Saturday, November 9, 2019

Warren Plays To Nearly Empty Hall As Enthusiasm Wanes For Democratic Candidates

Joseph Curl


"To say there’s a lack of enthusiasm for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would be a grand understatement.
"And in South Carolina, apparently, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not so popular.
"The Massachusetts Democrat hawking the $52 trillion Medicare-for-all program spoke Friday evening at an “Environmental Justice” forum in the state. 
"From photos of the event, it looks like dozens came, maybe 100 tops. Shots from the back of the auditorium show a sea of empty seats."
. . . 
"Questions emerged immediately on how to pay for the program. Said Warren: “The $11 trillion in household insurance and out-of-pocket expenses projected under our current system goes right back into the pockets of America’s working people,” Warren writes. “And we make up the difference with targeted spending cuts, new taxes on giant corporations and the richest 1% of Americans, and by cracking down on tax evasion and fraud. Not one penny in middle-class tax increases.' ” . . .

Who actually pays these taxes Warren wants to charge?
That leaves two remaining groups that may bear the burden of the corporate tax: workers and shareholders.

Schiff Goes Full Stalin

Now it seems you don’t even need real crimes defined by statute. You can invent them, as Dershowitz charged Democrats with doing in an appearance with former U.S. Atty Guy Lewis on the November 7 edition of “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News.

Daniel John Sobieski  "As Rep. Adam Schiff’s “sentence first, trial later” show trial of President Donald J. Trump reaches a so-called public hearing phase, we find the weaver of fables dictating what witnesses the GOP will be permitted to call based on a set of three qualifying question they must answer in advance. These questions ask, essentially, if the witnesses believe President Trump is guilty of pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military aid. The GOP, it seems, will not be allowed to call witnesses who have testimony or evidence to the contrary, that there was no pressure and no quid pro quo. Nor will the GOP be allowed to present witnesses or evidence that confirms that the “dirt” is accurate, that the crime of threatening to withhold aid for a personal and political favor, a crime Biden has already confessed to, was committed by Biden, not Trump, on behalf of Biden’s son Hunter. Nor will the GOP be allowed to make the case that any Trump inquiry of the Ukrainians was mandated by a treaty signed by President Bill Clinton. This is, dare I use the term Democrats used during the impeachment of Bill Clinton for a real crime, a phrase used by Joe Biden himself,  a political lynching. As reported by the New York Post:
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on Thursday released a tightened set of guidelines over what potential witnesses can be called in the impeachment hearings, saying Republicans must justify their relevance according to a three-point criteria…
Full article here.

Is Pelosi finally sick of the terrible damage Schiff is doing to her party?
"This week, Rep. Jim Jordan was officially moved to the House Intelligence Committee, from Oversight, in order to be part of the coming public interrogations of witnesses summoned by committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
"Jordan is a pit bull, exactly what the committee needs among its Republicans.  It was in Pelosi's purview to refuse Jordan's appointment, and she did not.
"Hmmm.  Is it possible that even she is sick and tired of Schiff's mendacity, his secrecy, his shutout of Republican questions, his witness tampering?  He even advised "witnesses" not to answer questions from Republicans. 
"Most of these people being called to testify are not witnesses to anything relevant; they are just vague anti-Trumpers willing to prostitute themselves in one way or another before Schiff's cloak-and-dagger, repressive little show trial that, as many have commented, is reminiscent of the tactics of the former Soviet Union." . . .

Impeachment Drama Is Fraught with Traps for Sane Observers

Conrad Black  "It is painful to take issue with my blessed friend Peggy Noonan, and also painful to read both that she has effectively joined the disreputable impeachers of Donald Trump and has invoked a disingenuous argument in support of that position.
Noonan

"Writing in the Wall Street Journal on November 2, she asserted that it is clear President Trump used his office to ask the president of Ukraine to destroy Joe Biden politically and that he used U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine as an incentive, and the withholding of it as a threat to incite such activity. And she wrote that the only remaining argument is whether that constitutes an article of impeachment that warrants removal from office.
"In fact, there is no evidence that there was a direct connection between Ukraine investigating Biden and the assistance involved. There is no evidence that Trump was asking for more than the facts of Biden and his son’s exposure in Ukraine—if the Bidens’ conduct was unexceptionable that finding would have fully satisfied Trump’s request to know what happened. The entire United States should want to know if Biden’s son was influence-peddling in Ukraine, China, and Romania—as has been alleged—and it should equally wish to know if the charges are unfounded.
"Peggy Noonan posed the question in her Wall Street Journal column, “Can we prove through elicited testimony, that the president made clear to the leader of (Ukraine) . . . that the U.S. would release congressionally authorized foreign aid only if the foreign leader publicly committed to launch an investigation that would benefit the president in his 2020 reelection effort?” Her answer: “We all know that.”
Tony Branco, Townhall
"We don’t know anything of the kind. The absence of evidence that information on Biden and aid were connected and that the president was directing President Zelensky to produce a condemnation of Biden and his son is precisely why this spurious Star Chamber conducted by the most chronically dishonest person in American public life (Adam Schiff, though only by a nose over House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, both Democratic congressmen), should not even get to the Senate.
"If there were convincing evidence on these points, that Trump was saying to Zelensky: “If you want any assistance from this country, give me an investigation of the Bidens’ activity in your country that demonstrates their corruption,” then there would be an issue that justified being enacted as an article of impeachment. The question Peggy Noonan posed of whether this justified the president’s removal from office would then be the subject of a Senate trial." . . .

Right to Confrontation: The Latest Bogus Legal Argument over the ‘Whistleblower’

Andrew C. McCarthy
Impeachment is neither a criminal trial nor a legal process, so the president does not have the constitutional right to confront his accuser.
"As a constitutional lawyer, Rand Paul makes a good medical doctor.
"I used to have occasion to say that in the Patriot Act debates, when the senator was wowing us with his Fourth Amendment theories. With impeachment upon us, he’s now onto the Sixth Amendment — specifically, the confrontation clause. It guarantees the right of cross-examination: In all criminal trials, the accused must be given the right to confront the accusers. Senator Paul has deduced that this must mean that the identity of the so-called whistleblower has to be revealed, lest President Trump be denied his constitutional rights.
"Sigh.
"Mind you, Senator Paul has been making this argument while he himself shrinks from outing the man at issue — whom we are reliably told is a 33-year-old CIA official, formerly tasked to the White House National Security Council as a Ukraine expert. There is but a small circle of people who fit that description, so Paul, like many in Washington, has known the name, to near certainty, for some time.
"The senator makes the fair point that there is no legal barrier to the media’s naming the man. We can be confident that if a Democratic president had been accused of impeachable offenses, that would already have happened weeks ago (and, indeed, some right-leaning media sites have published the name)." . . .

Republicans Move Jim Jordan to Intel Committee ahead of Public Impeachment Hearings

National Review

"Republican leadership have assigned Rep. Jim Jordan to serve on the House Intelligence Committee during the open impeachment hearings against President Trump next week.
"The Ohio congressman is currently the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee and has attended most of the closed-door impeachment hearings so far, but as a member of the Intelligence Committee he will be able to question witnesses.
"Jordan will temporarily replace Rep. Rick Crawford, (R., Ark) on the intelligence panel. Crawford will return to the committee after the impeachment probe is concluded.
“ 'Jim Jordan has been on the front lines in the fight for fairness and truth. His addition will ensure more accountability and transparency in this sham process,” read a Friday statement from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy.
“ 'In Speaker Pelosi’s House, those responsibilities have fallen victim to partisan witch hunts,” the California Republican added. “The typically venerable Intelligence Committee has now become the partisan Impeachment Committee.”
"Jordan has fiercely defended Trump from his critics, especially the Democrats in charge of the impeachment probe, which he has called a “ridiculous charade.' ” . . .

Why America loves Donald Trump and why he should win in 2020

Bookworm Room
The AC/DC soundtrack only makes more powerful this great video contrasting the media’s blind Trump-hatred versus Trump’s virtues and pro-Americanism.
"Trump Thunderstruck from Mr Smith on Vimeo.(Hat tipAce of Spades — and you should go to this Ace of Spades link because today’s content is that good, including creative solutions for overhauling a broken legal system.)"

Vindman, Zaid, Schiff: Foul birds of an ugly feather

Rabbi Aryeh Spero  "Lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman was reportedly reprimanded by a superior when it became known that he repeatedly made fun of Americans; American culture; and, as he said, "Americans not being educated or worldly."  He did this in front of foreign diplomats, constantly.  No wonder he remained an Obama loyalist and has tried to undercut President Trump.  After all, Obama considered himself first and foremost "a citizen of the world" and did not find anything exceptional in America in and of itself.  President Trump loves America and is representative of a patriotic heartland mindset.  After all, Trump believes in America first. 
"Vindman is a trans-nationalist, a globalist, someone who feels superior to most Americans.  I've run into many people who think like Vindman.  Perhaps Vindman is an acquaintance of Mark Zaid, the Long Island lawyer who boasted to friends about how he would help create a coup to bring down President Trump.  Zaid, like Vindman, has no respect for the American people.  He would negate the will of the American people, the majority of electoral votes that were cast for Donald J. Trump, and, through a coup, remove the president elected by the people. 
"Perhaps Zaid knows Adam Schiff, who is trying to do the same thing.  Adam Schiff made impeachment rules that would deny the American people, as represented by their Republican congressmen, equal participation in these hearings.  Schiff wants to overturn the American people's election of Donald Trump.  All three men are working with Congressman Jerrold Nadler.
"Schiff, Zaid, and Vindman are three principals in the illegal coup unfolding in front of our very eyes.  Schiff, Zaid, and Vindman all have a condescending view of the American people, our laws, and our culture.  They are not heroes.  Woe to a country where men such as these attain power and influence." . . .

Baseball etiquette, and what we need to see more of in society

Richard Jack Rail  "George Will interestingly contends that the most valuable rules in baseball are unwritten and relate to manners.  Will's leading example is Alex Bregman carrying his bat down to first base on his home run trot during the World Series, Juan Soto copying that on his subsequent homer, and both managers apologizing after the game for the breaches of etiquette.  It's often called showboating or showing up the other team's pitcher." . . .
. . . "The best way to combat unintentional showboating is the way Bregman did it — honestly and straight on. It isn't so much that there's bad in the best of us and good in the worst of us, as that Manichean, black-and-white thinking has made it too easy to accuse and not easy enough to take responsibility and accept blame without career death.  Baseball has provided an outstanding example of the way out of this imbroglio.  It involves more straightforward honesty and manliness than we're accustomed to seeing in public figures — men being men, owning their mistakes forthrightly with sincere expressions of regret.  Because those traits shine through in the way Bregman handled it at the postgame interview, the incident can be put behind us, and we feel good where we might have felt disgruntled.
"Nicely done, Bregman and Hinch and Martínez."