“The reckless irresponsibility of Joe Biden!”

OCTOBER 17, 2022 BY STEVEN HAYWARD at Power Line:

THE DAILY CHART: LONG EXPENSIVE COLD WINTER AHEAD

Never mind shortages of natural gas here and abroad: we may be running short of diesel fuel before long. Energy analyst John Kemp reported the troubling picture last week:

Global shortages of middle distillates such as diesel, gas oil and heating oil are intensifying rather than easing – making it more likely a relatively severe slowdown in the business cycle will be necessary to rebalance the market. U.S. inventories of distillate fuel oil depleted to 106 million barrels on Oct. 7, the lowest seasonal level since the government began collecting weekly data in 1982.

Given how much of our goods transportation (think trains and trucks) use diesel, this is going to be another upward force on inflation.

Here’s what the chart looks like:

Bonus chart to start the week—a startling graph that underlines the reckless irresponsibility of Joe Biden:

THIS TRIAL IS ABOUT THE CORRUPT FBI!

October 17, 2022

Durham’s In-Your-Face Danchenko Gambit

By Jack Cashill at American Thinker:

In the larger drama we’ll call “Russiagate” Igor Danchenko gets nowhere near top billing. Even today, after his week-long trial, not one American out of ten could identify this FBI informant by name. Fewer still could tell you word one about the drama’s other walk-ons, Sergei Millian and Charles Dolan. Although the Democrats and major media are anxious to see all three of these minor players vanish into the ether, Special Counsel John Durham made future stars out of them all.

Danchenko was accused of lying to the FBI about his relationships with both Millian and Dolan. These are lies, said Durham’s co-counsel Michael Keilty in his opening statement that “the FBI should have uncovered but never did.” So saying, team Durham put Washington on notice. This trial was not really about Danchenko at all. It was about the FBI, the Department of Justice, and, finally, the Mueller investigation.

“The evidence in this trial will show that the Steele dossier would cause the FBI to engage in troubling conduct that would ultimately result in the extended surveillance of the United States Citizens,” said Keilty. That conduct, the trial revealed, included offering Christopher Steele what amounted to a million-dollar bribe to corroborate his infamous dossier, paying Danchenko to be a confidential human source (CHS) after he proved to be a serial liar, and basing a multi-year persecution of President Trump on information the FBI had every reason to believe was bunk.

The attempted bribe, revealed on Day One of the trial, should have stopped the presses. Specifically, Durham asked FBI supervisor Brian Auten what the FBI offered Steele for “corroborative information.” Said Auten, “Mr. Steele was offered anywhere up to a million dollars for any information, documentary, physical evidence, anything of that sort which could help to prove the allegations.”

This offer reeks of desperation. The FBI made it in early October 2016, two weeks before it filed its first FISA application against American businessman Carter Page. As Auten admitted, Steele did not and could not provide “anything.” Ever. Yet without any corroboration, the FBI went ahead and filed not just one but four FISA applications against Page with the unproven Steele information as its foundation — a clear violation of FISA law.

Millian, like Carter Page, was an innocent bystander. The Russia-born Danchenko cited the Belarussian businessman as one of Donald Trump’s co-conspirators in the information he provided to Christopher Steele. A former FBI informant himself — this fact came as news to the media — Millian proved to be innocent of any conspiratorial involvement. Auten conceded, however, that dossier information indicting Millian was included in the October 2016 FISA application and all subsequent renewals, even after his innocence had been established.

Charles Dolan was not innocent at all. A longtime Democrat operative with Russian ties, Dolan was Danchenko’s principal sub-source. He just made stuff up and fed it to Danchenko who, in turn, fed it to Christopher Steele who fed it to the Clinton campaign, the media, and the FBI who collectively shared this unvetted nonsense with the world for several years.

At trial’s end, the judge dismissed the one count involving Dolan for semantic reasons. Predictably, perhaps intentionally, CNN missed the real story, headlining its article, “Judge drops 1 of 5 charges against Trump-Russia dossier source, in blow to special counsel Durham.” This was no blow. Dolan was not on trial. By tying the FBI investigation back to the Hillary campaign and the DNC, Durham accomplished what he needed to. A further revelation of the trial was that the FBI leadership resisted all efforts by its agents to interview Dolan or share information about him with the Mueller investigation.

America’s newsrooms are having a hard time digesting all this. The editors at the New York Times remain proud of the 2018 Pulitzer for their — don’t laugh — “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign.”

Not wanting to give the Pulitzer back, the editors continue to ignore or downplay all evidence that challenges their long since discredited narrative. As late as April 2022, Charlie Savage, the Times Washington correspondent, was claiming, “Donald J. Trump and his backers say revelations about the Steele dossier show the Russia investigation was a ‘hoax.’ That is not what the facts indicate.”

The word “hoax” does not do the Russia investigation justice. “Greatest political scandal ever” is closer to the mark. As Durham proved, the FBI and the DoJ turned a willfully blind eye to the dirtiest trick in the nation’s political history, and the media gave themselves awards for covering it all up. For the actual facts, I would recommend Techno Fog’s reporting at The Reactionary. This summary only skims the surface of the official skullduggery Durham revealed in just four days of trial.

In addition to exposing the conscious malfeasance of the FBI brass, Durham also established the organizational structure of the whole Russia investigation from the FBI’s Operation Crossfire Hurricane through to the Mueller Inquiry. This information should prove useful in any future investigation when the real culprits are indicted on RICO charges.

That Quiet Sneak Senator McConnell!!

Alaska Republicans Call On Kentucky GOP To Censure Mitch McConnell Over Party Interference

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE at the Federalist:

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is meddling in the Alaska Senate race between two Republicans instead of working to reclaim the Senate majority.

TRISTAN JUSTICE

Alaska Republicans are calling on the Kentucky GOP to formally censure Sen. Mitch McConnell for the bluegrass senator’s interference in the Alaskan Senate contest against the party-endorsed candidate.

On Thursday, the Alaskan Republican Party’s District 9 central committee passed a resolution to condemn the Senate minority leader’s spending on behalf of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The incumbent senator running for a fourth full term in the upper chamber is locked in a tight contest against Donald Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka, who is also endorsed by the Alaskan Republican Party.

McConnell’s super PAC to reclaim the majority, the Senate Leadership Fund, is spending heavily in the race between two Republicans, which the latest polls show is a tied match. According to the Anchorage Daily News, McConnell’s political operation has poured more than $7 million into the Alaskan contest instead of using that money towards ripe pick-up opportunities in Nevada and Arizona.

“We request the Senate Leadership Fund immediately stop the attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka and discontinue all support of Senator Murkowski,” District 9 Republicans demanded. Their resolution went on to demand Kentucky GOP leadership censure their senator for meddling in Alaska’s party affairs while the minority leader abandons efforts at capturing the majority.

“We request the Republican Party of Kentucky leadership act against Senator Mitch McConnell for his inappropriate behavior against Alaska Republicans and Republican endorsed candidate Kelly Tshibaka,” the Alaska Republicans wrote.

Alaska’s District 9 committee based in Anchorage is the second state party group to admonish the Kentucky lawmaker’s interference, according to Must Read Alaska columnist Suzanne Downing.

“The first was District 6, a Homer-area subdivision of the Alaska GOP,” Downing wrote.

In September, McConnell’s PAC reinjected money into the Alaska Senate contest after initially canceling $1.7 million alongside $8 million stripped from Republican Arizona Senate nominee Blake Masters. McConnell later pulled another $10 million from the Arizona race, leaving the Republican candidate abandoned by the primary super PAC charged with reclaiming the upper chamber.

Both Masters and Tshibaka have pledged not to support McConnell for another term in GOP leadership.

The decision to spend scarce resources on an ally in Alaska instead of a tight race in Arizona to bring down a Democrat incumbent drew criticism from former President Donald Trump on Monday.

“Kelly Tshibaka is doing very well in Alaska, probably leading horrendously bad Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican (barely!),” Trump wrote.

According to the latest aggregate of surveys from RealClearPolitics, which are often manipulated to fit pre-determined narratives, the Arizona Senate race remains a five-point race.

(Article sent by Mark Waldeland).

BIDEN’S IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE!

OCTOBER 17, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at Power Line:

TRUTH & NO CONSEQUENCES

Following up on “How to lose friends and influence over people,” I want to draw attention to Michael Goodwin’s New York Post column “Joe Biden’s Saudi state of affairs.” It opens this way:

Leaving aside Joe Biden’s ridiculous denial about inflation and his Walter Mittyesque claims to having been there and done that, he still managed to hit a new low last week.

If Congress plays by the rules it followed during Donald Trump’s presidency, Biden committed an impeachable offense. And he admitted it on television!

The president told CNN that “there will be consequences” for Saudi Arabia after the kingdom refused a White House request to postpone a cut in oil production.

Depending on circumstances, penalizing an ally might be necessary, but the problem is the request. It was politically self-serving, designed only to help Biden’s poll numbers and his party’s mid-term chances.

The White House, after being rebuffed on its demand that the planned production cut be rescinded altogether, focused on the timing. It was then that officials asked for the cut to be postponed a month, meaning it would take place after the elections.

In effect, the president’s team wasn’t as concerned with rising gas prices as it was over when consumers would feel the pain at the pump. The goal was to avoid price hikes before voters made their choices.

The Saudis, speaking for the OPEC+ cartel, which includes Russia, understood what was being asked and said no, leading Biden to level his threats.

This is a far more blatant case of courting foreign help for an election than the one Democrats cited for their first impeachment of Trump. The issue then was aid to Ukraine, and Nancy Pelosi’s House Dems accused the former president of soliciting “foreign interference” in the 2020 election by seeming to connect American aid to his request that Ukraine help find dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden.

Please read the whole thing here.

Welcome Tulsi Gabbard!

Tulsi Gabbard: A voice of reason

BY JOE CONCHA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 10/16/22 8:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”

That was former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) earlier this week announcing why she left the Democratic Party. Except one could reasonably argue that the Democratic Party left Gabbard.

One thing’s certain: These aren’t your daddy’s donkeys anymore. President Kennedy won the approval of the nation based largely on a platform of lowering taxes and strengthening the U.S. military. Jimmy Carter was pro-life and god-fearing. And Bill Clinton was conservative on illegal immigration, crime and spending.

Clinton said things one would never hear almost any Democrat say today when it comes to decreasing the size of government, ending the welfare state and not spending what we don’t have. Not coincidentally, Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of any Democratic president of the television era.

But then the party went so far left that its most popular lawmakers on social media embrace socialism. President Biden and most other Democrats seem to believe that spending trillions of dollars is the best way to lower inflation. So much for not spending what we don’t have.

Some in the party also believe cashless bail laws that allow violent criminals onto the street somehow lower crime, or the opposite of the approach taken by the 1994 crime bill Biden once championed.

Oh, and while President Clinton was a passionate supporter of border enforcement, Biden has allowed more than 2 million people to enter the country illegally this year and won’t even admit that there is a crisis on the border.

As for education, Gabbard is one of the very few Democrats who supports Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-Fla.) parental rights law (falsely dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by the media).

Gabbard’s overarching theme is how unsettling she sees the breakdown of basic freedoms in favor of authoritarian measures, such as the administration’s attempted rollout of the Governance Disinformation Board earlier this year.

“Every dictatorship has a propaganda arm—a ‘Ministry of Truth.’ The Biden Administration has now formally joined the ranks of such dictatorships with their creation of the so-called ‘Disinformation Governance Board,’” Gabbard tweeted in standing nearly alone among her now-former party in criticizing this disturbing creation. 

It’s frankly surprising this exit didn’t happen earlier, say after she was mistreated and disrespected by her party and the media during the 2020 presidential campaign.

CNN didn’t give Gabbard the chance to host a one-hour primetime town hall during the  campaign, despite Democratic rivals who polled lower than her getting the opportunity to do so.  

Hillary Clinton even apparently suggested, without evidence, that Gabbard may have been a Russian pawn. Not one prominent Democrat condemned Clinton for her reckless rhetoric, nor did the editorial board of any major newspapers. 

“When you have someone as powerful as Hillary Clinton seeking to smear my reputation and essentially implying that I’m a traitor to the country that I love, what she essentially is doing is taking my life away,” Gabbard said in response. Clinton never apologized. 

Soon after Gabbard’s announcement that she was leaving the party, “Good Riddence” trended on Twitter. 

Of course it did. Tulsi Gabbard isn’t woke enough for the Blue Team. She isn’t left enough for the Democratic Party. And she doesn’t conform to the Twitter mob, as so many lawmakers do. Here’s what the Jan. 6 committee missedIs the Biden administration about to put the Abraham Accords at risk?

But she is principled and pragmatic enough to see what’s happened to a party she once firmly embraced, and which was large enough to embrace her. It was once the champion of the little guy. And now, according to Gabbard, it is a party that caters to the elites. 

But Gabbard provides a rare thing in politics these days: independent thought that doesn’t toe the party line. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.

Xi In Action

October 16, 2022

Xi comes out swinging as 20th Party Congress opens in Beijing

By Thomas Lifson and Stephen P. Young at American Thinker:

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, theoretically the highest organ of the Party, opened Sunday in Beijing, and Chairman Xi led off with a speech that got rousing applause when it got aggressive toward Taiwan, and took hardline stands on zero Covid, Hong Kong. You can read summaries of it here, here, and here.

Xi is in charge, no question. But he knows he alone is on the hook as hard times loom, and the opposition lets him know they haven’t gone away.

Real power in the party lies at the top of the hierarchy, and that hierarchy is elected every five years at these Party congresses. 

YouTube screengrab

The 2300 delegates elected from party organizations all over China, will start the formal process of updating the membership of the Party’s power structure:

These delegates will appoint some 400 members to the party’s top national-level institution, the Central Committee. The 200 voting members of the Central Committee will then select from its ranks, the 25-member Politburo and the even more elite seven-member PSC.

Xi has purged opponents with corruption trials. Corruption is so common there that virtually anyone in the power structure is vulnerable. He is in charge, has consolidated his backing and he’s going to get his term as Party Chairman extended beyond the norm since Mao.

In the past, the twice-a-decade congress was seen as a chance for leaders to promote their supporters, as they vied to increase the power of their factions within the party.

But observers say these days there appears to be only one faction at the 20th Party Congress – that of Mr Xi.

In a clear sign of this consolidation of power, top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders released a communiqué days earlier endorsing him as “the core” of the party and leadership. They also called for the party to unite even more closely behind him.

Mr Xi currently holds the three most powerful positions in China – general secretary of the CCP, chairman of the country’s armed forces and president. He is expected to renew his term for the first two titles at the congress.

The CCP does not set any term limits. But no leader besides Mao, the founder of communist China, has ever served a third term.

The downside of all this power is that he is accountable, and if too many of his policies go south, you might say that he could lose the Mandate of Heaven. The Party, while a dictatorship, must always fear losing the allegiance of the people. That’s why it has so heavily invested in surveillance and social credit schemes, to keep control of unrest. Because China has millennias of history of throwing out failed governments.

Xi may be powerful now, but the germ of opposition is out there, lurking in the soil.  Everyone attending the conference has seen or heard about the signs that all is not calm beneath the surface.

In an ultra-rare move, banners directly attacking Xi were displayed in an affluent Beijing neighborhood. It was a reminder that currents of opposition still exist and that the happy talk of official media is not the real story.

A little over a year ago, a very Chinese style criticism of Xi’s rule came for a respected elder. A retired Premier, Wen Jiabao, published what everyone in China understood to be an implicit criticism of Xi, couched in, of all things, a tribute to his mother.

 In China, with no tradition of free speech, criticism of authority has always had to be couched in indirect terms, sometimes as historical allegories, or on the basis of moral inquiry, for instance.

Stephen P. Young, who coauthored the book The Tradition of Human Rights in China and Vietnam, explained it:

In the elegant style of Neo-Confucian literati in previous dynasties when they would comment on the unfitness of a ruler, Wen’s political thesis is put forth indirectly with allegories, symbolic references well known to readers, and analogies to past heroes and ideals. His thesis though is to criticize the politics and philosophy of Xi Jinping for lacking virtue and relying instead on the repressive apparatus of the state to be the “One Man” in China supervising “All-Under-Heaven” as the former emperors asserted was their right and duty.

When Wen finally states his beliefs at the end of the letter, he provides a China Dream to rival Xi’s China Dream of power, glory, and global hegemony.  Wen’s China Dream is that of “a country full of fairness and justice, where there is always respect for the human heart, humanity and the essence of human beings, and where there is always an air of youth, freedom and struggle.”

The revealing “tells” in Wen’s letter are:

1. He goes on at length about his Mother and Father and the sufferings and vicissitudes of their lives as just ordinary, hard-working and patriotic Chinese establishing his credentials as a Chinese worthy of respect for being “of the people”.
2. He states that “My mother taught how to be a human being” or simply “how to be human”. This simple sentence brings to mind the first passage in the Book of Mencius where Mencius sets forth the core of his vision for humanity – “my only counsels are to humanness (ren) and righteousness (yi).  Mencius rejects li or self-interest as the basis for just rule. This implies that others may not follow ren-yi and so are not dutiful administrators of the best of Chinese thinking.
3. His Mother’s telling him about the heroes Yue Fei, Wen Tianxiang and Zhuge Lian. To me the most important allegory here is to Zhuge Lian. Zhuge Lian was the Taoist master strategist who could use yin/yang forces and the Five Elements. He was one of the heroes seeking to preserve the Han Dynasty against unworthy militaristic upstarts in the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mentioning Zhuge Lian immediately brings to mind noble efforts to preserve righteousness under Heaven. Yue Fei and Wen Tianxiang were famous under the Southern Sung Dynasty striving to preserve the ethical heritage of China against northern invaders, again pitting righteousness against military might and unseemly personal ambition.
4. Building on this moral instruction, Wen says: “She always combined being a human being, ambition and responsibility with hard work and conscientiousness, which made me understand that people should not only be able to do something, but also learn to be a human being first.”
5. Another “tell” is his pointing out that his Mother called on him when “at the top” to “make peace with people, and to remember that a lone tree cannot become a forest.”
6. Wen provides a guide as to how to measure the goodness of a leader – look at his face. This brings to mind a saying by Confucius that a person cannot hide his moral quality. Wen simply says “There are many things that people can do to imitate each other, or even make painstaking efforts to do so. But the only thing that cannot be faked is the sincerity, simplicity and kindness of emotion and heart. Just look at his eyes, look at his compassion, look at his courage in distress, look at his spirit of commitment at the critical moment of the country’s future and destiny, and you can see his true nature.”  Xi Jinping, by the way, has a face (physiognomy) which does not inspire trust or reveal his possession of caring virtue.
7. Wen’s closing lines are a frontal challenge to the state authoritarianism advocated by Xi Jinping:

The China in my mind should be a country full of fairness and justice, where there is always respect for the human heart, humanity and the essence of human beings, and where there is always an air of youth, freedom and struggle. I have cried out and fought for this. This is the truth that life has taught me and that my mother

TORY TROUBLE…

 OCTOBER 16, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

IN BRITAIN, A TORY FLAMEOUT

Here in the U.S., it is often said that the Democrats are the Evil Party, and the Republicans are the Stupid Party. That goes in spades in Britain, where the Conservative Party is in the midst of a historic self-immolation.

It started when they ousted Boris Johnson as party leader and thus as Prime Minister. Boris has his faults, most notably an unaccountable fondness for “green” energy. Which of course is not a campaign plus in today’s Europe. Still, Johnson was the Tories’ most plausible leader, and they kicked him out because a gay Tory groped another guy at some kind of a party event. I don’t understand it, either.

When Johnson was voted out, there was a rather bitter contest to succeed him that ultimately was won by Liz Truss. Truss tried to channel Margaret Thatcher, and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng produced a budget that included income tax cuts. As Steve explained, those cuts were modest, but they were denounced by the “financial community,” the IMF, and the usual liberal suspects.

Truss retreated and fired Chancellor Kwarteng, throwing him under the bus in an effort to save her own skin. Predictably, it didn’t help. The London Times reports that Truss’s head is now on the chopping block: “Tories hold secret talks on crowning new leader.”

Liz Truss will appeal to moderate Tory MPs to save her premiership on Monday night after it emerged that powerbrokers had held secret discussions about ousting her and arranging a “coronation”.

The prime minister will address the One Nation group of centrist Conservatives after a weekend in which three of her MPs called on her to quit and her new chancellor tore up the agenda on which she was elected only last month.

So much for the second coming of Margaret Thatcher. In a separate article, the Times (which, to be fair, is largely hostile to the Conservatives) headlines: “Truss is the latest victim of a never-ending Tory death cult.” The subhead: “Many Conservative MPs say it is a question of when, not if, they select a fifth party leader in six years.”

I suppose we Republicans can take a certain solace in not being the world’s stupidest conservative party. But one laments, with Casey Stengel: Can’t anyone here play this game?