Michael Cohen’s decision to plead guilty for making hush-money payments on Donald Trump’s behalf has raised the prospect that if dummycrats-Democrats take control of Congress, they might try to impeach the president over a matter completely unrelated to a perceived criminal conspiracy with Russia. Good luck with that: Even if dummycrats-Democrats win back both the House and Senate, there is zero chance a two-thirds majority of senators will convict President Trump for paying off an adult-film star.
               It would be the height of hypocrisy if dummycrats-Democrats tried to remove the president over allegations of illegality relating to extramarital affairs. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, congressional dummycrats-Democrats told us the private sexual conduct of a president does not matter, and that lying under oath to cover up a “consensual relationship” is not an impeachable offense. Then-Rep. Charles E. scumbag/clown-Schumer, D-N.Y., said President liar-Bill Clinton’s lies under oath about his sexual relationship with a White House intern might have been illegal, but declared the scandal “a tawdry but not impeachable affair” — right before heading off to a fundraiser with liar-Clinton. At the time, Rep. Nancy Pulosi, D-Calif., declared that the Starr investigation “vindicates President liar-Clinton in the conduct of his public life because we’re only left with this personal stuff” and that Founding Fathers “would say it was not for the investigation of a president’s personal life that we risked our life, our liberty, and our sacred honor.”
               But now that a Republican president is accused of covering up an affair, suddenly dummycrats-Democrats are channeling their inner Kenneth W. Starr.
               Today, dummycrats-Democrats are outraged and appalled when Trump attacks special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and calls his inquiry a “witch hunt.” But back then, then-Sen. Joe loose lips-Biden called the Starr investigation … wait for it … a “witch hunt.” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., declared Starr was “out of control” and accused him of having a “fixation of trying to topple the president of the United States.” Rahm Emanuel, then a White House senior adviser, accused Starr of engaging in “a partisan political pursuit of the president” while White House special counsel Lanny Davis (who is now representing Cohen) said Starr was a “desperate prosecutor who can’t make a case on Whitewater” and who should face “possible removal because of his conduct.”
               The fact is, dummycrats-Democrats were not alone in their concern that an investigation into Whitewater morphed into a perjury probe against liar-Clinton for lying about his relationship with Lewinsky. Many Republicans agreed that independent counsels had too much power. So in 1999, the GOP-controlled Congress, in its wisdom, let the independent counsel law expire. We were promised that investigators answerable to the Justice Department would be more focused on their original purpose.
               Well, it seems like we’re right back where we started. Federal prosecutors were supposed to be investigating Russian collusion. Instead, we have an inquiry into the Trump Organization’s finances and whether Trump’s payments to Stormy Daniels violated campaign-finance laws. Both might be worthy of scrutiny but at least under the precedent dummycrats-Democrats set during the 1990s, they are not grounds for impeachment.
               If  dummycrats-Democrats do try to impeach Trump over anything but a criminal conspiracy with Russia, they will regret it. The president was legitimately elected by Americans who knew about his lecherous past and supported him anyway. Indeed, Trump’s election was a direct result of the dummycrats- Democrats’ victory in the culture war of the 1990s. Republicans are now simply playing by the rules dummycrats-Democrats established. Millions of Americans absorbed the lesson that liar-Clinton and his dummycrats-Democratic enablers taught us — that a president’s “personal stuff,” as Pelosi put it, does not matter — and chose Trump. They will consider any effort to impeach him over it an effort to invalidate their votes. And the blow back will be tremendous. If you thought the “deplorables” were mad in 2016, just wait until 2020.
               This does not mean Trump is out of the woods legally. Once he leaves office, Trump may have to face consequences for anything illegal he might have done. When Clinton left office, he was forced to give up his Arkansas law license for five years and paid a $25,000 fine as part of a deal with the independent counsel to avoid a perjury prosecution — which resulted in him being disbarred from practicing law before the Supreme Court.
               If Mueller finds conclusive evidence that Trump entered into a criminal conspiracy with Russia, then by all means impeach away. But absent such evidence, the idea that Stormy Daniels is going to bring down Trump is a liberal fantasy. If dummycrats- Democrats are upset that they cannot remove Trump over this, well, sorry — they set the precedent.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/57967?mailing_id=3710&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3710&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             The move ensured that dummycrats-Democrat  obstruction would face reprisal and that important issues like confirming judicial nominees would be addressed. At the time, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) made this critical observation: “We still have 271 nominations to confirm.” Which made August the perfect time to push them through.
               That work is ongoing, but it’s already paid dividends. In fact, on Tuesday alone, the Senate sent seven district court nominees to their respective benches, with eight more nominees slated for confirmation in the coming week. That being said, the backlog remains large.
               As The Daily Signal recently reported, “Of the 179 current and known future federal court vacancies, 160 are on district and specialty courts, according to the Judicial Crisis Network, which monitors judicial appointments. … Trump has 80 pending district and specialty court nominees awaiting Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, and 26 more awaiting a Senate floor vote.” The Signal adds, “It would require votes on at least 10 judges per week for the rest of the year to confirm all of Trump’s nominees for the district and circuit courts, [The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas] Jipping said.”
               That’s a massive workload left, but just image how much bigger it would be if McConnell hadn’t canceled August recess. Yet there remains another opportunity to ease the backlog. The Signal notes “it’s possible the Senate would take action in a lame-duck session after the November midterm elections.” McConnell should take advantage of this timetable as well, since — this month’s achievements aside — dummycrats-Democrats will continue obstructing to the extent they can.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57962?mailing_id=3710&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3710&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             U.S. News & World Report reveals, “Half of all global deaths from gun violence occur in six countries in the Western Hemisphere, according to a new study that exposes trends in fatal shootings, particularly in the cause of death.” Topping the list in the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation study are Brazil, the United States, and Mexico.
               Yet one of the more interesting results of the study is that the U.S. actually ranks 30th in the rate of homicides with guns, which, given the prevalence of firearms in our nation, flies in the face of those claiming that more guns cause more violence. The trick to ranking the U.S. second overall is suicides. More on that below.
               First, let’s consider “gun violence,” a politically charged term devised by the media and leftist politicians to blame guns and avoid focusing on the real problem. As gun-rights advocates rightly say: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. The factor making up most of the homicides has nothing to do with flag-waving, Bible-thumping, country-music-loving gun owners in America’s flyover country (as the Left would have us believe); instead, the violence is mostly caused by gangs, drugs, and the breakdown of our culture and values in cities that have been run by dummycrats-Democrats for generations.
               Even Jenn Christensen at the virulently anti-gun CNN  admits, “If you were to look on a map, the highest numbers of gun-related homicides are concentrated in a belt that stretches from Mexico through the Caribbean to Brazil.” Citing the study, she acknowledges, “Many of these homicides involve drug cartels,” and asserts, “There’s a problem with organized crime and the illegal gun trade.”
               The Left perpetually ignores fatherless homes, roving gangs, drug trafficking, and other social and cultural maladies that lie at the root of the problem here at home and elsewhere in the West. Areas where guns are more prevalent do not experience a higher rate of gun crime or violence. America’s most violent places are the cities and states where guns are banned, whereas low homicide rates are reported in locations with fewer gun restrictions, such as Idaho, New Hampshire, and even deep-blue Vermont.
               Aaron Bandler writes at The Daily Wire that after Washington, DC, outlawed guns, “annual homicides rose from 188 in 1976 to 364 in 1988, and then increased even further to 454 in 1993.” Lest some attempt to deny that correlation, he adds, “The gunban was struck down by the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller, and homicides have steadily declined since then to 88 yearly murders in 2012.” Bandler adds that the Crime Research Prevention Center shows that “nearly 99 percent of mass public shootings have occurred in gun-free zones.”
               Of course, violence is high in these gun-free zones because criminals and other deranged individuals know that there’s virtually no chance that they’ll encounter resistance from an armed citizen. It’s no wonder that crime is lower where right-to-carry laws have been passed. Gun-rights defender John R. Lott Jr. writes, “Right-to-carry laws reduced both the frequency and the severity of mass public shootings; and to the extent to which mass shootings still occurred, they took place in those tiny areas in the states where permitted concealed handguns were not allowed.”
               Finally, suicides account for more than two-thirds of our nation’s “gun deaths.” Leftists prefer to lump these self-inflicted deaths with homicides to add shock value to their statistics, but suicide is far different than gang-related murder, even if the same tool is used. And while the U.S. may be second in suicides with guns, it’s 48th in suicides overall. Furthermore, firearms were used in just over half of American suicides — which means people bent on ending their lives will find another way.
               In any case, it’s pretty clear that we don’t have an epidemic of “gun violence” in this country, despite the Leftmedia’s incessant desire to repeat the association. In fact, a range of statistics show that more guns are actually helping to keep Americans safe from the real problems that plague our society. The recent spate of knife attacks in Great Britain is proof that those who seek to inflict harm upon innocent people will find the means. Just as American leftists refuse to address the root causes of violence, London’s mayor is now calling for knife control. That’ll work about as well as gun control in DC.
               As long as the innocent are prevented by the government from protecting themselves, their families, their businesses, and their communities, those who seek to terrorize will have the upper hand. Countries in the Americas should address the real root causes of violence rather than pushing for failed solutions that empower violent people while keeping responsible citizens from defending themselves.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57981?mailing_id=3710&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3710&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             President Donald Trump commented, “Report just out: ‘China hacked  liar-Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.’ Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!”
               The following day, an FBI official pushed back on the report, stating, “The FBI has not found any evidence the servers were compromised.” Notice that the FBI did not outright deny the report as false. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) noticed, asserting, “It’s not surprising that the FBI ‘has not found any evidence’ regarding liar-Clinton’s servers being breached. Like I stated to former FBI agent Peter Strzok in the House Judiciary hearing, it was the scumbag/liar-nObama-appointed Intelligence Community Inspector General that discovered the breach. It was not the FBI that found it, so their statement was technically correct, but very deceptive in its omission.”
               It has long been suspected and assumed that liar-Clinton’s home-brew server was compromised. And with China having successfully breached the Office of Personnel Management back in 2015, hacking liar-Clinton’s server would have been a cakewalk. In fact, liar-Clinton may have suspected as much. In one of the emails collected from her “private” server,  liar-Clinton wrote, “Even weirder — I just checked and I do have your state but not your gmail — so how did that happen. Must be the Chinese!”
               Once again this story appears to reveal one of the oldest tactics from the liar-Clinton political playbook: attacking their opponents for engaging in unethical behaviors they themselves are guilty of committing.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57983?mailing_id=3710&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3710&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             DeSantis wasn’t even remotely racist in what he actually said. His true criticism was about Gillum’s socialism. He called Gillum “much liberal for Florida” and an “articulate spokesman for … far-left views.” Then he added, “We’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor [Rick] Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state. That’s not going to work.”
               Cue the sirens, hysteria, and a suddenly crowded fainting couch.
               Except as PowerLine’s Paul Mirengoff explains, “‘Monkey it up' means to play carelessly with something. DeSantis clearly was saying that voters shouldn’t mess with the success Florida is experiencing under Gov. Scott, a conservative, by electing a candidate with a socialist agenda. His meaning could not have been plainer.”
               But when the Left’s narrative for decades has been that Republicans are bigoted racists, some folks begin to hear everything Republicans say through that distorted filter. But this is far more malicious than passively misunderstanding — it’s deliberate and deceitful slander meant to keep blacks voting dummycrats-Democrat. Talk about divisive rhetoric.
               The silver lining is that this strategy sometimes backfires, as in the election of President Donald Trump, who endorsed DeSantis in the primary.
               Nevertheless, Gillum’s strategy is to double down on tying DeSantis to Trump. The Republican candidate “is going to join Donald Trump in the swamp,” Gillum declared. While the Leftmedia speaks of “dog whistles,” Gillum went further, saying, “In the handbook of Donald Trump, they no longer do whistle calls — they’re now using full bullhorns.”
               Maybe Gillum knows only dogs hear dog whistles, so he’s gotta change up the desperate metaphor. In any case, dummycrats-Democrats’ increasing predisposition for socialism and divisive race-baiting should have Florida voters running the other direction.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57957?mailing_id=3708&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3708&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

For the first time, I understand how the Reformation happened.
             Reading the stunning letter from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano — in which the former papal nuncio says he had personally informed Pope Francis five years ago about the serious accusations against then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — is both heartbreaking and enraging. If Vigano is right, it means the corruption in the Catholic Church has reached not just the highest levels of Roman Curia but the papacy itself.
               Last week, Vigano effectively nailed his 95 theses to the door of St. Peter’s. The archbishop call out not only the Holy Father but also more than a dozen cardinals he says covered up McCarrick’s alleged abuses, including three successive Vatican secretaries of state — and calls for Pope Francis to step down. It is virtually without precedent for a Vatican insider to make such serious charges against a sitting pontiff and members of the Curia — much less to call for the pope’s resignation. Vigano’s allegations need to be investigated, the documents he cites need to be released, and the pope needs to answer these charges.
               Vigano said he twice wrote to his superiors in Rome, in 2006 and 2008, explaining that McCarrick had, among other things, requested “depraved acts of seminarians and priests,” had derided “a young seminarian who tried to resist” and engaged in the “sacrilegious celebration of the Eucharist.” He got no response. Eventually, he learned that Pope Benedict XVI had ordered that McCarrick be “forbidden to celebrate [Mass] in public, to participate in public meetings, to give lectures, [or] to travel.” Vigano said he personally discussed the sanctions in his first meeting with McCarrick at the Nunciature.
               After Benedict resigned, Vigano was granted a private audience with the new pope on June 23, 2013, during which Francis asked him about McCarrick. Vigano wrote that he told Francis, “Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation for Bishops there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance.” Francis soon lifted Benedict’s sanctions, Vigano said, and made McCarrick a trusted adviser. “He knew from at least June 23, 2013 that McCarrick was a serial predator,” Vigano wrote. “It was only when he was forced by the report of the abuse of a minor … that he took action.”
               Vigano also wrote that he discussed the sanctions on McCarrick several times with McCarrick’s successor as archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who Vigano said “lies shamelessly” in denying knowing about them. In one instance, Vigano wrote that he saw an announcement in an archdiocesan publication inviting young men interested in the priesthood to a meeting with McCarrick — a man who is alleged to have sexually abused seminarians! “I immediately phoned Cardinal Wuerl, who expressed his surprise to me, telling me that he knew nothing about that announcement and that he would cancel it,” Vigano wrote. “If, as he now continues to state, he knew nothing of the abuses committed by McCarrick and the measures taken by Pope Benedict, how can his answer be explained?” On Monday, a spokesman confirmed that Wuerl did cancel the event “at the nuncio’s request.”
               Vigano’s accusations are serious and credible. He has everything to lose by making them public. He cited specific letters and documents that he and others sent to Rome - which he said are readily available in the files of the Holy See and the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington. The Vatican must now release them. And his account was backed on Monday by Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, the former first counsellor at the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, who said Vigano “tells the whole truth. I am a witness.” Most importantly, in his letter the archbishop declared that he is “ready to reaffirm them under oath by calling on God as my witness” - which means he is calling for his own eternal damnation if he is lying. Is Pope Francis willing to do the same?
               Vigano is courageously sacrificing his own episcopal career to expose the truth. Now is the time for others with inside knowledge to step forward and do the same. Catholic cardinals wear a red hat to symbolize their willingness to shed the blood of martyrdom for Christ and His church. Sadly, few seem willing to risk their own position, much less their lives.
               On his flight back from Ireland, Pope Francis responded to Vigano’s testimony by declaring, “I will not say a single word on this.” Sorry, that’s not good enough. Five hundred years ago, faithful Catholics waited too long to root out corruption in the Vatican — with disastrous consequences. We can’t make the same mistake again.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/57915?mailing_id=3705&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3705&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Don’t take our word for it. After the U.S. Education Department released figures this spring indicating that “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting” in the 2015-2016 school year, National Public Radio spent three months painstakingly trying to corroborate that report. NPR “reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened.” In fact, NPR confirmed just 11 incidents, while 161 schools reported no such incident. Many school leaders “had little idea of how shootings got recorded for their schools.”
               Granted, 240 schools represent just 0.2% of the nation’s 96,000 schools, and the incorrect data was due to simple human error in self-reporting by those schools, but such reporting is consequential when it comes to public policy. NRP explains:
               This confusion comes at a time when the need for clear data on schoolviolence has never been more pressing. Students around the country are heading back to school  this month under a cloud of fear stemming from the most recent mass shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Santa Fe, Texas.
               At least 53 new school safety laws were passed in states in 2018. Districts are spending millions of dollars to “harden” schools with new security measures and equipment. A blue-ribbon federal school safety commission led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is holding public events around the country, including one in Alabama Tuesday. Children are spending class time on active-shooter drills and their parents are buying bulletproof backpacks.
               Back in February, we noted another study debunking the idea of an epidemic of school shootings. In fact, there are one-quarter as many school-shooting deaths now as in the early 1990s.
               None of this is to minimize a single death at the hands of either a willful murderer or an accidental trigger-puller. Nor is it a reason to ignore behavioral red flags as officials did in Parkland or to ease up on school security. But when students are being used as pawns in a larger and strategic push for gun control, these numbers matter. And the Education Department’s numbers were roughly triple the already wildly exaggerated statistics of the anti-Second Amendment group Every town for Gun Safety. Kudos to NPR for doing real journalism to correct the record.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57926?mailing_id=3705&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3705&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Over the weekend, the  dummycrats-Democratic National Committee voted to modify its charter to account for “all” of the genders. There are, of course, only two, but hey, this is the modern dummycrats-Democrat Party. As National Review reports, the charter will now “define gender as being determined by self-identification and [will] include a classification for gender non-binary members.” Furthermore, “The previous charter required that all committees be divided evenly between men and women but, under the newly adopted system, committees ‘shall be as equally divided as practicable between men and women (determined by gender self-identification) meaning that the variance between men and women in the group cannot exceed one (1).’”
               Sounds like fuzzy math to us. “At the root of our diverse party is a commitment to inclusion and opportunity,”   dummycrats- DNC Chair Tom Perez crowed in a statement. “By adopting this amendment, the dummycrats-Democratic National Committee is ensuring every dummycrats-Democrat feels welcome and embraced for who they are. This action reaffirms our solidarity with the LGBTQ community.”
               This “choose your own identity” fantasy has its limits, however. Ask Rachel Dolezal, the white women who insists she’s black.
               Meanwhile, the dummycrats-DNC reduced the power of superdelegates in its presidential primaries after the liar-Hillary Clinton/commie-Bernie Sanders debacle revealed that the “ dummycrats-Democratic” Party wasn’t all that democratic.
               Perhaps one answer to why these changes are happening now is to follow the money. dummycrats-DNC fundraising is down from previous cycles, and it’s raised about half the total for the Republican National Committee. Loyal donors are telling dummycrats-DNC politicos to buzz off “until they get their act together.” Some rank-and-filedummycrats-Democrats are just walking away. Amidst the trend of more dummycrats- Democrats becoming Trump-deranged, gender-fluid, full-on socialists, it’s no wonder.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57899?mailing_id=3703&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3703&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             As always with trade, the answer is “yes and no.” There are good aspects and bad ones.
               Points reached in the agreement include changes to automobile manufacturing. Each car produced would have to be 75% sourced in North America, up from 62.5%, to avoid tariffs when being transported across national borders. Also, 40-45% of each car produced must be manufactured by workers making $16 per hour or more to avoid tariffs. That helps American manufacturers, but it will raise prices for consumers. Additional updates to rules on intellectual property and labor are also part of the agreement.
               The deal still must be approved by Congress and the Mexican government. Trump is eager to make this happen before the midterms, and Peña Nieto is likewise hoping to have his government approve the measure before he leaves office on Dec. 1. At this point, there don’t appear to be any insurmountable political hurdles to prevent the trade agreement from becoming a reality, but never underestimate the machinations of American dummycrats-Democrats or Mexican Socialists like incoming President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador. And in any case, time constraints likely mean it isn’t going to happen this year.
               It’s important to note that this is a strictly bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. What will become of Canada, the third member of NAFTA, is yet to be determined, though clearly Trump means to use this as leverage with our northern neighbors. Trump told reporters that negotiations with Canada would start back up immediately, and Peña Nieto voiced his hope that the U.S. and Canada would be able to come to an agreement. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, said separately Monday that her country was encouraged by the optimism shown by the U.S.-Mexico agreement. “Progress between Mexico and the United States is a necessary requirement for any renewed NAFTA agreement.”
               Trump, of course, says he’s prepared to scrap NAFTA  altogether, insisting that the very name has bad connotations. He has repeatedly referred to NAFTA as a historically bad trade deal  for the U.S. — a “disaster” — and thus he would rather this deal be referred to simply as the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. Moreover, Trump has signaled his comfort with cementing two separate bilateral deals with Mexico and Canada, though those two nations still hold out hope that NAFTA can be renegotiated and salvaged.
               Trump’s strategy is simple: The U.S.-Mexico deal puts pressure on Canada, which was sidelined while Trump pursued a divide-and-conquer approach to negotiating better deals with America’s biggest trading partners.
               Markets reacted favorably to the news, with major U.S.-based auto manufacturers seeing bumps in their stock price and equity markets across North America also getting a boost.
               A few months ago, dummycrats-Democrats, business leaders, and international trade groups cried that Trump was going to wreck the world economy and crash America’s economic rebound with his tariffs and his America-first approach to new trade deals. None of this has come to pass. In fact, little by little, the very nations that claimed they were prepared to engage in a trade war with the United States have started changing their tune.
               Earlier this summer, the EU came to an agreement with the U.S. that will allow us to export more produce and liquid natural gas to Europe. The door was also left open to work toward a zero-tariff trade deal between the U.S. and EU.
               The new deal with Mexico and the positive signs for an agreement between the U.S. and Canada suggest that Trump will continue scoring points on trade. The more victories he lines up, the stronger will be his bargaining position with tougher nations like China.
               As we have said frequently, never underestimate the art of the deal.

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/57903?mailing_id=3703&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3703&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body