February 9-10, 2020
Feb 09 05:47 Is Buttigieg corrupt? Or is he elitist? Or is Buttigieg both? Feb 09 08:05 Impeachment & the Declaration of Independence fit together Feb 09 13:15 Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' lightning rod Feb 09 17:31 Vindman brothers reassigned Feb 10 02:58 Ember's meltdown moment Feb 10 03:53 Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff defend Lt. Col. Vindman Feb 10 09:39 The Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton & Donald Trump impeachments Feb 10 11:12 The Democrats' next conspiracy
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Is Buttigieg corrupt? Or is he elitist? Or is Buttigieg both?
This article questions whether Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign is legitimate. The article opens by saying "Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's campaign contributed money to the technological firm whose voting app contributed to reporting delays in the Iowa caucuses. Federal Election Commission filings reveal that Buttigieg's campaign gave tens of thousands of dollars to Shadow on July 23, 2019, for 'software rights and subscriptions.'"
It continues, saying "Shadow, a technology company that has an investor in the Democratic digital nonprofit organization ACRONYM, was also paid $60,000 over two installments by the Iowa Democratic Party to build an app to help make caucus voting easier and faster for precinct volunteers. Filings also reveal that the Nevada Democratic Party paid Shadow $58,000 for 'website development.'"
In this video, Krystal Ball goes on a 5-minute rant, highlighting Buttigieg's 'connections':
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That's the personification of political corruption. When the DNC chairman jumps when Pete calls, that's worrisome. Watch the entire video. Saying that they aren't impressed with Buttigieg is understatement. The Buttigieg that Ball and Enjeti talk about is into class warfare and elitism.
The Buttigieg that interfered with the satellite caucuses isn't a candidate into diversity. That's a candidate who won't hesitate to do whatever it takes (legal or illegal) to win. Bernie won't criticize Buttigieg about that corruption. He's too much of a wimp to do that. If Bloomberg doesn't challenge him, he'll be the Democrats' nominee.
If that happens, President Trump will expose Buttigieg as a corrupt, elitist Democrat. That won't play well in the battleground states of the Heartland. Obama won Indiana in 2008 by getting a huge turnout of African-Americans in Gary, IN. That won't happen with Buttigieg.
Posted Sunday, February 9, 2020 5:47 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 09-Feb-20 09:03 AM
The democrats, progressives, socialists, communists, whatever the hell they are calling themselves today, are the most corrupt bunch of people outside of actual organized crime there is and the greatest thing is they try and screw their own party members. Then there's the diversity they claim to have. A bunch of mostly old, all white, all rich people debating who is going to make the rest of the people bow at their feet is not diversity.
Comment 2 by eric z at 11-Feb-20 11:48 AM
Chad - AOC? Warren? Ro Kahana?
Gary and Chad - Do you agree with putting the "Deep State Operative" label on the Mayor? McKinsey and all that, military intelligence?
Some have suggested it, but I would like to see a sincere effort to pin that stuff down definitively, one way or the other. Now that the Mayor is challenging to wedge out Biden to where Trump's and Rudy's efforts might have been for naught, the question of who he really is becomes relevant.
We did not do that well with the last Rhodes Scholar put into the White House, did we? Is that a foundation for analysis? Rhodes Scholars entering career politics with little wealth to start with, but ambitious, does the pattern promise much good to it?
Impeachment & the Declaration of Independence fit together
President Trump shouldn't have been impeached for multiple reasons. First, the record brought over was the thinnest in impeachment history. That isn't just my opinion, though I certainly agree with that statement. That's Jonathan Turley's opinion , too.
During his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Prof. Turley said "If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided."
At a time when the nation is doing well on multiple fronts, especially the economic front, what's required is a stabilizing agent. The Constitution is one of those stabilizing agents. We'd be wise to include the Declaration of Independence, too. There's a specific part of the Declaration that I'm thinking about that fits into the impeachment discussion.
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The second paragraph of the Declaration starts by saying this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The colonists talk about the usurpation of rights granted to them by "Nature's God." They passionately believed that the British monarchy wasn't acting in good faith. In fact, the Declaration listed their items of contention later in the document. (We'll return to that later.) The next part of this paragraph is important. Here's the key part:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ;
Adam Schiff's Democrats should've thought this through before injuring our republic. Were rights being violated? Were laws being broken? What was at the heart of this impeachment?
What was at the heart of this impeachment were 2 things. Democrats hate President Trump and Democrats disagreed with President Trump's negotiating methods. Fighting a war to end slavery is a just cause. Impeaching a president because you don't like him or you disagree with his handling of things is destabilizing. That's dangerous and it shouldn't be tolerated .
Impeachment should be reserved for Nixonian things. Nixon told the FBI that they didn't need warrants to wiretap antiwar protesters, a violation of the protesters' Fourth Amendment rights. Nixon told members of his staff to lie to investigators, clearly a case of obstruction of justice. These are things that rise to the level of treason or bribery.
Compared to the things that Nixon did, the things included in the Schiff-Democrat impeachment of President Trump are trivial. To emphasize the Declaration of Independence's cautionary note, we shouldn't impeach a president "for light and transient causes."
Posted Sunday, February 9, 2020 8:05 AM
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Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' lightning rod
Whenever Democrats need to distract attention away from their vulnerable members for their questionable votes, people can count on Nancy Pelosi providing that distraction. When Pelosi ripped up her copy of President Trump's SOTU Address, she did it to distract attention away from her vulnerable freshmen.
Her freshmen promised to fix health care. Freshman Democrats failed that test miserably. Democrat freshmen promised to lower prescription drug prices. Democrats failed on that, too. Democrat freshmen told voters that they didn't Pelosi for Speaker. Some of those freshmen voted for Pelosi to be Speaker. Freshmen Democrats that didn't vote for Pelosi for Speaker voted to initiate the impeachment inquiry. These freshmen Democrats voted for both articles of impeachment, too.
Now, Pelosi has written a dishonest op-ed that the Washington Post has published. In the op-ed, Pelosi wrote "President Trump abused the power of his office to pressure a foreign power to help him cheat in an American election." It's impossible to know whether President Trump pressured "a foreign power to help him cheat in an American election" since that election is 9+ months away. Is Pelosi clairvoyant? Or is she just lying again? I suspect it's the latter.
Further, it's virtually impossible for presidents to abuse their power in setting foreign policy. Since we've proven that President Trump didn't "pressure a foreign power to help him cheat in an American election", then the only matter on the table is setting US foreign policy. The first sentence in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution emphatically states that "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." This is important to note because of something Jeff Dunetz wrote in this post explaining why Lt. Col. Vindman was reassigned out of the NSC. (Make sure you read Jeff's entire article. It's the type of information you won't get from CNN, MSDNC or other MSM outlets.) Here's Lt. Col. Vindman's opening statement to the HPSCI:
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Jeff's article highlights a briefing Sen. Ron Johnson had in Ukraine. Here's what Jeff quoted from Johnson's letter:
I had just finished making the point that supporting Ukraine was essential because it was ground zero in our geopolitical competition with Russia. I was surprised when Vindman responded to my point. He stated that it was the position of the NSC that our relationship with Ukraine should be kept separate from our geopolitical competition with Russia. My blunt response was, "How in the world is that even possible? "
It's clear that Lt. Col. Vindman thought that the NSC, not President Trump, was in charge of setting foreign policy. It's apparent because of testimony he gave to the House Intel Committee:
Vindman testified that an "alternative narrative" pushed by the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was "inconsistent with the consensus views of the" relevant federal agencies and was "undermining the consensus policy."
Like Pelosi, Lt. Col. Vindman thinks that President Trump doesn't set US foreign policy. The Constitution that Pelosi intermittently expresses praise for disagrees. The Lt. Col. Vindmans of the world serve the president to implement his foreign policy. But I digress.
I admit that I paid a ton of attention to Pelosi's stunt. I don't regret it, though, because there's plenty of time to punish freshmen Democrats for voting "to initiate the impeachment inquiry and voting for both articles of impeachment." We have 9+ months left to make the case for firing Pelosi's Democrats. Let's make the most of that time.
Posted Sunday, February 9, 2020 1:15 PM
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Vindman brothers reassigned
In this post , Jeff Dunetz laid out why Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was reassigned to the Pentagon after President Trump was acquitted. John Kirby didn't explain what happened to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman in Kirby's CNN op-ed . This isn't surprising. Jeff is a man of integrity. Kirby hangs around with Deep Staters.
Kirby wrote "[Lt. Col.] Vindman did his duty by not only testifying about the infamous July 25, 2019 White House phone call, in which Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Trump's leading 2020 rival Joe Biden, Burisma (the Ukrainian energy company that had hired Hunter Biden), and the 2016 election--while $391 million in congressionally approved military aid was being withheld."
President Trump didn't press President Zelenskiy "to investigate" the Bidens. The transcript , not Lt. Col. Vindman, tells what actually happened:
The other thing, there's a lot of talk about Biden's son that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it : It sounds horrible to me.
That's an awfully casual pressure. That's at the top of pg. 4 so it's hardly a priority for President Trump. Watch Rep. John Ratcliffe's cross-examination of Lt. Col. Vindman:
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That drives a stake through the heart of Lt. Col. Vindman's testimony. At minimum, it casts doubt on Lt. Col. Vindman's testimony. Let's compare that with what's quoted in Jeff's article:
In November 2019 Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter to Reps Jordan (R-OH) and Nunes (R-CA) at Jordan's request which among other things raised questions about Lt. Col. Vindman's credibility, and accused him of being an insubordinate leaker and confirmed the President's reasons for the 55-day delay in Ukraine aid were the same as the President's public statements.
Johnson went to Ukraine as part of the U.S. delegation to President Volodymyr Zelensky's inauguration on May 20. Vindman was part of the delegation also. In the letter, the Senator suggested that Lt. Col. Vindman may be among the government bureaucrats who aim to push back on Trump's policies "by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office."
Lt. Col. Vindman gives new meaning to the cliche "going above and beyond the call of duty":
[In Sen. Johnson's letter, he wrote that Lt. Col. Vindman] "stated that it was the position of the NSC that our relationship with Ukraine should be kept separate from our geopolitical competition with Russia. My blunt response was, "How in the world is that even possible?"
Lt. Col. Vindman continued, saying this:
Vindman testified that an "alternative narrative" pushed by the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was "inconsistent with the consensus views of the" relevant federal agencies and was "undermining the consensus policy."
According to the Constitution, there's only one consensus view that matters -- the President's. As I wrote in this post , " The first sentence in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution emphatically states that 'The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.'"
In another diatribe, RAdm. Kirby wrote "No, it is not the Vindman brothers who have been disgraced by this pettiness. It is President Trump. It is not they who will be remembered for putting personal needs above national interests. The President will. And it is not they who will in years to come be forced to qualify or explain or argue the case surrounding their behavior. In a final and outrageous act of vengefulness, White House security officials escorted the Vindmans off the grounds."
That's BS. The Vindman twins will be celebrated by CNN as having stood up to Orange Man Bad but it's Lt. Col. Vindman who a) went around the chain of command, b) leaked information to the press and c) tried undermining US foreign policy because the President didn't do what Lt. Col. Vindman told him to do. That sounds more like a mutiny than doing the honorable thing. Perhaps CNN has a different definition for doing the honorable thing.
Posted Sunday, February 9, 2020 5:31 PM
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Ember's meltdown moment
Sunday on At Issue, Ember Reichgott-Junge had a meltdown moment when discussing President Trump's impeachment acquittal. In a mini-rant, Reichgott-Junge said "My biggest concern about what is happening now after the State of the Union is that we have Trump unleashed and now, he is emboldened to do whatever he wants to do for the next 9 months -- start investigations that have no basis, hold aid back in the districts of the legislators that worked to impeach him. I mean this man has no mores and no sense of justice at all. So my concern is what we're going to see in the future."
Wow. That's as paranoid of a rant as I've seen in years. Let's put what she said under the microscope, starting with "start investigations that have no basis." That's what the Obama administration, through Jim Comey's FBI and the FISC, did against Carter Page. That's what Lois Lerner did against TEA Party organizations when the IRS delayed tax-exempt status applications.
Next, where did Reichgott-Junge come up with the thought of withholding aid to districts represented by impeachment managers? Is this another paranoid fantasy of Ms. Reichgott-Junge's?
Finally, Ms. Reichgott-Junge admits that these are her concerns. She didn't say where her concerns came from. Were they the product of an over-active imagination? I can't eliminate that as a possibility? Perhaps, it's something that Democrats have done in the past? That's definitely possible.
What's worst about Ms. Reichgott-Junge's rant was that Tom Hauser didn't interrupt her. He sat there like a potted plant. He didn't say a thing. Mr. Truth Test sat there like he didn't disagree with her. That's a worse performance than Ms. Reichgott-Junge's paranoid rantings.
I expect delusional rantings from DFL politicians. Prior to this winter, I'd expected more from Hauser. This winter, though, Hauser's bias-proofing has slipped.
Posted Monday, February 10, 2020 2:58 AM
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Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff defend Lt. Col. Vindman
Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi have accused President Trump of retaliating against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Lt. Col. Vindman testified against President Trump during Schiff's public impeachment hearings.
What Pelosi and Schiff intentionally omit is the fact that Lt. Col. Vindman sidestepped his chain of command by talking to the NSC Counsel rather than talking to his boss, "Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's senior director for European affairs." Pelosi and Schiff intentionally omitted the fact that Jennifer Williams, who also listened in on the call, didn't find anything inappropriate with the call that alarmed Lt. Col. Vindman. Check out John Ratcliffe's cross-examination of Ms. Williams and Lt. Col. Vindman:
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Predictably, there's much more to this story than what Pelosi and Schiff are claiming. This isn't retaliation. This is President Trump reassigning a disgruntled employee with a habit of ignoring his chain of command reporting responsibilities. For all his military heroics, Lt. Col. Vindman had a habit of insubordination and mutiny. That's hardly a model employee.
During the hearings in November, his boss, Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's senior director for European affairs, said that multiple other officials had cast doubt on Vindman's judgment. Morrison said those colleagues had expressed concerns about whether Vindman had leaked information and confirmed that Vindman didn't keep him "in the loop at all times." Vindman also didn't immediately speak to Morrison about his concerns about the July 25 phone call, Morrison said during the hearings.
Lt. Col. Vindman was thought to have been one of the NSC's leakers. A person who's insubordinate and who leaks hasn't earned the right to serve on the NSC. Follow this link for more on the truth on Lt. Col. Vindman.
Posted Monday, February 10, 2020 3:53 AM
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The Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton & Donald Trump impeachments
It's difficult to take this article seriously. The article starts by saying "On February 6, 2020, the Senate acquitted Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, bringing an end to a process the president has been hurtling toward since the moment of his inauguration." After that, the writer turns into an emotional mess, writing "He and the Constitution are irrevocably at odds; one way or another, the country was always going to end up here. But 'here' doesn't just mean a world in which Trump has been impeached, of course; it's also a world in which a majority of the Senate voted to bless his conduct.
Next, the trainwreck:
The two other presidents who faced impeachment in living memory both delivered natural ends to the drama. Richard Nixon's helicopter lifted off the White House lawn after he resigned the presidency. Bill Clinton, the day of his acquittal in the Senate, stood in the Rose Garden and apologized for his conduct.
Richard Nixon resigned because he'd committed multiple felonies, including suborning perjury, obstructing justice and telling the FBI that they didn't need a warrant to wiretap antiwar protesters' phone calls. When Nixon resigned, few people thought he wasn't guilty as hell. I had just graduated from high school and I knew he was guilty as hell.
When Bill Clinton apologized, he had a lot to apologize for. The Independent Counsel's office issued this statement :
In the independent counsel's judgment, there was sufficient evidence to prosecute President Clinton for violating federal criminal laws within this office's jurisdiction. Nonetheless, the independent counsel concluded, consistent with the Principles of Federal Prosecution, that further proceedings against President Clinton for his conduct should not be initiated.
In other words, Clinton committed multiple felonies. The difference between Nixon and Clinton is that Clinton's felonies were considered low crimes.
The Schiff-Pelosi-Nadler-Democrat impeachment articles didn't charge President Trump with committing a crime. That, by itself, differentiates President Trump from Nixon and Clinton. Further, the investigators in Nixon and Clinton accumulated tons of proof that supported the investigators' charges. The Mueller Report was the precursor to the Schiff Report. It didn't find proof that President Trump committed any crimes.
So much for verifying the statement "at odds; one way or another, the country was always going to end up here." We shouldn't have wound up here. That isn't what the evidence said. Period.
That's before looking at the process. The Schiff-Pelosi-Nadler-Democrat process was scandalous. In Nixon and Clinton, their legal teams were allowed to bring in witnesses, submit evidence and cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses. President Trump wasn't afforded any of those rights. For the first 71 days of the official 78-day investigation, President Trump's legal team weren't allowed in the room.
Comparing President Trump's impeachment with Nixon's and Clinton's impeachments is like comparing Stalin with the Pope. It's a travesty. The MSM (and Pelosi) insist that President Trump is impeached forever. If that's true, then there's a stench and a stain forever on the Democrats' investigation. It's the most partisan investigation in presidential history. The Democrats ignored multiple pieces of exculpatory evidence, starting with the transcript of the July 25 phone call.
Simply put, President Trump deserved a victory lap like this:
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This November, it isn't just important to remember the Democrats' corrupt investigation. It's essential to remember the Democrats' corrupt investigation.
Posted Monday, February 10, 2020 9:39 AM
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The Democrats' next conspiracy
When Devin Nunes talks about the Democrats' next hoax, I listen. This morning, Nunes appeared on Fox & Friends to talk about the Democrats' next impeachment hoax . Nunes has gotten vilified virtually daily on US intelligence-gathering. Time after time, Nunes has gotten things right. Most recently, the Horowitz Report vindicated Nunes, showing the Nunes Memo to be virtually flawless.
It's noteworthy that the same Horowitz Report literally verified the Schiff Memo to be 100% wrong. In other words, Adam Schiff's report was totally worthless while Devin Nunes' Memo was almost 100% right. During his interview, Nunes talked about Pelosi's press conference where she said "We will continue to do our oversight to protect and defend the Constitution : but those cases still exist, if there are others that we see as an opportunity we'll make a judgment at that time."
Nunes replied, saying "I'd say that old habits die hard. They've done nothing else for their entire time that they've controlled Congress and don't forget the Democrats on the intelligence committee started this right after Trump was elected so that's going over three years."
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The only way to end these investigations is by firing the Democrat majority in the House this November. Schiff, Pelosi and Nadler have proven that their interest is investigating President Trump. These Democrats have shown that they aren't interested in fixing immigration, lowering prescription drug prices, establishing opportunity scholarships for students trapped in failing schools or cutting middle class taxes.
House Democrats want to raise taxes, raise the minimum wage and kill the fossil fuel industry. What's frustrating is that these Democrats sat while America cheered for Iain Lanphier and his 100-year-old great-grandfather Charles McGee. McGee is one of the last living Tuskegee Airmen. Democrats sat when President Trump announced that Janiyah Davis was receiving an opportunity scholarship so she could escape her failing school.
What type of people sit on their hands when great news like that is announced? How cold-hearted do you have to be to react like that? America, remember these things when you enter the voting booth:
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Nunes continued criticizing Pelosi's Democrats, saying "They may concoct a new hoax, I'm not sure that the American people will believe it, but you can be sure of one thing, the mainstream media will support whatever the narrative is that they want to build." It's time to stop this hate-filled, years-long diatribe. It's time to send an emphatic message to Democrats that We The People come first, not the nutjob conspiracy theorist Democrats.
Democrats haven't done a thing. They didn't make people more prosperous. They criticized President Trump when he killed the 2 biggest terrorists in the world. Democrats even tried telling us that President Trump's killing of Gen. Soleimani would trigger a further destabilization of the Middle East. It's time to get these idiots out of office. It's time to put competent people in charge. That starts with giving Rep. Nunes the gavel back to the HPSCI. That starts with handing the Speaker's gavel to Kevin McCarthy.
Posted Monday, February 10, 2020 11:12 AM
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