America’s Vast Fascistic Media Ignore Dem Crimes and Misdemeanors!!

He who must not be named: How Hunter Biden became a conversation-stopper

BY JONATHAN TURLEY, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR at the Hill:

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Hunter Biden: The mere mention of his name seemingly triggers the vapors among cable TV hosts and their guests.

When President Trump turned to the Bidens and Ukraine in a speech, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace cut off the coverage, declaring she had to protect the listeners: “We hate to do this, really, but the president isn’t telling the truth.” When Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) tried to answer a question about the Ukraine scandal by referencing the Bidens, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd angrily told him not to “gaslight” the nation.

The Bidens, simply, are not what well-bred people discuss in polite company, apparently. Indeed, many journalists seem to be channeling not Edward R. Murrow, the fabled CBS newscaster, but Florence Hartley, the author of “The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness” in 1872. Hartley warned her readers to “avoid, at all times, mentioning subjects or incidents that can in any way disgust your hearers.”

For news shows on MSNBC, CNN and other cable networks, nothing is more disgusting than the mention of what Hunter Biden actually was doing in Ukraine.

For those brave enough to read on, I wish to dispense with one threshold issue: I was critical of claims over the last three years of “proven” crimes and impeachable offenses in the Russia investigation. However, the first day that Trump’s Ukraine call was disclosed, I stated that — if a quid pro quo were proved — the alleged self-dealing with military aid would be an impeachable offense. My point: Raising concerns over Hunter Biden does not mean you are excusing Trump’s actions.

What is most remarkable about the paucity of coverage of Hunter Biden’s dealings is the conclusory mantra that “this has all been investigated.” Many TV hosts prefer to focus on President Trump’s dubious claim that former Vice President Joe Biden forced the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to protect his son. I, too, fail to see compelling evidence to support Trump’s charge.

There is, however, that other problem of Hunter Biden landing a windfall contract with one of Ukraine’s most corrupt figures after his father took charge of potentially billions in U.S. loans and aid for Ukraine. That is what no one seems to want to discuss.

Indeed, the Biden campaign has been remarkably open in demanding that news organizations stop airing interviews or publishing articles about the allegations. Instead of calling it “fake news” (which is virtually copyrighted by Trump), the Biden campaign calls such coverage “conspiracy theories.”

Thus, the campaign wrote to various networks, demanding that they stop airing interviews on the scandal with figures such as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Kate Bedingfield, deputy manager of the Biden campaign, also denounced The New York Times for publishing an op-ed by author Peter Schweizer on the controversy. The campaign apparently expected the Times and the networks to fall in line and bar others from even expressing a view.

Most recently, the campaign fired off letters to Facebook, Twitter and Google, demanding that they take down Trump ads referencing the Hunter Biden contracts. This normally would be viewed as unbridled hubris and arrogance — except that many TV news hosts are doing precisely what the campaign has demanded.

When Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) raised the issue on CNN, host Erin Burnett cut him off: “There is no evidence of Joe Biden doing anything wrong, and this is something that has been looked into, and I think — I want to make a point here — I think what we need to talk about right now is what did the president right now do or not do.” Other CNN hosts have repeated the line of “no evidence of wrongdoing” like a virtual incantation.

Whether the energy company involved with Hunter Biden was fully investigated by Ukraine is hardly a measure of culpability. Ukraine is widely considered one of the more corrupt places on Earth, where paying the children and spouses of powerful people is routine. Indeed, it is quite common in this country, too — and I’ve criticized that practice for more than 30 years in Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Yet Ukraine was a virtual gold rush for Washington’s elite. Paul Manafort made millions working for Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s corrupt former president. Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig and his law firm tapped into Yanukovych, too. Tony Podesta, Democratic powerbroker and brother of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman, were implicated in Ukraine dealings.

Hunter Biden’s quest for Ukrainian gold took him to one of Yanukovych’s most controversial and corrupt associates, Mykola Zlochevsky, who leveraged his post as minister of ecology and natural resources to build a fortune. Before fleeing Ukraine, Zlochevsky paid Hunter Biden and several other Americans to be directors of his energy company, Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden had no experience in the field — but he did have a notable connection to the vice president, who publicly has bragged about making clear to the Ukrainians that he alone controlled U.S. aid to the country. A stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry also was asked to serve as a director but reportedly declined and warned Hunter Biden not to do it; Biden didn’t listen. He later told The New Yorker that “the decisions that I made were the right decisions for my family and for me.”

His decisions certainly were profitable, but they were not “right” as an ethical matter for himself or his father.

Joe Biden has insisted he never spoke with his son about his foreign dealings — an incredible but categorical statement. The then-vice president flew with his son on Air Force Two on an official trip to China but suggests they never discussed his son’s deal seeking $1.5 billion in investments with the state-backed Bank of China. During the trip, Hunter reportedly introduced his father to Chinese private equity executive Jonathan Li, who was part of that deal. Yet Biden insists he was never told of any business linkage or dealings.

If true, Biden was, at a minimum, willfully blind not to ask his son about potential conflicts or controversies. But it does not appear to be true, at least in part — because Hunter Biden has said he informed his father about the Ukraine deal.

All of this should be of some interest to the media, which has exhaustively — and rightfully — pursued foreign deals by the Trump family. And there is no reason why the media cannot pursue allegations against both the Trumps and the Bidens.

That, however, would counter the narrative that there’s “nothing wrong” with Hunter Biden’s dealings and that it’s all a “lie” that’s best to ignore. As Hartley explained in 1872, good manners dictate that you “never attempt to disparage an absent friend. It is the height of meanness.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/465520-he-who-must-not-be-named-how-hunter-biden-became-a-conversation-stopper

Where Is The GOP Response to Hillary, Lerner, McCabe, and other DEM CRIMES?

Will We Ever Prosecute?

By Gordon Wysong  at American Thinker:

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Imagine that the local cops know that a gang member, named William, broke into the pawn shop and stole guns, jewelry, and money.  William’s fingerprints, film image, and DNA add to the hard evidence log.  The owner knows it; the prosecutor knows it; William’s gang associates know it.  But he is not arrested.  Nearby shopkeepers and neighborhood mothers are asking why he is walking the street.  No one explains it; mum’s the word.  Could it be there is a grand plan to take out the gang’s leaders?  No one knows; mum’s the word.  Shopkeepers and residents are about to give up and start moving away from the area, and no one asks them to stay the course.

Fast-forward to today’s still vocal Obama gang.  Why no indictments?  Mum’s the word.  Can anyone hold to the faith in American justice?  Those who support the rule of law feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick a football.  It’s coming — oh, wait, it’s coming…oh, wait…

Without doubt, a criminal cabal is an extraordinarily complex organization, and understanding who did what, why, when, and how is a challenge to the mental faculties of anyone.  But, what happens if the full scope of activities is never clear?  Does everyone get off?  Does complexity confer immunity?

In engineering, there is no perfect answer to anything, so changes are made incrementally, addressing the problems as they are recognized.  Each step brings a clearer view of remaining problems, which are then addressed, each in its turn.  The completed project is still flawed, but the solution is practical and productive.

So it should be with a grandiose scheme like the Russia Hoax.  The ringleaders don’t have to be handled with kid gloves.  They don’t even have to be handled at all.  Just start with the low-hanging fruit, and get as far as possible.

Those old enough to remember My Lai, Vietnam, know that Lt. Calley and Cpt. Medina were not alone in their actions.  However, their prosecution forever changed the game of passing the buck on war crimes.

So, too, can rabid prosecution of bit players in the Russian Hoax forever change the landscape in plots involving treason.  Those who would participate at the lower levels must know they are subject to prosecution, so they remain circumspect in such a re-enactment of the coup attempt.  This would be the Achilles heel of another cabal — those who are intimidated by the prospect of prison.  Those who realize they don’t have sufficient rank to escape punishment will be loath to participate in such a scheme.  Without them, there will be no operational viability to an unlawful coup.

Admittedly, there are always problems in pursuing a criminal case.  It must be so under our Constitution, but it cannot be impossible!

Prosecutors don’t get all the information, but at a certain point, for each criminal, evidence accumulates that there is a real and provable crime.  It may not include every transgression of that person, nor is it the magic revelation, untangling the Gordian knot of the conspirators.  It is a simple criminal act.  It is what it appears, and it need not be put in the context of the big picture — it is as plain as the nose on your face.

That stage is the stimulus for a prosecutor.  It is the time to move.  If the DOJ acts, many of the sins can never be prosecuted, because the prosecution of their lesser crimes may foreclose pursuit of other crimes under double jeopardy protection.  However, failure to move puts evidence and witnesses at risk of being lost.  This point has passed for so many of the coup conspirators that it seems there will be no justice for many of them, like Lois Lerner.

Why?

A full recounting of all that is already known would be tedious, and to expound on the criminal conduct yet again seems shrill.  It is not necessary to understand the intertwining of all the crimes before simply bringing the charges that are facially obvious.  But the deferral of prosecution, for whatever reason it is done, allows many of the cabal to walk free when they shouldn’t.  In fact, the indication is that they are continuing the very conduct for which they should be prosecuted.

Why has McCabe not been charged with lying to the FBI, lying under oath?  Nothing more is needed to start the dominos falling.  Who will step forward to exonerate him?  No one can, and no one will.  That omission — of a vigorously supported defense — will send a message to the others in the coup conspiracy.

Why has Samantha Power not been indicted for violating national security requirements in unmasking or transferring her unmasking authority to others?  It doesn’t pass the smell test that she is too important to be prosecuted.

Why is Huma Abedin strolling around, free as a bird?  She forwarded classified emails to Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  What else is needed to demonstrate a crime?

Did Strzok do anything?  Did Page?   Which one lied to Congress?  Their contradictory accounts mean at least one is a perjurer.  Sure, there is more “there” there, but it isn’t necessary to keelhaul them; just send them to jail, and send others a message.

Listing all the cabal members, who are quite obviously criminal, is not easy — in fact, it is not doable.  It need not be the aim.  A public that finds this whole thing partisan or tedious will not be easily impressed if a 2,000-count indictment naming 43 people is suddenly dropped.  Bringing along the public is certainly part of sending the message for future conspirators.  It probably is better done gradually.

Removing the context and simply prosecuting crimes is the method to educate both today’s and tomorrow’s citizens.

Selecting single actors, and naming obvious crimes, will have a chance to convince even skeptical partisans that something is wrong.  The lack of support from other participants will indeed remove most doubt.

The full scope of what has gone on will never be known, but the lessons for future participants in such a scheme is essential.  The next time, the prosecution will be more severe, more certain, and more expedient.  Protecting the Constitution is more important than perfect justice.  Some miscreants will escape, but they will never sleep well again.  The lesson must be taught.

A DOJ that fails to move loses its credibility and its honor.  The foundation of the Republic is placed at risk.  Without the rule of law, what do we have?

At some point, deferral of prosecution is dereliction or abetting.  Has it reached that point?

Gordon Wysong is an engineer and entrepreneur who has served as a county commissioner in Cobb County, Ga.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/will_we_ever_prosecute.html

Leftism: THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING TODAY’S AMERICA!

The Left to America’s Children: Your Past is Terrible, and Your Future is Terrible

iStockphoto

 

Dennis Prager

A rule of life is that everything the left touches it ruins: art, music, Christianity, Judaism, race relations, male-female relations, universities, high schools, elementary schools, late-night comedy, sports, liberty, journalism, the Boy Scouts, national economies, language and everything else it influences.

The left, not liberalism. (I have written a column and done a PragerU video on the differences between liberalism and leftism.)

To this list, we can now add childhood and children.

The left robs children of their innocence and has helped produce an unprecedented number of anxious and depressed young people.

Most of us are aware of how the left prematurely introduced sexuality into young children’s lives under the guise of “sex education.” That was just the beginning. Then the left changed same-sex college dorms, which had been the norm throughout American history, into coed dorms on virtually every American campus. Then came coed bathrooms. And just in case college students were not thinking about — or having enough — sex, the left introduced sex columns in college newspapers and “sex week” on virtually every college campus. One is more graphic than the other.

After reading a college newspaper sex column or experiencing the college’s sex week, a student could easily conclude that without having experienced a menage a trois and mastering cunnilingus or fellatio techniques, life is neither exciting nor fulfilling.

There are many reasons a greater percentage of college students are more depressed than ever before. But the immersion in loveless and romance-less sex is undoubtedly one of them. That is what contributes to the especially high rate of female depression on campuses.

The left hypersexualized colleges and now laments that colleges are all filled with a “rape culture.”

The left has devalued marriage.

An unprecedentedly large percentage of young Americans are not married, and more of them than ever do not consider marriage important. The left has indoctrinated a generation (or two) of young Americans into believing that marriage is unimportant — career alone is the road to a meaningful life for both men and women. Throughout American history, until the left took over the culture and universities beginning in the 1960s, it was a given, as Frank Sinatra sang, that “love and marriage … go together like a horse and carriage.”

The left has devalued having children.

The left is ambivalent and often hostile to people having children. That’s why people on the left have the fewest children of all political and religious groups.

The latest reason not to have children is that much of humanity is doomed if global warming is not immediately reversed. But since the 1970s, the left has offered other reasons not to have children including that the world would not produce nearly enough food and other basic resources to sustain the growing world population. Thus began the zero population growth (ZPG) movement.

Help us champion truth, freedom, limited government and human dignity. Support The Stream »

But the left’s ambivalence over having children isn’t just hysteria over too many people, lack of food or global warming. Many people on the left (again, unlike liberals or conservatives) just don’t particularly want kids. Children are a nuisance: They interfere with one’s career; they cost too much; and dogs and cats are perfectly acceptable substitutes.

In sum, the left doesn’t particularly like children.

The left is ruining the childhood of many children by depriving them of the joys and excitement of growing into men and women.

The left has invented a new idea in history: that human beings are not born male or female but are “assigned” their sex at birth by sexist parents, physicians and a society that is not yet “woke” to this “fact.” In schools throughout America, teachers are told to no longer call their students “boys” and “girls,” just “students,” lest they impose a gender identity on them. Mattel has released a doll that has no gender. A New York Times columnist whose photo shows him with a beard has requested that his readers refer to him only as “they,” as he believes gender is useless.

Teenage girls who declare themselves boys are allowed to have their breasts surgically removed without their parents’ permission. Divorced parents who tell their 5-year-old male child who feels he is a girl that he is a boy risk losing custody or parental rights if the other parent affirms the child is a girl. Girls who compete in sports against boys who identify as females and complain that they lose unfairly are attacked as “transphobic.”

The left has convinced innumerable young Americans that their past is terrible and their future is terrible.

The left tells American children that their past — the American past — is shameful and their future is even worse: They will likely die prematurely as a result of global warming.

Whatever the left touches it ruins. The latest example is children.

Be sure to catch Dennis Prager’s three amazing episodes on LIFE Today the final week of October. See here for a preview.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in April 2018, is The Rational Bible, a commentary on the book of Exodus. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

 

(Article sent by Mark Waldeland.)

The Left to America’s Children: Your Past is Terrible, and Your Future is Terrible

Courageous Fan Waves Her Trump 2020 Flag!

The Frightened Old Woman with Her Trump 2020 Flag

By Lloyd Marcus at American Thinker:

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Scouting a location to shoot a promotional video for my Trump Train 2020 song, my wife Mary and I spotted a lovely home with a huge Trump 2020 flag waving in the breeze on a flagpole. After knocking on the front door and introducing myself, I assured the elderly white homeowner that we would not show her address in our video.

Still, she declined our request to allow Mary to shoot video of me with her Trump 2020 flag in the background. She was terrified of being persecuted by Trump haters. It is outrageous that citizens are afraid to publicly express support for the president of the United States. The atrocious reality is Democrats and fake news media continue to instigate hate and violence against Trump voters.

Folks, we are in the process of losing our country right now, not somewhere down the road. Democrats are aggressively repealing your constitutional right to free speech. New York City will fine you $250,000 for saying “illegal alien.”

The only thing standing between Democrats and fake news media implementing their insane job-killing, anti-American, socialistic, and anti-Christian agenda nationwide is Donald J. Trump in the White House.

Fake News Media and Democrats’ hate-driven obsession with removing Trump from office is so over-the-top that it has literally become an episode of the “Twilight Zone.” Irrefutable proof that Trump did not pressure the Ukraine president to interfere in our election is being ignored. Democrats are moving forward with impeaching Trump based solely on Adam Schiff’s easily proven lies about what Trump said to the president of Ukraine.

Democrats have put all their eggs to win the presidency in 2020 into their Impeach-Trump basket. Their game plan is to sell voters their absurd lie that Trump is so corrupt that they had to impeach him.

The truth is that Trump has done nothing wrong. As a matter of fact, Trump is determined to restore power, as written in the Constitution, to We the People. He has built an unprecedented long list of remarkable achievements for America.  If Trump is not reelected, Democrats will begin reversing his achievements, repealing your individual liberties, and abandoning Trump’s America first agenda.

This is why my Trump Train 2020 song is so important. It is not just an ordinary nice song. I sincerely believe it was divinely inspired for such a crucial time as this. My Trump Train 2020 song will inspire, encourage, and embolden you. The song lets people know the great things Trump has done and is doing to save and restore our beloved country. Keeping his promises, Trump truly is making America great again.

Here is a bit of insider info about the recording session of the Trump Train 2020 song. My music producer and I had trouble finding Maryland singers and a recording studio willing to record a song supportive of Trump. We eventually found a recording studio. Singers from various states responded to my clarion call. We had singers black and white, old and young. Fourteen-year-old Justice, whose mom brought her all the way to Maryland from Florida, did a great job belting out her solo line, “Can you hear the whistle sound!” I love this kid.

After our awesome recording session which felt like a family reunion, the owner of the recording studio emailed me. He raved about how much fun he had and how it was a pleasure working with such a great group of nice people. Clearly, we Trump supporters were not the deplorable racist haters characterized by fake news media and Democrats.

Patriots, I cannot express upon you how important it is that we counter fake news media and Democrats’ relentless 24/7 flooding the airwaves with lies designed to deceive, intimidate, and dispirit Trump and his supporters. To win in 2020, Democrats and fake news media hope to destroy Trump’s character in the minds of a majority of voters.

It is infuriating that Democrats’ resistance to Trump has become so deranged that the elderly white woman with the Trump 2020 flag was afraid to risk her home being seen in my video.

I shot my one-minute promotional video for the Trump Train 2020 song at the beautiful Potomac river in West Virginia.

To be reelected, president Trump desperately needs and truly appreciates the support of everyone who loves America.

Lloyd Marcus, The Unhyphenated American

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/the_frightened_old_woman_with_her_trump_2020_flag.html

Fascists On Attack in once civilized MINNEAPOLIS, MN!

LAST NIGHT, WE SAW FASCISM IN THE STREETS [UPDATED]

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

Last night President Trump conducted a fabulously successful rally at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis. Scott had a great experience that included meeting the President and hearing his reporting praised repeatedly by President Trump. The 20,000 who were lucky enough to get into the Target Center had a wonderful time; by all accounts it was one of Trump’s best rallies.

But outside the arena, things were quite different. Thousands of lawless, violent Democrats “protested” Trump’s appearance by committing assault, among other crimes. They battled police officers. They attacked Republicans leaving Target Center. They set bonfires and burned patriotic regalia. They carried the flag of the defunct Soviet Union.

They spat on peaceful Trump supporters. They assaulted an uncounted number of normal citizens leaving the Target Center. They struck a woman across the head with a piece of lumber. They waved a sign that said, “Blue Lives Don’t F@$king Matter.” The Minneapolis Chief of Police reported, “Objects containing liquid believed to be urine were hurled at some of my officers along with bottles and rocks. Police horses were also assaulted by protesters striking them with sticks.”

These leftists are identical to the Nazi Brownshirts of the 1930s. But make no mistake–they represent today’s Democratic Party. A sitting Democratic State Representative, Aisha Gomez (DFL-Minneapolis), was seen among the fascists, dressed in black like an Antifa hoodlum. And Minneapolis’s boy Mayor, Jacob Frey, who expressed regret that he could not legally prevent President Trump from visiting Minneapolis, and then tried to do it anyway, issued an order to the Minneapolis Police Department not to use chemical irritants on the mob of criminal Democrats. [UPDATE: We have a disagreement between Boy Mayor Frey and the mob: Frey denies issuing such an order, putting him at odds with fellow Democrat Gomez.] And not a single local Democrat has condemned the violence and disorder that took place last night.

Please go here and view the many videos and other tweets assembled by Katie Fulkerson of Center of the American Experiment, the Minnesota organization (run by me) that fights the fascism that we saw in the streets of Minneapolis last night. The facts are very, very bad for the Left and for the Democratic Party. We need to bring those facts to light before it is too late.

 

Last Night, We Saw Fascism In the Streets [Updated]

Dems Are Becoming Lefty Schiff Fascists….What’s the Anti-Trump GOP Wing Becoming?

What is the Purpose of the GOP?

By Richard Moss at American Thinker:

 

A year ago I was locked in a political race for the Republican nomination for Congress from Indiana’s 8^th district.  I was running against then four-term incumbent, Larry Bucshon.  I had also run in the prior election cycle in 2016.  And I had run in 2014 against Mike Braun (now U.S. Senator for Indiana) for state representative (HR 63).

Among issues popular among conservatives, I also had what I thought was a compelling platform regarding the incumbent: Bucshon and his family had moved to Washington D.C.  I had hoped that this factor combined with his generally weak voting record could propel me to an upset victory, which is never easy against an incumbent.  I started early and ran hard.  I had raised money and traveled extensively throughout the 18 counties of Indiana’s 8^th district, meeting and interacting with voters.

Despite a vigorous, hard-hitting campaign, we came up short –- actually worse than the prior election.  I had dropped from 35% to 26%.  I also observed that many in the 8^th district county level GOP establishment were upset over my criticism of Bucshon for moving to D.C.  I contended, however, that a representative and his family must live, work, and attend schools in the area he represented.  In this era of an increasingly centralized federal government, far removed from its constituents, Bucshon’s decision to move to Washington exemplified a D.C.-centric mentality that defined perfectly what was wrong with our political system — and why I had run.

Having lost in three political campaigns, I can report that it is wonderful not to run for office.  The reasons for running in three separate campaigns, however, have not disappeared.  Our “one party” system in Washington remains profoundly corrupt and self-serving.  It consists of career politicians from both parties, special interests, donors, and lobbyists, all of whom agree on one thing: growing the size of government.

The Republican Party, in its budgeting and voting, is a left-of-center party; it is, as I often referred to it as, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.  With an increasingly Marxist Democratic Party, and no serious conservative opposition from “soft-progressive” Republicans, the trajectory of the nation is all to the left: more spending, more programs, more socialism, and ultimately more tyranny.

Rather than promote a constitutional, limited government agenda that would actually expand liberty and shrink the power of the federal government, the GOP, in effect, embraces the tenets and policies of the Democrats (other than occasional, meaningless rhetorical flourishes to the contrary).  Thus, there is no active force to thwart the mortgaging of the nation and future generations by politicians seeking short-term political gain.

Thanks to our federal government, for example, we have annual trillion-dollar deficits, a national debt approaching $22 trillion (larger than our GDP), and $200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities.  The actuaries of Medicare and Social Security indicate both programs will be bankrupt in 2026 and 2035 respectively.  The Republican Party, allegedly a stronghold of fiscal prudence, is, in fact, handmaiden to profligacy and insolvency.

The GOP remains hapless on the issue of immigration.  It has done nothing to curtail and reform legal immigration to reflect the national interest (i.e. to make it meritocratic, limited, and diverse; to end chain migration, the “diversity” visa, birthright citizenship, and lawless “sanctuary cities,” among many critical issues); it has not secured the southern border nor prevented the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, virtually all of whom are impoverished, uneducated, and unskilled, and who will burden our schools, hospitals, courts, and public systems.  Many of them are disease carriers, drug dealers, criminals, and terrorists.  Thanks to feckless Republicans, our immigration system has become a giant welfare magnet for the world, a threat to our sovereignty, the rule of law, and national security.

Utterly feeble on the cultural front, the Republican Party has meekly accepted the cultural Marxism of the left rather than push back against the nihilism and degradation of our popular and politically correct culture.  It has failed to promulgate a conservative “narrative” to confront the anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-American narrative foisted upon us by our cultural overlords.

Today’s Democrat Party, overtaken by the radical French Revolutionary Left, is not the Democratic party of your grandfather or father, of Truman or Kennedy.  This bunch, should they come to power, is preparing the ground for future gulags not unlike their Marxist predecessors of the 20^th century.

In effect, the conservative movement lacks a political vehicle with which to enact its agenda, policies, and narrative, hence the nation is at the mercy of liberaldom.  Absent effective and principled resistance from a fighting Republican Party, the leftward tilt of the nation, its decline into socialism and bankruptcy, its fragmentation into tribalized, warring identity groups, and the continued breakdown of its culture, is unavoidable.  The Trump years, like the Reagan era, will represent temporary but minor respites in the downward spiral of the country.

We live in treacherous times and the fault lines dividing us may be insurmountable.  But conservatives must continue to uphold our priorities that the nation may return to its foundational principles and beliefs.  We must reassert the religious and cultural underpinnings of the country, the central role of the two-parent family, faith, and the Judeo-Christian tradition; we should foster an appreciation of our unique history and heritage, of liberty, individual rights, the rule of law, free markets, and the principles of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  We, the believers, must remain the vanguard defending Western and American civilization — with or without the Republican Party.

Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com.  Visit Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/what_is_the_purpose_of_the_gop.html

There’s No Truth to What Our DEM Fascists Tally, for FASCISTS DICTATE Their Own Contrived ‘TRUTH’

Opinion | How to Sell Your Soul to Donald Trump

 

There’s no way that Mike Pompeo actually venerates Donald Trump. I doubt he even likes the president much.

Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point decades ago, a feat that suggests enormous reserves of discipline, a profound respect for tradition and a talent for self-effacement when the circumstances warrant it. Trump possesses none of those qualities.

Pompeo is an evangelical Christian, steeped in the very dictums that Trump has spent a lifetime mocking with both his words and his deeds. And Pompeo has long believed in the importance of American military intervention abroad, the kind of activist role that Trump railed against during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

In fact Pompeo, who was then a congressman from Kansas, supported Marco Rubio — and publicly praised him, while disparaging Trump, just before the state’s Republican caucus in March 2016. As Susan Glasser of The New Yorker recalled in an excellent recent profile of Pompeo, he sounded an alarm that Trump would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.” He urged Republicans to come to their senses and resist the lure of the surging Trump campaign. “It’s time,” he said, “to turn down the lights on the circus.”

But the lights continued to burn bright, so Pompeo just put on a clown suit, put away his ethics and finagled a big role under the Big Top.

He had plenty of company in that transformation. It’s the wonder of the Trump era and one of the saddest, scariest themes of the impeachment inquiry so far: the teeming crowd of sellouts and suck-ups who eagerly traded principle for position and are in some cases doubling and tripling down on that transaction, to a point where it’s fair to ask if there was ever much principle to begin with.

[Get a more personal take on politics, newsmakers and more with Frank Bruni’s exclusive commentary every week. Sign up for his newsletter.]

I’m looking at you, Lindsey Graham, who somehow decided that Trump was the new John McCain, which is like deeming tripe the new tenderloin. Hell, I’m looking at most of the Republicans in the Senate. I’m not so much looking at Attorney General William Barr, odious as his behavior has been, because it’s clear in retrospect that he never made much of a pretense of rectitude, at least not in the context of Trump. He also wasn’t on record trashing Trump, not the way Pompeo and Graham and so many others who now dutifully echo him and gaze beatifically at him were. They must have broken necks from their moral whiplash. Barr’s neck supports that big head of his just fine.

Pompeo, who first signed on as Trump’s C.I.A. director and then flattered his way to secretary of state, is a paragon of these lackeys-come-lately, and he’s especially vivid proof of how easily and completely the lure of power can overwhelm any call to conscience.

He raised his hand for secretary of state after he’d seen his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, humiliated by Trump and fired by tweet. This was more than a year into Trump’s presidency, by which point the rationalizations of other supposedly serious conservatives who took top administration jobs no longer held water. It was clear that Trump wasn’t just a few artful nudges away from proper presidential bearing. He couldn’t be lifted up because he was too busy cruelly dragging everyone else down.

But Pompeo had a heady shot at a vaunted job that almost surely wasn’t going to come his way any other time. So he lunged for it, then demonstrated with his obsequiousness that doing good and doing right were never high on the agenda.

He wrote an op-ed article that essentially broke with his fellow Republicans to promote Trump’s view that Saudi Arabia’s butchery of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi shouldn’t give anyone pause. What are a few severed body parts among allies?

He recalled the ambassador to Ukraine just to please the president and his babbling Beelzebub, Rudy Giuliani. He listened mutely to that July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, decided to ignore what he heard and then claimed — until a few days ago — that he was utterly in the dark about any pressure on Ukraine to kneecap Joe Biden.

Had he spoken up or pushed back, he would have risked ending up on the outside, among the swelling Trump administration diaspora. He preferred the inside, with its glossier trappings and cushier thrones. He and his wife were diplomatic royalty, jetting around the world. He could bear the ache of a tongue full of tooth marks. Better to be a wretched part of history than no part at all.

The tale sounds familiar because it is. It’s the story of Faust, who sold his soul for renown, then endured the ugliness of that deal. It’s also the story of too many of Trump’s Republican enablers to count. Sure, many of them decided to prop and pretty him up, a man whose unfitness for the Oval Office was never really in doubt, out of tribal loyalty, a force far too potent in American politics today. But some rushed to him because that’s where the riches were, at least metaphorically. That’s where the fame was.

And they weren’t simply burying the hatchet with a politician who hadn’t been their preferred candidate or whose positions differed from theirs only slightly. They were dismantling the chain saw that they’d wielded in the face of a fraud whose conduct, along with some of his proposals, was antithetical to who they claimed to be.

Few people remember anymore, but just years before she became the dark empress of “alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway was a respected, reasonably mainstream, uncontroversial Republican pollster and strategist. Just months before she joined Team Trump, she correctly labeled him “vulgar,” said that he wasn’t presidential, called him a liar and demanded his tax returns. Then he offered her the lofty job of managing his presidential campaign — and all the television airtime that came with it — and she turned herself into a kowtowing cartoon. She’ll never be seen the same way again. Was the ride really worth it?

And what was Mick Mulvaney thinking when he agreed to be Trump’s third chief of staff, having witnessed the tortures of chiefs Nos. 1 and 2? Before Trump was elected, Mulvaney called him and Hillary Clinton “two of the most flawed human beings running for president in the history of the country,” and lest you think Trump was merely collateral damage in her disparagement, Mulvaney separately called Trump “a terrible human being.” Now he calls him boss. Amazing how revulsion crumbles when relevance is in the equation.

Graham was oddly and briefly honest about this in an interview with The Times’s Mark Leibovich, framing his kinship with Trump, whom he once called “the world’s biggest jackass,” as part of his career-long quest “to try to be relevant.” This quest now involves the insistence that Trump, rather than abusing the presidency to dig up imagined dirt on a political rival, is the victim of some setup.

You can hear Graham’s version as predictably loopy illogic from a senator up for re-election next year in the deep-red state of South Carolina, but it’s more than that. It’s the fee for being able to get the president on the phone, for being invited to play golf with him, for feeling the rush of access, for getting to crow about your perch at the epicenter of the action. He and Pompeo will have insider anecdotes to last the rest of their lives. They’ll need just as long to convince themselves that they didn’t overpay.

 

https://www.newsrust.com/2019/10/opinion-how-to-sell-your-soul-to-donald.html

Dems’ Fascism, AT LAST, Is Beginning to be EXPOSED!??!!

WHITHER IMPEACHMENT?

by  John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

More information is coming out about the “whistleblower”–read, Democratic Party activist–who triggered impeachment mania, and it does not put the Democrats in a positive light. The New York Times reports that the “whistleblower” has long been working with Congressional Democrats:

The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.

A “spokesman”? I assume that means a Schiff spokesman, although that isn’t clear.

The C.I.A. officer approached a House Intelligence Committee aide with his concerns about Mr. Trump only after he had had a colleague first convey them to the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that initial avenue for airing his allegations through the C.I.A. was unfolding, the officer then approached the House aide. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.

A striking admission!

The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and meet with an inspector general, with whom he could file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff.

So a great deal has been going on behind the scenes. The complaint was filed in August, so Schiff had known about it for a month and a half before it became public. This means that the leaders of the Democratic Party had lots of time to coordinate the rollout of the impeachment drama. Which, in turn, explains my observation that within hours after Nancy Pelosi announced the launching of an impeachment inquiry, I was getting emails from Democratic politicians with coordinated talking points, demanding that the president be impeached.

Many have noted that the “whistleblower’s” complaint reads like a brief written by a lawyer. It turns out that his is exactly what happened. Democratic House staffers lined the “whistleblower” up with a lawyer–another Democratic Party loyalist who has worked for Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, and donated to Joe Biden–who drafted or helped to draft the complaint. The whole story stinks.

Why are Schiff and the Democrats using the friendliest possible news outlet to make these facts public now? Because the “whistleblower” will testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and Republican members of the committee will bring out the history of his or her contacts with Democratic officials and staffers. The story isn’t pretty, and the Democrats are using time-honored messaging techniques–getting ahead of the news, putting out their version preemptively, and using a friendly news organ to give it a positive spin.

Still, the facts are bad, mostly because the “whistleblower” was wrong. The conversation that he or she described in the complaint never happened. Trump’s discussion with President Zelensky was, in my view, blameless. In any event, no sane person could consider it grounds for impeachment. The Democrats must be frustrated about this. That frustration came out in Schiff’s bizarre committee performance, where he pretended to be quoting from the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call, but in fact made the entire thing up, along the lines of the “whistleblower’s” complaint. If only it were real, Schiff seemed to be saying!

Schiff also, by the way, lied when he claimed that “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” No surprise there; the surprise would be if Schiff, for once, told the truth.

Meanwhile, President Trump went on offense today during a press appearance with the President of Finland. The White House press office is pushing out quotes from Trump’s comments on the impeachment fraud. This is just a sampling:

The whistleblower said terrible things about the call, but I then found out he was secondhand and third hand. In other words, he didn’t know what was on the call. No. These are bad people, these are dishonest people.

He wrote a vicious conversation. In other words, he either got it totally wrong, made it up or the person giving the information to the whistleblower was dishonest and this country has to find out who that person was, because that person’s a spy, in my opinion.

This whole thing revolves around a simple conversation and if you remember at the beginning, it was ‘quid pro quo.’ That’s all you heard about and I think he said seven or eight times ‘quid pro’ — in other words, ‘you’re going to do that or we’re not going to give you money. You’re gonna do this or we’re not’… I never said it.

That is true, of course. Trump teed off on Adam Schiff:

Not a thing wrong unless you heard the Adam Schiff version where he made up my conversation. He actually made it up. It should be criminal, it should be treasonous. He made it up, every word of it, made up, and read it to Congress as though I said it. And I’ll tell you what, he should be forced to resign from congress, Adam Schiff.

On the impeachment inquiry:

They’ve been trying to impeach me from the day I got elected. I’ve been going through this for three years. They’ve been trying to impeach me from the day I got elected. And you know what? They failed. And this is the easiest one of all, because this one is based on one conversation.

Trump is right about that: Pelosi has said that the impeachment inquiry will be limited to Ukraine, and there is nothing to Ukraine but a single phone call, which is easy to defend to anyone who has read the transcript. Maybe Pelosi will decide to broaden the inquiry.

Finally, on the president’s favorite target:

You have corrupt media in this country and it truly is the enemy of the people. You people should be ashamed of yourself. We have the most dishonest media that you could imagine and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

Again, Trump is right. More important, a majority of Americans agree with him.

Where do we go from here? Soon we will be awash in poll data. A few days ago I cited a survey that found a majority of respondents agreeing that the Ukraine allegations are “serious.” Of course, that was before most people knew they are also false.

At The Hill, Sharyl Attkisson dissects a CBS News poll that over-sampled Democrats, the results of which were equivocal. Another basic indicator is the Rasmussen survey, the only poll that continuously samples likely voters on a daily basis. Trump had been climbing in Rasmussen’s numbers before the impeachment frenzy broke, with an approval rating of 52%, implying a relatively clear path to re-election. The Democrats have indeed brought his numbers down, to 48/51, currently. But that is hardly a catastrophic drop during a period when the Democrats have had the news cycle mostly to themselves.

But the problem with these early polls is that very few people know the facts. Many, not surprisingly, assume that where there is a great deal of smoke, there likely is some fire. But the Democrats face an intractable problem that will only get worse with time: no rational person could find grounds for impeachment in Trump’s phone call with Zelensky.

While guest hosting for Dennis Prager yesterday, I likened the transcript of the call to the child’s game of “find the hidden picture”–where is the outline of a tiger, a baseball cap, etc., in a drawing? It would be fun to take a liberal through the transcript line by line and ask him to specify where, exactly, the impeachable offense occurs. Any possible answer to that question could only be laughable.

All of which is to say that I am beginning to come around to the view, not that the Democrats have overreached–that has been obvious from the beginning–but that there is a good possibility the voters will punish them for their fanaticism and their dishonesty in November 2020.

Whither Impeachment?

Why Are Pelosi Dems Going Foul and Fascist Against Our Gifted President?

THE BANK SHOT THEORY OF IMPEACHMENT [WITH COMMENT BY JOHN]

by Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

Steve Hayward has postulated four theories of impeachment. Paul Mirengoff has added his own (a fifth). Matt Continetti posits a more direct version of Hayward’s first theory. Why is Nancy Pelosi doing this?

Because she has resigned herself to the argument that impeaching Trump is the way for Democrats to win the presidency and Senate 13 months from now. Pelosi’s bank shot isn’t aimed at Trump’s conviction on the Hill. It’s aimed at his loss at the polls.

I think Matt’s column is the best I have read so far. It is posted at the Washington Free Beacon under the headline “Pelosi’s Impeachment Bank Shot.” It is straightforward, it is concise, and it is, in its own way, chilling.

Matt doesn’t cite evidence in support of his theory. I think Quint Forgey’s Politico article “Pelosi warns a second Trump term could inflict ‘irreparable harm’ on the nation” can usefully be read as adding it.

JOHN adds: This is basically what I wrote last week, e.g.:

[I]mpeachment is a political act, not a legal one, and the Democrats’ motives are entirely political. They think that impeaching President Trump will cast a pall of discredit over him and weaken his chances for re-election in 2020. I think that calculation is probably right.

 

The bank shot theory of impeachment [With comment by John]

Whoever Would Have Thought Our Dems Would Fall in Love With Leninthink!

LENINTHINK

by Scott Johnson  at PowerLine:

I recently drew the attention of Power Line readers to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s essay “How the great truth dawned.” It leads off the September issue of The New Criterion. Beginning and ending with Solzhenitsyn, it takes up the Gulag, Communism, mass murder, Russian literature, the turn to God and much more. It is a great essay.

The New Criterion invited Professor Morson back to deliver its inaugural Circle Lecture last week. It has posted an edited version of his lecture under the title “Leninthink.” The lecture includes a small autobiographical component along with a penetrating explanation of the essence of Lenin’s thought.

Professor Morson observes: “Leninist ways of thinking continue to spread, especially among Western radicals who have never read a word of Lenin. This essay is not just about Lenin, and not just Leninism, the official philosophy of the ussr, but also the very style of thought that Lenin pioneered.” He calls it Leninthink. Professor Morson concludes this invaluable lecture with an open question:

When Leninism is significant, there will always be a spectrum going from those who really understand, to those who just practice the appropriate responses, to those who are entirely innocent. The real questions are: Is there such a spectrum now, and how do we locate people on it? And if there is such a spectrum, what do we do about it?

“There is no space to address such questions here,” writes Professor Morson. “My point is that they need to be asked.” With this essay he gives us the tools of analysis and with the return of the hard left to a prominent place in our public life the questions have become urgent.

 

Leninthink