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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced U.S policy toward Israel’s “settlements” is reverting to one held by the Reagan administration; that is the right of Israelis to settle in the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria “is not, per se, inconsistent with international law.”

This is good news, not only for Israel and its right to national security and sovereignty, but after seven decades of enemy attempts to eradicate the Jewish state it says to the world, “time’s up.”

Israel’s enemies have had the most generous offers to live in peace, including the relinquishing of land captured by Israel after many aggressive and unprovoked wars and terrorist attacks. With ongoing propaganda statements by Israel’s enemies, the firing of rockets into civilian areas from Gaza and elsewhere, and ongoing sermons attempting to justify the violent overthrow of Israel and the murder of Jews, a reality check is long overdue.

Israel, under all of its prime ministers, has gone more than halfway trying to make peace. The responses have been as if no outreaches were ever made. Israel and the West have a right to question the sincerity of those Arab and Muslin nations when they continue to denounce and defame Israel and the Jewish people as illegitimate occupiers of “Palestinian” land. As long as such denial continues, there can be no opportunity for peace and Israel is well within its rights to defend itself against such ominous and ongoing verbal, theological and military threats.

It is and always has been wishful thinking to believe that people motivated by hate, a mandate from Allah to conduct what would amount to genocide against Jews and revisionist history as to the original owners of “occupied land,” would miraculously change their minds and agree to reverse decades of provocations and proof of their ultimate objective.

This has always been the danger when Westerners believe all humans are alike and given the right incentives can be persuaded to act in ways consistent with Western values and practices.

The next step is for the Israeli Knesset to validate the Trump administration’s new policy, which aligns with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultimate goal.

As reported in the Jerusalem Post, “Likud MK Sharren Haskel proposed the bill weeks ago, but decided to fast-track it in light of the change in U.S. policy. Haskel submitted a request to exempt her bill to annex the Jordan Valley from the mandatory six-week waiting period for any new legislation, so that it can go to a vote in the plenum next week.”

Columnist Caroline Glick wrote for the publication Israel Hayot, “In the interest of promoting peace, Pompeo instead told the truth. Not only are Israeli settlements not illegal. Pompeo noted that they are arguably more justified than civilian settlements built in other disputed territories.

"In his words, the administration’s determination ‘is based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank.’ That is, it is based on the historic ties of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria. These ties lay at the heart of Jewish history and religion.”

Indeed, they do. Now if the European Union, whose hatred of Israel goes back to the shameless days of Nazi anti-Semitism, and is now resurging, would only see the light and end its recently announced policy to require “goods from illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories to be labeled as such,” perhaps some real steps forward might occur.

As long as a religious motivation for wiping out Israel persists, there will be no peace, and no two-state solution. It is why the Trump administration’s position on the legality of settlements in Judea and Samaria is not only correct, but a necessary contribution to Israel’s security and any true peace, or at least stability.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66914?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

WRAPPING UP: Trump impeachment report could drop next week, though summoning additional witnesses isn’t being ruled out (AFP)

GOP RETORT: House Republicans drafting rebuttal to counter Democrats’ impeachment report (Washington Examiner)

Government & Politics

MUST COMPLY: Former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify to Congress, judge rules; administration will appeal (The New York Times)

TRUMP FINANCIALS SHIELDED: Supreme Court blocks House committee from immediately reviewing Trump’s financial records (The Washington Post)

SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES: Ex-Pentagon aide Guy Snodgrass evades answering if he’s anonymous author of anti-Trump book A Warning (Fox News)

OBSTRUCTIONISTS AT THE HELM: Three years into Trump administration, a quarter of embassy slots are vacant, leaving State Department bureaucrats in charge (The Daily Caller)

AN AFFRONT TO FREE SPEECH: Justice Samuel Alito pens fiery dissent after Supreme Court declines to hear dispute between climate professor Michael Mann and National Review (Fox News)

ON CROSS-EXAMINATION: Four big questions about the inspector general report on FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign (The Daily Signal)

Other Notables

MOVING ON: Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher to retire from active duty, will not take part in a review board (Fox News)

REVENUE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: California Department of Motor Vehicles makes $50 million a year selling drivers’ info to private companies (National Review)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Disaster looms for Democrats as Trump goes “bigly” with blacks (Roger L. Simon)

POLICY: In 2020, the world should pay more attention to the South China Sea (The Economist)

HUMOR: Local man who’s never given a dollar to charity mad Jeff Bezos only donated $98.5 million to homeless (Genesius Times)  

Yesterday it was Gordon Sondland’s turn in the impeachment sham spotlight. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, suggested there was a “potential quid pro quo” between the Trump administration and Ukraine. But his remarks also undercut the Democrats’ primary line of attack.

Sondland said the quid pro quo related to a White House meeting. As for any demands linked to U.S. military aid (lethal aid that scumbag/liar-nObama would never give), Sondland said Trump never expressed such a demand and that he merely guessed at it. 

Democrats have repeatedly insisted that President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate loose lips liar-Joe Biden in order to help his 2020 prospects. But Sondland was clear in his testimony that the request for investigations related to Ukraine’s efforts in the 2016 election to help scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and the natural-gas company Bursima, which paid Hunter Biden at least $50,000 a month.

Sondland also said that when he pressed the president about what he wanted from Ukraine’s leaders, President Trump replied, “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.” (The president triumphantly read that statement in the Rose Garden on his way to Texas yesterday afternoon.)

That doesn’t sound like bribery or extortion to me.

Speaking of bribery and extortion, watch this video of Rep. Elise Stefanik questioning Ambassador Kurt Volker and former National Security Council official Tim Morrison. Both men denied that there was ever any hint of bribery or extortion. 

In addition, Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, who also sat in on the July 25th call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, said he heard “nothing wrong or improper” on the call.

This is essentially boiling down to a disagreement over individual perceptions, opinions, and guesses — hardly the stuff of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

A big part of the impeachment sham is “The Resistance” attempting to take down the president before the 2020 election. It is so desperate to defeat him now because it doesn’t think any of its candidates can win the election. And it doesn’t want to give you, the American people, the chance to reelect the president.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi is trying to rally her caucus around the idea that Trump must be impeached now because it is “dangerous” to let the voters decide.

Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee announced yesterday that they intend to subpoena Hunter Biden, the mysterious whistleblower, and Alexandra Chalupa, a Democrat operative who was in Ukraine in 2016 digging up dirt on Donald Trump.

The Deep State on Display

As I suggested earlier, what’s on display in these hearings is not “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the offenses our Founding Fathers believed might justify impeachment, but the Deep State’s sense of entitlement.

Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch appeared to be in an existential crisis because the president no longer wanted her to serve as ambassador to Ukraine. Her feelings were hurt because she was fired.

But just to repeat, all ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president. And Barack scumbag/liar-nObama fired all of George W. Bush ambassadors before he was even inaugurated! 

Can you imagine the media’s reaction if Republican senators had called up Bush’s ambassadors to testify about how upset they were, how their feelings were hurt? They would have been laughed out of the room, and rightly so.

Tuesday, we heard from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who said it was his job to coordinate U.S. policy toward Ukraine. Vindman never met the president, and his superiors expressed concerns about his judgment and temperament.

During his testimony Tuesday, it seemed Vindman was upset that Trump wasn’t reading his memos. Nevertheless, Vindman did concede that the president ultimately sets policy and was within his rights to request Ukraine’s help with any investigations.

Again, what we’re witnessing in the House Intelligence Committee is the Deep State throwing a temper tantrum, upset that the bureaucratic establishment isn’t calling the shots anymore. 

Beijing’s Espionage

Several weeks ago, I told you about reports that the Trump administration was taking steps to stop China’s efforts to recruit scientists in the United States for its espionage efforts. A Senate report released this week reveals just how extensive Beijing’s efforts were.

The Chinese “Thousand Talents” program began in 2008. It recruited at least 2,600 scientists in the United States, most of them Chinese nationals, at government labs or federal-funded university research facilities. 

While these scientists were being paid by the U.S. government to conduct research on a wide range of issues, they were also being paid by the Chinese Communist Party to make sure their research found its way back to China. 

Incredibly, the FBI did not begin aggressively confronting the Chinese espionage until 2018! Presumably, scumbag-James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok were just too busy sniffing out Russians in the Trump campaign to notice all the Chinese spies crawling around our college campuses and government labs.

But I do remember being surprised when scumbag-Comey’s successor, FBI Director Christopher Wray, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at the beginning of this year:

The Chinese counterintelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of.

While the left and the media are focused on Russia and Ukraine, the Chinese are robbing us blind.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66917?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

But this task is made difficult when there are long-term “investigations” whose sole objective is nullifying the election of a duly elected president.

Just 20 minutes after Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2017, The Washington Post ran a prophetic headline declaring, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”

That headline foretold how, for 30 months, the Democrat Party (with the full support of its Leftmedia public relations conglomerates), would collude with deep-state operatives in the CIA and FBI, essentially saboteur holdovers from the scumbag/liar-nObama administration, to undermine the Trump administration. The Russian-collusion hoax amounted to, in effect, a coup d'état against the Trump administration.

From its outset, we waded through the Mueller investigation that, predictably, failed to provide any shred of evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. In fact, we learned unequivocally that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s corrupt campaign had actually colluded with Russia, but the damage had already been done: Democrats seized on the phony “Trump Colluded!” narrative to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, which has given them free rein to harass and obstruct the Trump administration via endless subpoenas and witch hunts.

(BTW, recall that Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuk donated more than $10 million to the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation between 2009 and 2013, including when Clinton was secretary of state. scumbag/liar-Hillary had deep ties to Ukraine.)

It may be too little too late, but the upcoming Justice Department reports from Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Durham will unveil some of this Demo/deep-state criminal conspiracies. In fact, IG Horowitz is scheduled to testify before the Republican-controlled Senate on December 11, just after the expected release of his report. Regarding the expected length of the Horowitz report, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), formerly a federal prosecutor, wryly observed, “It doesn’t take an inspector general 500 pages to say that everything was done correctly and properly.” But it is Durham’s as-yet unfinished report that ultimately matters, because only it can hold deep-state Democrats accountable via criminal referrals.

Will the mainstream media give either of these damning reports the attention they deserve? We’re not holding our breath.

So, just as your editorial team was ready to take a post-Mueller breather, enter rotten-to-the-core Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff (D-CA), who used his office to collude with another Demo deep-state CIA saboteur to once again set up President Trump — this time for impeachment.

It’s no coincidence that just days after the aforementioned WaPo inaugural headline that the lawyer representing this so-called whistleblower, Mark Zaid, declared on his social-media account, “#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.”

As an aside, the identity of this whistleblower is the worst-kept secret in Washington. And, judging from this bureaucrat’s elitist background and his strong ties to loose lips liar-Joe Biden, it’s easy to why scumbag/liar-Schiff, who weeks ago promised that the whistleblower would testify before his committee, is now lying to the American people that he doesn’t know his name.

Now that the Democrats’ Coup d'État 2.0 is underway, scumbag/liar-Schiff’s shift from Russia to Ukraine, in the interest of your time, we’ve launched a section in The Patriot Post titled “scumbag/liar-Schiff Show Roundup,” under which you’ll find only the most significant news on the impeachment charade.

While our scumbag/liar-Schiff Show coverage is a 30,000-foot overview, let’s take a Mach 3 ride up to 80,000 feet for a strategic survey of those overviews. What follows are few of the most important directional indicators in the Democrats’ impeachment ruse, Day 1,034.

Off we go.

First, if you want to better understand the whole charade, watch Rep. Devin Nunes’s opening statement, which you can view here. Nunes also lists some key questions for the whistleblower.

Second, as the title of this column suggests, scumbag/liar-Schiff has pivoted from “quid pro quo” to “extortion” to “perjury and bribery,” because most Demo constituents have no idea what “quid pro quo” means. And because — we kid you not — “bribery” polled best among their focus groups.

We assumed that scumbag/liar-Schiff would cast a wide impeachment net in an attempt to catch Trump on something beyond Ukraine — the same model Mueller used to catch Trump associates like Paul Manafort on charges completely unrelated to the Russia investigation. But with the two aforementioned Justice Department reports coming up, some Demos may get caught in their own net.

And it’s precisely this concern about getting caught in his own net that accounts for scumbag/liar-Schiff’s reversing his decision to allow the “whistleblower” to testify. Why? Because cross-examination by House Republicans would likely reveal Schiff’s lies about not having colluded with that witness.

As for scumbag/liar-Schiff’s shift from how he initially framed the impeachment inquiry, to “perjury,” that was the basis for scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton’s impeachment — and he was clearly and demonstrably guilty.

Who can forget scumbag/liar-Clinton’s contortions in his grand jury testimony — a masterpiece of verbal contortion in which he attempted to defend his lies by insisting, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

Got that?

Today’s Trump-hating Democrats have a far flimsier case, but they hope to use the perjury precedent to snag Trump on some twist of wording in the written responses he supplied during the Mueller investigation that they can pass off as lying to federal investigators — which would be a felony.

As for “bribery,” that of course is one of just two specific crimes mentioned in our Constitution (Article II, Section 4) as grounds for impeachment, i.e., “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

scumbag/liar-Schiff, whose relationship with the truth is, well, complicated, shamelessly invoked the framers in trying to make his case: “Bribery … as the founders understood bribery — it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader. It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you’re offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation’s interest.”

Horse pucky.

The only bribery connection relevant to this case was a Ukrainian company paying Hunter Biden $83,000 a month to influence his then-vice president father, who was at the time the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s point person on Ukraine. Recall that it was loose lips liar-Joe Biden himself who bragged about his BILLION dollar bribe of the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin before he could fully investigate Hunter Biden.

Until the Demos present solid evidence of perjury or bribery, here’s what they have: Among other things, in his phone call with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump wanted the Ukrainian government to announce that they were finally going to investigate the loose lips liar-Bidens.

I never thought I’d say this, but Trump should have tweeted this request and his reference to Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election instead of broaching these two subjects in the phone call with Zelensky.

That notwithstanding, the road to Trump’s impeachment has more potholes than Detroit.

But given the unfurling dragnet, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes, impeachment can be unpredictable, which is to say it can be perilous. And the Democrats have the votes in the House to make the Senate referral, despite a few Party defections.

That being said, a review of the Democrat/deep-state chronology reveals government corruption that is much more serious and consequential than the charges that led to Richard Nixon’s impeachment. This was, in effect, a government conspiracy to overthrow the Trump administration, a coup d'état. And Trump’s impeachment is a diversionary political tactic that has trivialized the constitutional impeachment authority of Congress.

And what is the outcome Demos are seeking in this charade? Trump will not be ejected from office, so their objective is to use the Senate impeachment vote exonerating Trump to defeat a few Republican senators in vulnerable states, retake control of the Senate in 2020, and if Trump survives the impeachment smear and is reelected, the Democrat-controlled Senate can block any further conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

However, Trump’s presidency should be decided at ballot box. 

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/66906?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

But this task is made difficult when there are long-term “investigations” whose sole objective is nullifying the election of a duly elected president.

Just 20 minutes after Donald Trump was sworn in on January 20, 2017, The Washington Post ran a prophetic headline declaring, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”

That headline foretold how, for 30 months, the Democrat Party (with the full support of its Leftmedia public relations conglomerates), would collude with deep-state operatives in the CIA and FBI, essentially saboteur holdovers from the scumbag/liar-nObama administration, to undermine the Trump administration. The Russian-collusion hoax amounted to, in effect, a coup d'état against the Trump administration.

From its outset, we waded through the Mueller investigation that, predictably, failed to provide any shred of evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. In fact, we learned unequivocally that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton’s corrupt campaign had actually colluded with Russia, but the damage had already been done: Democrats seized on the phony “Trump Colluded!” narrative to take control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, which has given them free rein to harass and obstruct the Trump administration via endless subpoenas and witch hunts.

(BTW, recall that Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuk donated more than $10 million to the scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation between 2009 and 2013, including when Clinton was secretary of state. scumbag/liar-Hillary had deep ties to Ukraine.)

It may be too little too late, but the upcoming Justice Department reports from Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Durham will unveil some of this Demo/deep-state criminal conspiracies. In fact, IG Horowitz is scheduled to testify before the Republican-controlled Senate on December 11, just after the expected release of his report. Regarding the expected length of the Horowitz report, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX), formerly a federal prosecutor, wryly observed, “It doesn’t take an inspector general 500 pages to say that everything was done correctly and properly.” But it is Durham’s as-yet unfinished report that ultimately matters, because only it can hold deep-state Democrats accountable via criminal referrals.

Will the mainstream media give either of these damning reports the attention they deserve? We’re not holding our breath.

So, just as your editorial team was ready to take a post-Mueller breather, enter rotten-to-the-core Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff (D-CA), who used his office to collude with another Demo deep-state CIA saboteur to once again set up President Trump — this time for impeachment.

It’s no coincidence that just days after the aforementioned WaPo inaugural headline that the lawyer representing this so-called whistleblower, Mark Zaid, declared on his social-media account, “#coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. #impeachment will follow ultimately.”

As an aside, the identity of this whistleblower is the worst-kept secret in Washington. And, judging from this bureaucrat’s elitist background and his strong ties to loose lips liar-Joe Biden, it’s easy to why scumbag/liar-Schiff, who weeks ago promised that the whistleblower would testify before his committee, is now lying to the American people that he doesn’t know his name.

Now that the Democrats’ Coup d'État 2.0 is underway, scumbag/liar-Schiff’s shift from Russia to Ukraine, in the interest of your time, we’ve launched a section in The Patriot Post titled “scumbag/liar-Schiff Show Roundup,” under which you’ll find only the most significant news on the impeachment charade.

While our scumbag/liar-Schiff Show coverage is a 30,000-foot overview, let’s take a Mach 3 ride up to 80,000 feet for a strategic survey of those overviews. What follows are few of the most important directional indicators in the Democrats’ impeachment ruse, Day 1,034.

Off we go.

First, if you want to better understand the whole charade, watch Rep. Devin Nunes’s opening statement, which you can view here. Nunes also lists some key questions for the whistleblower.

Second, as the title of this column suggests, scumbag/liar-Schiff has pivoted from “quid pro quo” to “extortion” to “perjury and bribery,” because most Demo constituents have no idea what “quid pro quo” means. And because — we kid you not — “bribery” polled best among their focus groups.

We assumed that scumbag/liar-Schiff would cast a wide impeachment net in an attempt to catch Trump on something beyond Ukraine — the same model Mueller used to catch Trump associates like Paul Manafort on charges completely unrelated to the Russia investigation. But with the two aforementioned Justice Department reports coming up, some Demos may get caught in their own net.

And it’s precisely this concern about getting caught in his own net that accounts for scumbag/liar-Schiff’s reversing his decision to allow the “whistleblower” to testify. Why? Because cross-examination by House Republicans would likely reveal Schiff’s lies about not having colluded with that witness.

As for scumbag/liar-Schiff’s shift from how he initially framed the impeachment inquiry, to “perjury,” that was the basis for scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton’s impeachment — and he was clearly and demonstrably guilty.

Who can forget scumbag/liar-Clinton’s contortions in his grand jury testimony — a masterpiece of verbal contortion in which he attempted to defend his lies by insisting, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the — if he — if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not — that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.”

Got that?

Today’s Trump-hating Democrats have a far flimsier case, but they hope to use the perjury precedent to snag Trump on some twist of wording in the written responses he supplied during the Mueller investigation that they can pass off as lying to federal investigators — which would be a felony.

As for “bribery,” that of course is one of just two specific crimes mentioned in our Constitution (Article II, Section 4) as grounds for impeachment, i.e., “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

scumbag/liar-Schiff, whose relationship with the truth is, well, complicated, shamelessly invoked the framers in trying to make his case: “Bribery … as the founders understood bribery — it was not as we understand it in law today. It was much broader. It connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you’re offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation’s interest.”

Horse pucky.

The only bribery connection relevant to this case was a Ukrainian company paying Hunter Biden $83,000 a month to influence his then-vice president father, who was at the time the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s point person on Ukraine. Recall that it was loose lips liar-Joe Biden himself who bragged about his BILLION dollar bribe of the Ukrainian government to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin before he could fully investigate Hunter Biden.

Until the Demos present solid evidence of perjury or bribery, here’s what they have: Among other things, in his phone call with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump wanted the Ukrainian government to announce that they were finally going to investigate the loose lips liar-Bidens.

I never thought I’d say this, but Trump should have tweeted this request and his reference to Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election instead of broaching these two subjects in the phone call with Zelensky.

That notwithstanding, the road to Trump’s impeachment has more potholes than Detroit.

But given the unfurling dragnet, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes, impeachment can be unpredictable, which is to say it can be perilous. And the Democrats have the votes in the House to make the Senate referral, despite a few Party defections.

That being said, a review of the Democrat/deep-state chronology reveals government corruption that is much more serious and consequential than the charges that led to Richard Nixon’s impeachment. This was, in effect, a government conspiracy to overthrow the Trump administration, a coup d'état. And Trump’s impeachment is a diversionary political tactic that has trivialized the constitutional impeachment authority of Congress.

And what is the outcome Demos are seeking in this charade? Trump will not be ejected from office, so their objective is to use the Senate impeachment vote exonerating Trump to defeat a few Republican senators in vulnerable states, retake control of the Senate in 2020, and if Trump survives the impeachment smear and is reelected, the Democrat-controlled Senate can block any further conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.

However, Trump’s presidency should be decided at ballot box.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/66906?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“scumbag-Cuomo is a proud opponent of fossil fuels,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board explains. “But now that the consequences of his policies are harming people in the real world — those who can’t afford to escape to Florida — the Governor is blaming others.”

Because the governor has blocked shale fracking upstate, as well as several pipelines that would deliver natural gas from Pennsylvania, upstate New Yorkers are paying some of the highest electric bills in the country — as in 40% more for electricity than the people of Pennsylvania, and 15% more than those in in New Jersey. Moreover, 25% of them still use heating oil, which costs about $1,000 more per year than natural gas — and emits 40% more CO2, the “greenhouse gas” that is the bane of those who believe mankind is the ultimate culprit on a planet headed for extinction, unless we kowtow to the will of our internationalist overlords.

Overlords whose own commitment to eco-purity is overshadowed by a deeper commitment to mansions, limousines, private jets.

Last March, as a result of the aforementioned pipeline constraint championed by the governor, New York utility Con Edison halted natural-gas connections north of New York City. Last May, another power provider, the British-owned National Grid, announced a moratorium on new gas hook-ups following a decision by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to nix a proposed pipeline known as the Northeast Supply Enhancement project.

National Grid insisted its gas capacity is maxed out, and without construction of the pipeline, it couldn’t guarantee uninterrupted service to existing customers. By contrast, scumbag-Cuomo, other elected officials, and eco-advocates insist the utility company is holding its customers hostage to its demands for approval of the pipeline, and that the company never seriously investigated alternative methods of delivering energy.

Last month, scumbag-Cuomo played both ends against the middle in an effort to escape the consequences of his policies. Earlier in the month, his administration ordered  National Grid to provide electricity to 1,157 customers who had been denied service because of the moratorium on new hookups. The Public Service Commission (PSC), which licenses and oversees public utility companies, warned National Grid that a failure to do so would precipitate “millions of dollars in penalties.”

National Grid pledged to deliver the gas, but once again explained the obvious problem of meeting demand when supply is artificially constrained. “We stand by our analysis and there are very real gas supply constraints in the northeast,” stated said National Grid spokeswoman Karen Young in an email.

A little less than two weeks later, in the midst of further attacks on National Grid, scumbag-Cuomo directed his animus at the PSC, despite the reality that the PSC is, as Politico put it, “a quasi-independent commission he effectively controls.” The governor wrote a letter to PSC Chairman John Rhodes in which he admitted that National Grid’s assertion of supply issues “was not a startling insight.” He excoriated Rhodes and his agency’s failure “to adequately anticipate, respond, or prevent this harm which was your regulatory duty.”

scumbag-Cuomo persisted. “I also want to know when and how we eliminate an abusive utility from the state to protect consumers,” he added. “To that end, I want the specific explanation of potential grounds for revocation of National Grid’s license and its liability for the damage that has already been incurred and future damages which will be incurred over the following 12 to 18 months as development is delayed for additional projects is needed.”

On Nov. 12, scumbag-Cuomo sent a letter to National Grid, giving the utility 14 days notice “of my intention to revoke National Grid’s certificate to operate its downstate gas franchise.” He also ordered the utility to explore “short-term options” he alleged the utility “either deliberately, negligently or incompetently refused to secure” to increase supply. They included transporting natural gas by tanker or truck, the proposal of other infrastructure, and the installation of additional unloading facilities, which he considered viable alternatives, courtesy of a company that he finds “grossly negligent” or one that “deliberately defrauded” the people of New York.

Yet as the Journal notes, several inconvenient realities intrude. “Building barges would require environmental permitting and is opposed by green groups in any case. National Grid already plans to deliver compressed natural gas by truck during the winter, but what if a snow storm closes roads?” The Journal’s editorial board further notes the irony of scumbag-Cuomo’s pipeline veto below New York Harbor that “could reduce annual CO2 emissions by the equivalent of 500,000 cars on the road,” as opposed to his embargo, which “is raising state emissions.”

“National Grid is in receipt of the letter from Governor scumbag-Cuomo and will review and respond accordingly within the timeframe outlined in the letter,” a company spokeswoman said in a statement. “We continue to work with all parties on these critical natural gas supply issues on behalf of all our customers in downstate New York.”

In the meantime, scumbag-Cuomo boasted about his leverage: “This would be one of the most lucrative franchises in the country.”

Perhaps, but one might think if the governor makes good on his promise to end National Grid’s franchise, getting another utility willing to be browbeaten by the governor, hamstrung by the PSC, and very likely sued by a number of the state’s eco-warriors for any attempt to provide power that doesn’t comport with the state’s agenda to be “carbon neutral” by 2050, might prove problematic.

It is worth remembering that New York also sued energy giant Exxon for alleged securities fraud related to global warming. “Additionally, more than a dozen ‘public nuisance’ lawsuits seek to hold energy companies responsible for billions of taxpayer dollars spent on acclimating to a warming world, or picking up the pieces following unprecedented hurricanes, floods and wildfires,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Rhode Island filed such a complaint last year, while a dozen city governments from California, Washington, Colorado, Maryland and New York have also sued.”

What they haven’t done? They haven’t given up using fossil fuels. Gas stations are still open, homes are still being heated and cooled, and the numerous products — many of which are critical to maintaining a modern society — are still being sold.

In other words, eco-talk is cheap. Moreover, what is happening in New York is a great harbinger in miniature of the devastating real-world consequences that the Democrat Party’s Green New Deal would engender.

Everyone wants a clean planet. But magic solutions, whereby reliance on fossil fuels can simply be mandated away by eco-warriors — many of whom will buy “carbon offsets” in a self-serving effort to preserve their own greenhouse gas-spewing lifestyles — and their overwhelming hypocrisy — aren’t part of the equation.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66921?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

There were 10 candidates on stage last night for round five (the seventh night) of Democrat presidential debates. In order of average poll standing, the ones who made the cut were loose lips liar-Joe Biden (27%), Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren (20.3%), commie-Bernie Sanders (18.8%), Pete Buttigieg (8.3%), lowlife-Kamala Harris (4.8%), Andrew Yang (3%), scumbag-Cory Booker (1.8%), Amy Klobuchar (1.8%), Tulsi Gabbard (1.3%), and Tom Steyer (1%). While the Democrat-controlled House was busy with its impeachment circus, these 10 Democrats duked it out for the right to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 after Democrats inevitably fail to remove him from office.

Here are a few of the, er, highlights:

“We cannot simply be consumed by Donald Trump,” commie-Bernie Sanders warned, “because if you are you’re going to lose the election.” Every Democrat struggled with that dilemma last night. Trump usually does take up most of the oxygen in the room, and Democrats struggled to explain why they had anything to offer besides hating Trump.

One of those plans is the disastrous Medicare for All, which commie-Sanders reminded everyone — again — was his idea, yelling, “I wrote the damn bill!” That’s a pretty tired line already, and it’s not a terribly popular policy.

On other policy, billionaire Tom Steyer promised to “declare a state of emergency on day one” of his presidency to tackle climate change. We’ve warned about this expansive view of executive power; don’t be surprised if the next Democrat president doesn’t, in fact, attempt it.

There was infighting. Pete Buttigieg and scumbag-Cory Booker attacked Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren over healthcare and her punitive wealth tax. lowlife-Kamala Harris went after Tulsi Gabbard for working with Republicans, including — gasp — Donald Trump. lowlife-Harris then immediately proceeded to tell viewers that she will bring America together. The cognitive dissonance was apparently lost on her.

Gabbard attacked … well, every Democrat. For example, she observed yet again that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton is the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” She added, “Our Democratic Party is unfortunately not the party that is of, by, and for the people.” Gabbard’s sole claim to fame has been the Democrat running against the Democrat Party. Her poll standing shows that strategy isn’t going to win her the party’s nomination, and this was likely her last debate.

lowlife-Harris bragged about her role in opposition the nominations of three men … who were confirmed by the Senate anyway. “I believe we have to have the ability to not only have a nominee who can go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump,” she said. “And I have taken on Jeff Sessions. I have taken on Bill Barr. I have taken on Brett Kavanaugh. I know I have the ability to do that.” And lose.

Predictably, there was plenty of identity politics to go around. Amy Klobuchar complained about how mistreated women are. Several candidates seem to assert that they are the best option to keep more than 90% of blacks voting Democrat. For example, scumbag-Cory Booker vacuously asserted, “I’ve had a lot of experience with black voters. … I’ve been one since I was 18.” Not to be outdone, loose lips liar-Biden insisted, “I’m part of that scumbag/liar-nObama coalition. I come out of a black community in terms of my support.”

Arguably the most bizarre claim of the night was this one boast from Klobuchar: “I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends.” How’s that for a 2020 slogan?

On a final note, Buttigieg actually uttered what might be the most interesting and compelling line of the night: “I know that from the perspective of Washington, what goes on in my city [South Bend, Indiana] might look small. But frankly, where we live, the infighting on Capitol Hill is what looks small.” That doesn’t mean the mediocre mayor of a town of 100,000 is qualified to be president of the United States, but it does serve as a reminder that what goes on inside the Beltway isn’t usually the most important thing on the average American’s mind. Nor should it be. Yet Democrats continue to run on and expand that very platform at every opportunity.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66924?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

There were 10 candidates on stage last night for round five (the seventh night) of Democrat presidential debates. In order of average poll standing, the ones who made the cut were loose lips liar-Joe Biden (27%), Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren (20.3%), commie-Bernie Sanders (18.8%), Pete Buttigieg (8.3%), lowlife-Kamala Harris (4.8%), Andrew Yang (3%), scumbag-Cory Booker (1.8%), Amy Klobuchar (1.8%), Tulsi Gabbard (1.3%), and Tom Steyer (1%). While the Democrat-controlled House was busy with its impeachment circus, these 10 Democrats duked it out for the right to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 after Democrats inevitably fail to remove him from office.

Here are a few of the, er, highlights:

“We cannot simply be consumed by Donald Trump,” commie-Bernie Sanders warned, “because if you are you’re going to lose the election.” Every Democrat struggled with that dilemma last night. Trump usually does take up most of the oxygen in the room, and Democrats struggled to explain why they had anything to offer besides hating Trump.

One of those plans is the disastrous Medicare for All, which commie-Sanders reminded everyone — again — was his idea, yelling, “I wrote the damn bill!” That’s a pretty tired line already, and it’s not a terribly popular policy.

On other policy, billionaire Tom Steyer promised to “declare a state of emergency on day one” of his presidency to tackle climate change. We’ve warned about this expansive view of executive power; don’t be surprised if the next Democrat president doesn’t, in fact, attempt it.

There was infighting. Pete Buttigieg and scumbag-Cory Booker attacked Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren over healthcare and her punitive wealth tax. lowlife-Kamala Harris went after Tulsi Gabbard for working with Republicans, including — gasp — Donald Trump. lowlife-Harris then immediately proceeded to tell viewers that she will bring America together. The cognitive dissonance was apparently lost on her.

Gabbard attacked … well, every Democrat. For example, she observed yet again that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton is the “personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.” She added, “Our Democratic Party is unfortunately not the party that is of, by, and for the people.” Gabbard’s sole claim to fame has been the Democrat running against the Democrat Party. Her poll standing shows that strategy isn’t going to win her the party’s nomination, and this was likely her last debate.

lowlife-Harris bragged about her role in opposition the nominations of three men … who were confirmed by the Senate anyway. “I believe we have to have the ability to not only have a nominee who can go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump,” she said. “And I have taken on Jeff Sessions. I have taken on Bill Barr. I have taken on Brett Kavanaugh. I know I have the ability to do that.” And lose.

Predictably, there was plenty of identity politics to go around. Amy Klobuchar complained about how mistreated women are. Several candidates seem to assert that they are the best option to keep more than 90% of blacks voting Democrat. For example, scumbag-Cory Booker vacuously asserted, “I’ve had a lot of experience with black voters. … I’ve been one since I was 18.” Not to be outdone, loose lips liar-Biden insisted, “I’m part of that scumbag/liar-nObama coalition. I come out of a black community in terms of my support.”

Arguably the most bizarre claim of the night was this one boast from Klobuchar: “I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends.” How’s that for a 2020 slogan?

On a final note, Buttigieg actually uttered what might be the most interesting and compelling line of the night: “I know that from the perspective of Washington, what goes on in my city [South Bend, Indiana] might look small. But frankly, where we live, the infighting on Capitol Hill is what looks small.” That doesn’t mean the mediocre mayor of a town of 100,000 is qualified to be president of the United States, but it does serve as a reminder that what goes on inside the Beltway isn’t usually the most important thing on the average American’s mind. Nor should it be. Yet Democrats continue to run on and expand that very platform at every opportunity.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66924?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

That is what sent scumbag/liar-Schiff spiking the football. However, following the break it became clear that Sondland’s “bombshell” was in fact a dud. “Did the president ever tell you personally about any preconditions for anything?” Republican counsel Stephen Castor asked Sondland. “No,” Sondland answered. Castor drilled down further, asking how Sondland knew Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were engaged in a quid pro quo. Sondland responded that he “assumed” it and that it was “no secret.”

Sondland claimed, “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky.” However, under further questioning, Sondland admitted that he was never directly told by anyone that Trump had tied conditions of investigating the loose lips liar-Bidens with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelelnsky’s desired visit with Trump; rather Sondland “presumed” this was the case. Sondland also believed that “in the absence of any credible explanation” for the military aid being withheld, it was due to the fact that Ukraine had not made any public announcement of an investigation into Burisma and Ukraine’s own 2016 election meddling.

Ohio Republican Jim Jordan blasted Sondland for omitting in his opening statement what he had previously testified to in his earlier closed-door hearing — that Trump had explicitly answered his question on Ukraine, “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I just want Zelensky to do the right thing and do what he ran on.”

Overall, it was another day where nothing new was learned. However, scumbag/liar-Schiff finally got what he wanted — a witness explicitly testifying that there was a “quid pro quo.” Expect the Democrats to be writing up articles of impeachment soon.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66925?mailing_id=4677&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4677&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Why are House Democrats stonewalling questions about the identity of the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower?

Start by taking them at their word. Perhaps they really are concerned about the whistleblower’s personal safety. They also know that, beyond a limited prohibition applying only to the inspector general of the intelligence community, no law bars anyone — in politics, media or anywhere else — from revealing the whistleblower’s identity. So they worry.

But there is more to the story. Should the whistleblower have connections to prominent Democrats, exposure of his identity could be embarrassing to the party. And perhaps most of all, reading through the impeachment inquiry depositions that have been released so far, it’s clear that cutting off questions that could possibly relate to the whistleblower has also allowed Democrats to shut off any look at how the Trump-Ukraine investigation started.

Who was involved? What actions did they take? Why did some government employees think President Trump’s July 25 call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky represented a lost opportunity, or poor judgment, while others thought it represented wrongdoing requiring congressional investigation?

Democrats do not want the public to know. And that is a position familiar to anyone who has watched Washington for the last two years: The Democrats’ determination to cut off questions about the origins of the Trump-Ukraine investigation is strikingly similar to their determination to cut off questions about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. In both cases, they fought hard to keep secret the origins of investigations that have shaken the nation, deeply divided the electorate, and affected the future of the presidency.

From their point of view, it makes sense. Democrats were rattled by Republican efforts to uncover the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. The Steele dossier, the use of spies and informants to target the Trump campaign, the Carter Page wiretap, the murky start to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — Democrats resisted GOP attempts to reveal them all.

But in 2017 and 2018 Republicans controlled the House. Then-Chairman Devin Nunes used the power of the Intelligence Committee to unearth key parts of the story. Nunes’ efforts eventually led to a Justice Department inspector general investigation whose results, expected in coming weeks, could further damage the Democratic Trump-Russia storyline. And then there is the ongoing criminal investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham.

But Democrats now control the House. As they lead the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry, current Intelligence Committee Chairman scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff and other Democrats are applying the lesson learned from Trump-Russia: Do not allow inquiry into the origins of the investigation.

The problem is, the whistleblower remains an important part of the story. His carefully crafted Aug. 12 complaint created the template that Democrats have followed in the impeachment campaign. In public hearings, Democrats have praised the whistleblower’s action for starting the whole process. And it’s an incredibly important process — what matter could be more weighty than possible removing the president of the United States? But the public does not get to learn how it began.

Behind the scenes, scumbag/liar-Schiff has exercised his authority to cut off lines of questioning that might reveal anything about the probe’s origin. The transcripts of depositions his committee has released are filled with example after example of scumbag/liar-Schiff, or lawyers acting at his direction, stopping questioning that might lead to how the investigation began. “We want to make sure that there is no effort to try to, by process of elimination, identify the whistleblower,” scumbag/liar-Schiff said in one recently released deposition.

Democrats learned several lessons from their unsuccessful attempt to bring down the president over the Trump-Russia affair. That investigation was entrusted to a special counsel who ultimately could not establish that scumbag/liar-Schiff’s and the Democrats’ key allegation, a conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, ever actually occurred. Now — lessons learned — House Democrats are doing the Trump-Ukraine investigation themselves, making it easier to reach the conclusion they want.

But Democrats appear committed to not allowing Republicans to open the Pandora’s box of how the investigation began. In the case of the Trump-Zelensky call, some officials heard the conversation as it happened and saw no wrongdoing. Others, or at least one other — National Security Council official Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman — saw wrongdoing and felt compelled to take action.

How did that happen, precisely? That is what scumbag/liar-Schiff does not want the nation to know.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/66883?mailing_id=4672&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4672&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Other than that, the story was accurate!

These stories initially made it past the vaunted fact-checkers solely because they were meant to vilify the Trump administration over immigration detentions. They fit the leftist narrative of Trump’s “xenophobic and racist” immigration policies. Of course, that was untenable because the data was collected during the scumbag/liar-nObama administration.

In fact, there are roughly 6,500 minors detained in the U.S. at the moment, and over the past year, the Trump administration has detained less than 70,000 kids at any point or duration. Again, 100,000 was the cumulative total for all of 2015. Hope ‘n’ Change and all that.

Moreover, says the Washington Examiner’s Becket Adams, “That ‘100,000’ figure should have never made it past the editing process, let alone launch a handful of headlines declaring the U.S. the leader in detained children. That figure requires not just shoddy math but also a total suspension of disbelief regarding what goes on in the darker, more tyrannical corners of the world. To say the U.S. is a world leader in detained minors would mean that America is being measured against all countries, including China, Russia, and North Korea. If you believe U.N. investigators have reliable figures from any of those countries, then, oh boy, have I got a bridge to sell you.” China is currently detaining as many as two million Uighurs. Think maybe some of them are children?

We’ve seen this movie before. Back in the summer 2018, when outrage over the Trump administration’s detention polices was at its peak, the media hyped pictures of kids in cages that were actually taken during scumbag/liar-nObama’s regime, all to make Trump look bad. Fake news often happens because of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66894?mailing_id=4672&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4672&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Like so many leftists, however, the Times disparages the tax law by insisting that it unfairly benefits only the wealthy. “FedEx reaped big savings, bringing its effective tax rate from 34 percent in fiscal year 2017 to less than zero in fiscal year 2018, meaning that, overall, the government technically owed it money,” the Times claims, adding, “But it did not increase investment in new equipment and other assets in the fiscal year that followed, as [FedEx CEO Frederic] Smith said businesses like his would.”

Smith called out the Times for its hypocrisy. He noted the rich irony of the Times blasting FedEx when the Times itself “paid zero federal income tax in 2017 on earnings of $111 million, and only $30 million in 2018 — 18% of their pretax book income.” The Times did not dispute it. Kettle meet pot.

Furthermore, Smith challenged the Times to a debate over taxes, writing, “I hereby challenge A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and the business section editor to a public debate in Washington, DC with me and the FedEx corporate vice president of tax. The focus of the debate should be federal tax policy and the relative societal benefits of business investments and the enormous intended benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners.”

Once again, leftists like the hacks at the Times display their fundamentally anti-American view that the government has more right to an individual’s or company’s hard-earned money than the earners do. As J. Frank Bullitt observes, “The greediest people on Earth are not those who earn wages, salaries, and profits and wish to keep what they made — it’s the lawmakers who want to forcibly take what belongs to others and use it for their own purposes.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66879?mailing_id=4672&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4672&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Much has been made in the hearing about the career servants from the State Department or DOD who don’t see eye-to-eye with President Donald Trump’s policies. The government does need experts in what goes on around the world — it’s too much for a president to take in, even with the cabinet. But that being said, these people may provide advice and information. They can recommend a course of action.

That is all fine and dandy — but the person who was elected to make the decisions is the president of the United States. As of January 20, 2017, that office is held by Donald Trump. Within the constraints of the checks and balances established by the Constitution, President Trump has a lot of room to maneuver on foreign policy. Whether it’s Syria, Yemen, North Korea, or even how to deal with NATO.

Now, we at The Patriot Post have debated these issues. We have debated Iran, Iraq, and the War on Terror. We have raised our concerns about whether we have followed the proper constitutional procedures for getting into conflicts. But these are issues for the president and Congress to resolve, NOT career bureaucrats or military personnel.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman forgot that. Vindman did receive the Purple Heart for being wounded in action, but based on the testimony he gave behind closed doors, he’s also crossed a huge line.

Put it this way, in 1951, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was relieved of his command over his dispute with President Harry S Truman regarding how to fight the Korean War. Since then, there have been other cases. General Stanley McCrystal was forced out over comments by his staff that went public in a magazine article. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, a four-star general, was removed as CENTCOM commander by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama over the perception that he was too tough on Iran.

Each of these officers had careers that were far more distinguished than Vindman’s. Yet we’re supposed to defer to Vindman in his dispute over policy when MacArthur, Mattis, and McCrystal all had military careers end? We don’t think so — and we think that the very important principles of civilian control over the military and the primacy of elected officials over bureaucrats are at risk.

We had many disagreements with the scumbag/liar-nObama administration over some very poor policy decisions. Withdrawing from Iraq; halting programs like the Zumwalt, F-22, and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle; the Iran nuclear deal; dismantling the enhanced interrogation program; and the “reset” with Russia were foolhardy, and that’s a mild description.

Foolhardy or not, though, scumbag/liar-nObama had the right to make those decisions by virtue of winning the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. There were many who rightly criticized his foreign policy, and most of them make Syria and the Ukraine look minor. But if there had been even a tenth of the effort to form a “Resistance” to undermine scumbag/liar-nObama’s policies as there has been under Trump, it’s a very safe bet that the same media outlets and pundits celebrating people like Vindman and their efforts to undermine the foreign policy pursued by President Trump would be singing a different tune.

Which brings us to one other point we have mentioned before. America can survive a president with character flaws or who pursues bad policies. What America cannot survive is a sense that double standards are becoming enshrined. Right now, one party has been able to get away with Operation Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting the Tea Party, Wisconsin’s “John Doe” abuses, Operation Choke Point, efforts to use RICO against those who opposed the Left’s environmental policies, Spygate, and scumbag-Andrew Cuomo’s attacks on the NRA.

Americans who want accountability on the part of those bureaucrats will run out of patience at some point. Better for the bureaucrats to be brought in line now, before things get to a dangerous point.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66891?mailing_id=4672&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4672&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Each witness testified that there was no bribery or quid pro quo present in the phone call, while at the same time both described Trump’s request of Zelensky to investigate the loose lips liar-Bidens’ connection to Burisma as “inappropriate.” On the issue of the Democrats’ new semantic choice of the word “bribery,” no evidence was present to substantiate such an allegation.

There was new information that was learned, however. Under Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan’s pointed questioning, it became clear that Vindman is the one who leaked to the whistleblower. As Jordan honed in on the individuals with whom Vindman admitted discussing the president’s phone call, only one individual, an intelligence officer, remained unnamed. In fact, Chairman scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff (D-CA) jumped in to interrupt Jordan’s questioning in order to forbid the individual’s name from being mentioned. scumbag/liar-Schiff’s action only further demonstrated that he has been lying about not knowing the identity of the whistleblower.

As for Vindman, it became clear that he allowed his own political views to direct his actions rather than follow the well-established chain of command. His testimony prompted a stinging response from Benghazi hero Mark Geist, who stated, “Vindman is a disgrace to all who have served. [In the] transcript of his previous closed door testimony he clearly admits to undermining the POTUS foreign policy and now he has chairman Schiff advising him on how to answer questions.” Navy Seal Robert O'Neill, the one who killed Osama bin Laden, seconded Geist, writing, “I agree. I wish the left wouldn’t use his uniform to make him a saint. He’s an operative with an agenda.”

Mark Alexander wonders whether Vindman “is part of the deep-state cabal” endeavoring to undermine Trump.

Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine, and Timothy Morrison, deputy assistant to the president and the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe and Russia, were the other two witnesses to testify. Their testimonies only further demonstrated the fact that Democrats continue to lack evidence to support their charge that Trump engaged in an impeachable offense — let alone anything even remotely criminal. Volker, however, did throw shade at Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, asserting, “President Trump had a deeply rooted, negative view of Ukraine rooted in the past. He was receiving other information from other individuals, including Mayor Giuliani, that was more negative, causing him to retain this negative view.” So, again, that’s a policy dispute, not fodder for impeachment.   ~The Patriot Post

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33YLnToDp5U&feature=emb_title

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66895?mailing_id=4672&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4672&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Protests began this summer after Beijing’s handpicked Hong Kong administrator Carrie Lam announced a law that would allow China to extradite Hong Kong residents to the Mainland for crimes committed in the autonomous region. The law was rescinded after widespread protests, but Beijing’s continued meddling in Hong Kong’s political and economic affairs has not quelled the protests.

Chinese President Xi Jinping recently stated that the Chinese government would do whatever it deems necessary to bring an end to the violence. Coming from a Chinese leader, this could mean anything, up to and including tanks rolling through the streets of Hong Kong. This not-so-veiled threat has not quelled the unrest.

Hong Kong now faces major disruptions due to the protests and the police response. Stores have shuttered and business has suffered. Rail, road, bridge, and tunnel routes have been blocked by protesters, making it difficult for people to travel to work. Universities have told students not to report for classes, fearing that campuses will become the target of violent clashes between protesters and the police.

When it assumed control over Hong Kong in 1997, China had pledged to adhere to a “one country, two systems” policy for 50 years. Of course, like most things the Chinese government says, that was lie. Beijing worked in subtle ways for years to slowly convert Hong Kong into a province that would answer solely to the communist government’s rule, but things went into overdrive after Xi became president in 2013. Since then, Beijing has chipped away at Hong Kong’s autonomy, inserting puppet officials in public office and tightening restrictions on commerce and free speech.

Beijing finds itself in a tough spot, though. Hong Kong is one of the world’s richest cities and a key economic bridge between Mainland China and the rest of the world. If China meddles too much in autonomous affairs, that could all go away, particularly if the United States, Great Britain, and other nations withdraw trading partnerships with the region.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed a bill requiring the secretary of state to review Hong Kong’s record on human rights and democracy annually, giving the president the power to strip the region of trade and customs privileges should it fail to pass muster. The Senate is expected to pass the bill soon, with President Donald Trump’s signature all but assured.

Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong wave American flags and call upon the support of the United States in their fight against the communists. It is evident after the horrors of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square that Beijing will stop at nothing to maintain power. The United States must respond with its full support for the brave men and women putting their lives on the line in Hong Kong.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/66866?mailing_id=4670&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4670&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body