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Impeachment is over — or is it? Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/481787-impeachment-is-over-or-is-it

If you think the Senate’s vote on Wednesday to acquit President Trump ends the impeachment saga, you haven’t been paying attention.

Congressional Democrats never believed they could actually remove Trump from power over anything as specious as the Ukraine kerfuffle. No more than they expected that the collusion caper — which was already known to be an investigative dry hole by the time of Bob Mueller’s May 2017 special counsel appointment — was a viable vehicle for ousting the president.

Impeachment has always been a partisan pretext. A third-order pretext, as I explained in “Ball of Collusion”: (1) The counterintelligence investigation launched by the Obama administration was a pretext to monitor Trump’s campaign while conducting a criminal investigation without the necessary criminal predicate; (2) the criminal investigation, formally launched on the ludicrous fiction that Trump’s constitutionally appropriate firing of FBI director James Comey could be an obstruction crime, was a pretext for packaging an impeachment inquiry for House Democrats (since the bureau didn’t have a crime but knew that impeachment does not require a crime); and (3) the impeachment drama has been a pretext for what all along has been the goal — to tumble out enough unsavory information over a long enough time that Trump is rendered unelectable by the time we get to the stretch-run of the 2020 campaign.

This is not to say, of course, that congressional Democrats would not remove the president if they could. The fact that House Democrats hauled out and formally voted two articles of impeachment, rather than contenting themselves with a long-running impeachment inquiry spiced up by the occasional, damning public hearing, shows that if they thought there was any shot at defenestrating Trump, even a remote one, they would take it.

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Democrats Feel the Bern. For Insiders, It’s Heartburn Charles Lipson

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020//06/democrats_feel_the_bern_for_insiders_its_heartburn.html

A specter is haunting the Democratic Party—the specter of socialism.

For several years, this hard-left movement has been gaining support within the party, especially among younger voters. In a few deep blue districts, socialist/populist candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad have managed to defeat entrenched center-left incumbents. The movement is now powerful enough that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose to press forward with impeachment, which she never favored, to retain her leadership position. Bernie is pressing an equally radical agenda in the primaries. He finished in the top two in Iowa and is currently leading a weak field in next week’s New Hampshire primary.

Party leaders are appalled—and alarmed—by Sanders’ strength. They uniformly opposed him in 2016, and they are doing exactly the same this year. They favor Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or even Warren—anybody but Bernie.

When party insiders “feel the Bern,” it’s acid reflux. Democratic donors, lobbyists, think tanks, and elected officials are convinced their party is doomed this November if an avowed socialist heads the ticket. They’re right, but they don’t have an easy answer.

The insiders’ dilemma is simple to state but tricky to solve. They think Bernie’s nomination would be an electoral disaster, but they must prevent it without alienating his supporters. They need them to win in November.

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Three Glorious Days of Democrat Agony Kurt Schlichter *****

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/02/06/three-glorious-days-of-democrat-agony-n2560771?

So, February 3, 4, and 5, 2020 were pretty much the most miserable three days in the history of the Democratic Party. I’m not laughing, really I’m not! You know how sometimes you have a bad day when nothing goes right? Well, these super-achievers managed to triple that streak. They are achievers in the same sense Hoover Snort Biden is an achiever.

Let’s start with Monday, February 3rd and the Iowa Caucuses. In their defense, it wasn’t like they had four years to get prepared to handle…counting. Oh wait, they did have four years to handle…counting. Okay, well, then in their defense they went to unionized failing government schools, so counting is hard. But not for the Republicans, who managed to count their votes just fine.

As of when you read this, they might still not have actual numbers. Audie Murphy Buttigieg, Crusty Commie Curmudgeon and Chief Sitting Bolshevik may well all still be claiming victory, while Gropey J’s handlers are likely still complaining about the process and Not Senile Joe himself is chasing an uppity squirrel around a Nashua park.

One thing for sure – Mr. Electible is done for. He started off Monday arguing with liberal Savannah Guthrie on NBC about how his stripperphilic brat got his Ukrainian gig by being really “bright.” He ended up serenaded by sad trombones as he was hustled out of Des Moines to head east to try and salvage the S.S. Lusitania that is his latest presidential campaign. 

The Dems are not only dealing with this massive show of incompetence – “Okay, counting a few thousand ballots is beyond our abilities, but taking over the entire health care system will totally go smoothly” – but also coming to the realization that none of their three remaining candidates has any appeal outside a faculty lounge, gulag, or in the case of Warren, a second-tier casino. 

In the wings, perched on a couple telephone books, is Mike Bloomberg, waiting to try to buy his way in as the sensible sorta-center candidate. Seems like a good plan. When the Bernie bros are once again denied their victory by the blatant cheating of the Democrat establishment, they’ll flock to the bite-sized billionaire. He’ll totally get the nomination, or in his case, the gnome-ination.

Quick, what is the name of a person in your life who would vote for the Verne Troyer of American politics? And that shrug you just gave demonstrates that you should go short on President Bloomberg.

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Democrats Have a ‘Go Big or Go Home’ Problem by David Davenport

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-have-a-go-big-or-go-home-problem

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-have-a-go-big-or-go-home-problem

The fact that Democrats could not even deliver timely results of their own Iowa caucuses underscores their larger problem. They have become the party of big, structural changes led by government in a time when people lack confidence and trust in big government.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren likes to talk about the need for “big, structural change” to our domestic policies. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is right with her, denouncing “half measures” and arguing, as he did in a recent commercial, “America is best when we strive to do big things.” 

Nearly all of the Democratic candidates have jumped on the “go big or go home” bandwagon, with calls for “Medicare for all,” free college, a revolutionary and expensive Green New Deal, and huge tax increases on the wealthy. Apparently, Democrats have concluded that if policy proposals are not blockbuster, then they are merely lackluster. Their pitch is not President John F. Kennedy’s “we can do better” call for improvement, but rather President Franklin Roosevelt’s plea for a revolutionary New Deal.

The problem is that the public increasingly distrusts big government. A Pew Research Center study published last year showed that only 17% of people trust the government to do what is right, while 75% believe that trust in the federal government is shrinking. Examining trust in various leadership groups, government officials came in dead last, behind scientists and educators, but even trailing journalists and business leaders.

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Meanwhile: Americans’ optimism about personal finances surges to all-time high in new Gallup poll

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/02/05/meanwhile-americans-optimism-personal-finances-surges-time-high-new-gallup-poll/

A friendly reminder amid all the impeachment hubbub today that Trump’s probably getting reelected and the political shiny object du jour will have little or nothing to do with his odds.

Neither the Reagan era nor the Clinton era, both famous boom times for America, produced quite as much financial optimism as the Trump era has. Remember that other poll that Gallup released yesterday showing Trump’s job approval at a personal best 49 percent? Now we know what’s driving that number. With economic enthusiasm like this, if Trump were a little less … Trump-y his job approval might be north of 55 percent. He’d be a near-lock for a second term.

But there’s more. Gallup also asked a question with lots of resonance for the 2020 election: Are you better off financially then you were a year ago?

Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year…

The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is essentially tied for the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy — a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows — though GDP growth was higher at that time.

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A Week of Political Karma for the Democrats Julie Kelly

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/05/a-week-of-political-karma-for-the-democrats/

President Trump now stands acquitted. The Democrats must confront the debacle that is their presidential primary field and run on a nonexistent record of achievement as the 2020 campaign season kicks off. Karma, indeed, is a bitch.

Donald Trump couldn’t have scripted it better himself: The Democratic Party’s karma knocked them right on the head this week as their countrymen watched in disgust—some, admittedly, in delight.

After three years of deception, gaslighting, and public temper tantrums, these power-hungry partisans finally got their comeuppance. An assembly of agents provocateurs, motivated by an insatiable amount of contempt not just for the president but for Americans in general, who gambled on a farcical impeachment crusade rather than build a persuasive policy case to win over voters this year, are ranting and pouting and tearing up stuff because . . . well, because they are losing. If Nancy Pelosi could have thrown a pacifier from her Capitol high chair Tuesday night, she would have.

The past several days have been filled with delightful metaphors: The president gave a lengthy interview before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, touting his achievements and mocking his political foes. A team from a pro-Trump red state faced a team from a Trump-hating blue state, which was favored to win. The San Francisco 49ers, based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hometown, had a 10-point lead going into the fourth quarter.

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Trump aide: Rising anti-Semitism will lead to settlement growth

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/02/06/trump-aide-rising-anti-semitism-will-lead-to-settlement-growth/
“The Israeli birth rate is strong and is growing because sadly anti-Semitism in Europe and other places around the world is encouraging more Jews to return to Israel. The settlements are going to continue to expand,” says Robert O’Brien, US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.

US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser warned Palestinians on Wednesday that Israeli settlements will continue to expand because rising anti-Semitism around the world means more Jews will immigrate to Israel.

Addressing many hot-button global issues in a speech and discussion with foreign diplomats to the United States, Robert O’Brien defended Trump’s Mideast peace plan, which was embraced by Israel but rejected by the Palestinians.

O’Brien said the plan is not “perfect,” but urged the Palestinians to negotiate terms of the proposed deal. The deal offers economic benefits that would allow “Palestine” to become the “Singapore of the Middle East,” he said.

The Palestinians have roundly denounced the proposal, which offers them limited self-rule in chunks of territory with a capital in parts of east Jerusalem while allowing Israel to annex portions of Judea and Samaria.

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Save Us From Secular Redeemers Anthony Daniels

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/01/save-us-from-secular-redeemers/

One of the most troubling aspects of what, as I write this, is the latest Islamist terrorist attack in London, is the reaction to it of Mr David Merritt, father of one of the murdered victims, a young man who believed that he was helping to “rehabilitate” his own murderer, and that he, or others like him, had succeeded in doing so. Mr Merritt said he hoped that his son’s death would not be used to promote more “draconian” sentences.

But what constitutes a draconian sentence for a man who plots seriously to blow up the stock exchange, assassinate a prominent politician, bomb synagogues and kill rabbis, and set up a training camp for terrorists to do more of the same? Such a man is a mass, and probably serial mass, killer in the making. By his remarks, therefore, Mr Merritt implied that freeing such a man after eight years in prison had been the right thing to do, even if it entailed the death of his own son.

Let us try for a moment to imagine what effect his remarks would have on an aspiring Muslim terrorist. This is difficult, of course, but it is one of the things that having an imagination is for: to see ourselves as others see us.

The aspiring Muslim terrorist, having usually participated in what he comes to regard as the Sodom and Gomorrah of Western life, suddenly comes to think that Islam at its most puritanical and uncompromising is the indubitable answer to life’s problems. This is a stupid thing to think, no doubt, but there is no doctrine so stupid that it is incapable of inspiring fanaticism. Our aspiring terrorist believes that it is his duty, as well as his pleasure, to impose his vision of virtue on the world, even to the point of martyrdom rewarded by the kind of genteel or cleaned-up Sodom and Gomorrah in the sky that is his conception of paradise.

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UK: Why Are Dangerous Jihadists Being Released Early from Prison? by Soeren Kern

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15536/uk-jihadists-released-early

“We cannot have the situation…where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board. — UK Secretary of State for Justice.

“When I was a constable, I could arrest and process a suspect in an hour, maximum. Today, it takes a day or more…. The police are mired in bureaucracy, while the judicial system has become an institutional cloud-cuckoo land.” — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

“Bluntly, how would you feel if you were told to keep track of known terrorists who have been released from prison to satisfy the politically correct assumptions of our justice system?” — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to toughen sentencing guidelines for convicted terrorists after a newly-released prisoner carried out a jihadist attack in London.

On February 2, Sudesh Amman, a 20-year-old jihadist from Harrow in north-west London, stabbed two people in a knife rampage on Streatham High Road before he was shot dead by police. He had been released from prison just days earlier after serving less than half of his sentence for terrorism offenses.

Amman, who was carrying a 10-inch kitchen knife, wearing a fake suicide bomber vest, and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”), had been under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which London police described as an “Islamist-related terrorist incident.”

In December 2018, Amman was sentenced to three years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to 13 counts of expressing support for Islamist terrorism and possessing and sharing Islamic State and al-Qaeda propaganda. He was 18 years old at the time.

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Democrats Panic After Iowa James Carville says he’s “scared to death” that Dems have gone too far left. Thomas Gallatin

Posted By on February 6th, 2020

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68373-democrats-panic-after-iowa-2020-02-05

With the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses fiasco dragging on into its third day — no official winner has yet been announced — there are clear indications that party leaders are panicking. Longtime Democrat strategist and former Bill Clinton campaign manager James Carville wondered why Tom Perez was still leading the Democratic National Committee. “The polling averages have not been very good the last 10 days and I’ve some pretty good polls that show enthusiasm among Democrats is not as high as we might like it,” Carville observed. “This is not going particularly well so far. And why is Tom Perez still the chairman of the Democratic National Committee? I have no idea. This party needs to wake up.” He later added, “I know these donors and they’re not going to give a popsicle to the DNC right now. I can promise you that.”

Carville isn’t the only high-profile Democrat sounding the alarm. David Axelrod, former senior advisor to Barack Obama, bemoaned, “However bad the handling the count has been, the Iowa’s Democratic Party’s handling of the messaging around it has been an abject disaster. It should be taught in classrooms as an example of what not to do in a crisis.”

Then there’s the growing specter of election malfeasance, which will only further complicate the DNC’s future efforts of getting its base to coalesce around the party’s eventual nominee, let alone gin up voter enthusiasm.

Speaking of coalescing, the divide within the party between hard-left socialists and non-socialists has Carville even more concerned. “I mean, I’m 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death, that’s why,” he complained. It’s more than an image problem, Carville argues. “All the Sanders people were taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. … The press corps went AOC crazy. … We got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party? … The urban core is not going to get it done. What we need is power. You understand? That’s what this is about. Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points.”