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The Los Angeles Times reports, “As people living in tents, RVs and makeshift shelters become a fact of life in neighborhoods far and wide, homelessness is now an all-consuming issue in Los Angeles County, with 95% of voters calling it a serious or very serious problem,” according to a new poll conducted for the Times and the Los Angeles Business Council Institute.

“The courts have upheld the rights of homeless people in recent years,” adds the Times, “saying that cities cannot ban sleeping in public unless they provide enough beds for those who want them.” Along these lines, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in December 2019 not to take up a lower court’s ruling protecting the homeless from prosecution for sleeping outside.

Of course, we can neither round up and imprison the homeless nor simply ignore them. And the crisis has gotten the attention of President Trump, who threatened the city with federal intervention.

But those bold steps were stopped by Congress in December, which voted to restrict how the administration could spend federal funds designed to alleviate conditions in Los Angeles. Nonetheless, as The Washington Post reports, “Administration officials now hope to work closely with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D). They are considering whether to send hundreds of federal workers and additional money for services if a deal can be reached.”

When it comes to addressing homelessness, money appears to be the primary consideration. Phillip Molnar writes at The San Diego Union-Tribune, “San Diego, and other California cities, have spent millions of tax dollars on the homeless issue, including shelters, storage facilities and numerous programs.”

Money and new legislation clearly aren’t enough, especially when so-called leaders enact bad laws that make matters worse.

Thus, to the north in Washington state, Republicans are taking a more comprehensive approach to homelessness that goes beyond merely throwing money at the problem. As Seattle’s Ashley Archibald writes, “A group of Senate Republicans held a press conference Jan. 21 to articulate their vision of how to end homelessness in Washington, which would rely on existing funding and could strip the progressive stronghold of Seattle and King County of some authority to implement its own existing policies.”

Archibald adds, “One such proposal, the SHELTER — Serious Homelessness Engagement Leads to Effective Results — Act from Sen. Phil Fortunato (R-Auburn), would require counties of a certain size to have at least one large shelter facility, guarded by police, that would also have counseling and job services at hand.”

On the other side of the country, New York City houses the homeless in shelters and, for nearly 50 years, in commercial hotel rooms. But Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to end that practice by 2023 as part of the city’s Turning the Tide on Homelessness plan, a costly initiative that seeks to address the complexities of the problem.

These innovative ideas won’t end homelessness in America, but focusing on the root causes is a good start — and a far better alternative to allowing homeless tent villages to spring up on city streets, bringing lawlessness, violence, drug use, and disease.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68256?mailing_id=4835&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4835&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Democrats impeached President Donald Trump for putting his own political fortunes ahead of the national interest in dealing with Ukraine. But it’s loose lips liar-Joe Biden who should be in the hot seat for that.

Trump is criticized for a July 25 phone call, when he asked the president of Ukraine for help investigating what loose lips liar-Joe Biden did, as vice president, to get a prosecutor there fired. loose lips liar-Biden’s son was on the payroll of a corrupt Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, targeted by authorities.

Democrats claim it was wrong to ask for the investigation. Trump’s defense lawyers say there was every reason to ask. The evidence backs them up.

It’s not just the $1 million a year that Burisma paid loose lips liar-Biden’s son Hunter, with no energy or Ukrainian expertise. That’s small potatoes.

The question is what did Burisma get in return? The scumbag/liar-nObama administration forked over $53 million in American taxpayer money to assist the Ukrainian energy industry. The public should know how much Burisma and its related ventures may have gotten.

Biden should also have to answer for the $20 million in taxpayer-funded loans that went to his Delaware pal John Hynansky to launch a luxury car dealership in Ukraine selling Porsches, Land Rovers and other high-ticket vehicles. None were made in the U.S. Hynansky had made large donations to loose lips liar-Biden’s campaigns. Later he would loan $500,000 to loose lips liar-Biden’s brother James, who was behind on mortgage payments and owed more than $590,000 in back taxes.

Democrats and media allies are adamant that loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s dealings in Ukraine are irrelevant to Trump’s impeachment. Not so, if loose lips liar-Biden used taxpayer money as his personal piggy bank to help his son and his car dealer pal.

On that July 25 call, Trump did the right thing asking about Burisma, especially when $391 million more in taxpayer-funded aid to Ukraine was about to go out the door.

The chronology of the loose lips liar-Bidens’ transactions raises serious questions:

April 15, 2014: Burisma sends Hunter Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, $112,000.

April 16, 2014: Archer visits Vice President loose lips liar-Biden at the White House.

April 21, 2014: Vice President loose lips liar-Biden arrives in Ukraine bearing millions in aid for the Ukraine energy industry.

May 12, 2014: Hunter Biden joins Burisma’s board.

February 2015: Ukrainian authorities seize the property of Burisma’s CEO and go after unpaid taxes.

March 2016: loose lips liar-Biden demands that Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, be fired, and threatens to hold up $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees.

loose lips liar-Biden even bragged about telling the Ukrainians “if the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.” That’s the kind of quid pro quo of which Trump is accused, only loose lips liar-Biden did it, and it’s on tape.

The loose lips liar-Biden campaign claims the vice president demanded Shokin’s dismissal for being soft on corruption, and the media gladly parrot that claim. It defies common sense.

Though accounts vary about how aggressively Shokin investigated Burisma, Shokin himself is clear. In an email to The Washington Post, he blamed Vice President loose lips liar-Biden for getting him axed, saying that loose lips liar-Biden’s “motives” were “the activities of Hunter Biden, and the investigators on his tail.”

Data from the United States Aid for International Development show that the scumbag/liar-nObama administration sent $1.28 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2014 to 2016. loose lips liar-Biden, the administration’s point person for Ukraine, should be held accountable for how the money was used or misused.

“Profiles in Corruption,” a new book by Peter Schweizer, documents how loose lips liar-Biden’s family and friends leveraged his position to cash in with deals in China, Iraq, Kazakhstan and Latin America. loose lips liar-Joe Biden’s suspect dealings in Ukraine were not out of character. The loose lips liar-Biden motto appears to be that a family that “takes” together stays together.

Democrats insist claims of loose lips liar-Biden wrongdoing are “discredited” and “without evidence.” That doesn’t pass the smell test.

Americans have seen the transcripts of Trump’s calls with the Ukrainians. Let’s see loose lips liar-Biden’s call records with the Ukrainians.

If the Senators decide to call witnesses, loose lips liar-Joe Biden should be on the top of the list.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68202?mailing_id=4829&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4829&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

I just returned from a historic event in the East Room of the White House where President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new peace plan. 

The room was electric, filled with Christian and Jewish leaders, as well as key administration officials who worked on the plan, including Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Ambassador David Friedman. 

There were also several ambassadors from Arab nations in the audience, a hopeful sign that others in the region are eager to work with Israel and the United States to advance peace in the Middle East.

The president received more than a dozen standing ovations, and Prime Minister Netanyahu received nearly as many as they outlined their vision for lasting peace. This is not a “pie in the sky” deal. Nor does it force Israel to do anything that will hurt its security. Here are some of the key elements of the Trump plan:

• Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel. This is essential from Israel’s stand point, and something that Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel and I worked very hard to guarantee.

• The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state.

• Hamas must be disarmed, and the Palestinians must reject terrorism.

• The so-called “refugee problem” will be settled outside the boundaries of Israel.

• Israel will suspend construction in disputed territories for four years to give both sides time to implement various aspects of the deal.

• The president pledged $50 billion of investment to provide hope and economic opportunity to the Palestinian people.

Trump spoke directly to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying, “If you choose the path of peace, America will be there to help you every step of the way.”

Netanyahu praised Trump as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” He hailed the Trump peace plan as “a realistic path to a durable peace,” that recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and other strategic areas of Judea and Samaria. 

The prime minister vowed, “If the Palestinians are genuinely prepared to make peace with the Jewish state … Israel will be prepared to negotiate peace right away." 

The Real Problem

Almost every American president and Israeli prime minister has tried and failed to negotiate a lasting peace between Israelis and the Palestinians. The problem is not Israel or the United States. 

The real obstacle to peace is the refusal of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, and others to recognize the right of Israel to exist at all. Their so-called "leaders” have rejected every peace deal ever offered to them. They have to want peace with Israel.

As I noted above, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed the hope that the Palestinian leadership would not be stupid and reject this deal out of hand. Unfortunately, Mahmoud Abbas has already done just that.

Another major problem is that the Palestinian people are themselves divided between Abbas and his Fatah Party in the West Bank and Hamas, which rules Gaza. It’s not at all clear who speaks for the Palestinian people. 

The 84-year-old Abbas is now in the 15th year of his four-year term of office and is expected to step down sometime this year. Polls show that Hamas, a terrorist organization funded by Iran and dedicated to Israel’s destruction, could easily prevail in a new election. 

How do you compromise with an opponent who wants you dead? Nonetheless, Prime Minister Netanyahu has once again joined with President Trump to try to find a way forward.

Dershowitz vs. the Democrats

Monday, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz  dismantled the Democrats’ impeachment arguments. He argued that the two articles of impeachment do not rest on identifiable crimes, much less impeachable offenses. I’ll spare you his historical lecture and summarize his main points.

Democrats are attempting to impeach President Trump for “obstruction of Congress” because he refused to comply with many of their demands during the course of their impeachment investigation. 

But what they see as “Obstruction of Congress,” others see as “Separation of Powers.” If defending the authority of the executive branch is a crime, then the founders were criminals. But the left probably believes that anyway. 

When disputes arise over the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches, they go to the courts to decide the issue. But if it’s a crime for a president to resist Congress when it overreaches, then every president is going to be impeached.

The president is also being impeached for “Abuse of Power.” But that charge is what critics always say about their opponents. Even George Washington, the most admired of our founders, was accused of abusing his power. 

Professor Dershowitz went on to cite 20 presidents, from Washington to Obama, who were accused of abuse of power. For example:

• Thomas Jefferson dramatically expanded the size of the country through the Louisiana Purchase without congressional authorization.

• Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War.

• Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans during World War II due to concerns about national security.

Ultimately, Donald Trump is being impeached because he defeated scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, which the left considers a “high crime.” He’s also being impeached because he is doing what he said he would do.

He’s putting the interests of the country first with trade deals and immigration policies that put American workers first. He’s defending the sanctity of life and religious liberty by breaking the left’s stranglehold over our courts. Those are Trump’s “crimes,” which our political elites cannot tolerate.

Sadly, there is a group of Republicans who still think The New York Times is a legitimate news outlet. They should forget about John Bolton’s book. As Professor Dershowitz made clear, there is no impeachable crime here regardless of what is or is not in Bolton’s book.

By the way, Fred Fleitz, Bolton’s former chief of staff, published an excellent opinion piece calling on Bolton to withdraw his book until after the 2020 election.

Fleitz argues, rightly in my opinion, that high-level officials should not cash-in on their service with “tell-all” books that threaten to expose the private advice and communications between presidents and their advisers. Sadly, that’s how the Swamp operates.

At yesterday’s White House announcement for the Middle East peace plan, many of John Bolton’s old friends were angry and disappointed in his conduct since he left the administration. More than once, I heard the rhetorical question, “What in the world is wrong with Bolton?!”

Speaking of the Swamp…

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi exposed the potential corruption of Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which she described as “nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst." 

She defended President Trump’s decision to raise Burisma and the loose lips liar-Bidens with Ukraine’s president because the media had raised the issue in 2014, because Chris Heinz, Hunter’s business partner, raised concerns about it and because scumbag/liar-nObama State Department officials raised concerns about it.  

Bondi’s presentation made it clear that the president was looking to address past issues of corruption rather than exploiting his office to influence the next election.    ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68205?mailing_id=4829&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4829&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The coronavirus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in Wuhan known for selling wild-animal meat. Symptomatically, infected individuals suffer symptoms similar to that of influenza, though what has public-health experts worried is the apparent higher mortality rate than the flu and the unusually virulent nature of this virus. Evidently, unlike the flu, an infected individual is contagious prior to showing any symptoms of being sick. Therefore, someone can be contagious and spreading the virus before they even know they’re infected.

Are the ChiComs in a position to handle this health crisis? Well, as The Wall Street Journal reports, “[China] has about 20% fewer physicians per capita than Mexico and 70% fewer general practitioners than World Health Organization standards. About 96% of its doctors are specialists because general practitioners are poorly paid. Hospitals are overcrowded, and people in rural areas rely on medieval village clinics. Doctors at a small city near Wuhan are wearing ponchos because they lack hazmat suits. Hubei province needs 100,000 suits each day, but Chinese manufacture can produce only 30,000. Village clinics are rationing face masks.”

Meanwhile, Beijing has repeatedly rebuffed U.S. offers to send Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials to help, but U.S. Health Secretary Alex Azar did observe that China’s response has been significantly better than its response to the 2002-2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak.

Thus far five out of more than a hundred people who traveled from Wuhan to the U.S. have tested positive for the virus, but CDC officials say that the current health threat to Americans remains low. In fact, the bigger impact of coronavirus to the U.S. may be to the economy, as China has stopped work for more than 50 million Chinese until mid February. Arguably the biggest problem with the story, however, is that no one can trust the information coming out of China.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68196?mailing_id=4829&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4829&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The Trump-Netanyahu plan has a few key elements. As Bauer outlines:

• Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel. (Remember, Trump finally kept a long-standing U.S. promise to move the American embassy there.)

• The Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state.

• Hamas must be disarmed, and the Palestinians must reject terrorism.

• The so-called “refugee problem” will be settled outside the boundaries of Israel.

• Israel will suspend construction in disputed territories for four years to give both sides time to implement various aspects of the deal.

• The president pledged $50 billion of investment to provide hope and economic opportunity to the Palestinian people.

The offer is certainly pro-Israel, but it’s also remarkably generous to the Palestinians, who for more than half a century have terrorized Israeli and rejected every previous offer of peace. The onus is on the Palestinians, not on Israel or the U.S. As David Harsanyi rightly observes, “Israel, in fact, probably feels less external pressure than ever to enter into a deal.” That’s because it is, at the moment, quite secure.

To Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, Trump said, “If you choose the path of peace, America will be there to help you every step of the way.” Yet Abbas is reported to have already rejected the offer, and vehemently so. That’s not surprising, given that Palestinian principals like Abbas have never wanted peace — they want an endless war to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of United Nations elites. It is the Palestinian people who bear the brunt of that evil strategy.

Maybe part of the deal should be Trump shipping the Palestinians a load of those “Hate Has No Home Here” yard signs that are all the rage among chardonnay-sipping leftist elites who hate Trump.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68215?mailing_id=4829&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4829&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Dershowitz certainly could have been clearer, but the Trump team’s argument is this: A lawful quid pro quo in service to U.S. interests is not illegal or impeachable, regardless of whether it benefits the president politically. Thus, even if Democrats’ allegations are true, Trump’s “offense” doesn’t rise to an impeachable one. Of course, there’s also an inconvenient truth: There was no actual quid pro quo, though one was attempted. Ukraine got its military aid and Volodymyr Zelensky got his presidential meeting, all without opening the investigations Trump requested.

In any case, Trump’s request regarding the corruption of a previous and potentially future American administration is absolutely in U.S. interests, though Trump was unwise to ask this of one of Europe’s most corrupt countries.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand exemplified the hyperventilating on the Left, arguing that Dershowitz “essentially said that if President Trump believes his election is for the good of the American people that he could do whatever he wants.” That’s a false representation of what Dershowitz actually argued, and leftists know it.

Patrick Philbin, one of the president’s lawyers, bolstered Dershowitz’s point: “If there is something that shows a possible public interest” in what Trump said, “that destroys [the Democrats’] case.”

scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff, one of the leading and most dishonest of the Democrat impeachment managers, disagreed. “If any part of the president’s motivation was a corrupt motive,” he insisted, “it would be enough to convict under criminal law.”

To illustrate his preposterous contention, scumbag/liar-Schiff engaged in another bit of absurd B-movie theater, mockingly saying, “Let’s … see how you feel about this scenario:”

President [Barack] scumbag/liar-nObama, on an open mic, says to [then-Russian President Dimitri] Medvedev, “Hey, Medvedev, I know you don’t want me to send this military money to Ukraine because they are fighting and killing your people. I want you to do me a favor, though. I want you to do an investigation of rino-Mitt Romney. And I want you to announce you found dirt on rino-Mitt Romney. If you’re willing to do that, quid pro quo, I won’t give Ukraine the money they need to fight you on the front line.”

Do any of us have any question that Barack scumbag/liar-nObama would be impeached for that kind of misconduct? Are we really ready to say that that would be okay if Barack scumbag/liar-nObama asked Medvedev to investigate his opponent and withhold money from an ally that needed to defend itself to get an investigation of rino-Mitt Romney? That’s the parallel here.

The especially brazen aspect of scumbag/liar-Schiff’s latest attempt to win an Oscar is that he comes fairly close to what scumbag/liar-nObama actually did. Unknowingly on a hot mic, scumbag/liar-nObama told Medvedev in 2012 that he would have “more flexibility” after his reelection to make changes to U.S. defense policy sought by our Russian geopolitical foes and detrimental to our European allies. scumbag/liar-nObama was not impeached, of course, though Democrats — four years too late — eventually realized that Russia is in fact a threat to U.S. interests.

No, rino-Romney was not mentioned in the real conversation, but scumbag/liar-nObama had to defeat rino-Romney before he could give Medvedev’s puppet master, Vladimir Putin, what he wanted: American capitulation on missile defense. Nothing Trump said is even remotely close to being that bad for U.S. interests.

Meanwhile, as John Bolton and his leaked book allegations have dominated the news this week, there’s more misinformation and distortion coming out of even libertarian and conservative news outlets. Without getting lost in the weeds, any book written by a top administration official like Bolton must be reviewed by the National Security Council (NSC) to determine if any classified information is revealed.

In a letter to Bolton’s publisher, the NSC contended that there was indeed classified information — some of it TOP SECRET — in Bolton’s manuscript. That would need to be removed before the book could be published. This was not a ham-handed attempt at “muzzling” Bolton, and it wasn’t a “threat” to block his book entirely, either. The NSC review is standard procedure that Bolton rightly submitted to in order to honor his own nondisclosure agreements.

The NSC letter is dated January 23, three days before the New York Times blockbuster revealing that Bolton says there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine. The Times depended on a well-timed leak of Bolton’s manuscript, leaving us to wonder whether the leaker — one of the Vindman twins? — violated federal law by disclosing classified information.

Democrats still want Bolton to testify before the Senate, though that is increasingly unlikely. But we thought it would be enlightening to highlight scumbag/liar-Schiff’s long history of denigrating Bolton. In 2005, scumbag/liar-Schiff complained of Bolton’s “lack of credibility.” And all the way back in 2018, he groused about Bolton’s “love of conspiracy theories.”

Now we have to hear from Bolton? What changed, Mr. scumbag/liar-Schiff?

And finally, Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the president’s trial, refused to read a question submitted by Sen. Rand Paul because Paul named the whistleblower. The worst-kept secret in the swamp is that Eric Ciaramella is likely the whistleblower. Federal law protects whistleblowers only from retribution, not from being named, so the continued charade of keeping his name a “secret” is absurd. Not only should Ciaramella’s name be spoken, he should have testified before the House.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68244?mailing_id=4832&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4832&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body    
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The Pot-Kettle-Black Impeachment

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, generally far  ahead of the rest of the world regarding potential pandemic threats, is always watching this and other bugs for early warning signs of spread in the U.S. Taking additional measures, the Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has empaneled a task force to ramp up preparedness and response to the spread of this contagion. Azar declared, “Americans should note this is a potentially very serious public health threat.”

Officially, the communist Chinese government claims about 220 deaths and 10,000 infections. Our sources indicate that the actual rates of infection and deaths in China are much higher, and, in fact, official reports may only represent 5-7% of the actual dead and infected. The so-called “popup hospitals” now being constructed in Hubei province where the coronavirus outbreak originated double as isolation morgues.

In the U.S., the CDC is now reporting human-transmitted cases and has confirmed five cases in Arizona, Washington state, Illinois, and California, while officials are investigating four more — two in Washington, DC, and one each in Maryland and Virginia. The CDC is waiting on test results for more than 100 other patients suspected of coronavirus infection. Accordingly, the U.S. has issued a strong travel advisory for China, but we believe the CDC should increase the isolation period for those who are suspected of being infected to 14 days.

What do you need to know — and do?

First some perspective. Global deaths from the Ebola epidemic originating in 2014 are estimated now at more than 13,200. But deaths from the the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu outbreak, while officially put at 18,449, are now estimated by one CDC study to be as high as 284,000. The vast majority of these deaths occurred in third-world nations where containment and treatment are rudimentary. Most deaths were at both ends of the age spectrum — the young and old.

While domestic concern about the coronavirus is warranted, it is worth noting that the current influenza B/Victoria viral strain in the U.S. is deadly. There have been more than 8,000 deaths associated with influenza across the country in this flu season. “Influenza is going to cause thousands more hospitalizations and I’m afraid many, many deaths that will make the coronavirus impact on our country very tiny in comparison,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious-disease specialist. He added, “The risk from influenza is real and present.” (Did you get that flu shot this year?)

What can you do?

Be prepared. As I noted in “The REAL Pandemic Threat,” “Clearly, there are significant pandemic threats posed by viral infections that mutate into much more contagious forms and can spread regionally, nationally, and internationally, causing significant loss of life. I have advised for years that the primary defense against such contagions is the capacity to shelter in place. What originates in China or Africa one week can be in your suburb the next.”

For that reason, years ago we developed a resource page on Disaster Preparedness Planning, including a Two Step Individual Readiness Plan and a section on how to shelter in place.

We encourage you to visit each of these pages, because national preparedness begins with individual preparedness.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/68279?mailing_id=4835&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4835&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

It was a good move and a powerful way to sum up what this impeachment trial has really been all about: Democrats impeaching the vote of the American people. However, it doesn’t look like Trump will get an acquittal vote without witnesses being called.

While Trump’s defense team appealed to the Senate to end the Democrats’ partisan trial with a quick vote to acquit, it’s looking more likely that at the very least John Bolton will be called as a witness. In a Tuesday evening meeting with Republicans, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he didn’t have the votes needed to block witnesses or document requests. It’s a recognization that at least four Republican senators want to hear from Bolton, and a further admission that not calling witnesses will play into Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer’s twisted narrative that Republicans aren’t interested in the truth, just in covering for Trump.

If calling witnesses is a forgone conclusion, what options does the GOP have to prevent the Democrats from drawing this charade out ad nauseam? First, simply vote to call Bolton and only Bolton. Democrats would immediately wail for adding Mick Mulvaney, but McConnell might have the votes to turn that demand aside.

Otherwise, McConnell could also put forward a list of witnesses that Republicans have long been calling for, including the loose lips liar-Bidens and the whistleblower, as part of a take-it-or-leave-it package deal. That would effectively put the pressure back on the Democrats to argue against certain witnesses. Of course, if scumbag-Schumer and company agreed to this deal, then McConnell would need Trump to agree to not invoke executive privilege, as that would only complicate matters for Republicans, delaying the process and playing into the Democrats’ “cover-up” narrative.

The key for McConnell and Republicans is to prevent Democrats from dictating or dragging out this process. The probability that Bolton will present any new or damning information is low, no matter how the Democrats and their media spin machine may claim, and it might even play in Trump’s favor. Wrangling over witnesses will play out over the next couple of days, with key votes later in the week.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68217?mailing_id=4829&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4829&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

I love Ireland for its natural beauty, its people, its food (some of it), its music, its writers and especially its elections, which are shorter, less costly and designed to engage citizens and boost voter turnout.

On January 14, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar called a general election for February 8. That means a campaign of slightly more than three weeks. In the process, the Irish Parliament was dissolved. What a delightful thought. If only the U.S. Congress could be at least occasionally dissolved. It could use some dissolving, or at least disinfecting, after the toxic impeachment and trial of President Trump.

Unlike Irish politics, U.S. election campaigns increasingly resemble endless wars. Like those wars, campaigns cost too much and never seem to resolve the conflict.

Multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg says he is willing to spend up to $1 billion of his fortune to either win the Democratic nomination, or if he doesn’t, to help the eventual nominee defeat President Trump. Recent presidential campaigns have cost over 1 billion (some estimates put the cost of 2020 ad spending alone at over $6 billion), so Bloomberg’s spending will ensure this year’s presidential campaign will set another record.

As soon — or possibly before — this election season ends, people will be talking about 2024 and 2028. It never ends and real problems are rarely solved.

The process begins with candidates establishing “exploratory committees” during which the “explorer” speaks about carefully poll-tested subjects and repeats them ad nauseum, while fundraising and appearing on TV.

Does any of this time and money spent produce real solutions to obvious problems, such as reforming entitlement programs and reducing debt? If it did, by now, wouldn’t those solutions have been implemented? The goal of too many politicians is not solving problems but getting elected and then re-elected.

All of this contributes to generally low voter turnout compared to other developed nations. This gives power to activists on both the left and right, which skews the results and gives no clear picture of where most Americans would like to see the country go. For example, consider how often the parties exchange power in Congress and the presidency. Why do we elect a liberal like President Obama and then eight years later elect President Trump, who has been enacting and promoting the conservative agenda?

Ireland isn’t the only country that has sane campaign and election practices.

In 1926, the longest Canadian election — from announcement to voting — was 10 weeks.

According to mic.com, an American internet and media company based in New York City that caters to millennials, “Election spending is strictly limited in the U.K. Each party cannot spend more than $29.5 million in the year before the election. The New York Times reported that the combined spending of both major British political parties in 2010 came out to around the same amount as the American presidential candidates spent … on expenses related to raising money in 2012.”

German political parties may not release more than one 90-second television political ad during a campaign. That would not please U.S. networks and local stations, which make a fortune from political ads. TV expenses in America are a major contributor to the escalating costs of campaigns, even though studies show the ads change few minds.

Brazilian elections are held on weekends, making it more convenient.

Not every country’s campaign and election practices may be worthy of copying in the U.S., but some are. Why can’t we learn from others to improve the process by which we nominate candidates and elect presidents? We can, but will we? A corollary question: What’s stopping us? The answer: only our lack of will.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68180?mailing_id=4827&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4827&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Like clockwork, just after the president’s defense team decimated scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff’s entire impeachment case (more on that below), the two main media organs of the left, The New York Times and CNN, came rushing to the rescue.

Both outlets dropped a report that every Trump-hater is calling a “bombshell.” Here are my thoughts on the latest “revelations” allegedly from John Bolton’s upcoming book.

• There are no direct quotes from the Bolton manuscript in either the CNN or New York Times story because neither outlet has actually seen the book manuscript. It was simply “described” to them by “multiple people.” This is yet another attack piece by the liberal media using anonymous sources in a desperate attempt to reverse the last election and force Trump off the ballot in the next election.

• The reporters for the Times story, Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt, are well-known partisan hacks with histories of running reports later debunked as false. And the left-wing bias at The New York Times goes well beyond these two reporters.

• Whatever is in Bolton’s book, how would someone have leaked what is or is not in it? The leak could have come from the publisher. The book is currently at the White House, undergoing a review process to ensure it does not violate national-security agreements that people like Bolton have to sign when they work in the administration.

• That review is taking place at the National Security Council (NSC), which was expanded during the scumbag/liar-nObama years and is still filled with scumbag/liar-nObama loyalists. The so-called “whistleblower” was at the NSC. Alexander Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, are at the NSC. By the way, one of Yevgeny Vindman's jobs is to review book manuscripts.

• A senior NSC employee, responsible for Russia and Ukraine policy, was recently escorted from the White House and placed on leave pending a security investigation. The official had only been there for a few months, after transferring from the State Department. I have no idea what that is all about, but it does seem like a big coincidence. One reason officials are abruptly removed from the White House is that they were caught leaking.

Even if Bolton’s claims are accurate, none of it changes the basic facts, which the Trump defense team outlined very well on Saturday. 

Nonetheless, the target of this Democrat Party press release disguised as a news story is a handful of Republican senators who could force so-called “witnesses” (to what?) to be called, dragging out this process and setting up a Kavanaugh-style situation with new accusations and new demands for witnesses every day.

In short, it would be a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition against the president just as the 2020 presidential campaign kicks into high gear.

By the way, many in the media are citing polling data showing that Americans overwhelmingly support calling witnesses during the Senate’s impeachment trial.  

What they fail to point out is that many Republicans support calling looae lips liar-Joe and Hunter Biden, as well as the so-called “whistleblower,” who has yet to face any serious public scrutiny or be crossed-examined by the president’s lawyers.

Defense Team Demolishes scumbag/liar-Schiff’s Case

President Trump’s defense team finally got the chance to make its case Saturday after scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff and the other House managers exhausted all their time. The presentation by Michael Purpura, deputy counsel to the president, was particularly effective. Here’s an excerpt of his remarks:

Once you sweep away all of the bluster and innuendo, the selective leaks … the staged public hearings, what we’re left with are six key facts that have not and will not change.

First, the transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. The paused security assistance funds aren’t even mentioned on the call.

Second, President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure on them to review anything.

Third, President Zelensky and high-ranking Ukrainian officials did not even know … the security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25 call.

Fourth, not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting, or anything else.

Fifth, the security assistance flowed on September 11 and a presidential meeting took place on September 25 without the Ukrainian government announcing any investigations.

Finally, the Democrats’ blind drive to impeach the president does not and cannot change the fact as attested to by the Democrats’ own witnesses that President Trump has been a better friend and stronger supporter of Ukraine than his predecessor.

By the way, you may recall that last week I questioned why scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff was leading the impeachment charge given his own serious credibility issues. I’m pleased to report that the president’s lawyers made it a point to zero in on scumbag/liar-Schiff during their opening statements.

Never Again

Yesterday marked the 75th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, revealing some of the worst horrors of the Holocaust. More than one million people were systematically murdered there. 

In 2005, as then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was threatening a second Holocaust by vowing to “wipe Israel off the map,” the United Nations voted to recognize January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

President Trump issued a proclamation recognizing the significance of this day and reaffirming “our steadfast commitment to confronting the vile poison of anti-Semitism wherever and whenever it arises.”

I join President Trump and all men and women of goodwill in standing against the evil of anti-Semitism and standing proudly with the Jewish state of Israel.

Speaking of Israel, Israeli officials noted over the weekend that the country’s aviation system came under sustained cyberattack during last week’s World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem. 

Israel fended off more than 800 attacks “aimed at disrupting the flight paths of more than 60 planes carrying heads of state, kings and presidents.” The attacks originated from Iran, China, North Korea, Russia, and Poland.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68173?mailing_id=4827&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4827&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

As our editor Thomas Gallatin noted Monday, The New York Times published a leaked report about a soon-to-be-published book by former National Security Advisor John Bolton. The Times alleges that Bolton alleges that President Donald Trump mentioned to him that freezing aid to Ukraine was, in part, motivated by Trump’s interest in having Ukraine’s government investigate corruption suspicions regarding loose lips liar-Joe and Hunter Biden.

The report about Bolton’s allegation re-warms the Demos’ “quid pro quo” claim that Trump used his office to threaten withholding aid in order to undermine his 2020 opponent, loose lips liar-Joe Biden. That is the centerpiece of the Democrat impeachment case. However, there is nothing illegal or impeachable about a president using his office, and the promise of U.S. aid, to insist a third-world nation clear up longstanding questions of internal corruption — particularly if tied to the actions of a former vice president and Ukrainian grossly-excessive “compensation” for his son Hunter.

Recall that loose lips liar-Joe Biden bragged on the record about how, in 2015 as VP, he coerced Ukraine to fire a prosecutor — which even The New York Times acknowledged benefited Hunter Biden, who was a target for investigation. As loose lips liar-Biden recounted, if Ukrainian officials didn’t “take action against the state prosecutor” (fire him), “I said … ‘We’re not going to give you the billion dollars. … I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ … Well, son of a b—h. He got fired.”

But there is somebody whose name did not appear in The New York Times revelation’s about Bolton’s book and the source of that information: Yevgeny Leonid Vindman.

For context, Democrat Party would have no contrived case against Trump (which is actually what impacts loose lips liar-Biden’s 2020 candidacy) if not for a Soviet Union-born U.S. Army officer, Alexander Semyonovich Vindman, on the National Security Council. We believe Vindman provided the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call to impeachment manager Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff’s Demo deep-state operative, Eric Ciaramella, the so-called “whistleblower.” Ciaramella’s collusion with scumbag/liar-Schiff launched the impeachment charges.

A day after The Times’ deliberately-timed “blockbuster” revelation, it is now reported that the twin brother of Alexander Semyonovich Vindman is U.S. Army officer Yevgeny Leonid Vindman. That is significant because Yevgeny Vindman is responsible for National Security Council reviews of publications by current and former NSC officials — like, say, John Bolton. Bolton submitted the transcript of his book for NSC review in December, and the NSC has not responded to requests regarding Yevgeny Vindman’s access to that review copy, or the implication that he could be in the pipeline of Demo operatives who informed The New York Times about the Bolton allegations.

Are scumbag/liar-Schiff and his dullard Demos that stupid…?  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68192?mailing_id=4827&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4827&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

It’s 2020, which means election year is upon us. And although Washington is currently preoccupied with the impeachment melodrama going on in the Senate, we should not lose sight of problems in our voter registration and election process that imperil the integrity of upcoming local, state, and federal elections.

When our citizens exercise their right to choose their leaders, their votes shouldn’t be diluted or stolen through fraud or administrative errors.

Unfortunately, that remains a problem, as demonstrated by the proven cases in The Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database. We recently added 18 instances of election fraud to the database, which contains a sampling of almost 1,300 fraud cases from across the country.

There are other cases the database does not yet include but that should concern everyone.

Paul Pate, the Iowa secretary of state, recently referred nine Iowans to Polk County prosecutors for double voting in the 2018 election — that is, voting in Iowa and another state in the same election. Another 27 suspected occurrences of double voting are under investigation.

These problems were discovered through the state’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center program. Currently, 25 states and the District of Columbia are enrolled in the program, which allows states to compare voter registration information.

Unfortunately, not enough states are participating in either the Electronic Registration Information Center program or the similar Interstate Crosscheck program. New York and California, the states with the largest voting populations, are not in either program. Some states that do participate don’t do anything with the reports they receive on possible double voters. So it is still relatively easy to vote illegally in more than one state without getting caught or prosecuted.

As Pate correctly said, “One fraudulent vote is too many. It nullifies a legally cast vote. Iowans take the integrity of our elections very seriously, and we will not stand for people trying to cheat the system.”

If you think these incidents in Iowa are isolated, look at a recent entry from Heritage’s database.

Charles Eugene Cartier Jr. of New Hampshire just pled guilty to double voting in the 2016 general election, voting first in New Hampshire and then again in neighboring Massachusetts. He was the fourth person found guilty of duplicate voting in New Hampshire just in the last year.

Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t the only states to uncover instances of duplicate voting. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has referred 18 cases of duplicate voting in his state to appropriate prosecutors — all discovered through the state’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center.

But can one vote actually affect the outcome of an election?

Absolutely! From 2013 to 2017, 56 elections in Ohio resulted in a tie vote and 86 were decided by only one vote.

The problems in Ohio don’t stop with duplicate voting, either. LaRose also found 77 noncitizens who cast ballots and 277 aliens who were on the voter rolls.

Similarly, Illinois recently was forced to admit it had mistakenly registered 574 aliens through its new “automatic voter registration” system, 16 of whom cast votes in the 2018 election. State officials minimized the problem by saying the glitch in the system that caused this has been fixed.

But Illinois has long had a problem with aliens registering and voting, and election officials there never have had any interest in doing anything about it. It has no checks in place to verify that individuals registering to vote are citizens. The U.S. Justice Department prosecuted dozens of aliens for voting in the 1982 election in Chicago, and the U.S. attorney in Chicago at the time, Dan Webb, estimated that there were thousands of aliens registered and voting in Chicago.

In 2012 and 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued decisions involving three different aliens who illegally registered and voted in Illinois, two of whom did so through the DMV. This wasn’t prevented by the DMV or detected by Illinois election officials; the aliens were caught only when they applied for a change of status with the Department of Homeland Security.

Still think we don’t have a problem with alien voting? Last year, Pennsylvania officials admitted that more than 11,000 aliens had registered to vote in the state, also through a glitch in their DMV system.

Over the past few years, the Public Interest Legal Foundation has issued a series of reports on aliens who self-reported to election officials that they were registered. That included:

— 86 aliens registered to vote in Philadelphia.

— 5,556 aliens in Virginia who were removed as registered voters but not before a third of them had cast ballots.

— More than 1,000 aliens in 11 counties in New Jersey.

— Almost 5,000 aliens in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, sanctuary jurisdictions in seven states, 11 townships in Michigan, and Palm Beach, Florida, many of whom had voted before they were removed.

These aliens were removed only because they contacted election officials to inform them that they were not U.S. citizens. There is no telling how many more aliens are illegally registered and voting who are not being detected by election officials.

The stakes of the 2020 election are high for all involved. But the stakes are even higher for the voting public who have a right to fair and secure elections.

Combating election fraud head-on is the only way to secure our elections, and in turn, the sanctity of the democratic process.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68148?mailing_id=4825&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4825&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the year — the annual March for Life. Every year hundreds of thousands of people come to Washington, DC — in January! — to march for the sanctity of life. That tells you something about the dedication of the pro-life movement.

Usually the “mainstream media” totally ignores the march. But it couldn’t ignore this year’s march because President Trump made history by becoming the first sitting United States president to address the March for Life! Here are a few excerpts of the president’s remarks:

We’re here for a very simple reason — to defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their God-given potential. For 47 years, Americans of all backgrounds have traveled from across the country to stand for life. And today as president of the United States, I am truly proud to stand with you…

All of us here today understand an eternal truth — every child is a precious and sacred gift from God. Together we must protect, cherish and defend the dignity and the sanctity of every human life. When we see the image of a baby in the womb, we glimpse the majesty of God’s creation… As the Bible tells us, each person is wonderfully made…

To all of the moms here today, we celebrate you and we declare that mothers are heroes. Your strength, devotion and drive is what powers our nation. And because of you our country has been blessed with amazing souls who have changed the course of human history…

We know this: Every life brings love into this world. Every child brings joy to a family. Every person is worth protecting. And above all, we know that every human soul is divine and every human life, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of Almighty God.

If you missed the president’s March for Life address, you can watch it here.

And the president is continuing to lead on this critical issue. Yesterday, the Trump administration formally notified the state of California that it is violating federal conscience laws by mandating abortion coverage in all health-insurance policies. 

The state’s abortion mandate was challenged by an order of Catholic nuns and Skyline Wesleyan Church. The state has 30 days to repeal the mandate or risk losing federal funds.

In related news, the Trump campaign announced its “Pro-Life Voices for Trump” coalition yesterday. Having dedicated my entire adult life to defending the sanctity of life, I am proud to be an advisory-board member of “Pro-Life Voices for Trump.” This president has proudly stood for the unalienable right to life, and I am proud to stand with him!

Pro-Life America

A new Marist poll released this week finds overwhelming support for pro-life policies. For example:

• 70% of those surveyed support significant limits to abortion.

• Only 21% support abortion on demand.

• 60% oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

• 75% oppose the use of their tax dollars to perform abortions overseas.

• 62% believe the Supreme Court should allow states to regulate abortion.

In the coming weeks, the court will have an opportunity to do just that when it considers a challenge to a Louisiana law requiring abortionists to meet certain health and safety standards. 

The Louisiana law is similar to Texas law the high court struck down in 2016 in a 5-3 vote after Justice Scalia had passed away. But the Supreme Court has changed significantly since then. President Trump nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch to replace Scalia and Justice Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy, who was the deciding fifth vote in the Texas case.

The Deep State Scandal

Late Thursday there was breaking news that the Justice Department informed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it was wrong to renew the last two warrants to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Better late than never, I guess.

Many media outlets glossed over the news, often with tepid headlines that downplayed the importance of the story. We’ve just been told that the Deep State effort to investigate, undermine, and delegitimize a duly elected president, by spying on an innocent American who was part of the campaign, was illegal! 

Every citizen should be outraged by this gross abuse of power and the gross politicization of our intelligence agencies. Once again, we’re seeing that President Trump was right to fire scumbag-James Comey, that all the hype about Russian collusion was an absurd hoax, that the Mueller investigation was a colossal waste of $30 million.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for Rachel Maddow or scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff to apologize for misleading the country or accusing the president of being a Russian asset.

The Wuhan Virus

A few folks have asked me this week how concerned they should be about the coronavirus from Wuhan, China. For now, I think the answer is that we haven’t been told enough yet to know how concerned we should be. 

Chinese communist authorities are notorious for hiding the truth. We don’t know for certain how many people are infected and how many have died. We don’t know enough yet to know for certain if this is just another random flu or another Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people worldwide in 1918. 

Rising additional concern is that communist China’s reaction to this outbreak seems over the top based on what we know so far. To shut down travel and isolate Wuhan, a city of 11 million people and bigger than New York City, does not seem like a reasonable reaction if just a variant of the flu is going around. According to the latest news, Beijing has now imposed restrictions on more than 30 million people.

Here’s another curiosity: China announced that it is immediately constructing a new hospital — just for the people stricken with the “Wuhan virus.” It also closed 70,000 movies theaters across the country in order to discourage crowds. That makes sense if this is a “killer virus." 

On the other hand, thousands of people may have contracted the virus but never got sick enough to go to the hospital and have since recovered. If that ends up being true, then this is just another viral flu.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68146?mailing_id=4825&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4825&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=bod

I must have said it a dozen times since the Democrats’ impeachment miniseries took over our televisions, but I’ll say it again.

The Democrats and their allies in the liberal media think history began this morning when they rolled out of the left side of their beds.

It happened again during the Democrats’ opening impeachment tirades in the Senate.

Democrats are still wasting our time — and ignoring their jobs — trying to prove that President Trump should be impeached because he abused the power of his office and because he obstructed Congress by claiming executive privilege.

The obstruction charges against Trump are for refusing to let administration officials testify before the impeachment hearings in the House and for withholding documents the House had requested.

Well, if using or threatening to use executive privilege for those reasons are impeachable crimes, George Washington and every president since JFK, including my father, is guilty — often on multiple counts.

In 1962, for example, JFK used executive privilege to order his military adviser General Maxwell Taylor to refuse to testify before a congressional committee investigating the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Between 1980 and 2012 it was used 25 times.

President scumbag/liar-Clinton, the all-time modern leader, asserted executive privilege 14 times to try to keep his staff from appearing before various grand juries and congressional committees.

George W. Bush used it six times, including in 2008 when he told his Attorney General to assert executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena for documents related to an investigation into who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

Meanwhile, President scumbag/liar-nObama employed executive privilege so many times that even the liberal media of the day questioned the legitimacy of invoking it.

The prime example was the infamous “Fast and Furious” case in 2012, when Attorney General scumbag-Eric Holder used executive privilege to shield documents from Congress that were related to the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s program to let illegally purchased guns flow across the Mexican border.

Congress obviously didn’t rush out and impeach those pre-Trump presidents for obstructing Congress or for posing an existential threat to the U.S. Constitution.

They let the legitimacy of invoking executive privilege in each case be decided in the courts, where it belonged. That’s why we have three branches of government.

But now, thanks to the Democrats’ blind hatred of President Trump, the bar has been lowered to where if a president doesn’t immediately roll over and give Congress whatever people or documents it wants, he’ll get impeached.

It’s been frustrating having to watch the first three ridiculously long, tedious days of the Senate impeachment hearings, which Democrats are cynically using as a weapon to stain Trump ahead of the 2020 election and hurt some Republican senators who face tight races in the fall.

Everyone has known for months what the outcome of the House Democrats’ impeachment show trial will be — the Republican Senate will never find Trump guilty.

I’m starting to really feel sorry for the members of the Senate who are trapped at their desks for twelve-hours at a time without their smartphones.

They have to sit in silence as scumbag/liar-Schiff and his solemn crew say over and over again how the U.S. Constitution and our national security were put at risk by a phone call our treasonous president made to the president of Ukraine last summer.

All those poor senators are allowed to drink is milk and water. The rest us watching the hearings on TV are lucky.

We can always get up and do a few Jello shots or drink some tequila to pass the time and ease the pain.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/68139?mailing_id=4825&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4825&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The House Democrats’ argument for convicting Trump is based on a narrative of their own creation. They argue that Trump placed a hold on $400 million in aid to Ukraine to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky into “digging up dirt” or at least announcing an investigation into loose lips liar-Joe and Hunter Biden. They contend that in so doing Trump abused the power of the presidency for his own personal benefit — thus he was somehow attempting to rig the 2020 election. (Kind of like what scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton actually did to Trump in 2016, but we digress.) Their “evidence” for Trump’s corruption is an alleged quid pro quo … that never happened. To put it bluntly, Democrats have impeached Trump over his supposed motives for something that did not happen. Thought crimes.

After the obviously timed Bolton curveball, the Trump defense team responded directly and effectively. “Nothing in the Bolton manuscript would rise to the level of an abuse of power or impeachable offense,” stated Alan Dershowitz. “That is clear from history. That is clear from the language of the Constitution. You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct simply by using words like quid pro quo and personal benefit. It is inconceivable that the Framers would have intended so politically loaded and promiscuously deployed a term as ‘abuse of power’ to be weaponized as a tool of impeachment. It is precisely the kind of vague, open-ended, and suggestive term that the Framers feared and rejected.”

The president’s defense team also disputed the Democrats’ assertion that Trump’s motive for wanting Ukraine to open investigations was not concern over corruption but purely intended to benefit his 2020 campaign. “The president wasn’t ‘caught,’ as the House managers allege. The managers are wrong,” Deputy White House Counsel Mike Purpura stated. “All of this … demonstrates that there was no connection between security assistance and investigation.”

Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, pointedly noted, “Asking a foreign leader to get to the bottom of issues of corruption is not a violation of an oath.” And regarding the questions of corruption surrounding the loose lips liar-Bidens, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi highlighted the litany of instances in which numerous individuals both within the mainstream media and even the scumbag/liar-nObama administration raised red flags. She also observed, “Every witness who was asked about Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma agreed there was a potential appearance of conflict.” She further noted, “The House managers talked about 400 times, but they never gave you the full picture. Here are those who did: The United Kingdom Serious Fraud Unit, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, … ‘ABC Good Morning America’, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ukrainian law enforcement, and the scumbag/liar-nObama State Department itself. They all thought there was cause to raise the issue about the loose lips liar-Bidens and Burisma.”

Ken Starr warned against allowing the precedent of so grossly politicizing impeachment: “We are living in what can aptly be described as the age of impeachment. In the House, resolution after resolution, month after month, has called for the president’s impeachment. How did we get here? … Presidential impeachment has become a weapon to be wielded against one’s political opponent.” Meanwhile, the Democrats’ argument that Trump’s refusal to give documents and witnesses to the House equated to obstruction of Congress is actually evidence of a “runaway House,” Starr insisted. “If there is a dispute between the people’s House and the president of the United States over the availability of documents or witnesses, and there is in each and every administration — then go to court. It really is as simple as that.”

Finally, due to the leaked Bolton manuscripts, it now appears more likely that a sufficient number of Senate Republicans will vote to call witnesses. However, this also gives Republicans an opening to call witnesses Democrats vehemently objected to, such as Hunter Biden and the whistleblower. The timed Bolton leak has put Republicans in a tough spot, but Democrats may ultimately regret opening Pandora’s Box.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68190?mailing_id=4827&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4827&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

After Sanders began a non-answer, O'Donnell broke in, “You don’t know how much your plan costs?”

“You don’t know. Nobody knows,” commie-Sanders admitted. “This is impossible to predict.”

O'Donnell responded with appropriate incredulity, “You’re going to propose a plan to the American people and you’re not going to tell them how much it costs?”

That’s socialism in a nutshell. Oh, there might be some numbers out there, but the negative reaction against those numbers has left commie-Bernie increasingly unwilling to offer estimates. This isn’t the first time he’s refused to discuss a price tag.

That price tag? Try at least $32 trillion for Medicare for All or $16 trillion for commie-Bernie’s version of the $93 trillion Green New Deal. The $60 trillion O'Donnell references is CNN’s analysis of the commie-Sanders agenda, though it also isn’t comprehensive or accurate.

No matter what Democrat wins the nomination, his or her agenda will dwarf Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s spendthrift “stimulus” and scumbag/liar-nObamaCare. Every Democrat candidate want to “pay for” this income redistribution by raising taxes. They claim it will be only on the wealthy — the billionaires commie-Sanders says shouldn’t even exist — but those tax increases will hit everyone. Regardless, even if raising taxes brought in the vast revenue Democrats claim, it wouldn’t pay for what the government spends now, let alone new or expanded programs.

And that’s why we can all expect the Leftmedia to forget all about asking these questions of the eventual Democrat nominee.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/68159?mailing_id=4825&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4825&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

Let’s begin with a reality check. The current impeachment effort is only the latest vehicle being used to remove Trump from office. Previous vehicles included the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, and the Russia investigation. Prior to his inauguration, the media campaigned for Democrats to reach a deal with Republicans and persuade Electoral College electors to defect, and The Washington Post reported efforts to impeach Trump had begun 17 minutes after he was sworn into office. Far more important, before Trump’s election, the scxumbag/liar-nObama administration  initiated its scandalous Crossfire Hurricane project to investigate Russian collusion with members of Trump’s campaign staff and the president himself.

Reality check number two: Any and all collusion that ostensibly occurred did so while the scumnbag/liar-nObama  administration was in charge. Moreover, rather than warn fellow Americans from the opposition party that the Russians might be seeking to influence the 2016 election, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s administration instead chose to assume those opposition party members were committing treason, thereby justifying all methods, even felonious ones, used to stop them.

On to double standards. The same Democrat/Media Complex that assured Americans for three years Trump’s collusion with Russia was incontrovertible were completely sanguine regarding scumbag/liar-nObama’s open-mic assurance to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he’d “have more flexibility” regarding his relationship with Vladimir Putin. And they remained sanguine two years later, when Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

That same year, then-Vice President loose lips liar-Joe Biden openly bragged about getting Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma, an energy company paying loose lips liar-Biden’s son, Hunter,  $83,000 per month by threatening to withhold a billion dollars in foreign aid. By contrast, Trump allegedly  threatened (belied by a transcript of the conversation in question) to withhold funds that weren’t ultimately withheld in return for an investigation that was never undertaken.

But Trump is the one guilty of a “quid pro quo,” and any investigation into the corrupt machinations of loose lips liar-Biden and his son can precipitate impeachment proceedings?

Robert Mueller’s investigation was tasked with finding Russian collusion. Yet it somehow managed to avoid  determining how the thoroughly discredited Steele dossier — bought and paid for by scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton and the DNC — gained credibility among the highest echelons of the nation’s top law-enforcement agency.

The bigger picture? Does anyone seriously think President Trump could, among many things, gotten away with having members of his executive branch file warrants with the FISA Court under false pretenses; spying on members of Congress and the press; running weapons to Mexican cartel members; taking out an American citizen with a drone strike; selectively targeting conservative groups using the IRS; communicating with his secretary of state on an unsecured server; and sending pallets of cash to a nation sponsoring worldwide terror — without the deafening clamor for impeachment Barack scumbag/liar-nObama miraculously avoided?

Eight years of the scumbag/liar-nObama administration clearly demonstrated that the media are willfully blind — and justice is anything but. Yet the weaponization of impeachment has moved this nation into uncharted territory. Americans now live in a nation where private presidential phone calls with foreign counterparts “will be leaked and printed in the major media,” and impeachment will be a “casual affair” to be undertaken routinely, whenever the opposition party has a House majority, even if it is solely used for political gain, Victor Davis Hanson explains.

Moreover, as liar-Nancy Pelosi amply demonstrated, timeliness is now irrelevant. “Once a president is impeached,” Hanson adds, “the writ may simply sit until the House majority feels that the climate or polls are ripe to refer the articles to the Senate for trial, whether in days, weeks, months, or years.”

Equally irrelevant is the “term high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nothing illuminates that better than charging Trump with obstruction of Congress, a nonsensical assertion borne out of the need for Democrats to keep impeachment front and center, rather than wait for the Supreme Court to ultimately decide what obligations co-equal legislative and executive branches of government have to each other.

“Whistleblower” is now a meaningless term. Going forward, anyone with second- or third-hand information, working in coordination with the opposition party, will be deemed acceptable and credible, even as their identity can remain secret indefinitely.

Investigations? Testimony can be taken in secret and  selectively leaked to the media for partisan advantage, while witnesses can be prevented from answering questions posed by the opposing party. Law enforcement and intel agencies can hire foreign nationals, use  operatives to co-opt the media, employ multiple “confidential informants” (read: spies) to glean information about members of the opposing party’s campaign, and unmask private citizens involved with those campaigns, all under the auspices of protecting national security.

To advance those investigations, any surveillance requiring a warrant can be rubber-stamped by FISA Court jurists, whose knowledge of being lied to will not precipitate legal consequences, but simply demands for “reform” — from the liars themselves.

Remarkably, Democrats and their contemptible allies have done it all while ignoring one of the oldest adages known to man: what goes around comes around. They have not only set the stage for the permanent paralyzation of government, they are well on their way toward making elections utterly irrelevant.

In fact, their point man in this charade, documented liar scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff, has made that abundantly clear. “The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box,” he insisted. “For we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

In other words, American voters are too stupid to be trusted, and unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats running the administrative state must prevail. Thus, an acquittal of Trump by the Senate will be deemed a “miscarriage of justice.” In turn, that miscarriage of justice will make the 2020 election “illegitimate,” unless a Democrat prevails.

If Trump wins? Additional impeachment proceedings. If a Democrat becomes president? The only flaw in Hanson’s argument is the traditional cowardice amply demonstrated by a GOP that would likely allow a Democrat Party to continue running roughshod over the Constitution, undoubtedly promoted under the absurd auspices of “saving the republic.”

By then, there will be no republic to save. “We are now on new anti-constitutional grounds, and the United States will probably never return to the constitutional customs and traditions of its first 233 years,” Hanson predicts.

Thus, Americans are finally discovering what fundamental transformation is really all about. A constitutionally contemptuous Democrat Party, suffused with a lust for uncontested power and thoroughly convinced of its moral superiority, has precipitated the ultimate irony:

Democrats had to destroy the nation in order to “save” it.  

~The Patriot Post

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