PrairiePundit

Roger Simon:
Our hearts are supposed to be pounding because "Anonymous," the character who wrote a New York Times op-ed back in 2018, supposedly from inside the Trump administration, has secretly been working on a book that is about to be published.
The book, titled “A Warning,” is being promoted as “an unprecedented behind-the-scenes portrait of the Trump presidency” that expands upon the Times column, which ricocheted around the world and stoked the president’s rage because of its devastating portrayal of Trump in office.

The column described Trump’s leadership style as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective,” and noted that “his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

The author of the column, which was titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” and published Sept. 5, 2018, was known to the Times but identified only as a senior official in the Trump administration…

Ed Timberlake:
News flash for all Deep State conspirators: we have a lawfully elected President who is at the top of the Executive Branch of US Government.  As such, President Trump represents one third of our constitutionally empowered leadership and is “the US Government.” That reality has proven to be an issue for a lot of Deep State players inside the US Government, who from day one of his election or even earlier could not accept the will of their fellow citizens. Sadly, rather than focusing on changing administrations in our four-year cycle of peaceful revolution at the ballot box, many have engaged in violating the law through a conspiracy to remove President Trump. They have been using all their power for ill as US Government employees at the Department of Justice and FBI, and aided and abetted by senior members of the Intelligence Community and State and Defense. Fortunately for America and most unfortunately for some conspirators, some not yet charged, and all bad actors who th…

Legal Insurrection:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has vowed to “use force” to protect the country’s borders after Turkey threatened to unleash a wave of immigrants into Europe, French TV network Euronews reported.

The statement came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threatened to “open the gates and send 3.6 million” migrants over to Europe.

“If Turkey sets off further hundreds of thousands on top of this, then we will need to use force to protect the Hungarian border and the Serbian-Hungarian frontier and I do not wish for anyone that we should need to resort to that,” Prime Minister Orbán said.

President Erdogan threatened to open up the floodgates and swarm Europe with migrants after European leaders criticized Turkey for launching a military offensive against the Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria. Following the U.S. troops withdrawal, the Turkish army invaded northern Syria to target the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The U.S.-allied SDF, a coaliti…

Power Line:
The lead headline in today’s Washington Post (paper edition) proclaims: “Foes of Ukraine swayed Trump.” Just below this headline, we are informed that “Putin, Orban urged a hostile view; leaders fed corruption narrative, U.S. officials say.” The Post’s story is here. Just a few days ago, however, the Post paid glowing tribute to Joe Biden’s “brawling efforts” to combat corruption in Ukraine. Clearly, Ukrainian corruption is real and serious, not the invention of its enemies. Is it possible that Biden’s “brawling” rooted out all serious corruption in Ukraine? No, it isn’t. Even his boosters at the Post don’t make such a ridiculous claim. Thus, Trump didn’t need Putin or Orban to “sway” him into believing that there is a corruption problem in Ukraine. I don’t doubt that, in his effort to keep the administration from aiding Ukraine, Putin reminded Trump of the corruption problem. But there is no reason to believe that Putin swayed Trump. And, of course, the U.S. ultimately provid…

WSB-TV:
In a legal victory for the White House, a federal appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a challenge from the state of Maryland and Washington, D.C. over the issue of emoluments, ruling that those two governments had no right to bring such a lawsuit against the President of the United States.

"The District and Maryland's interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clause is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts," wrote a three judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a 36 page opinion, the judges said the case simply boiled down to the question of whether Maryland and D.C. had the legal right to bring such a case.

"The District and Maryland do not have Article III standing to pursue their claims against the President," the judges ruled.
... The same people who think renting a hotel room is unethical are OK with Biden…

John Nolte:
CNN’s Mad Trump Got Mexico to Build and Pay for a Wall It may not be the wall that critics visioned but it has been effective in slowing the illegal mass migration effort.

Democrats use illegal aliens to get undeserved House seats and they are willing to put the community at risk to steal those House seats. Cruz makes a strong case against those putting citizens at risk to pursue an illegitimate policy.  I think the DOJ should consider charing officials who refuse to cooperate with ICE with obstruction of justice.  Congress should also pass a law that would allow victims of violent illegal aliens released by sanctuary jurisdictions to sue the officials responsible le for the release.

PJ Media:
On Monday, Judicial Watch released new emails involving former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and that would have exposed Clinton's private email account if they had been released to Judicial Watch in a FOIA request win 2014. One long withheld email, which provides talking points for a call with senators and therefore fits the criteria of records concerning "talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack," should have been disclosed in 2014, but it was hidden from Judicial Watch for years.

"This email is a twofer – it shows Hillary Clinton misled the U.S. Senate on Benghazi and that the State Department wanted to hide the Benghazi connection to the Clinton email scheme," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. "Rather than defending her email misconduct, the Justice Department has more than enough evidence to reopen its investigations into Hillary Clinton."…

Washington Examiner:
...
Graham pointed out that Trump still does not know who his accuser is and criticized the closed-door process that has accompanied much of the impeachment inquiry so far. He said he could “only imagine” the difference in coverage the impeachment inquiry might have if a Democrat were in the White House.

"It shows a lot of things about our national media,” Graham said, adding, “When it's about Trump, who cares about the process, as long as you get him?" That has been the attitude of the mainstream media ever since Trump began his original campaign.  They decided early on that they did not have to treat him fairly and they certainly have not to this day.  They embraced the Russian collusion hoax and other coup attempts against him with gusto.

Washington Post:
Anxiety rises among Democrats worried about party’s prospects in 2020As they look at a weakened Republican president, Democrats see vulnerabilities in their own field, and the unpredictable nature of the race so far has contributed to their unease. They have a weak field because they are pushing unpopular Democrat policies.  They know their agenda is unpopular and that is why they are trying to taint Trump by pushing a bogus theory about Ukraine that has zero merit.  In the process, they are energizing the President's base in a way that leads them to want to crawl across broken gall to vote against Democrats.  Trump is already leading the preelectrion campaign financing polling with a nearly insurmountable lead in fundraising.

I can't wait to vote against Democrats who pivot from the Russian collusion hoax to an attempt to try to make normal diplomacy look like an impeachable offense.  I have never seen a more disgusting group of politicians and their media coh…

NY Times:
An Envoy’s Damning Account of Trump’s Ukraine Pressure and Its Consequences William B. Taylor Jr. laid out in visceral terms the potentially life-or-death stakes of what he saw as an illegitimate scheme to pressure Kiev for political help by suspending American security aid. By not allowing the Republicans to discuss counter information revealed on their examination which shoots down this whole thesis Schiff is trying to throw a skunk into the jury box.   In fact, Republicans think they destroyed a key part of Taylor's testimony.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said a fellow Republican lawmaker deconstructed a key part of the latest Trump impeachment inquiry witness testimony in Tuesday's closed-door session.

"In 90 seconds, we had John Ratcliffe destroy [acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill] Taylor's whole argument," McCarthy said.

The questioning by Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican and member of both the House Intelligence and Judiciary …

It turns out that it was one of the favorite phrases of blacks in Congress to describe the impeachment of Bill Clinton and it was also used by Joe Biden.  It looks like Democrats are having a massive short term memory problem as are their media cohorts who also described the Benghazi probe of Hillary Clinton as a lynching.

It is another example of how Democrats try to shut down their opponents with fake outrage.

I don't know if Trump deliberately set them up for this revealing screw up, but it did turn out to be a brilliant move on his part that shows just how phony Democrats are in their attempted coup attempt or 'lynching."

There is more on the Democrats' hypocrisy in the use of the term lynching here.

Guardian:
I was told Trump wanted quid pro quo deal, Ukraine ambassador reportedly testifies – live

Bill Taylor, acting US ambassador to Ukraine, reportedly directly contradicted testimony of Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the EU In this case, it is double hearsay since the reporter didn't hear the testimony of Tayor either so it could be just Schiff or some other Democrat lying about what was said.  That has happened already in this coup attempt., but assuming that the reporter was told what Taylor actually said, Taylor is not speaking from firsthand knowledge of what the President said.   It looks like Schiff is continuing to push hearsay allegations with no direct testimony.

Washington Post:
Trump compares investigation to ‘lynching,’ drawing condemnationWhile the president previously called the probe a “witch hunt,” his latest tweet seized on a word associated with the killings of thousands, predominantly African Americans. Lynching was never limited to just targetting black people.  Its meaning is associated with people ignoring the rule of law and due process to attach someone they hate or someone caught stealing cattle.  While certainly there were black people who were lynched, I doubt the number was in the thousands.  Whatever the number, it was wrong but it is not wrong for Trump to describe the current coup attempt by Democrats as a lynching that ignores the rule of law and due process.

Democrats seem to think that they can appropriate a word and ignore its original meaning.  It is just another attempt to play identity politics and it is disgusting.  Treating the black population as if Jim Crow is still in effect is a false narrative meant to fright…

NY Times:
Trump Administration Moves to Lift Protections for Fish and Divert Water to Farms The Trump administration eased protections on a small California fish, allowing water to be diverted from its estuary habitat to large Central Valley farms. The reversal will also make more water available to people and to be used to fight fires.  California's policy on the environment was making it less safe for people.  It also harmed the farming industry in favor of non-voting fish.

Roger Kimball:
Media Attempt to School Republicans Is a Disingenuous Fraud

What we are witnessing with such gems of hysterical mendacity are the pathetic death throes of a discredited political franchise and its rapidly disintegrating narrative. Kimball takes on an attempt by the Times to talk the GOP into a treasonous coup attempt.  It is worth reading in full.

The Federalist Papers:
President Trump and Michigan Republicans were just handed a huge victory by the Supreme Court on a case involving redrawn congressional districts, as Reuters reports:

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a challenge to Republican-drawn electoral districts in Michigan that Democrats said were illegally configured to dilute their voting power, an action taken in the aftermath of major rulings by the justices in June prohibiting federal courts from hearing such claims.

The Supreme Court’s action voided an order in April by a three-judge panel to rework 34 districts in the state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives whose boundaries were crafted purely to advantage Republicans, a practice known as partisan gerrymandering.
... The court had made a similar ruling in another state. It means that the state legislature will be the final arbiters of partisan gerrymandering and not liberal judges.

Lee Smith:
...
The impeachment battle is not just about congressional probes and alleged presidential strong-arming, but about the Russiagate narrative. Anti-Trump forces in the government and media are working to vindicate their previous efforts and discredit a forthcoming Justice Department inquiry into the origins of Russiagate by again connecting Trump and a foreign power to a U.S. election.
...

Although the details are different – no mention this time of hookers and golden showers – the whistleblower’s central claim closely resembles the thesis laid out in the anti-Trump dossier compiled by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which the FBI used as its roadmap to collusion: That Trump took or solicited dirt on his Democratic opponent from a foreign power in exchange for favors to that country’s government.

Once again, much of the media seem to be treating every allegation against Trump as probable fact, while dismissing any questions and concerns as conspir…

Politico:
Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee have raised more than $300 million this year for his reelection — more than any other sitting president in history at this point in the campaign.

Trump has nearly twice as much cash on hand — $158 million, between his campaign account and the RNC — as Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee had at this time in his successful re-election run.

Already this year, Trump’s campaign operation has spent close to $23 million on TV and digital advertising, more than 10 times the amount that the lone major Democratic super PAC spending against him, Priorities USA, has laid out so far in its online-only spending campaign.

Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed by the spending chasm between the two sides — and its implications for the general election.

“The resources he has will be put to work anywhere and everywhere that he feels like he can scare up electoral votes, and Democrats will never catch up. It’s just too much …

Chuck Devore:
More than half of California voters have thought about moving out of state, according to a new poll from the Institute of Governmental Studies at U.C. Berkeley. A full 74 percent of the state’s very conservative voters say they’re looking into moving, and 84 percent of those cite California’s political culture as their rationale for leaving.

Unsurprisingly, the high cost of housing is mentioned by 71 percent of California voters who have considered moving out-of-state. More than half of voters ages 18 to 39 have thought about moving out of state, with more than 80 percent of that group citing high housing costs as the reason.

So, lots of Californians want to move. Who can blame them?

While wages in the state are generally higher than in the rest of the nation (especially close to the Pacific Coast), so too are housing costs, which more than eat up the higher earnings. For instance, workers moving from the tech industry in the San Francisco Bay Area to Austin, Texas, woul…

Jeff Dunetz:
In April 2019, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) began the Family Fraud Initiative in El Paso to identify individuals fraudulently showing themselves as families including kids who aren’t theirs, to make asylum and be released into the United States. Since April, the Family Fraud initiative has discovered: Trafficking Kids
238 fraudulent families identified;329 false documents seized that were used to support fraudulent claims;more than 350 individuals federally prosecuted for various crimes, including human smuggling, making false statements, conspiracy, and illegal re-entry after removal; and50 individuals identified who have fraudulently claimed to be unaccompanied minors. And that is at El Paso, just one crossing area
...

Some of the most disturbing cases identified criminals who are exploiting young kids to further their trafficking business. These disgusting criminals are working with the children’s just as disgusting parents to attach their kids, so…

NY Times:
Trump Calls Impeachment Inquiry a ‘Lynching’ President Trump called the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into him a “lynching” and said it was “without due process or fairness or any legal rights.” The Democrats have not been able to make a persuasive case for their secrecy and lack of due process in a coup attempt to overthrow the government.  They have also not made a persuasive case for protecting the 'whistleblower' who spread false hearsay in an attempt to spur their impeachment efforts.

Politico:
As President Donald Trump continued his attacks on the Ukraine whistleblower on Monday, Chuck Schumer is asking the intelligence community what is being done to protect the source from harm.

The Senate Minority leader asked both the acting director of national intelligence and the inspector general on Monday afternoon to outline what "specific steps" they are taking to protect the whistleblower. Schumer said his understanding is the unidentified individual is receiving some security but said that he fears "safety risks may intensify in the event that the whistleblower’s identity is disclosed."

"In light of the President’s ill-advised statements, his lack of respect for the rule of law and his well-documented habit of condoning violence by his supporters, I am concerned that he may disclose the whistleblower’s identity or cause it to be disclosed by others in the administration," Schumer wrote in a letter to acting DNI Joseph Maguire and IG Micha…

Breitbart:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) review into the origins of the Russian collusion hoax probe has reportedly prompted some CIA analysts in the crosshairs of investigators to lawyer up.

NBC News made the revelation on Monday, adding that DOJ “has found something significant” and expanded the review.

The news outlet also found:

[Connecticut U.S. Attorney John] Durham has also requested to talk to CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia’s activities, prompting some of them to hire lawyers, according to three former CIA officials familiar with the matter. And there is tension between the CIA and the Justice Department over what classified documents Durham can examine, two people familiar with the matter said.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has tapped Durham to conduct the investigation.

DOJ would not say whether the investigation has morphed into a criminal probe, NBC News acknowledged.

The U.S. attorney leading the review has hired more staff and expan…

Steve Hilton:
From the beginning, it was obvious that for the Democrats, impeachment is partisan politics dressed up as principle. Nancy Pelosi told us that herself the day she kicked off the process.

"What's more serious is that he [President Trump] can't win," Pelosi said.

But last week, another aspect was revealed, and it shows us what the stakes are in this fight. Day after day on Capitol Hill, we saw a parade of bureaucrats stepping out of the shadows to attack President Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you, "Trump Wars: The System Strikes Back."
...
The idea that career civil servants are high-minded, politically neutral oracles of wisdom is a joke. They think Trump is deplorable. They think you're deplorable, and they think any challenge to their globalist establishment ideology is deplorable.

From day one, the career civil servants have knocked, blocked and plotted against this president. This week, they went after EU Amb. Gordon Sondl…

Victor Davis Hanson:
Joe Biden claims he wants to take Trump behind the gym and beat him up.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) jokes that she would like to go into an elevator with him and see Trump never come out alive. Robert De Niro has exhausted the ways in which he dreams of punching Trump out and the intonations in which he yells to audiences, “F—k Trump!”

The humanists and social justice warriors of Hollywood, from Madonna to Johnny Depp, cannot agree whether their elected president should be beheaded, blown up, stabbed, shot, or incinerated. All the Democratic would-be presidential nominees agree that Trump is the worst something-or-other in history—from human being to mere president.
...

The so-called deep state detests him. An anonymous op-ed writer in the September 5, 2018 New York Times bragged about the bureaucracy’s successful efforts to ignore Trump’s legal mandates—a sort of more methodical version of the comical Rosenstein-McCabe attempt to stage a palace coup and remo…

Mark Clifford, South China Post:
China’s targeting of the NBA shows why it may fail at building soft power – and the Chinese dream


By narrowing the boundaries of commentary, China is gradually alienating outsiders who might see opportunities thereIn attacking the NBA, which does not need China and would be difficult to replace, Beijing may have finally gone too far
...
No other state would think of doing what China has done. This is behaviour unworthy of a proud, confident country with 2,000 years of statecraft.

It smells of brittleness, insecurity and a government’s doubts about its own legitimacy. A confident country would not even notice a political tweet by a foreign sports executive.

Would the French react with such vehemence if Morey had tweeted in support of the gilets jaunes ? I don’t think anyone would have noticed – or if they did, cared. Who, after all, takes a basketball executive’s view on another country’s politics seriously?

Companies that are doing business in Hong Kong …

Conservative Tree House:
The activity of the “small group” of coup plotters consists of three generalized subsidiary agencies: (1) DOJ/FBI, (2) CIA/ODNI, and (3) The State Department.

Within each “small group faction” a years-long review of their narrative constructs shows the groups have specific and unique media outlets for their offensive (’16, ’17) and defensive (’18, ’19) propaganda efforts.

•The DOJ/FBI faction of the “small group” leaks to narrative engineers at the New York Times and NBC. •The CIA/ODNI faction utilize the Washington Post and ABC; and •the State Dept. faction use CNN and CBS. Each faction uses the same reporters & pundits for their distribution. This pattern, albeit generalized, has been consistent for several years.

The originating media entity -utilizing the leaks, opinions and agenda of the faction most concerned- starts the process. The secondary media groups come in for support – reporting on the reporting; and then reporting on the reporting of the re…

Breitbart:
Latino-owned businesses are experiencing significant growth thanks to a strong economy, a Biz2Credit study found.

Rohit Arora, Biz2Credit’s CEO, said Latino business owners are enjoying a 46 percent jump in revenue this year, which will bolster the nation’s thriving economy.

Arora commented:

Latino-owned businesses have grown 31.6% since 2012, and our research finds that revenues of Latino-owned companies jumped 23% from 2017-18. Cost management is a challenge for young and growing firms, which can factor into the dip in credit scores. Latino businesses are thriving and expanding, and they help contribute to the overall strength of the U.S. economy.
In May, Alfredo Ortiz of the Job Creators Network said that although Democrats claimed the Trump economy was no help to the Hispanic community, the facts revealed the opposite.

Ortiz wrote:

The fact is that Hispanics are flourishing in the Trump economy. Democrats asserting the contrary is a mere partisan talking point to try to den…

Power Line:
LIBERALS SMASH ALL NORMS OF CIVILITY From attacking Republicans in public to fantasies about harming the President, the Democrats have lost all civility.   This is how they respond to a President who counterattacks.

Tasks and Purpose:
The Marines need to slim down in order to fight big wars against China and Russia, according to Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger.

Currently, the Marine Corps is built to fight another Desert Storm, Berger told reporters during a roundtable on Wednesday.

"We are big and we are heavy," Berger said. "We have to go on a diet."

Toward that end, the Marine Corps is working on a 10-year plan to make sure it has Marines in the right military occupational specialties in order to respond quickly should war with Russia or China break out, Berger said.

While China and Russia have fearsome armored and other mechanized units, the Marine Corps does not expect to fight massive tank battles against either country, he said.

"We will absolutely fight combined arms, but will not take them on in a symmetrical fashion," Berger said. "That would be stupid. That would be dumb."

Instead, the Marine Corps is looking at how to best disperse its…

NY Post Editorial:
In her efforts to rationalize her 2016 loss, Hillary Clinton has gone full cuckoo. Vladimir Putin not only robbed her, he’s positioning his “assets” to do it again.

Doing a podcast with David Plouffe, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, she insisted that Putin is “grooming” a Democrat for a third-party run next year.

“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton raved.

She plainly meant Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, as Plouffe said. Never mind that Gabbard ruled out any third-party bid on CNN in August — or that she’s a veteran who put her life on the line for this country.

This follows last week’s New York Times story hinting at the same conspiracy theory, which cited at least two former Clinton aides and which Gabbard slammed onstage at last week’s debate.

The former secretary of state (who once pro…

Washington Examiner:
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke claimed religious organizations receiving tax benefits from the federal government should be required to "follow the law" when it comes to discriminating against gay and transgender people.

Backtracking on his claim earlier this month that religious organizations should be taxed if they did not perform gay marriage, O'Rourke said churches and other religious nonprofits should maintain their tax-exempt status, but that they should be legally obliged not to discriminate against gay and transgender people.

Citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, O'Rourke claimed on Sunday that regardless of religious values any organization should be required to adhere to the same laws meant to curb discrimination in housing, transportation, and employment. "They must follow the laws of this country, including the law that prohibits discrimination."

"I want to make sure that we enforce those laws,"…

J.E. Dyer:
Schiff’s Russia Expert Worked W/Steele, Wrote ‘Russian Interference’ Piece In 2016, Has Unusual Connections

...
On 27 July 2016, out of the blue, Fiona Hill published an article in Vox on “3 reasons Russia’s Vladimir Putin might want to interfere in the US presidential elections.”

The timing was, let us say, distinctive. This was four days before the FBI launched “Crossfire Hurricane,” and three days before Bruce and Nellie Ohr’s fateful breakfast meeting with Christopher Steele.

It was also at the time the mainstream media were suddenly beating a drum about “Russian interference in the U.S. election.” There can be little doubt that that spurt of themed coverage, virtually identical across media platforms, as a result of Glenn Simpson’s and Christopher Steele’s effort to stop the “Russian interference” narrative around the mainstream media, a campaign Simpson alluded to (albeit obliquely) in his testimony to Congress in 2017.
...
But right out of the gate, we find Fiona Hi…

NY Times:
Erdogan’s Ambitions Go Beyond Syria. He Says He Wants Nuclear Weapons. A month before invading Kurdish areas in Syria, Turkey’s president said he “cannot accept” the West’s restrictions that keep him from a bomb. Does he now want to nuke the Kurds too?  He has ruined Turkey.  He destroyed the Democratic system of Ataturk and has become an Islamist despot.  In the process, he has also done great harm to the country's economy.  He wants to jail anyone who disagrees with him.  It would be as foolish to allow him to get nuclear weapons as it would be to do so in Iran.

NY Times:
As Homelessness Surges in California, So Does a Backlash Tent encampments across California are testing residents’ tolerance and compassion as street conditions deteriorate. Tents are the new affordable housing in California and the elected officials have no realistic plan for dealing with it.  In fact, they will make it worse with rent controls which will lead to less home construction.  The real way to fix the problem of affordable housing is to give builders an incentive to build more and increase the supply.  California is doing the opposite.

It is also failing to deal with the drug problem and the mental health aspects of the situation.  The state that bans plastic straws, provides plastic needles to the druggies which wind up on the streets.

No wonder so many sane people want to leave the place.

Washington Post:
Pelosi leads surprise delegation to Jordan for ‘vital discussions’ on Syria crisis

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit highlighted her sharp disagreement with President Trump over policy in the Middle East following the president's abrupt removal of U.S. troops from northern Syria and Turkey’s subsequent attacks on Kurds. Democrats could care less about the Kurds as anything other than a vehicle to bash Trump.  What they should be focused on is the rogue leader of Turkey.  Erdogan is an Islamist despot who sided with ISIS when Obama was in the White House and his aggression is something that should be the subject of bipartisan cooperation instead of an excuse to attack the President for the irrational acts of Turkey.  She is out of her lane in trying to bypass the President.  It is more evidence that the Democrats are pushing a coup attempt.

NY Times:

Trump Campaign Floods Web With Ads, Raking In Cash as Democrats Struggle That campaigns are now being fought largely online campaign is hardly a revelation, yet only one political party seems to have gotten the message. Trump ads had some very effective ads attacking the Democrats and their media cohorts.  He has also had ads effectively attaching theri coup attempt through the impeachment process.  The Democrats have been making a lot of racket, but thney have not been making much seince.  Their latest efforts to demonize the normal back and forth with other countries as some kind of illegal quid pro quo is ridiculous.

Rachel Bovard:
Adam Schiff’s ‘Gossip Girl’ Probe

The problem with conducting an impeachment probe in secret is that it never allows for a full airing of the evidence—either to other members of the House, who will be compelled to vote on it at some point, or to the American people.

...

Despite the fact that support for impeachment is slowly dropping, and 60 percent of voters say they’d rather Congress focus on actual problems facing Americans, Democrats are still hell-bent on making a mockery of the impeachment process.

They are led by U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In ordinary impeachment probes, the inquiry would be led by the House Judiciary Committee. But the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) has bungled key elements and fallen out of favor with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

So the duty has fallen to Schiff, who is proving himself to be terrifyingly adept at three things: running secret hearings, forcin…

John Kass:
Watching the Democratic presidential candidate debate — with Elizabeth Warren promising government health care for all without saying she’ll tax the middle class to pay for it — was like staring from a distance at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

You don’t know the Big Rock Candy Mountain? That’s the gorgeous Democratic Socialist paradise where everything is free.

“Where the handouts grow on bushes … And the sun shines every day/ On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees/ The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings/ In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”

It sounds so nice, like Democratic economic policy written for modern Americans who’ve been trained to despise the freedom offered by capitalism, while yearning for free stuff promised by the federal masters.

It’s an old hobo (can I still use that word?) song about a dreamy place where the cops have wooden legs, guard dogs have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs all day.

But I concentrated on what the candidate…

Ned Ryun:
...
The political moment we are living through is not the usual one. This is more than the corporate leftist media and Democratic attacks to which we’ve become accustomed against any Republican, including the usual tripe about how Bush or (pick a name) is a Nazi and the election of said Republican signals the end of days. This with Trump is about so much more.

James Piereson described it best this week at a conference co-sponsored by American Greatness and The New Criterion: we’re used to domestic politics, where the discussions are over the size of tax cuts, etc. What we are seeing today is vicious regime politics and a struggle over who is really in charge of this country’s governmental agencies. The duly elected president of the United States? Or players inside of that administrative state, along with their mouthpieces in the media?

None of these absurd fairytales of collusion were ever really about actual suspicions that Trump was somehow tied to Putin. (Though certainly…

Kenneth Timmerman:
The national media blasted President Trump’s withdrawal of 50 US military advisors from the Syrian border with Turkey as a “sellout,” a “betrayal” and a “huge strategic blunder.”

Let’s be clear: None of them truly care about the Kurds. Otherwise, they would have been sending correspondents and camera crews to Rojava, as the Kurds call northern Syria, on a regular basis.

Let’s also be clear about the goals of Turkish president Tayyip Recep Erdogan. While he attempted to stylize his military invasion of Rojava as a counterterrorism operation, few international observers bought into it. Why? Because there have been no terror attacks against Turkey from Syrian territory since the Syrian Kurds established their self-governing entity in 2012. None.

Erdogan is not even remotely interested in fighting ISIS, or in taking responsibility for the estimated 12,000 ISIS fighters currently in Kurdish custody at the al-Hol refugee camp. What actually happens to those ISIS prisoners…

Debra Heine:
Impeachment Witness and Schiff Staffer Meeting in Ukraine Organized by Burisma-Funded Think Tank He appears to be conspiring with the parties to the Biden corruption.

Washington Free Beacon:
Prominent A-Hole Wants to Impeach Trump While the descriptor probably applies to several of the President's opponents, Kasich appears to have really angered people about other issues too.

Steve Feinstein:
Proving a negative -- proving that the absence of something is definitively due to very specific reasons or circumstances -- is an inexact science at best. There is a hugely significant “negative” that  has occurred recently, one that is quite plausibly due to some very distinct actions and clear-cut decisions made by the American oil industry and the Trump administration: the non-event that has happened is world crude oil prices not rising in spite of the cruise missile and drone attack on the Saudi oil fields on September 14th, 2019 that destroyed a significant portion of Saudi oil production, the missile attack on an Iranian oil tanker in waters off Saudi Arabia on October 11th, 2019 and new Mideast unrest in the form of Turkey’s military incursion into Syria in mid-October. In years past, any one of these incidents would have spooked the world’s oil market into n hysterical price spike; today, the cumulative effect of all of them is not even a murmur on the radarsc…