MSM/Dems are certain for the umpteenth time that the end is near for Trump admin, this time with Michael Cohen guilty plea

Thomas Lifson  "Once again, Robert Mueller’s team is nailing a witness they want to use to incriminate President Trump in some nefarious scheme with a guilty plea for lying, and thereby discrediting any future testimony against the intended target. Well, at least it gives them a scalp to nail to the wall to justify the tens of millions of dollars already expended over the last two years in an effort to unseat a sitting president.
. . . 

"No less than lifelong Democrat and Hillary Clinton voter Alan Dershowitz is pointing out that rather than uncovering past crimes, Mueller’s modus operandi is to generate new crimes in the course of investigation:

The recent guilty plea of Michael Cohen of lying represents the dominant trend in Mueller's approach to prosecution. The vast majority of indictments and guilty pleas obtained against Americans by Mueller have not been for substantive crimes relating to his mandate: namely, to uncover crimes involving illegal contacts with Russia. They have involved indictments and guilty pleas either for lying, or for financial crimes by individuals unrelated to the Russia probe. If this remains true after the filing of the Mueller report, it would represent a significant failure on Mueller's part.

Mueller was appointed Special Counsel not to provoke individuals into committing new crimes, but rather to uncover past crimes specifically involving alleged illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian agents. No one doubted that Russia attempted to influence the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton. But Mueller's mandate was not to prosecute Russians or to point the finger at Vladimir Putin. His mandate was to uncover crimes committed by the Trump campaign with regard to Russia's attempts to influence the election.

"Meanwhile, actual evidence that the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with Russian intelligence agents (via cutouts Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS) to influence the election is apparently of no interest whatsoever to Mueller. It’s almost as if this entire effort is a cover-up…. "

How's this for collusion with Russia?

How Did Shane End Up?

Victor Davis Hanson

The gunslinging outsider saved the vulnerable farmers, but they didn’t love him for it.

. . . "Stevens’s movie gives us the familiar paradox of the ostracized outsider and savior in tragic literature and film (The Magnificent Seven, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider . . . ). Although they hesitate to say so, the farmers, if they are to survive, must rely on the very antithesis of their own idealistic commitment to law, order, the settled life, and the way of the future. Shane himself wants to reject gunslinging and stay civilized.

    "But to do so would mean that Shane’s newfound friends would be killed or driven off by the cattlemen, and their farms returned to the open range — they don’t have the skills to win a range war against cowboys and hired guns. Yet by picking up his gun and going outside the law to take down the evildoers, Shane himself — apparently a former Confederate, Yankee-hating hired gun — loses his recent claim on civilized life. 

    "Even the very farmers whom he will save are uncomfortable with the idea that Shane is willing to shoot someone to save them. Or as one self-righteous farmer puts it when Shane warns the sodbusters about the dangers of the cattlemen’s hired gun, Wilson, “I don’t want no part of gunslinging. Murder’s a better name.” Shane himself appears impatient with gradual change and seems to believe that he alone, not the distant law, can stop the murderous bullies. 

    "The movie ends in classic tragic-hero fashion: Shane rides into cattlemen’s town alone, wins his gunfights, is wounded, and finally rides off alone into the stormy Grand Tetons — content that he rid the farmers’ valley of the hired guns. The means he used to save the sodbusters are precisely those that must have no place in an agrarian world that, thanks to him, is now peaceful. Only a small boy, Joey, will yell out, “Shane! Come back!” 

...."Stevens leaves the exact fate of Shane is doubt — at least sort of. We do not know the true extent of his wounds. And where will he end up on the trail? As a gunfighter, he can never settle down in the turn-of-thecentury, civilizing West that no longer has a place for either him or his enemies. Or, as Shane puts it at the end of the movie to Joey, the son of his farming hosts: 

A man has to be what he is. . . . Can’t break the mold. There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks. There’s no going back.

    "In less melodramatic fashion, we see variances of the Shane paradox in all aspects of our lives, and we are now also witnessing something similar to it in the current Trump administration, especially in these confusing and unsettled times after the midterms." . . .

Paula Jones still ignored

Mueller has indicted and harassed Trump's family and friends in a manner that jeopardizes our Republic. If the people cannot elect a president of their choosing then why bother with elections.Clinton was more malleable. He could be bought off. President Trump cannot. That is why Official Washington hates him.

Don Surber   "Peggy Noonan today gave the Washington Establishment version of the Clinton impeachment. Her employer, the Wall Street Journal, summed it up: "It was a tragedy for Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and America. He could have averted it by apologizing."
"Oh I agree. Had Clinton apologized to the victim of his sexual harassment, we would never have known about it. But he refused. Still does. No one has.
"In a 1,300-word essay on this historic event, Noonan does not even name Clinton's victim because it is not Lewinsky.

"It is Paula Jones.

"Two decades after James Carville branded her trailer trash and the media followed (Jay Leno, how could you?) hers is now the name none dare speak.

"Noonan wrote, "I see it all now more as a tragedy than a scandal. I am more convinced than ever that Mr. Clinton made the epic political miscalculation of the 20th century’s latter half. He had two choices when news of the affair was uncovered: tell the truth and pay the price, or lie and hope to get away with it.
"What is the tragedy? Lewinsky wanted it. Clinton wanted it. The press didn't want to hear about it. Even when Lucianne Goldberg got the story out, Newsweek refused to publish it.
"They would have gotten away with it too if not for that meddling Matt Drudge.
"This story is a reminder that the Internet has freed the truth from the choke hold of corporate media." . . .