“U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Kenneth O’Brien always seems to be at the right place at the right time. He is a special ops pararescueman based in Japan. As “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell reports, it’s a dangerous job and O’Brien is always busy.
While serving on the president’s security detail during a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, he saved a civilian from a burning car. Last year, he helped lead the rescue of the Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave. He also saved a fellow rescuer, a Thai Navy SEAL.
In a video released by DVIDS last year, O’Brien described what it was like to be a part of the rescue.
“We’re all willing to put our life on the line to help these other countries out, and we have to think, you know, if it was our children, our families, we would want people to step up and help us in the same situation,” O’Brien said.”
“These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story”
“Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.”
“Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: We’ll sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren”
“In recent interviews of several big-money Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community, CNBC has found that this opinion is becoming widely shared as Warren surges against Joe Biden.
Warren is a critic of big banks and corporations, and has called for a wealth tax.”
“Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle — or even back President Donald Trump — if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination.
In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
“You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump,’” said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
During the campaign, Warren has put out multiple plans intended to curb the influence of Wall Street, including a wealth tax. In July, she released a proposal that would make private equity firms responsible for debts and pension obligations of companies they buy. Trump, meanwhile, has given wealthy business leaders a helping hand with a major corporate tax cut and by eliminating regulations.”
“As Scott noted earlier, during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee earlier today, committee chairman Adam Schiff purported to quote from the transcript of President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Per the Daily Caller, these are the words Schiff attributed to President Trump:
“This is the essence of what the president communicates. We’ve been very good to your country, very good, no other country has done as much as we have, but you know what, I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.”
Schiff continued, making it up as he went along: “I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I’m going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him.”
The House Intelligence Committee chairman even suggested that Trump told Zelensky, “‘And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy — you’re going to love him, trust me. You know what I’m asking, and so I’m only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again, I’ll call you when you’ve done what you’ve asked.’ This is the sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the president’s Oath of Office.”
Schiff simply lied. Not a word of his tirade came from the transcript of the president’s conversation with Zelensky. Schiff made it all up, and it didn’t resemble the actual transcript in any respect.”
————
He had to do something, since the actual evidence doesn’t really say what he says it does. This is lying frauds operate, while the rubes cheer him on.
“Complaint From So-Called ‘Whistleblower’ Is Riddled With Gossip, Blatant Falsehoods
The complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower,” released Thursday, is a mix of gossip, hearsay, and misstatements of fact contradicted by publicly available evidence.”
“The formal complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower” alleging various crimes by President Donald Trump is riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods. The document was declassified by Trump Wednesday evening and released to the public Thursday morning. The complaint, which was delivered to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.
Rather than provide direct evidence that was witnessed or obtained firsthand by the complainant, the document instead combines gossip from various anonymous individuals, public media reports, and blatant misstatements of fact and law in service of a narrative that is directly contradicted by underlying facts. A footnote in the document even boasts about its use of “ample open-source information.”
Contrary to news reports asserting that the complaint included volumes of information incriminating Trump, it is instead based entirely on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various public media reports.
“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confesses on the first page. Instead, the complainant notes, the document is based on conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.” Those officials are not named, and their positions are not identified anywhere in the letter.
The complainant begins by falsely characterizing a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, the transcript of which was released by the White House on Wednesday.
Trump made a “specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike,” the complainant alleges. A review of the transcript of the call shows that while Trump mentioned Crowdstrike once during the call, he never made such a request about locating and turning over multiple servers to the U.S.
The complainant also falsely alleges that Trump told Zelensky that he should keep the current prosecutor general at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, in his current position in the country.
“The President also praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelensky might want to keep him in his position,” the complainant alleges, based on gossip he says he heard from unnamed White House officials.
Trump made no such suggestion to Zelensky, according to the transcript of the phone call. While Trump did say that it was “unfair” that a prosecutor who was “very good” was “shut down,” it’s not clear that Trump was even referring to Lutsenko, as a previous prosecutor named Viktor Shokin was fired after he opened investigations into a Ukrainian energy company that placed Hunter Biden, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, on its board.”
“After failing on Russia, Democrats try a new hoax”
“Sequels are rarely better than the original.
If we have learned anything over the last six days, as the feeding frenzy over the whistleblower has overtaken official Washington, it is this: Democrats want to impeach President Trump and they do not care if the facts support their cause.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally got with the program and announced she would support an impeachment inquiry. She has resisted impeachment for months as her caucus has grown restless. She was considering the House Democratic majority. I thought she was disciplined and strategic.
She got ahead of the facts and now she is trapped.
As the transcript of the July phone call between Mr. Trump and the Ukrainian president was released Wednesday morning, several key claims made by Democrats and their media allies unraveled.
There was no “quid pro quo.” We were promised that Mr. Trump was explicit. The transcript shows no evidence of that.
The president did not mention defense aid even once. We were promised that Mr. Trump withheld defensive foreign aid as a bribe to secure an investigation of the Bidens. He did not mention the subject of defensive aid once during the call.
The only investigation that Mr. Trump brought up himself, unprompted, was an investigation into foreign meddling in the 2016 election, as it related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server. Democrats used to care deeply about this subject.
The Ukrainian president was the first to mention Mr. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and he asked that Mr. Giuliani travel to Ukraine.
Despite news reports that Mr. Trump urged an investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter as many as eight times on the call, the transcript shows he mentioned them only once. The Ukrainian president specifically said Wednesday he did not feel pressured by Mr. Trump.
This is far too thin for the extreme constitutional remedy of impeachment.”
“In a recent column, I noted that young people like Greta Thunberg should be thankful for the uniquely peaceful and wealthy world they’ve inherited.
Of course, whenever I write pieces that point out that life has vastly improved for billions of people despite climate change, angry readers inundate me with links about glaciers and coral reefs and heat waves. These events are allegedly apocalyptic proof that we’ve left a rickety planet to our kids. Never once do any of these emailers consider the tradeoffs that accompany the authoritarian system they propose to fix climate change. For many, of course, the authoritarian system is the point.
Now, I can’t disprove forecasts about our impending collapse. But I can point out that Malthusian environmentalists have been consistently and spectacularly wrong going on five decades and that even in a warming planet, nearly every quantifiable measure of human existence is improving. The retreat of socialism — exactly the kind of system environmentalists would like to bring back to fight global warming — has led to extraordinary gains in the most important aspects of human existence over the past 30-40 years.
“Democrats in Congress and the media pretend to swoon over conduct they accepted when Obama did it.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement at today’s hearing, a grilling of National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire, was remarkable. To begin with, he recited a parody of the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that was so absurd, it would not have made it into a Grade-C mob movie. A telling decision by Schiff, a capable former prosecutor: If you have an extortionate conversation, you quote it. If you need to imagine it into something it isn’t, that means it is not an extortionate conversation.
Also telling: Chairman Schiff came flying out of the starting block describing how overwhelmingly dependent Ukraine is on the United States and its president. Of course, this fact must be forced to the fore because it is not obvious from the Trump–Zelensky conversation — again, Schiff does not have evidence that Trump extorted Zelensky for the purpose of aiding Trump’s 2020 campaign.
But more to the point, the relationship of dependency intensified in 2015 due to the flight to Moscow of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych. At that point, a new Ukrainian government more to the Obama administration’s liking, under President Petro Poroshenko, came to power. It was desperate for American help, financially and security-wise, which is why Vice President Biden was in a position to pressure it into firing the prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of Burisma, the energy company that had appointed Hunter Biden to its board and was lavishly compensating him.
In Ball of Collusion, I outline some of the extensive evidence that in 2016, the Obama administration’s law-enforcement agencies pressured their Ukrainian counterparts to revive a dormant corruption investigation of Paul Manafort. I summarized the matter in an excerpt for Fox News a few days back:
During the . . . early 2016 weeks when [Alexandra] Chalupa [a Ukrainian-American and DNC operative] was tapping her Ukrainian sources and giving Democrats a heads-up about a potential Manafort-Trump alliance, NABU [Ukraine’s anti-corruption] investigators and Ukrainian prosecutors journeyed to Washington. There, the Obama administration arranged for them to huddle with the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the White House’s National Security Council (agencies that coordinated frequently throughout the collusion caper).
Andrii Telizhenko, a political officer at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington, later told The Hill’s John Solomon that the U.S. officials uniformly stressed “how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united.” The officials also indicated to their Ukrainian counterparts that they were keen to revive the investigation of payments by Yanukovych’s ousted Party of Regions government to an American political consultant — i.e., the FBI’s Paul Manafort probe [that was reportedly closed without a recommendation of charges in 2014] . . .
Nazar Kholodnitskiy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told Solomon that soon after the January 2016 Washington meetings, he found that Ukrainian officials were effectively meddling in the American presidential election. Another top Ukrainian lawman, Kostiantyn Kulyk, recalled that after the Kiev contingent’s return home from the United States, there was lots of buzz about helping the Americans with the Party of Regions investigation.”
“Quid Pro Crap – Are all NeverTrumpers too far gone?”
“The dust is still swirling around the Trump-Zelensky phone call and the released transcript, but I would like to direct my exasperation at the one NeverTrumper who should know better than to fall for it. The one NeverTrumper for whom I still had a few shreds of respect, and whom I would on occasion read and actually enjoy his writing. Perhaps the only such NeverTrumper out there. Yes, that’s right—I am talking about David French. The last of the Mohicans.
Most NeverTrumpers are pitiful. Max Boot long ago became a complete non-entity—and a reasonable case can be made that he never was an entity in the first place. Jennifer Rubin was more or less readable at one time, but became a miserable whiny hag after Trump’s election—I gave up on her in 2016, and haven’t read a thing she’s written in three years. Bill Kristol is a sad, pathetic wreck of an ex-conservative, eking out a living off the crumbs from a lefty billionaire’s table and peddling Democratic Party talking points on a website no one ever reads. George Will ceased to exist for me after he opined in 2018 that electing rabid socialists took priority over electing Republicans (such as they are, sadly).
But David French? I admit, occasionally he says some things worth saying. Occasionally. Sometimes they are even interesting.
So why is it so hard for him to look in the mirror in the morning, take a deep breath, and say to the reflection: “Dave, you handsome devil, you! I know you’ve been confused these last few years. I know that cheesy trick Kristol pulled four years ago, trying to get you to run for president, really messed with your head. Dave, since you’re me, I know how hard it can be to let go. But while Trump is no God’s gift to the planet, and while Trump might not always be right or politic or temperate, he has done more for conservative causes than all the Republican politicians put together in the last 30 years. So Dave, as someone who knows you well, I am telling you: it is time you quit this NeverTrump nonsense. Just quit. Cold turkey. Sure it will be hard the first few days, Dave, and you will probably have the shakes, and your wife will complain—but in the end, you will feel so much better! Your life will never be the same, because you will know in your heart, at last, who your true enemies are, and who is in your corner.”
But, alas, no. French refuses to seek help from the man he sees in the mirror. Instead, he penned this: “The Trump–Ukraine Transcript Contains Evidence of a Quid Pro Quo.” I saw the headline, and I thought to myself: @#$? This is a National Review headline? Did I somehow click on the wrong URL, and end up at The Daily Worker?
Unlike 99 percent of Americans, I actually read the transcript. Beginning to end. Every word. It wasn’t what I would call terribly exciting reading—humdrum and mundane is more like it. Anticlimactic, if I am being honest with myself, and this was definitely an occasion for honesty with oneself.
Like French (and like every lefty pundit, commentator, congressional Democrat and CNN talking head), I was looking for that quid pro quo. I was looking for that incontrovertible evidence of Trump corruption that the Washington Post and the New York Times promised us. (I am sure CNN promised it too, but I don’t have CNN any more in my cable package, so I will leave it to others to confirm.)
I was looking for Trump coming back, again and again, to Joe Biden. Eight times! (Or so the experts in the media told me.) And to Biden’s sex-addled, cocaine-compromised dolt of a son. You know, that son whose “consulting company” was paid $3 million by a Ukrainian gas company while Biden was handing out $1 billion in aid to Ukraine.
All this, despite the fact that Hunter Biden has exactly zero experience in oil and gas law (that’s zero, as in exactly none), and the Ukrainian company in question had never done any business in the United States. That son.
But instead, in five pages of dense, single-spaced text, all we got was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention of Biden somewhere two-thirds of the way in, and the conversation quickly moved on to other things. I even word-searched for Biden in the transcript multiple times—nope, nothing else there, anywhere, about Biden.
Now, congressional Democrats, Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times have long ago decamped into a fact-free alternative universe, so I am not surprised they have no trouble finding impeachable offenses in everything that Trump does and says. Even when Trump just picks his nose, or eats two scoops of ice cream for lunch, instead of one, in the White House cafeteria, you can almost hear the impeachment machine’s engine warming up. So where does David French find the quid, much less the quo?”
——————
Answer. He didn’t, because there was none to find. But again, his TDS got the best of him.
“David, I am sorry again, but you need help. When a man sees things that simply aren’t there, when the TDS voices whispering in his head become too important to ignore—that man needs help. An intervention is surely in order.
I like you—or, at least, I want to like you. Or, fine—if I can’t like you, at least I don’t want to think of you as a delusional NeverTrump gnome who drank too much NeverTrump Kool-Aid. I want to continue reading your stuff. I refuse to believe that you are too far gone. I refuse to lump you in with the Jennifer Rubins, the Max Boots, and the Bill Kristols. You are better than them—and you have it in you to overcome the debilitating disease affecting many lesser minds.
I know you know what I am talking about. The Trump Derangement Syndrome is a terrible affliction.”
Good analysis in this thread from young Heath Mayo.
Then this: the IG notes that in his preliminary review of the complaint’s veracity, “other information” presumably beyond the four corners of the complaint, supported not just the complaint, but the claim that the President pressured Ukraine for political gain. What info? pic.twitter.com/47nJjvdaTI
Wrong again Ricky. I’m going to take the law professor’s word over yours.
What it reads as is a closing argument crafted by partisan Democrat lawyers (because it is). It’s just the bogus document that sat on Schiff’s desk for months. Only now it’s important and pressing.
“The “Whistleblower Complaint” isn’t a whistleblower complaint, it’s a closing argument
If CIA or other intelligence operatives are using their access to sensitive information in order to interfere in our political process, then that is a lot more frightening than a President raising the widely-reported corruption of his political opponent with the president of the country where the alleged corruption took place.”
“When the so-called Whistleblower Complaint was released this morning, my first impression was that this was a very professionally-done document, likely crafted by a lawyer.
It looks like a lawyer letter. It’s very legalistic in many parts, cites to statutes and executive orders, and is heavily footnoted. It attempts to bring together evidence from disparate sources, including public news reports. It is, in every sense, a closing argument or brief in support of a position by someone who did not actually participate in the events about which he or she is writing.
The document does not at all read like we would expect a whistleblower complaint to read — alerting the appropriate authority to facts the whistleblower has learned and leaving the legal conclusions to those authorities.”
——
“Who talks/writes like this? Lawyers and analysts steeped in national security law, and concerned about the nuances of classifications. In this case, the whistleblower likely was well-versed in national security law AND had legal help crafting the complaint.
Why go to the trouble of such a detailed explanation of what is/is not classified in the document? Why not leave that classification issue to the appropriate authorities?
Perhaps the whistleblower wanted the document to be leaked and wanted to make sure the leakers knew only to leak the letter, not the attachment:
This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.
* * *
To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure.
In the coming days, we’re likely to find out more about the whistleblower. An exclusive interview with the Washington Post, a la Christine Blasey Ford, seems likely with or without a reveal of identity.
It’s too soon to say conclusively this was a CIA analyst or other intelligence community member, but if that turns out to be the case, then the implications are frightening. It will show that the worst conspiracy theories about the “deep state” were not conspiracy theories at all.
If CIA or other intelligence operatives are using their access to sensitive information in order to interfere in our political process, then that is a lot more frightening than a President raising the widely-reported corruption of his political opponent with the president of the country where the alleged corruption took place.”
—————–
Trump was right. They’re traitors, led and directed of course, by a team of Democrat lawyers..
“Former NSA Chief Of Staff Suggests Whistleblower Had Help From Congressional Democrats In Crafting Complaint”
“Former CIA officer and National Security Agency Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz is suggesting that the whistleblower accusing President Donald Trump of misconduct had help from lawyers and House Democrats in crafting his complaint.
He suggests the document is just too polished and has too much in common with the Democratic impeachment agenda — and a tweet from California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is also chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Fleitz wrote Thursday in an op-ed piece for the New York Post.
“This document looks as if this leaker had outside help, possibly from congressional members or staff.”
He also says the whistleblower’s declassified complaint, made public Thursday, “appears to be written by a law professor.”
Fleitz, who is the president of the Center for Security Policy, describes himself as “troubled” by the whistleblower affair. “I am troubled by the complaint and wonder how an intelligence officer could file it over something a president said to a foreign leader. How could this be an intelligence matter?”
“It appears likely to me that this so-called whistleblower was pursuing a political agenda.”
The former CIA officer notes that he is “very familiar with transcripts of presidential phone calls since I edited and processed dozens of them when I worked for the NSC. I also know a lot about intelligence whistleblowers from my time with the CIA.”
“From my experience, such an extremely polished whistleblowing complaint is unheard of.””
“Former CIA official on whistleblower: ‘How could this be an intelligence matter?’”
—-
“Moreover, it looks like more than a coincidence that this complaint surfaced and was directed to the House Intelligence Committee just after Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), an outspoken opponent of President Trump, expressed numerous complaints in August 2019 accusing President Trump of abusing aid to Ukraine to hurt Joe Biden. This includes an August 28 tweet that closely resembled the whistleblowing complaint.”
“House Republicans need to ask the whistleblower under oath whether he spoke to the press or Congress about his complaint.
Also very concerning to me is how the complaint indicates intelligence officers and possibly other federal employees are violating the rules governing presidential phone calls with foreign leaders.
The content and transcripts of these calls are highly restricted. The whistleblower makes clear in his complaint that he did not listen to a call in question, nor did he read the transcript — he was told about the call by others. If true, intelligence officers have grossly violated the rules as well as the trust placed on them to protect this sensitive information.
I refuse to believe that the leaking, timing and presentation of this complaint is coincidence. I don’t think the American people will buy this either.
I’m more worried, however, that this latest instance of blatant politicization of intelligence by Trump haters will do long term damage to the relationship between the intelligence community and US presidents for many years to come.”
“ABC News Bungles Report That White House Set Preconditions For Trump-Zelensky Meeting”
“ABC News added a major correction to a report that U.S. officials set preconditions for a meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president.
ABC inaccurately identified the source of the story, Serhiy Leshchenko, as an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.
Leshchenko has not been an adviser to Zelensky for months. Leshchenko also disputed the quotes attributed to him in the ABC article, but an ABC reporter said he has a recording of Leshchenko’s remarks.
Nellie Ohr testified to Congress in 2018 that Leshchenko was a source of information for Fusion GPS.”
No, they take an oath once and uphold it. This is disgusting what he did. He created fraudulent soundbites that will be used in more disinformation videos. He should be forced out. This has all been beyond ridiculous. Smh
Wait a minute. Check this out: Schiff tweeted this exact same Trump-Ukraine "collusion" narrative a month ago. Hmm … Exactly how long have Schiffty-Schiff and Dems been working with this "whistleblower"? Smelling more and more like prefabrication https://t.co/cRXi222Zwi
Isn’t it mildly concerning that Adam Schiff was running around parroting the EXACT claim made by the whistleblower two weeks before Congress was allegedly notified by the inspector general of the intelligence community of the existence of such a complaint? https://t.co/qTPnkb1PlQ
That makes this sound more like the whistleblower may have been working with Schiff BEFORE the process had played out legally, and raises serious questions about leaks from the whistleblower or someone else in the intelligence community to Schiff.
And, by the way, the top reply to Schiff’s tweet on Twitter comes courtesy of…Alexandra Chalupa, the DNC operative who was working with the Ukrainian embassy to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign in 2016. https://t.co/aVH6TR1CKY
Highly boring to watch House Intel Democrats spend hours moaning about how Administration has "hidden" a call transcript and whistleblower complaint that the entire world has now read. Yawn.
Ditto listening to them suggest it is DNI treatment of this whistleblower that will discourage future complaints–rather than Democrats' own theatrical handling of this situation.
Tychicus, Do you know that Kasparov was describing the behavior of Trump and The Cult?
In Goodfellas, Ray Liotta’s character muses about how he always wanted to grow up to be in the mob. “To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.” What a failure of imagination. He didn’t even consider you could be both!
With Trump it's always lies and it's always Russia. Trump has been following Putin's line on Ukraine since before he became president & had Manafort, a fixer for Putin's lackey in Ukraine, as his campaign chief. https://t.co/w7WYxnmzqI
Pathetic. The GOP is a disgraced party, and now its members are disgracing themselves and their nation individually. "The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity."—Robert Anthony https://t.co/6eh1l0qnji
No matter how awful Trump is, the media are going to end up reminding every religious and social conservative exactly how things are in this country, and what will happen to us when they take power.
Which is why it’s even sadder that some of those “religious and social conservative” people would rather lie down politically with the hard left. Because, umm… principles… or something….
“Trump calls on Adam Schiff to resign for allegedly lying to Congress”
“President Trump on Friday called on Rep. Adam Schiff to resign, accusing the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee of “fraudulently” reading to Congress a nonexistent version of his call with the Ukrainian president.
“Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist,” the president said in a tweet
“He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, an (sic) me sound guilty,” he wrote as he renewed his claim that his conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect.”
“HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT,” Trump continued. “Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!””
“Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge
Federal records show that the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing.”
———–
“Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.
The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”
The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed.
The complaint alleges that President Donald Trump broke the law during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. In his complaint, which was dated August 12, 2019, the complainant acknowledged he was “not a direct witness” to the wrongdoing he claims Trump committed.”
“A previous version of the whistleblower complaint document, which the ICIG and DNI until recently provided to potential whistleblowers, declared that any complaint must contain only first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing and that complaints that provide only hearsay, rumor, or gossip would be rejected.
“The [Intelligence Community Inspector General] cannot transmit information via the ICPWA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing,” the previous form stated under the bolded heading “FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.” “This includes information received from another person, such as when an employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing.”
“If you think that wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions, [the Intelligence Community Inspector General] will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA,” the form concluded.”
I know that Jonah Goldberg and Kevin D. Williamson are buddies. From the articles they wrote today, I think they have been discussing Trump’s Ukraine Extortion. Williamson’s article ends with a riddle. Can you figure out what Kevin wants to happen?
Here is Kevin Williamson, bringin' it — and when he brings it, it's brought (brung?). https://t.co/diW3FamQbD
Nothing discredits social and religious conservatives more with young people, the press and the educated than when their “leaders” excuse and defend the dishonesty, ignorance, childishness, amorality and demagoguery of Donald Trump. The Falwells, Jeffresses and Franklin Grahams make all social and religious conservatives look stupid and/or hypocritical every day. The stink of Trump isn’t just on Republicans. It is on all social and religious conservatives. It is going to take a long time for that stink to dissipate, but the first step toward renewal is to remove him from office.
DJ, Like you, conservative Quin Hillyer looked for a good objective source for news. He selected the Wall Street Journal, but not the WSJ editorial page. He also included analysis from several level-headed conservatives.
Kasparov gives us the counter-argument to Williamson, Goldberg and Brooks. Sometimes, it is important to turn around and sock a bully in the nose.
Here is the explanation of this phenomenon in Winter Is Coming. Trump does the same, and the weak response from his rivals only encourages further abuses. If they really cared, he thinks, they would stop him. And he's right. pic.twitter.com/rWFX1rUqMl
7:34, nah. Trump, et al, are *way* down on the list of what discredits religious folk with young people. The gospel and any associated cause isn’t so fragile that “nothing” does more damage to its credibility than Donald Trump. Let’s take a breath.
How about a couple of examples of things that discredit religious and social conservatives with young people, the press and the educated more than when religious and social conservative “leaders” excuse and defend the behavior of Trump?
The press and the much of the brainwashed “educated” as you call them should be ignored. They’re irrelevant and largely lost to secularism already. This is plainly obvious. They’ll never be on your side Ricky. You aren’t one of the cool kids, that’s reality. The longer the youth remain in our indoctrination system, the farther lost they’ll be as well. Their opinions on gay marriage, climate change, illegal immigration are all being influenced by their educations, not be their churches or their parents in most cases. That’s reality. Same goes for their politics. They aren’t drawn to Sanders and Warren and their socialist promises because of something someone on the right said or did. They’re drawn there because it’s what they’re taught to believe is best.
And that has jack squat to do with Trump. Started long before him, and it will continue long after him.
There are 2 choices here. While Trump isn’t ideal, the alternative isn’t really even an option for folks concerned with religion and social conservatism. It’s not excusing anything if you’re simply selecting the lesser of two evils. There are really only two choices. Your vote helps one or the other either way it goes. While the children may pretend that isn’t so, it is. When they grow up, they’ll see that in fact it is.
Wandering Views 
On his way to being honored for his outstanding work, he shows why he’s earned it. 🙂
————
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kenneth-obrien-outstanding-airman-honored-for-heroism-saves-child-on-his-flight-to-pick-up-the-award/
“U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Kenneth O’Brien always seems to be at the right place at the right time. He is a special ops pararescueman based in Japan. As “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell reports, it’s a dangerous job and O’Brien is always busy.
While serving on the president’s security detail during a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, he saved a civilian from a burning car. Last year, he helped lead the rescue of the Thai soccer team trapped in a flooded cave. He also saved a fellow rescuer, a Thai Navy SEAL.
In a video released by DVIDS last year, O’Brien described what it was like to be a part of the rescue.
“We’re all willing to put our life on the line to help these other countries out, and we have to think, you know, if it was our children, our families, we would want people to step up and help us in the same situation,” O’Brien said.”
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The media continues to not report the facts.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story
“These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story”
“Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.
He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.
There’s just one problem.
Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.
And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.
In addition, Burisma’s American team offered to introduce Ukrainian prosecutors to Obama administration officials to make amends, according to that memo and the American legal team’s internal emails.
The memos raise troubling questions:
1.) If the Ukraine prosecutor’s firing involved only his alleged corruption and ineptitude, why did Burisma’s American legal team refer to those allegations as “false information?”
2.) If the firing had nothing to do with the Burisma case, as Biden has adamantly claimed, why would Burisma’s American lawyers contact the replacement prosecutor within hours of the termination and urgently seek a meeting in Ukraine to discuss the case?
Ukrainian prosecutors say they have tried to get this information to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) since the summer of 2018, fearing it might be evidence of possible violations of U.S. ethics laws. First, they hired a former federal prosecutor to bring the information to the U.S. attorney in New York, who, they say, showed no interest. Then, the Ukrainians reached out to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.”
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Good news. 🙂
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar
“Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: We’ll sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren”
“In recent interviews of several big-money Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community, CNBC has found that this opinion is becoming widely shared as Warren surges against Joe Biden.
Warren is a critic of big banks and corporations, and has called for a wealth tax.”
“Democratic donors on Wall Street and in big business are preparing to sit out the presidential campaign fundraising cycle — or even back President Donald Trump — if Sen. Elizabeth Warren wins the party’s nomination.
In recent weeks, CNBC spoke to several high-dollar Democratic donors and fundraisers in the business community and found that this opinion was becoming widely shared as Warren, an outspoken critic of big banks and corporations, gains momentum against Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
“You’re in a box because you’re a Democrat and you’re thinking, ‘I want to help the party, but she’s going to hurt me, so I’m going to help President Trump,’” said a senior private equity executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of retribution by party leaders. The executive said this Wednesday, a day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
During the campaign, Warren has put out multiple plans intended to curb the influence of Wall Street, including a wealth tax. In July, she released a proposal that would make private equity firms responsible for debts and pension obligations of companies they buy. Trump, meanwhile, has given wealthy business leaders a helping hand with a major corporate tax cut and by eliminating regulations.”
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What can you say?
Frauds do fraudulent things, and lying liar’s lie. That’s Shifty Schiff in a nutshell.
And some of the more gullible rubes actually take him seriously.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/the-significance-of-adam-schiffs-parody.php
“As Scott noted earlier, during a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee earlier today, committee chairman Adam Schiff purported to quote from the transcript of President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Per the Daily Caller, these are the words Schiff attributed to President Trump:
“This is the essence of what the president communicates. We’ve been very good to your country, very good, no other country has done as much as we have, but you know what, I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.”
Schiff continued, making it up as he went along: “I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I’m going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him.”
The House Intelligence Committee chairman even suggested that Trump told Zelensky, “‘And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy — you’re going to love him, trust me. You know what I’m asking, and so I’m only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again, I’ll call you when you’ve done what you’ve asked.’ This is the sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the president’s Oath of Office.”
Schiff simply lied. Not a word of his tirade came from the transcript of the president’s conversation with Zelensky. Schiff made it all up, and it didn’t resemble the actual transcript in any respect.”
————
He had to do something, since the actual evidence doesn’t really say what he says it does. This is lying frauds operate, while the rubes cheer him on.
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The not really a whistleblower complaint is a joke.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/26/complaint-from-so-called-whistleblower-is-riddled-with-gossip-blatant-falsehoods/
“Complaint From So-Called ‘Whistleblower’ Is Riddled With Gossip, Blatant Falsehoods
The complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower,” released Thursday, is a mix of gossip, hearsay, and misstatements of fact contradicted by publicly available evidence.”
“The formal complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower” alleging various crimes by President Donald Trump is riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods. The document was declassified by Trump Wednesday evening and released to the public Thursday morning. The complaint, which was delivered to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.
Rather than provide direct evidence that was witnessed or obtained firsthand by the complainant, the document instead combines gossip from various anonymous individuals, public media reports, and blatant misstatements of fact and law in service of a narrative that is directly contradicted by underlying facts. A footnote in the document even boasts about its use of “ample open-source information.”
Contrary to news reports asserting that the complaint included volumes of information incriminating Trump, it is instead based entirely on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various public media reports.
“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confesses on the first page. Instead, the complainant notes, the document is based on conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.” Those officials are not named, and their positions are not identified anywhere in the letter.
The complainant begins by falsely characterizing a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, the transcript of which was released by the White House on Wednesday.
Trump made a “specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike,” the complainant alleges. A review of the transcript of the call shows that while Trump mentioned Crowdstrike once during the call, he never made such a request about locating and turning over multiple servers to the U.S.
The complainant also falsely alleges that Trump told Zelensky that he should keep the current prosecutor general at the time, Yuriy Lutsenko, in his current position in the country.
“The President also praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelensky might want to keep him in his position,” the complainant alleges, based on gossip he says he heard from unnamed White House officials.
Trump made no such suggestion to Zelensky, according to the transcript of the phone call. While Trump did say that it was “unfair” that a prosecutor who was “very good” was “shut down,” it’s not clear that Trump was even referring to Lutsenko, as a previous prosecutor named Viktor Shokin was fired after he opened investigations into a Ukrainian energy company that placed Hunter Biden, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, on its board.”
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Meet the new hoax, much like the old hoax.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/25/after-failing-on-russia-democrats-try-a-new-hoax/
“After failing on Russia, Democrats try a new hoax”
“Sequels are rarely better than the original.
If we have learned anything over the last six days, as the feeding frenzy over the whistleblower has overtaken official Washington, it is this: Democrats want to impeach President Trump and they do not care if the facts support their cause.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally got with the program and announced she would support an impeachment inquiry. She has resisted impeachment for months as her caucus has grown restless. She was considering the House Democratic majority. I thought she was disciplined and strategic.
She got ahead of the facts and now she is trapped.
As the transcript of the July phone call between Mr. Trump and the Ukrainian president was released Wednesday morning, several key claims made by Democrats and their media allies unraveled.
There was no “quid pro quo.” We were promised that Mr. Trump was explicit. The transcript shows no evidence of that.
The president did not mention defense aid even once. We were promised that Mr. Trump withheld defensive foreign aid as a bribe to secure an investigation of the Bidens. He did not mention the subject of defensive aid once during the call.
The only investigation that Mr. Trump brought up himself, unprompted, was an investigation into foreign meddling in the 2016 election, as it related to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server. Democrats used to care deeply about this subject.
The Ukrainian president was the first to mention Mr. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and he asked that Mr. Giuliani travel to Ukraine.
Despite news reports that Mr. Trump urged an investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter as many as eight times on the call, the transcript shows he mentioned them only once. The Ukrainian president specifically said Wednesday he did not feel pressured by Mr. Trump.
This is far too thin for the extreme constitutional remedy of impeachment.”
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The world is better than ever, with the charts to prove it. 🙂
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/25/here-are-a-bunch-of-charts-that-prove-the-world-is-better-than-ever/#.XYy0G3DxKyY.twitter
“In a recent column, I noted that young people like Greta Thunberg should be thankful for the uniquely peaceful and wealthy world they’ve inherited.
Of course, whenever I write pieces that point out that life has vastly improved for billions of people despite climate change, angry readers inundate me with links about glaciers and coral reefs and heat waves. These events are allegedly apocalyptic proof that we’ve left a rickety planet to our kids. Never once do any of these emailers consider the tradeoffs that accompany the authoritarian system they propose to fix climate change. For many, of course, the authoritarian system is the point.
Now, I can’t disprove forecasts about our impending collapse. But I can point out that Malthusian environmentalists have been consistently and spectacularly wrong going on five decades and that even in a warming planet, nearly every quantifiable measure of human existence is improving. The retreat of socialism — exactly the kind of system environmentalists would like to bring back to fight global warming — has led to extraordinary gains in the most important aspects of human existence over the past 30-40 years.
Here are just a few:
Capitalism is eradicating extreme poverty.”
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If it weren’t for low and double standards, they’d have none at all.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/double-standards-on-ukraine/
“Democrats in Congress and the media pretend to swoon over conduct they accepted when Obama did it.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement at today’s hearing, a grilling of National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire, was remarkable. To begin with, he recited a parody of the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky that was so absurd, it would not have made it into a Grade-C mob movie. A telling decision by Schiff, a capable former prosecutor: If you have an extortionate conversation, you quote it. If you need to imagine it into something it isn’t, that means it is not an extortionate conversation.
Also telling: Chairman Schiff came flying out of the starting block describing how overwhelmingly dependent Ukraine is on the United States and its president. Of course, this fact must be forced to the fore because it is not obvious from the Trump–Zelensky conversation — again, Schiff does not have evidence that Trump extorted Zelensky for the purpose of aiding Trump’s 2020 campaign.
But more to the point, the relationship of dependency intensified in 2015 due to the flight to Moscow of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych. At that point, a new Ukrainian government more to the Obama administration’s liking, under President Petro Poroshenko, came to power. It was desperate for American help, financially and security-wise, which is why Vice President Biden was in a position to pressure it into firing the prosecutor who was conducting a corruption investigation of Burisma, the energy company that had appointed Hunter Biden to its board and was lavishly compensating him.
In Ball of Collusion, I outline some of the extensive evidence that in 2016, the Obama administration’s law-enforcement agencies pressured their Ukrainian counterparts to revive a dormant corruption investigation of Paul Manafort. I summarized the matter in an excerpt for Fox News a few days back:
During the . . . early 2016 weeks when [Alexandra] Chalupa [a Ukrainian-American and DNC operative] was tapping her Ukrainian sources and giving Democrats a heads-up about a potential Manafort-Trump alliance, NABU [Ukraine’s anti-corruption] investigators and Ukrainian prosecutors journeyed to Washington. There, the Obama administration arranged for them to huddle with the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the White House’s National Security Council (agencies that coordinated frequently throughout the collusion caper).
Andrii Telizhenko, a political officer at Ukraine’s embassy in Washington, later told The Hill’s John Solomon that the U.S. officials uniformly stressed “how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united.” The officials also indicated to their Ukrainian counterparts that they were keen to revive the investigation of payments by Yanukovych’s ousted Party of Regions government to an American political consultant — i.e., the FBI’s Paul Manafort probe [that was reportedly closed without a recommendation of charges in 2014] . . .
Nazar Kholodnitskiy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told Solomon that soon after the January 2016 Washington meetings, he found that Ukrainian officials were effectively meddling in the American presidential election. Another top Ukrainian lawman, Kostiantyn Kulyk, recalled that after the Kiev contingent’s return home from the United States, there was lots of buzz about helping the Americans with the Party of Regions investigation.”
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Well if our resident NTer is any indication…..
Yes. Totally and completely.
“Quid Pro Crap – Are all NeverTrumpers too far gone?”
“The dust is still swirling around the Trump-Zelensky phone call and the released transcript, but I would like to direct my exasperation at the one NeverTrumper who should know better than to fall for it. The one NeverTrumper for whom I still had a few shreds of respect, and whom I would on occasion read and actually enjoy his writing. Perhaps the only such NeverTrumper out there. Yes, that’s right—I am talking about David French. The last of the Mohicans.
Most NeverTrumpers are pitiful. Max Boot long ago became a complete non-entity—and a reasonable case can be made that he never was an entity in the first place. Jennifer Rubin was more or less readable at one time, but became a miserable whiny hag after Trump’s election—I gave up on her in 2016, and haven’t read a thing she’s written in three years. Bill Kristol is a sad, pathetic wreck of an ex-conservative, eking out a living off the crumbs from a lefty billionaire’s table and peddling Democratic Party talking points on a website no one ever reads. George Will ceased to exist for me after he opined in 2018 that electing rabid socialists took priority over electing Republicans (such as they are, sadly).
But David French? I admit, occasionally he says some things worth saying. Occasionally. Sometimes they are even interesting.
So why is it so hard for him to look in the mirror in the morning, take a deep breath, and say to the reflection: “Dave, you handsome devil, you! I know you’ve been confused these last few years. I know that cheesy trick Kristol pulled four years ago, trying to get you to run for president, really messed with your head. Dave, since you’re me, I know how hard it can be to let go. But while Trump is no God’s gift to the planet, and while Trump might not always be right or politic or temperate, he has done more for conservative causes than all the Republican politicians put together in the last 30 years. So Dave, as someone who knows you well, I am telling you: it is time you quit this NeverTrump nonsense. Just quit. Cold turkey. Sure it will be hard the first few days, Dave, and you will probably have the shakes, and your wife will complain—but in the end, you will feel so much better! Your life will never be the same, because you will know in your heart, at last, who your true enemies are, and who is in your corner.”
But, alas, no. French refuses to seek help from the man he sees in the mirror. Instead, he penned this: “The Trump–Ukraine Transcript Contains Evidence of a Quid Pro Quo.” I saw the headline, and I thought to myself: @#$? This is a National Review headline? Did I somehow click on the wrong URL, and end up at The Daily Worker?
Unlike 99 percent of Americans, I actually read the transcript. Beginning to end. Every word. It wasn’t what I would call terribly exciting reading—humdrum and mundane is more like it. Anticlimactic, if I am being honest with myself, and this was definitely an occasion for honesty with oneself.
Like French (and like every lefty pundit, commentator, congressional Democrat and CNN talking head), I was looking for that quid pro quo. I was looking for that incontrovertible evidence of Trump corruption that the Washington Post and the New York Times promised us. (I am sure CNN promised it too, but I don’t have CNN any more in my cable package, so I will leave it to others to confirm.)
I was looking for Trump coming back, again and again, to Joe Biden. Eight times! (Or so the experts in the media told me.) And to Biden’s sex-addled, cocaine-compromised dolt of a son. You know, that son whose “consulting company” was paid $3 million by a Ukrainian gas company while Biden was handing out $1 billion in aid to Ukraine.
All this, despite the fact that Hunter Biden has exactly zero experience in oil and gas law (that’s zero, as in exactly none), and the Ukrainian company in question had never done any business in the United States. That son.
But instead, in five pages of dense, single-spaced text, all we got was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention of Biden somewhere two-thirds of the way in, and the conversation quickly moved on to other things. I even word-searched for Biden in the transcript multiple times—nope, nothing else there, anywhere, about Biden.
Now, congressional Democrats, Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times have long ago decamped into a fact-free alternative universe, so I am not surprised they have no trouble finding impeachable offenses in everything that Trump does and says. Even when Trump just picks his nose, or eats two scoops of ice cream for lunch, instead of one, in the White House cafeteria, you can almost hear the impeachment machine’s engine warming up. So where does David French find the quid, much less the quo?”
——————
Answer. He didn’t, because there was none to find. But again, his TDS got the best of him.
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Here’s my Quote of the Day. 🙂
“David, I am sorry again, but you need help. When a man sees things that simply aren’t there, when the TDS voices whispering in his head become too important to ignore—that man needs help. An intervention is surely in order.
I like you—or, at least, I want to like you. Or, fine—if I can’t like you, at least I don’t want to think of you as a delusional NeverTrump gnome who drank too much NeverTrump Kool-Aid. I want to continue reading your stuff. I refuse to believe that you are too far gone. I refuse to lump you in with the Jennifer Rubins, the Max Boots, and the Bill Kristols. You are better than them—and you have it in you to overcome the debilitating disease affecting many lesser minds.
I know you know what I am talking about. The Trump Derangement Syndrome is a terrible affliction.”
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A perfect time to use the newest Official Trump Cult phrase: So you have nothing.
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Good analysis in this thread from young Heath Mayo.
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Wrong again Ricky. I’m going to take the law professor’s word over yours.
What it reads as is a closing argument crafted by partisan Democrat lawyers (because it is). It’s just the bogus document that sat on Schiff’s desk for months. Only now it’s important and pressing.
It’s a fraud, like those pushing it.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/the-whistleblower-complaint-isnt-a-whisteblower-complaint-its-a-closing-argument/
“The “Whistleblower Complaint” isn’t a whistleblower complaint, it’s a closing argument
If CIA or other intelligence operatives are using their access to sensitive information in order to interfere in our political process, then that is a lot more frightening than a President raising the widely-reported corruption of his political opponent with the president of the country where the alleged corruption took place.”
“When the so-called Whistleblower Complaint was released this morning, my first impression was that this was a very professionally-done document, likely crafted by a lawyer.
It looks like a lawyer letter. It’s very legalistic in many parts, cites to statutes and executive orders, and is heavily footnoted. It attempts to bring together evidence from disparate sources, including public news reports. It is, in every sense, a closing argument or brief in support of a position by someone who did not actually participate in the events about which he or she is writing.
The document does not at all read like we would expect a whistleblower complaint to read — alerting the appropriate authority to facts the whistleblower has learned and leaving the legal conclusions to those authorities.”
——
“Who talks/writes like this? Lawyers and analysts steeped in national security law, and concerned about the nuances of classifications. In this case, the whistleblower likely was well-versed in national security law AND had legal help crafting the complaint.
Why go to the trouble of such a detailed explanation of what is/is not classified in the document? Why not leave that classification issue to the appropriate authorities?
Perhaps the whistleblower wanted the document to be leaked and wanted to make sure the leakers knew only to leak the letter, not the attachment:
This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.
* * *
To the best of my knowledge, the entirety of this statement is unclassified when separated from the classified enclosure.
In the coming days, we’re likely to find out more about the whistleblower. An exclusive interview with the Washington Post, a la Christine Blasey Ford, seems likely with or without a reveal of identity.
It’s too soon to say conclusively this was a CIA analyst or other intelligence community member, but if that turns out to be the case, then the implications are frightening. It will show that the worst conspiracy theories about the “deep state” were not conspiracy theories at all.
If CIA or other intelligence operatives are using their access to sensitive information in order to interfere in our political process, then that is a lot more frightening than a President raising the widely-reported corruption of his political opponent with the president of the country where the alleged corruption took place.”
—————–
Trump was right. They’re traitors, led and directed of course, by a team of Democrat lawyers..
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A different take on the teenager from Sweden:
http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/09/greta-thunberg-and-the-road-of-good-intentions/
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Like I said….
It sat on Schiff’s desk for months.
Where it was edited isn’t hard to figure out. This is just another hoax.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/27/former-nsa-cos-whistleblower-help-congressional-democrats-complaint/
“Former NSA Chief Of Staff Suggests Whistleblower Had Help From Congressional Democrats In Crafting Complaint”
“Former CIA officer and National Security Agency Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz is suggesting that the whistleblower accusing President Donald Trump of misconduct had help from lawyers and House Democrats in crafting his complaint.
He suggests the document is just too polished and has too much in common with the Democratic impeachment agenda — and a tweet from California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who is also chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Fleitz wrote Thursday in an op-ed piece for the New York Post.
“This document looks as if this leaker had outside help, possibly from congressional members or staff.”
He also says the whistleblower’s declassified complaint, made public Thursday, “appears to be written by a law professor.”
Fleitz, who is the president of the Center for Security Policy, describes himself as “troubled” by the whistleblower affair. “I am troubled by the complaint and wonder how an intelligence officer could file it over something a president said to a foreign leader. How could this be an intelligence matter?”
“It appears likely to me that this so-called whistleblower was pursuing a political agenda.”
The former CIA officer notes that he is “very familiar with transcripts of presidential phone calls since I edited and processed dozens of them when I worked for the NSC. I also know a lot about intelligence whistleblowers from my time with the CIA.”
“From my experience, such an extremely polished whistleblowing complaint is unheard of.””
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More……
https://nypost.com/2019/09/26/former-cia-official-on-whistleblower-how-could-this-be-an-intelligence-matter/
“Former CIA official on whistleblower: ‘How could this be an intelligence matter?’”
—-
“Moreover, it looks like more than a coincidence that this complaint surfaced and was directed to the House Intelligence Committee just after Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), an outspoken opponent of President Trump, expressed numerous complaints in August 2019 accusing President Trump of abusing aid to Ukraine to hurt Joe Biden. This includes an August 28 tweet that closely resembled the whistleblowing complaint.”
“House Republicans need to ask the whistleblower under oath whether he spoke to the press or Congress about his complaint.
Also very concerning to me is how the complaint indicates intelligence officers and possibly other federal employees are violating the rules governing presidential phone calls with foreign leaders.
The content and transcripts of these calls are highly restricted. The whistleblower makes clear in his complaint that he did not listen to a call in question, nor did he read the transcript — he was told about the call by others. If true, intelligence officers have grossly violated the rules as well as the trust placed on them to protect this sensitive information.
I refuse to believe that the leaking, timing and presentation of this complaint is coincidence. I don’t think the American people will buy this either.
I’m more worried, however, that this latest instance of blatant politicization of intelligence by Trump haters will do long term damage to the relationship between the intelligence community and US presidents for many years to come.”
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The press continues to misreport the matter.
https://dailycaller.com/2019/09/26/abc-bungles-trump-zelensky-report/
“ABC News Bungles Report That White House Set Preconditions For Trump-Zelensky Meeting”
“ABC News added a major correction to a report that U.S. officials set preconditions for a meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president.
ABC inaccurately identified the source of the story, Serhiy Leshchenko, as an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president.
Leshchenko has not been an adviser to Zelensky for months. Leshchenko also disputed the quotes attributed to him in the ABC article, but an ABC reporter said he has a recording of Leshchenko’s remarks.
Nellie Ohr testified to Congress in 2018 that Leshchenko was a source of information for Fusion GPS.”
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“But the story has several problems.”
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Jonah Goldberg’s analysis may irritate both sides.
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Here’s the opinion of another constitutional legal scholar.
.https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2019/09/27/some-courageous-whistleblower-mark-levin-takes-dems-and-medias-truly-insane-allegations-apart-in-epic-thread/
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1:09
Why might Trumpers be suspicious of any well-written document?
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——-
Way more details here.
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2019/09/27/hoo-boy-thread-explaining-major-error-in-whistleblower-memo-an-eye-opener-making-dems-and-media-look-worse/
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Like I said, never trust the Shifty One.
https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/1177546801890693120
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https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/1177551643312885761
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https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/1177550919363379200
————
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This certainly looks…… Shifty…..
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Yet Schiff claims he didn’t know and that the info didn’t make it to Congress. Again, he’s clearly lying.
https://twitter.com/WWG1WGA_MD/status/1177511156665085953
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Which led to:
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Hoax.
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Just another coincidence, I’m sure…. 🙄
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I’m not the only one getting sleepy. 🙂
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🙂
https://twitter.com/LoJoandKJ/status/1177254704822333446
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“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
― Garry Kasparov
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Tychicus, Do you know that Kasparov was describing the behavior of Trump and The Cult?
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More Kasparov:
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More Kasparov. He is a very heroic man.
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Dreher is correct.
Make no mistake, that’s exactly how it will go.
Which is why it’s even sadder that some of those “religious and social conservative” people would rather lie down politically with the hard left. Because, umm… principles… or something….
Nose. Cut. Off. Spite. Face.
That’ll sure show that Trump. 🙄
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Resign you lying hack! 🙂
https://nypost.com/2019/09/27/trump-calls-on-adam-schiff-to-resign-for-allegedly-lying-to-congress/
“Trump calls on Adam Schiff to resign for allegedly lying to Congress”
“President Trump on Friday called on Rep. Adam Schiff to resign, accusing the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee of “fraudulently” reading to Congress a nonexistent version of his call with the Ukrainian president.
“Rep. Adam Schiff fraudulently read to Congress, with millions of people watching, a version of my conversation with the President of Ukraine that doesn’t exist,” the president said in a tweet
“He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, an (sic) me sound guilty,” he wrote as he renewed his claim that his conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect.”
“HE WAS DESPERATE AND HE GOT CAUGHT,” Trump continued. “Adam Schiff therefore lied to Congress and attempted to defraud the American Public. He has been doing this for two years. I am calling for him to immediately resign from Congress based on this fraud!””
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Oh for crying out loud…..
Does anyone really need further proof that this is a set-up?
I mean besides the TDS sufferer…..
They gutted the whistle blower rules so they could sneak this hoax in with n proof.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/27/intel-community-secretly-gutted-requirement-of-first-hand-whistleblower-knowledge/
“Intel Community Secretly Gutted Requirement Of First-Hand Whistleblower Knowledge
Federal records show that the intelligence community secretly revised the formal whistleblower complaint form in August 2019 to eliminate the requirement of direct, first-hand knowledge of wrongdoing.”
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“Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.
The brand new version of the whistleblower complaint form, which was not made public until after the transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the complaint addressed to Congress were made public, eliminates the first-hand knowledge requirement and allows employees to file whistleblower complaints even if they have zero direct knowledge of underlying evidence and only “heard about [wrongdoing] from others.”
The internal properties of the newly revised “Disclosure of Urgent Concern” form, which the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) requires to be submitted under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), show that the document was uploaded on September 24, 2019, at 4:25 p.m., just days before the anti-Trump complaint was declassified and released to the public. The markings on the document state that it was revised in August 2019, but no specific date of revision is disclosed.
The complaint alleges that President Donald Trump broke the law during a phone call with the Ukrainian president. In his complaint, which was dated August 12, 2019, the complainant acknowledged he was “not a direct witness” to the wrongdoing he claims Trump committed.”
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Can’t wait to hear Ricky’s excuse for this.
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This is a joke.
The Deep Staters are at it again.
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“A previous version of the whistleblower complaint document, which the ICIG and DNI until recently provided to potential whistleblowers, declared that any complaint must contain only first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoing and that complaints that provide only hearsay, rumor, or gossip would be rejected.
“The [Intelligence Community Inspector General] cannot transmit information via the ICPWA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing,” the previous form stated under the bolded heading “FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.” “This includes information received from another person, such as when an employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing.”
“If you think that wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions, [the Intelligence Community Inspector General] will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA,” the form concluded.”
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But we changed the rules and…. voilà…..
Now we can sneak this trash thru.
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I know that Jonah Goldberg and Kevin D. Williamson are buddies. From the articles they wrote today, I think they have been discussing Trump’s Ukraine Extortion. Williamson’s article ends with a riddle. Can you figure out what Kevin wants to happen?
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4:33 and 5:48
Nothing discredits social and religious conservatives more with young people, the press and the educated than when their “leaders” excuse and defend the dishonesty, ignorance, childishness, amorality and demagoguery of Donald Trump. The Falwells, Jeffresses and Franklin Grahams make all social and religious conservatives look stupid and/or hypocritical every day. The stink of Trump isn’t just on Republicans. It is on all social and religious conservatives. It is going to take a long time for that stink to dissipate, but the first step toward renewal is to remove him from office.
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DJ, Like you, conservative Quin Hillyer looked for a good objective source for news. He selected the Wall Street Journal, but not the WSJ editorial page. He also included analysis from several level-headed conservatives.
https://twitter.com/quinhillyer/status/1177690050806583296?s=21
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David Brooks basically agrees with Goldberg and Williamson and does a good job of setting forth his practical considerations.
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Kasparov gives us the counter-argument to Williamson, Goldberg and Brooks. Sometimes, it is important to turn around and sock a bully in the nose.
Amash says it most succinctly: Just do what is right. Don’t worry about what others are doing.
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7:34, nah. Trump, et al, are *way* down on the list of what discredits religious folk with young people. The gospel and any associated cause isn’t so fragile that “nothing” does more damage to its credibility than Donald Trump. Let’s take a breath.
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How about a couple of examples of things that discredit religious and social conservatives with young people, the press and the educated more than when religious and social conservative “leaders” excuse and defend the behavior of Trump?
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The press and the much of the brainwashed “educated” as you call them should be ignored. They’re irrelevant and largely lost to secularism already. This is plainly obvious. They’ll never be on your side Ricky. You aren’t one of the cool kids, that’s reality. The longer the youth remain in our indoctrination system, the farther lost they’ll be as well. Their opinions on gay marriage, climate change, illegal immigration are all being influenced by their educations, not be their churches or their parents in most cases. That’s reality. Same goes for their politics. They aren’t drawn to Sanders and Warren and their socialist promises because of something someone on the right said or did. They’re drawn there because it’s what they’re taught to believe is best.
And that has jack squat to do with Trump. Started long before him, and it will continue long after him.
There are 2 choices here. While Trump isn’t ideal, the alternative isn’t really even an option for folks concerned with religion and social conservatism. It’s not excusing anything if you’re simply selecting the lesser of two evils. There are really only two choices. Your vote helps one or the other either way it goes. While the children may pretend that isn’t so, it is. When they grow up, they’ll see that in fact it is.
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