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Pelosi’s impeachment delay is an unforced error Refusing to hand impeachment articles to the Senate looks like partisan pique because it is Charles Lipson

Posted By on December 20th, 2019

https://spectator.us/pelosi-impeachment-delay-unforced-error/

One of our perennial school pranks was to place a whoopee cushion secretly on the chair of an unsuspecting teacher. When she sat, she would launch the resounding clap of flatulence. That, metaphorically, is what just happened to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Unfortunately, she placed it on her own chair. The embarrassing noise sounded when she announced she would delay sending the House’s Articles of Impeachment to the Senate.

This delay was a nakedly partisan ploy — and a major error of political judgment. Every day it continues will cost Democrats in the general election.

Why?

First, the Democrats should be emphasizing only the constitutional necessity of impeachment. That’s why Speaker Pelosi wore funereal black for the House vote, why she tried in vain to stop jubilant Democrats from taking selfies after the vote. (She seemingly couldn’t control Washington Post reporters, who did the same thing. Democracy dies in derangement.) The delay highlights the Democrats’ raw political calculations. Of course, those calculations are always the drivers for both parties in Washington. What Pelosi’s stunt does, though, is put them front and center.

The real motives are painfully obvious. Democrats want Trump out not for some specific reasons (the articles of impeachment are virtually inkblots) but because they truly, deeply hate him. Republicans want to keep him, most because they like him, some because they think the party will implode if they remove him now. Both parties are united. Impeachment only solidified their stances. 

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The Deep State Will Challenge the New FDA Head Henry Miller & Jeff Stier

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/the-deep-state-will-challenge-the-new-fda-head/

If we are to realize the kind of aggressive, innovation-promoting deregulation called for by President Trump, Stephen Hahn will need to disrupt the agency’s built-in bias for overregulation.

Now that the Trump Administration’s new FDA commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, has been confirmed, he’ll find he has one of the most difficult and important jobs in government. The FDA’s purview is wide, regulating pharmaceutical and other medical, food, and vaping products that account for more than 25 cents of every consumer dollar, over a trillion dollars annually.

Government regulation offers some reassurance to the public, to be sure, but when it is wrong-headed or merely fails to be cost-effective, it actually costs lives—directly by withholding life-saving and life-enhancing products, and also indirectly by diverting societal resources to gratuitous regulatory compliance.

Dr. Hahn is inheriting an organization that is huge, critical, and dysfunctional. The stakes are high. For example, FDA has pushed the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug to market to over $2.5 billion. That ensures that many new drugs will have a hefty price tag, and that others will never be developed at all.

Putting FDA on the right track will require toughness and discipline at an agency where more than 99.9 percent of the employees are civil servants who cannot be fired even for incompetence or insubordination. (Did we hear someone mutter, “deep state?”)

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MY SAY: WHAT IS A COLLECTIVE NOUN FOR THE DEMOCRATS?

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

A gathering of witches is called a “coven.”  A gathering of ravens who often gang up on their prey or animals that enter their space, is actually called a “congress” or an “unkindness” 

Barracudas in numbers are called a “battery.” Vultures in a group are called a “wake.”  Rattlesnakes convening are called a “rhumba.”

By Jove! Here is a perfect collective noun for the Democrats in Congress:

A group of hyenas is called a “cackle.”

Perfect!

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Boris Johnson’s Victory Heralds a Golden Era in US-UK Relations by Con Coughlin

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15310/boris-johnson-us-uk-relations

The US president said a future US-UK trade agreement has “the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative” than any deal that could have been made with the EU.

Compared with the calamitous impact a victory for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose politics is defined by his visceral anti-Americanism, would have had on transatlantic relations, Mr Johnson’s return to Downing Street will have been greeted with enormous relief in the White House, as it means Washington now has a firm ally in London, someone who is committed to breathing new life into the vital and long-standing partnership between Britain and America.

Boris Johnson has only been back in Downing Street a few days following his stunning victory in Britain’s general election, but there are already early signs that his premiership will preside over a dramatic revival in transatlantic relations not seen since the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

First and foremost, the British prime minister has made it abundantly clear that his first priority will be to break the Brexit deadlock that has effectively paralysed British politics, and the country’s ability to make its voice heard on the international stage, at the earliest possible opportunity, thus opening the way for a trade deal with Washington.

As a start, Mr Johnson has committed his new government to fulfil its election pledge to complete Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union by the end of January. Furthermore, he will enshrine in law his promise that the complicated trade negotiations that are due to take place next year to finalise Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU bloc will be completed by the end of 2020.

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Turkey’s East-West Carpet Trading by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15233/turkey-east-west

In addition, Turkey is in talks with Russia to purchase a second batch of the S-400 system, including coproduction and technology transfer options. If the S-400 system is operated in Turkey, Moscow could find a built-in cyber backdoor to spy on NATO assets.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in September that it was unacceptable for Turkey not to have its own nuclear weapons – although Turkey is a signatory to both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

In 2016, Erdoğan said that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations

Erdoğan thinks that he can forever benefit from the East-West divide by officially belonging to West but more-than-courting the East. He seems to love playing the Russia card to Americans and the America card to Russians. He should be led to understand that he cannot play this carpet trading game forever.

While NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, celebrated its 70th anniversary on December 4, these days it is sitting on a different paradigm than it did since its birth in Washington DC in 1949. Three years later, in 1952, Turkey, along with its Aegean rival Greece, became a member.

In the 67 years since its membership, Turkey has moved from being a staunch ally defending Europe’s southeast flank in the Cold War to being NATO’s unresolved burden.

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Corbyn Crushed, A Telling Lesson for Democrats But will the Democratic Party take heed?

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/corbyn-crushed

British citizens went to the polls this past Thursday and handed opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn a humiliation that will permanently stain his already tarnished reputation. His Labor Party sustained a stunning rout at the hands of the conservatives and suffered its worst showing since before World War II.

True to form, Corbyn and his die-hard acolytes refused to take any responsibility for the calamity befalling their party and instead, blamed Brexit and the media for their defeat. Corbyn’s vapid explanations and denials are steeped in a combination of hubris, venality and fantasy. Britain’s citizens plainly recognized Corbyn for what he was, a vile, hard-core socialist and anti-Semite who could not be trusted to lead the nation.

As noted by Katie Hopkins at FrontPage, Corbyn ran on a platform that would have fostered an atmosphere inimical to the free market system. He called for the nationalization of utility companies. Wanted illegal aliens to have access to Britain’s already heavily burdened healthcare system and wanted to restructure the inheritance tax in a manner that would have further punished those who managed to accumulate some measure of wealth during their lifetime. 

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Pelosi Threatens to Call Off Impeachment Unless Senate Meets Her Demands Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/pelosi-threatens-call-impeachment-unless-senate-daniel-greenfield/

Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to commit Wednesday to delivering articles of impeachment to the Senate, citing concerns about an unfair trial on removing President Donald Trump from office.

Senior Democratic aides said the House was “very unlikely” to take the steps necessary to send the articles to the Senate until at least early January, a delay of at least two weeks and perhaps longer.

“So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us,” Pelosi told reporters at a news conference just moments after the House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstructing congressional investigations. “That would’ve been our intention, but we’ll see what happens over there.”

Pelosi’s comments, which echo suggestions raised by other Democrats throughout the day, inject new uncertainty into the impeachment timetable and send the House and Senate lurching toward a potential institutional crisis.

Though the House adopted two articles of impeachment charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congressional investigations, it must pass a second resolution formally naming impeachment managers to present the case in the Senate. That second vehicle triggers the official transmission of articles to the Senate.

By delaying passage of that resolution, Pelosi and top Democrats retain control of the articles and hope to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to adopt trial procedures they consider bipartisan.

What leverage does Speaker Pelosi think she has here?

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The Voter-Purge Myth By David Harsanyi

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/the-voter-purge-myth/

It’s nothing more than destructive scaremongering.

Maggie Haberman, the esteemed New York Times reporter, recently tweeted out a Mother Jones article to 1.2 million followers titled: “GOP-Led Voter Purges in Wisconsin and Georgia Could Tip 2020 Elections.” The chilling piece warns readers that “hundreds of thousands of voters are set to be purged in two key swing states,” which “potentially” gives Republicans “a crucial advantage by shrinking the electorate” in those states.

None of this, of course, is true. Cynical pieces of this genre, an election-time tradition at this point, only allow Democrats to warn of widespread disenfranchisement and preemptively give aggrieved Democrats such as Stacey Abrams a baked-in excuse for losing elections and smearing Republicans.

How many people who fall for these claims understand that both federal law and state law mandate the updating of voter lists? In Georgia, we already know that hundreds of thousands of “voters” were not purged, because at least 62 percent of registrations that were canceled by the state this week had surely moved away or died. Either their mail was returned as undeliverable or they had officially changed their address to a different state.

Other registrations were purged because the person hadn’t voted in years. Georgia has automatic registration. I know it’s difficult for some people to believe this, but lots of Americans have no interest in voting. And Georgia voters can be declared “inactive” if they haven’t participated in elections, contacted officials, responded to officials, or updated their registrations since the 2012 election.

That’s the state law. Georgia sends everyone letters explaining how they can fix any potential problems. Georgia, in fact, publishes a list of names online so anyone who has not received a letter can check if they are still registered. Governor Brian Kemp signed a law recently that lengthens the period before voters become “inactive” from three to nine years.

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Dems’ Real Impeachment Goal: Sabotage Trump’s Second Term

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/19/the-dems-real-impeachment-goal-sabotage-trumps-2nd-term/

Why would House Democrats put forward articles of impeachment that are laughably weak and have no chance of removing President Donald Trump from office? Most of the speculation has been that the impeachment will nevertheless hurt Trump’s reelection chances.

There’s another possibility that’s even more insidious.

Democratic Party leaders can’t possibly be unaware of the fact that their impeachment case has no merit. Despite the endless talk of bribery, extortion, campaign finance violations and other supposed crimes Trump has committed, not one of the articles of impeachment accuses Trump of breaking any of those laws, or any federal law for that matter.

Instead, they accuse Trump of an “abuse of power” and of “obstruction of Congress.” As Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week at a Heritage Foundation event, as weak as the first article is, “the second article is orders of magnitude weaker.”

“They’ve simply said that the mere fact that you assert a privilege is itself impeachable, without their bothering to issue a subpoena or litigating anything.

“If that is impeachable conduct,” Cruz went on, “all 45 presidents we have had in the United States have committed impeachable offenses.”

Mind you, this is in sharp contrast to the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, which charged him with committing two felonies – perjury before a federal grand jury and obstruction of justice.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Book Review: After ISIS by Seth Frantzman By Lela Gilbert

Posted By on December 19th, 2019

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/review-after-isis-frantzman/

October 27, 2019 marked the death of infamous “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Once his demise had been confirmed, optimistic media voices asserted that the last chapter of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had been written. The western world very much wants to believe we are living in a new, post-ISIS era. But are we?

Several months before the death of Islamist madman Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Israeli journalist and scholar Seth Frantzman published his tour de force volume, After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East—a thought-provoking and at times heartbreaking narration of a war and its ongoing aftermath.

Does Frantzman believe we are living in an “after ISIS” world? Not exactly.

His book provides a painstakingly researched and carefully documented overview of a modern war. It includes the author’s personal accounts of explosive battle scenes, half-buried mass graves, and hungry, homeless children—scenes he witnessed while deployed with Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

Here, for example, he describes what he saw in the aftermath of the Yazidi slaughter:

Here in the killing fields of Sinjar, the bones of those killed in 2014 sit on the surface. Human hair pokes through grass that has grown on the bodies. Skull fragments. Bullet casings… A teenager’s soccer jersey that says “Emirates” on it. The clothes people wore when they were murdered are there. The blindfolds they wore could be seen.