inspectors on the eve of Mr. Raisi’s visit. The U.N. has likewise been helpless as North Korea ignores Security Council resolutions and sanctions to expand its nuclear program.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a rare trip to New York on Tuesday to make the moral case for support against Russia’s invasion. But the U.N. has been worse than useless during the Ukraine conflict. Russia’s veto in the Security Council with Chinese support has blocked any serious response to the Kremlin’s marauding. The one U.N. contribution was to help negotiate a deal to allow grain exports from Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin recently nixed that agreement.

Missing F-35 is found: Debris from $80M stealth fighter jet is recovered in a field two hours north of Charleston after pilot ejected on Sunday and plane continued in ‘zombie mode’ – sparking Pentagon to GROUND all models

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12532685/missing-fighter-jet-update.html?ito=windows-widget-push-notification&ci=564499

Debris from the F-35 fighter jet missing since its pilot ejected over South Carolina has been found – hours after the military asked the public for help to find it.

Joint Base Charleston had asked the public to call if they have ‘any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35,’ which is worth $80 million.

The pilot ejected and parachuted safely into a residential area in North Charleston around 2pm Sunday.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he was in stable condition, said Maj. Melanie Salinas.

The pilot’s name has not been released. On Monday afternoon, the military said debris from the plane had been found. 

How Biden Will Circle the Wagons As impeachment becomes inevitable, the President’s defense schemes are predictable By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/18/how-biden-will-circle-the-wagons/

The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

The Defense in Depth 

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

There’s a whole lot to say about the missing F-35, none of it good (but some of it funny) By Andrea Widburg

It’s not a news story anyone in America ever expected to read, although maybe two-and-a-half years into the Biden administration, we should have learned to expect the unexpected: An unpiloted F-35 combat aircraft is flying somewhere over America on a trajectory known only to itself. The memes are wonderful, but the facts should disturb all of us.

The story sounds like a Cold War farce but, as the local Charleston paper reports, it’s very real:

At least we know that the jet, which was designed to be a stealth fighter, lives up to that reputation.

Image: An F-35A fighter. Public domain.

But, honestly, how in the world can we have a functional military that loses $80-100 million jets? It’s one thing if we design them so that the enemy can’t spot them but did anyone in the chain of command think that we might want to find them?

The contention is that the plane’s transponder was turned off. How in the world did that happen? Was it incompetence? Or are we looking at something worse, such as sabotage or even an enemy action? Perhaps the plane is winging its way to China or Russia even as we speak. And speaking of China, maybe the Chinese weather balloon can find the jet for us.

As of this writing, the search for the missing jet is continuing:

Based on the facts available, I’m also troubled by the pilot ejecting from the plane over a heavily populated area. Of course, the plane may have ceased responding to anything he did, in which case, there was nothing he could do but save his own life.

Who is Seth Rich? Who Murdered Him? And What’s The Deep State Hiding? By Ron Wright

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/who_is_seth_rich_who_murdered_him_and_whats_the_deep_state_hiding.html

The Background:

Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was murdered on July 10, 2016. The DC Metro Police attributed his death to a botched robbery. That’s tragic but straightforward. Why, then, is the FBI refusing to release the information from Rich’s laptop? Perhaps it’s because Rich is the key to understanding the Russian collusion narrative that the Democrats and Deep State used to such savage effect against Trump, up to and including the 2020 campaign, when operatives lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Anyone questioning the official narrative was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist and canceled.

The Russian Disinformation Narrative – The Con:

The convenient Russian collusion claim had its roots in 2016 when the FBI knowingly used the false Russian narrative to weave together a FISA search warrant affidavit alleging that two low-level Trump campaign volunteers, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos, were Russian assets. They were not. However, unaware of that fact, the FISA court issued a search warrant and three subsequent warrants for counter-espionage surveillance authorizations.

Special Counsel John Durham’s team thoroughly debunked the Russian collusion narrative during the trial of Attorney Michael Sussman. From the trial testimony and evidence introduced, we learned that the Russian collusion narrative was created, paid for, and leaked to the media at the behest of Hillary Clinton and her operatives, and aided by the FBI and CIA in a domestic disinformation operation.

The FBI retargeted the fabricated counter-espionage investigation to spy illegally, first, on candidate and, then, on President-elect Trump. The FBI knowingly failed to disclose the dual-purpose nature of these warrants to the FISA judge(s) who reviewed and issued these warrants. The FBI agents, including then-Director James Comey, lied by omission to the FISA court, as they later did in the Mar-a-Lago warrant. To this day, there has been no criminal accountability for these FBI agents.