Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Ukraine.

Saturday, August 26th, 2023

The escalation of American involvement in Ukraine continues in spite of growing questions about it. There is a whole bipartisan obsession with that country, going back to Joe Biden’s involvement and his son’s. Even before that, there was much concern about the fact that Ukraine was the site for many of the USSR’s nuclear missiles. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR, fears about those missiles resulted in an agreement. The 1994 agreement to remove those missiles, included a promise to protect Ukraine from aggresion.

The U.S., in a burst of diplomatic energy and at a time of unmatched global influence, worked to prevent the unprecedented collapse of a nuclear superpower from leading to history’s largest proliferation of nuclear weapons.

It was at a time of immense US power and a weakened Russia.

This diplomatic activity manifested in security assurances for Ukraine embedded in what has become known as the Budapest Memorandum. With the entrance of Ukraine into the international order as a non-nuclear state, Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.” The memo reaffirmed their obligation to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” The signatories also reaffirmed their commitment to “seek immediate” UN Security Council action “to provide assistance to Ukraine … if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression.” These assurances upheld obligations contained in the U.N. charter and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act.

The nuclear weapons were sent to Russia to dismantle them. In 2014, sensing US weakness and indecision, Russia invaded and took possession of Crimea. Russia has a long history with Crimea.

Some argue that Putin’s annexation of Crimea is an attempt to return Russia to the glory of its pre-Soviet days, “as one of the world’s greatest civilizations.” Although Ukrainian nationalism remains strong, particularly in the eastern part of the country, Ukrainian officials and analysts report to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that significant demographic transformation is underway, with a huge influx of ethnic Russians.

This may or may not be true. Eastern Ukraine has many Russian speaking people, or had, and plebiscites have been confusing. There has been some evidence that those Russian speakers have been bombarded by Ukrainian forces for years.

In 2010, Victor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian Ukrainian was elected president.

Prior to entering national politics with his successful run for parliament in 2006, Yanukovych was the Governor of his native Donetsk Oblast from 1997 to 2002. He was simultaneously the Chairman of the oblast’s legislature from 1999 to 2001.

Yanukovych first ran for president in the 2004 election, where he advanced to the runoff and was declared the winner against former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. However, allegations of electoral fraud and voter intimidation caused widespread protests and Kyiv’s Independence Square was occupied in what became known as the Orange Revolution. The Ukrainian Supreme Court ultimately nullified the runoff election and ordered a rerun, which Yanukovych lost to Yushchenko. Yanukovych ran for President again in the 2010 election, this time beating Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in an election that was judged free and fair by international observers.[5][6]

Yanukovych had represented a Russian speaking portion of eastern Ukraine and was seen by the CIA as a Russian ally.
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The Trump Indictments

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023

We now have coming the fourth indictment of Donald Trump in the Lawfare aimed at blocking him from the presidency. I tend to agree with him that the 2020 election was stolen but that is another topic.

What about the latest indictment ? Kim Strassel explains.

Take Mr. Trump out of the equation and consider more broadly what even the New York Times calls Mr. Smith’s “novel approach.” A politician can lie to the public, Mr. Smith concedes. Yet if that politician is advised by others that his comments are untruthful and nonetheless uses them to justify acts that undermine government “function,” he is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the country. Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all.

For example, Barak Obama in 2009 telling Americans and the AMA, “If you like your doctor, you can keep him.” We know that advisors told him that was a lie.

Let’s take another indictment. The Mar a Lago raid and indictment.

CNN’s version of the indictment.

Presidents can and do have access to any information the government possesses, and the government has a legitimate need to keep some secrets about intelligence gathering and defense capabilities, including its nuclear arsenal.

The US Intelligence Community is comprised of 18 distinct agencies, including the CIA and the National Security Agency and elements of the Department of Defense.

This new, superseding indictment adds allegations of violating a section of US law with regard to tampering with evidence.

Interestingly, the indictment was by a DC grand jury but the case will be tried in Florida. Why ?

The Presidential Records Act says “Establishes that Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the Archivist as soon as the President leaves office.”

But Trump’s records were not. Why? Did he pack up those 15 boxes of records by himself ? I have read that NARA, the Archives, refused to accept them. I can’t find a link to that story but NARA seems to have been very involved in this case from the start. I have also read that the disputed records concerned the Russia Hoax. Perhaps Trump feared another Sandy Burglar event.

Then, of course, we find out that Biden, who did not have legal access, had classified records from his time as a Senator which he was not allowed to have.

Then we have the Alvin Bragg indictment. This may be the most ridiculous although the coming indictment in Georgia might be the most comical.

Alvin Bragg’s case against Donald Trump is running into a wall of skepticism — including from left-leaning legal experts, liberal pundits and some of Trump’s Republican detractors who have otherwise been eager to see him held accountable.

A day after the Manhattan district attorney unveiled the history-making charging documents against the former president, some of Bragg’s natural allies were left scratching their heads and Trump world appeared emboldened by the uncertainties in the case.

In Georgia, mean while,
It’s a marvel of the American judicial system that Emily Kohrs, a 30-year-old woman who has described herself as between customer service jobs and who said she didn’t vote in the 2020 presidential election, could play a pivotal role in the potential indictment of a former US president.

Anyway, the continued legal harassment by Biden’s DoJ has illustrated the lack of a sense of irony in this regime. Anthony Blinken just spoke about how outrageous it was for Putin to arrest his political rival.

Trump is indicted again.

Friday, June 9th, 2023

The Democrats keep reenforcing the lessons of “Ham Sandwich Nation,” especially when a Republican is involved. The last time was a civil suite by A woman who alleged he raped her 40 years ago in a department store dressing room. Of course she had no evidence and it will be reversed on appeal but it was enough for a New York jury to harass Trump.

Given the plethora of criminal laws and regulations in today’s society, this due process gap allows prosecutors to charge almost anyone they take a deep interest in.

The election of leftist district attorneys has added to the problem. Certain locations, heavily Democrat in politics, are ideal locales for these political cases. Race, as in the Chauvin case in Minneapolis, is an added feature.

Now we have another case involving Donald Trump and the Biden regime. The designated hitman is one Jack Smith who, with Andrew
Weissmann, has the distinction of having a verdict reversed by the US Supreme Court 9-0.

Smith previously served under Attorney General Eric Holder, leading the DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit from 2010 to 2015. Smith led a team of 30 prosecutors in conducting public corruption cases throughout the U.S., including a mixed track record of going after high-profile politicians.

While chief of the public integrity section, Smith helped with the prosecution against then-Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Virginia Republican who was indicted and convicted on federal corruption charges related to bribery in 2014. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned McDonnell’s conviction in 2016.

Of course, the conviction was successful in ending the defendant’s political career, which seems to be the same here.

Here is an example of the double standard.

Here is some background about the use of Lawfare.

The DOJ is no longer legally arguing that Donald Trump held any classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. The DOJ is arguing that President Trump held documents vital to U.S. defense security. It’s a farce but that’s their position. The classification status of documents is moot, nonexistent, except to create the predicate for the proverbial FBI nose under the tent.

The DOJ-NSD (that’s Lisa Monaco) got a warrant to look for classified documents, but never intended to use classified documents as a case cornerstone because President Trump had full declassification authority.

The entire case has shifted to another charge based on “The Espionage Act” beloved of Woodrow Wilson.

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Trump is indicted.

Friday, March 31st, 2023

In an obvious political move, Manhattan NY District Attorney, Alvin Bragg has succeeded in getting a grand jury to indict former president Trump on what are supposedly 34 counts of something. The indictment seems related to the Stormy Daniels case where a porn actress, represented by felon lawyer Avenatti, succeeded in extorting $130,000 from Trump during the election season. Her only evidence was a photo taken at a public golf tournament. Trump, of course, denied the accusation. He is a well known germaphobe who does not even shake hands with people. That he would have sex with such a likely STD source is ridiculous but in the midst of a campaign he paid her off with a Non-disclosure agreement which, she of course violated.

Great hilarity is, of course, widely seen in the leftist media, like the LA Times. At least they do admit the concerns of many.

The larger share — the “maybe Trumpers,” as Ayres calls them, make up 55%-60% of the party. “They’re exactly the kind of people who will want to know if this is a credible case or a trumped up vendetta by a liberal New York, Democratic prosecutor who is out to get Trump,” Ayres said.

No kidding. Nancy Pelosi has weighed in with what she thinks the law is. She thinks he has to “prove his innocence.”

Alan Dershowitz disagrees.

Dershowitz said on the Sean Hannity program on Fox News that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is playing with fire.

[W]hen you’re a democratic elected prosecutor who ran on the campaign pledge of getting Trump and you’re going to indict, forget about the former president, the man who may become the future president if he beats the incumbent who is the head of your political party. Prosecutor, you’d better have the strongest case imaginable, not a case that depends on stitching together two inapplicable statutes and using Michael Cohen.

Powerline blog also has a different opinion.

While politics has always been a scrappy arena, former President Donald Trump has radicalized Democrats and brought them to a level of derangement that few could have imagined. The full-court press to ruin Trump began the moment he descended the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in June 2015 and continues to this day.

It started with the Russiagate hoax, which was manufactured by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and carried out by the top ranks of the FBI and DOJ. The FBI falsified information on a FISA court warrant application in order to spy on Trump’s campaign, pushed the debunked Steele dossier as fact knowing full well that its sourcing was bogus, and openly boasted about trying to stop Trump from becoming president.

Now what ?

The Wall Street Journal agrees this is making history.

President Bill Clinton in 1998 was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice related to his attempted coverup of his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate voted against conviction, but the threat of criminal charges persisted until the final hours of Mr. Clinton’s presidency, when he struck a deal with independent counsel Robert Ray. The prosecutor agreed not to pursue a grand jury indictment after Mr. Clinton admitted to giving false testimony under oath, surrendered his law license for five years and accepted a $25,000 fine.

Clinton committed perjury as well as sexual misconduct in the Oval Office, of all places.

When compared with practices in other countries, Mr. Trump’s prosecution is less unusual, even among liberal democracies. In the last decade alone, sitting or former heads of state in France, Italy, Israel, Brazil and South Korea have been charged with crimes including illegal campaign financing, bribery and tax fraud.

The Israel prosecution is the closest comparison to Trump’s. It has been pushed by Netanyahu’s enemies on the left.

Here is an analysis of that case.

The corruption charges facing him, meanwhile, are problematic. It does look as if he and his wife have been living extravagantly, and they look grasping and a bit unethical in accepting expensive gifts, such as copious amounts of rare cigars and fine champagne, from people they call “friends” but who could be seen as supplicants.

I claim no expertise in Israeli law concerning gift limits, but judging from most coverage I’ve read, the gifts in themselves seem at worst a minor violation. The major allegation against Netanyahu would have to be that the gifts were accepted as a bribe for specific official action. If the gifts weren’t just an extravagance, but actually changed Israeli government policy, that would amount to a crime under the laws of most republics.

What is chilling about the charges against Netanyahu, though, is that the alleged “bribery” involved no change in policy at all. Instead, he is alleged to have influenced media outlets friendly to him to also be friendly to those who provided the gifts.

The similarity to Trump’s case is that the legal issues are murky but the opposition is determined to drive him from office. That link is to 2019 so the campaign did not work but Natanyahu is trying to reform the corrupt Israeli courts and the left has taken to the streets in protest.

In both cases the left is using the legal system to try to destroy a political rival. The recent incident at Stanford Law School shows that the left is in firm control of law schools. In time, not so long, the legal system will be controlled by the left.

Behind the bank failures

Thursday, March 16th, 2023

I want to recommend a good piece at Conservative Tree House, which I read every day.

It is this post which connects a few dots.

This is where we need to keep the BRICS -vs- WEF dynamic in mind and consider that ideologically there is a conflict between the current agenda of the ‘western financial system’ (climate change) and the traditional energy developers. This conflict has been playing out not only in the energy sector, but also the dynamic of support for Russia (an OPEC+ member) against the western sanction regime. Ultimately supporting Russia’s battle against NATO encroachments.

The war in Ukraine, which probably would not have begun if Trump was president, led to a war of economic interests. The western democracies have invested their future in “climate change,” which used to be “global warming” before the failure to warm made that slogan obsolete. Climate change has evolved into a war on energy production. The Biden regime now has even gone after gas stoves. Since I just bought one, I have an interest. Now, they seem to be going after washing machines. Ours has failed recently so I had better be quick to replace it.

The recent Credit Suisse bank crisis is complicated by the refusal of its largest shareholder, the Saudis, to help with a bail out. Why would this be ? This brings up the topic of BRICS. This is a new financial combination made up of Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa.

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The culture wars.

Sunday, March 5th, 2023

I am pretty much a non-combatant in the culture wars these days but the gulf between decriminalizing homosexuality and the trans gender thing is just too vast for an old guy to grasp. I am pretty much a libertarian on most of this but the sexualization of children is a reach too far. I have no problem with gay marriage although Civil Union seemed more appropriate. I have worked with gays for many years and always was tolerant of them. The vicious backlash by gay “activists” after the California prop 8 was approved by a large majority was appalling. The federal judge who ruled it unconstitutional retired soon after and married his gay lover. The state attorney general did not appeal that ruling. Gay activist groups were able to retaliate by identifying those who donated to the proposition’s supporters.

Boycotts were also a feature of public response to the outcome of the election. LGBT rights groups published lists of donors to the Yes on 8 campaign and organized boycotts of individuals or organizations who had promoted or donated to it.[159][160][161] Targets of the boycotts included the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, El Coyote Cafe, California Musical Theatre, and the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel.[161][162][163]

Some supporters of Proposition 8 reported receiving death threats, some of which claimed to be “stemming from Prop 8”.[164][165] Some LDS churches were vandalized with spray paint.[166][167]

The boycotts and threats cost a few waitresses their jobs. More significantly, Brenden Eich, the founder/CEO had to resign from Mozilla.

The new chief executive of Mozilla, the firm behind the Firefox web browser, has resigned following a furore over a donation he made in support of a ban on gay marriage in California.

Brendan Eich has “chosen to step down” after less than two weeks in the job, Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, which owns the company, announced in a blogpost on Thursday.

“We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves,” said Baker. “We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better.”

Thus, the “Woke” movement and “Cancel Culture” got an early start.

The “Racism” theme got a big boost from Barak Obama as he decided to use racism as a weapon to tie blacks to the Democrat Party.

First, there was the Henry Gates kerfuffle where he had lost his keys and tried to force his front door. A concerned neighbor called 911.

Gates found the front door to his home jammed shut and, with the help of his driver, tried to force it open. A local witness reported their activity to the police as a potential burglary in progress. Accounts regarding the ensuing confrontation differ, but Gates was arrested by the responding officer, Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, and charged with disorderly conduct. On July 21, the charges against Gates were dropped. The arrest generated a national debate about whether or not it represented an example of racial profiling by police.

Of course, Obama inserted himself into this local matter.

On July 22, President Barack Obama said about the incident, “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”

Racial relations, which had been improving since 1964, were set back almost 50 years by what followed.
Next came Ferguson, MO where a black who had just committed a robbery tried to wrest a policeman’s gun from him. Hysteria, fed by Obama, followed.

Brown was accompanied by his 22-year-old male friend Dorian Johnson, who later stated that Brown had robbed a convenience store before the shooting occurred.[3] Wilson, a white male Ferguson police officer, said that an altercation ensued when Brown attacked him in his police vehicle for control of Wilson’s service pistol. The struggle continued until the pistol fired.[4] Johnson said that Wilson initiated a confrontation by grabbing Brown by the neck through Wilson’s patrol car window, threatening him and then shooting at him.[5] At this point, both Wilson and Johnson state that Brown and Johnson fled, with Wilson pursuing Brown shortly thereafter. Wilson stated that Brown stopped and charged him after a short pursuit. Johnson contradicted this account, stating that Brown turned around with his hands raised after Wilson shot at his back. According to Johnson, [ the co-robber] Wilson then shot Brown multiple times until Brown fell to the ground.

The controversy was fueled by Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, Obama’s black former college radical “Wing Man” as he put it.

The Department of Justice investigation into the shooting determined witnesses who corroborated Wilson’s account were credible while those who contradicted Wilson’s account were not.

The officer was not indicted but riots still took place.

Peaceful protests and civil disorder broke out the day following Brown’s shooting and lasted for several days. This was in part due to the belief among many that Brown was surrendering, as well as longstanding racial tensions between the minority-black population and the majority-white city government and police.[149] As the details of the original shooting event emerged from investigators, police grappled with establishing curfews and maintaining order, while members of the Ferguson community demonstrated in various ways in the vicinity of the original shooting.

“Peaceful protests” included burning down much of the town.

The Ferguson riots were preceded by the 2012 shooting of teenage thug Trayvon Martin. who had been kicked out of her house by his mother and sent to live with his father. He was shot by a local resident who was on neighborhood patrol and who had reported him to police. The media version of the story has many distortions. One of many was that the shooter, named George Zimmerman, was white. In fact he was of mixed race, largely Hispanic. Apparently, Martin saw Zimmerman watching him and attacked. In the struggle, Martin was shot to death.

As Martin was returning from the store to the Twin Lakes neighborhood, George Zimmerman, a volunteer Neighborhood Watch person, spotted Martin, who was 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) tall and weighed 158 pounds (72 kg) at the time of his death.[9] Zimmerman called Sanford police to report Martin, who he said appeared “suspicious”. There was an altercation between the two individuals in which Zimmerman shot Martin, killing him. Zimmerman claimed self-defense[1] and was eventually charged in Martin’s death. On June 10, 2013, Zimmerman’s trial began in Sanford and on July 13, a jury acquitted him of second-degree murder and of manslaughter charges.

Among other items omitted from the media version was that Martin was attempting to buy a drug called Dextromethorphan, which is a component of a popular drug cocktail called “Purple drank.”

As usual, Obama inserted himself into the controversy.

At a White House press conference in March, President Obama was asked about the Martin shooting, and said, “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon and I think they [his parents] are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves. Much of the media coverage had used an old photo of Martin in which he was a child.

What came next and led to the grandfather of all riots was the George Floyd case.

Floyd was a career criminal who attempted to pass counterfeit 20 dollar bills. The Minneapolis police were called and they attempted to arrest him. He resisted and may have swallowed his drugs to conceal them.

In a call to 911, made at 20:01, the employee told the operator he had demanded the cigarettes back but “he [Floyd] doesn’t want to do that”, according to a transcript released by authorities.

The employee said the man appeared “drunk” and “not in control of himself”, the transcript says.

Shortly after the call, at around 20:08, two police officers arrived. Mr Floyd was sitting with two other people in a car parked around the corner.

It was when officers tried to put Mr Floyd in their squad car that a struggle ensued.

The first two officers were rookies. In a fatal moment, they called for help and Derek Chauvin, a senior policeman arrived.

That’s when witnesses started to film Mr Floyd, who appeared to be in a distressed state. These moments, captured on multiple mobile phones and shared widely on social media, would prove to be Mr Floyd’s last.

Mr Floyd was restrained by officers, while Mr Chauvin placed his left knee between his head and neck.

For more than nine minutes, Mr Chauvin kept his knee on Mr Floyd’s neck, the prosecutors say. The duration was initially given as eight minutes and 46 seconds but Minnesota prosecutors have since revised the time.

The argument is about Chauvin kneeling on his neck but note he was in “distress” before Chauvin arrived. Like the Rodney King incident, the public for the first time saw a video of a violent arrest. Floyd died with a lethal level of drugs in his system but Chauvin was accused of murder. Chauvin was convicted after being denied a change in venue. Jurors were obviously intimidated, including attempts to follow the bus taking them to and from the courthouse which was barricaded like a fortress. When Chauvin attempted to appeal his conviction, he could not find a lawyer to represent him.

Massive riots followed. Racial harmony will not recover for decades, if ever. The installation of old racist Joe Biden and his crime family will prolong any attempt at recovery.

The Midterm Election.

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022

Well, that wasn’t much of a red wave. Why ? There was probably some fraud but that did not determine these surprising results.

Here is a pretty good analysis

* Fantasy vs. Reality. It turns out that there are a great many voters who don’t care much about what traditionally have been considered decisive issues: inflation, crime, illegal immigration, lousy schools, etc. Many millions of Democrats, confronted with these facts, didn’t conclude that they should consider voting for someone else. Rather, they seem to have thought, My team is in trouble! All the more reason why I need to support my team. This was an election in which, to an extraordinary degree, issues were subordinated to party loyalty.

I agree this was a party loyalty election. The issues we all thought would dominate were ignored. Why ?

Maybe Democrats are living in a fantasy world. Not phased by inflation or gas prices yet. Was Trump a factor?

* Donald Trump. I thought the Democrats’ endless yammering about “our democracy” and “fascism” was incredibly stupid, born of desperation, and would be ignored by voters. I was partly right: those themes were stupid, and they were born of desperation. But it turned out that they were not ineffective. To cite just one example, a young woman I know posted a photo of herself at the polls on Instagram, with the text, “I’m voting against fascism.”

Trump did not do well with the candidates he endorsed. I was not surprised when Oz lost in PA. I was astounded by the candidate who won. Fetterman is obviously not qualified and I assume his wife will serve in his stead or the Democrat governor will appoint some typical pol. Pennsylvania is also the home of vote fraud. In 2020, they changed the rules, violating the law and ignored a Supreme Court Justice ruling that they must sequester late mail in ballots.

This is probably the end of the Trump magic. It’s not fair but the left has taken control of the country and will not be displaced short of war or economic collapse. I think either or both are coming.

“Our democracy” and “fascism” were code for Donald Trump. At this point, Trump is a giant anvil around the neck of the Republican Party. In many areas, likely most, he is absolute poison. To be associated with Trump is to lose. Pretty much everything he has done in the last two years has been not just ill-advised but massively destructive to the Republican Party and to the United States. He has teased a “big announcement” in the next few days. I hope he announces that he is moving to Bulgaria.

I think that is too strong and it is unfair but Trump has been successfully vilified. His rallies did not seem to help his chosen candidates.

* Polls. We Republicans have gotten used to the idea that polls generally underpredict Republican performance. When liberal pollsters started reporting more favorable numbers for Republicans in the days leading up the election, it looked like the usual script was being followed. But this year, if anything the polls may have understated Democratic support, not Republican. What–to cite just one instance–happened to the 26-point swing among suburban women toward the GOP, which led Steve to dub this the “Desperate Housewives Election?” They were desperate, all right–desperate to vote in favor of abortion and against Donald Trump. But how could so many polls be so wrong?

DeSantis did outstandingly well in Florida and he is now the leader for 2024.

One consideration is that the things we thought would dominate the election as issues are not going away. I was concerned that the GOP Congress would get blamed for the troubles which will get worse. Inflation, oil prices and shortages, supply chain issues, school indoctrination of children, the “transsexual” fad. All these will get worse now. But Republicans cannot be blamed. As HL Mencken said, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” I suspect they will be getting it good and hard. Sadly to say, we will be getting it good and hard, too.

We will be lucky not to get into a war we lose in the next two years.

The Raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Thursday, August 11th, 2022

The FBI raid on Trump’s residence is unprecedented in American history. The pretext for the raid and the refusal to allow TRump’s lawyers to witness what was done is also a gross deviation from normal behavior.

Conservative Treehouse a pretty good theory of the reasons.

The motives of the DOJ and FBI are clear when you have a full comprehension of the background. However, it’s the threats and betrayals against President Trump that most people have a hard time understanding. Why he was blocked is clear, but how Trump was blocked is where you realize the scale of the threat that exists within this corrupt system.

Trump has for years been promising to declassify documents showing how the “Russiagate” conspiracy developed, including the FBI role in it.

By the time we get to September of 2018 the basic outlines of the Trump-Russia targeting operation were clear. However, the Robert Mueller investigation was at its apex, and anyone in/around Donald Trump was under investigation for ancillary issues that had nothing to do with Russia.

It was into this fray of constant false narratives that President Trump first made statements that he would declassify documents related to his targeting. It was after Trump made those statements when the real motives of putting Robert Mueller as a special counsel became clear.

With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from anything to do with the Trump-Russia investigation, it was Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who delivered the message to President Trump in September of 2018, shortly before the midterm election, that any action by him to release documents, now under the purview of the Mueller special counsel, would be considered an act of “obstruction” by the DOJ/FBI people charged with investigating him.

What he might have done is to bring some of those documents with him when he left the White House. Of course, that is speculation since the warrant was never disclosed to the Trump lawyers.

In essence the DOJ and FBI, along with white house counsel and a collaborating senate and media, kept President Trump from declassifying and releasing documents by threatening him with impeachment and/or prosecution if he defied their authority. The threats created a useful Sword of Damocles, and blocked Trump from acting to make documents public.

In the months that followed President Trump frequently made public statements and tweets about the frustration of documents not being declassified and released despite his instructions to do so. Many Trump supporters also began expressing frustration.

The external debate and consternation surrounded how the Administrative State has seemingly boxed-in President Trump through the use of the Mueller/Weissman counterintelligence probe, authorized by Rod Rosenstein, where President Trump was the target of the investigation.

A widely held supporter perspective was that President Trump could expose the fraudulent origination of the counterintelligence investigation; of which he is now a target; if he were to declassify a series of documents as requested by congress and allies of his administration. This approach would hopefully remove the sword of Damocles.

I had a suspicion that Trump might have been in contact with the FBI whistleblowers mentioned by Senators Grassley and Johnson. That is also a reasonable theory.

Newsweek has a typical left wing excuse.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

This is ludicrous as the FBI with full cooperation by Trump, searched these boxes of records in June. They even required their own padlock to seal the room.

Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House.

I doubt a 10 year old child would believe this rot.

A threshold has been crossed. Many on the left seem to cheer this on as their obsessive hatred of Trump and his voters is unending. I just hope Trump has good personal security. I don’t trust the Secret Service any more than I trust the FBI.

It’s official. A recession. How about a Depression?

Saturday, July 16th, 2022

The Fed has confirmed that we are officially in a recession. The actual decline in GDP is higher, though. It is at least -1.6%

What caused the Great Depression? Amity Schlaes’ book “The Forgotten Man” suggests that Roosevelt’s “Regulatory Uncertainty” was a big part of the cause. How were businessmen supposed to plan when policies changed from month to month ? The Roosevelt “Brain Trust” could not decide what might work. Some were good ideas, like the CCC which took young men off the street, helped them get into condition and did many worthwhile projects. Some, like the National Recovery Association, were Fascism which was popular in the 1930s.

Now, we face a disastrous shift in the national focus to imaginary threats like Global Warming. This has become all powerful among politicians because none of them know any science and the science people have become dependent on government funding. Fear is a great driver of government money. Climate science has become a rich field through flogging the unskeptics with fear of global warming. It doesn’t matter that there is no evidence of global warming or any of the other alleged threats. The super rich, like Barak Obama, are still buying waterfront estates no matter what they tell their followers.

Here is a proposal that might help.

Central planning always fails, but the utopian visionaries implementing the plans cannot admit that they are at fault. A scapegoat must be found. As a leading example, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture led to mass starvation, the official blame was placed on “saboteurs” and “wreckers.”

Our current-day analog is the centrally-planned replacement of our very large, inexpensive and highly functional energy system, mostly based on fossil fuels, with the alternatives of intermittent wind and sun-based generation, as favored by incompetent government regulators who don’t understand how these things work or how much they will cost. Prices of energy to the consumer — from electricity to gasoline — are soaring; and reliability of supply is widely threatened.

All of which brings our President forth to blame the current price and supply issues in the energy markets on anything but his own administration’s intentional efforts to suppress the functional fossil fuel energy. One day the scapegoat is Vladimir Putin; another it is “companies running gas stations,” who stand accused of price gouging.

One possible solution is to use the states as experimental laboratories.

With federalism in energy policy, we can have New York forging ahead with its “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” and California doing the same with its SB 100 — both of them seeking to eliminate fossil fuels from the generation of electricity, and then to force all energy consumers to use only electricity for their supply. Will that work? If New York and California are successful, they will be a model for the rest of the country to follow. Congratulations will be in order. If they fail relative to other states — that is, if they see energy prices soar, or frequent blackouts or shortages of needed energy — then it will be obvious to all that it was the green energy that failed, and not that there were “saboteurs” or “wreckers” or “price gougers,” who after all could have attacked the other states as well.

Well the Feds allow this? Probably not with the current regime in power.

Fortunately, the red states are not just going along with this kind of thing any more. This will be a critical battleground over the next five to ten years.

We will see after the election. Many Republicans are in thrall to the climate hoax.

The Sussman verdict.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2022

Today, a DC jury packed with Democrat donors and friends acquitted Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. The judge and jury were stacked and, I suspect it took the jury longer to choose a foremen than a verdict. As Law Professor Turley put it “You could not come up with a worse jury” for the prosecution.

This was expected but it is interesting how brazen they were, not even pretending to deliberate. Drawing a jury pool from a city that voted 98% for Hillary Clinton and for Democrats is an example of futility. A DC jury also acquitted, Gregg Craig of the same charge.

Prominent Washington lawyer Greg Craig was found not guilty of lying to the Justice Department about work he did for the government of Ukraine in a case that arose from the special counsel’s Russia investigation and that centered on the lucrative world of foreign lobbying.

The jury deliberated for less than a day before clearing Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, of a single count of making false statements to federal investigators.

Paul Manafort was convicted of the same charge by a DC jury. Almost identical facts, by the way.

Nick Sandman wisely filed his defamation lawsuit in Kentucky where he lives. There is no way a DC jury would have found in his favor. His MAGA hat would have been enough to doom his chances.