Dallas Morning News Exposes California's Utopian Failure

Dallas Morning News Exposes California's Utopian Failure

 

BY BRYAN PRESTON

Palm trees frame a home being destroyed by a wildfire above Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., on Nov. 9, 2018.(AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

As California suffers under disasters and its own delusions, the Dallas Morning News weighs in with a brilliant editorial outlining the difference between that failing state and a far more stable and successful state to its east.

Here is the difference between California and Texas: In California, even the public utility, funded by customer fees set by a government agency, can't do its job. And in Texas, our trust in a free market system has served us well. Multiple emergencies, financial and weather, bear this out.

California’s governor declared a state of emergency over the weekend because of wildfires north of San Francisco. The utility, PG&E, responded by cutting off power to millions of people to try to prevent fires spreading because of power lines. This must be terrifying for the people in the region, who are trying to avoid the natural disaster and also find shelter with electricity.

And what is the root of that difference? Texas and California bear many similarities. Both are large, high-population states with an international border and diverse geographies, people, and economies. Both are home to thriving high-tech, entertainment, and vast energy and agriculture industries. Both suffer extreme natural disasters on a regular basis — California with its quakes and wildfires, Texas with its wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

But one is refashioning itself into a socialist utopia. The other has its boots planted firmly in real soil. California continually elects the kind of people who want to change the world but can't even change a tire. Texas elects real leaders with real experience who get the job done.

And as the DMN observes, this makes a world of difference.

For one small example, I was part of the team that led relief after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and 2018. Our first priority was helping Texans get back home, so much so that we practically had that tattooed on our arms. We were constantly shuttling back and forth from Austin to the storm zone on the coast. One of our team moved into an RV in Rockport for several weeks to direct housing relief on the scene. The head of the Harvey recovery effort, Pete Phillips, worked well over 100 straight days through weekends and holidays. I merely worked 35 straight days after Harvey. Don Forse, Jeff Miller, Brittany Eck, and many others — too many to name — sacrificed weekends, time with family, and sleep to get the job done.

No one on the team ever saw that disaster as a means to effect some political outcome. Can the same be said for the party that "never wants a crisis to go to waste"? Can that be said for the party that uses mass-shootings as an excuse to disarm law-abiding Americans and arrogantly lectures and tries to reshape electorates that believe in free markets, free speech, freedom of faith and freedom of self-defense?

The subtitle of the DMN editorial may as well be "Whatever you do next year, Texans, do NOT elect any Democrats to major office."

The New York Post is even more direct in its assessment of California's scheming:

Between the raging wildfires and the blackouts, California is now offering an abject lesson in the perils of wishful thinking. The state’s leaders may blame climate change or big utility companies, but in reality it’s their own damn fault.

[...]

Green sentiment has beaten back the timber industry, which might have put life-saving access roads into wild areas. It has prevented controlled burns (for fear of disrupting animal habitats) and barred even minor brush-clearing programs.

When last summer’s disastrous fire killed 85, the state found reason to blame PG&E — which was sued into bankruptcy and is still deep in Chapter 11. (Utilities that aren’t privately owned, meanwhile, don’t face the same liability under California law.) Hence its precautionary blackouts now.

Socialism is slavery to the state and a threat to human life and freedom. The Green(back) New Deal is, in the words of its own shadow author, a means to control people, not a means to help the environment.

Choices have consequences. California's utopian socialists have lied and bullied their way into one disaster after another with deadly consequences — while Texas conservatives have built up a gaudy record of job growth and competent governance.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/dallas-morning-news-exposes-californias-utopian-failure/

Schiff and Pelosi Try to Hold the Nation Hostage

Schiff and Pelosi Try to Hold the Nation Hostage

by Amanda Green in politics 17 Comments

Our nation is being held hostage. Not by terrorists. Not by a foreign nation. No, it is being held hostage by the likes of Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi and their accomplices in the House of Representatives as they once again try to reset the narrative of the Trump presidency. For two days, we heard rumblings that Thursday would be the day the House finally voted to endorse impeachment proceedings against the president. Now, and it really shouldn’t surprise anyone, they’ve changed their tune. The vote isn’t going to be endorsing the proceedings. Oh no. All they’re going to do is decide how to hold the public hearings. The real question,–and one the mainstream media isn’t asking–is why the change?

There are any number of possible answers. The Dems want to keep the talk of impeachment front and center during the election season. They are so inept they can’t figure out how to hold the hearings. Or, my personal favorite, what the witnesses have been telling them is far from what has been leaked to the media. In other words, they know they don’t have enough evidence to impeach the president but they are so deep into their own fantasy world that they can’t admit they’ve failed, even to themselves.

This would certain explain why Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, “is reportedly telling witnesses testifying not to answer questions asked by Republican lawmakers.”

According to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La.:

He’s directing witnesses not to answer questions that he doesn’t want the witness to answer if they’re asked by Republicans . . . He’s not cut off one Democrat. He’s not interrupted one Democrat and told a witness not to answer Democrat members’ questions but today he started telling witnesses not to answer questions by certain Republicans.”

The real question comes down to whether or not justice is being served by the charade being held in the House chamber. Schiff, Pelosi and company have been up in arms since the election, doing everything they can to discredit Trump (often with help from him and his Twitter account). They’ve bitched to high heaven when folks they’ve wanted to question have refused to cooperate. But now the shoe is on the other foot and it is just fine with them. It seems they have no problem at all with keeping the proceedings hidden from the public, doling out information they want through convenient “leaks” and denying their Republican counterparts the chance to question witnesses. Hell, let’s be honest about it. Schiff is preventing the Republicans from calling witnesses. It’s his show and the little dictator is going to run it his way.

The farce has extended to yesterday’s evidence gathering.  Scalise and other Republicans held a press conference yesterday to describe Schiff’s latest round of grandstanding. According to Scalise and Congressman Jim Jordan, R-OH, Schiff prevented them from asking  Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman some follow-up questions.

When we asked [Vindman] who he spoke to after important events in July — Adam Schiff says, ‘no, no, no, we’re not going to let him answer that question,”‘ Jordan said.

Hmmm, I don’t know about you, but I have a real problem with Schiff not allowing the question to be asked. After all, part of the build-up to Lt. Col. Vendman’s testimony was the assertion he reported his concerns on more than one occasion. So wouldn’t it be important to find out who, besides his supervisor, he might have said something to? Apparently Schiff didn’t think so. Either that or he is worried that the knowledge of who Vendman spoke to might cast doubt on his allegations.

What other steps have the Dems taken to hamstring the Republicans? A reading of the resolution Pelosi is presenting for a vote Thursday speaks volumes. Here are a few of the ways the Dems are trying to stack the deck and prevent the president from getting a fair and impartial hearing (not that I ever expected them to try to be impartial).

According to Pelosi:, the resolution:

 affirms the ongoing, existing investigation” and “establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the president and his Counsel.”

Wait, why do they need to “affirm” the ongoing investigation? Shouldn’t that have been done before our tax dollars were spent? Also, why were the procedures addressed before now? Oh, wait, I know the answer. The Dems haven’t wanted the hearings to be public. By keeping them behind closed doors, Schiff and company could control the flow of information, especially since the media has acted as their accomplice in the attempt to bring down the Trump Administration since before Trump took office.

The very first paragraph of the resolution shows what a one-sided fishing expedition it will be. The House committees already looking into the president are to:

continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.”

So they can continue digging, despite being unable to find sufficient evidence in approximately three years of trying. Worse, they can do so for “other purposes” beyond determining if there’s sufficient grounds to impeach him.

“We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives,” Pelosi said Monday.

Hypocrite, thy name is Nancy Pelosi. She has no problem with Schiff telling witnesses not to answer questions from Republicans, but heaven forbid Republicans act as her own party does.

And what about Schiff?

Oh, the little dictator is loving his time in the limelight. He has no problem telling the media that Trump and members of his administration want nothing more than to “punish” the so-called whistleblowers.

We will make every effort to make sure that notwithstanding the president or his allies’ desire to out and exact political revenge on this whistleblower, that our committee is never used for that purpose,” he said.

No, they’ll just use Schiff’s committee and the others to exact their political revenge on Trump for daring upset their plans for 2016.

How long do they plan to keep this up? Until he either throws his hands up and resigns or he is defeated or he reaches his term limit. To hell with the cost to the nation. None of that matters as long as they can continue to scream about how he should never have been sworn in. After all, that honor should have gone to Hillary Clinton.

Read the resolution for yourselves. When you cut through all the jargon, it comes down to Schiff being in control and basically being able to do whatever he wants.

How many weeks and months have we listened to Pelosi and Schiff and their cohorts in the House telling us there is more than enough evidence to not only impeach the president but to bring him up on criminal charges? How many weeks and months have they promised to move forward, to bring the case before the American people and yet there’s been nothing but strategic leaks and innuendo? It is past time for them to either show their hand or move on–preferably to move out of their roles in government.

When our politicians are more concerned with punishing fellow politicians because they dared get elected than they are in serving their constituents, our nation is in trouble. When we continue electing those same politicians, we need to step back and take a hard look at ourselves. We have that chance coming up in the next election. I know what I’m going to do. What about you?

If that isn’t enough to get you thinking, perhaps this will be. What will the history books say about the antics of the House of Representatives over the last three years? Will they talk about all the legislation that was passed and how it helped move the country to a stronger position internationally? Not a chance. Will the books tell future students how the House reached across the aisle to work with the Republican held Senate? Nope. Instead, those books will, or at least should, talk about how Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi and others in House leadership roles tried to hold the nation hostage because they couldn’t get over the fact Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

Don’t let this be the death knell of the American dream. It is time to reclaim our country from politicians who are more worried about their own personal agendas than they are about the safety and welfare of the nation.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/schiff-pelosi-hold-nation-hostage/

The Adam Schiff Empowerment Act

by Byron York

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House Democrats plan to pass their Trump impeachment resolution Thursday. Its full description is "Directing certain committees to continue their ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes."

A better and much shorter title would be The Adam Schiff Empowerment Act.

The resolution gives Rep. Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, far-reaching power over the Trump impeachment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains the ultimate authority, of course, but, like a chairman of the board choosing a chief executive officer, she has picked Schiff to run the show. And in the resolution, Democrats will give him near-total control.

The first thing the resolution will do is give the impeachment investigation to the Intelligence Committee. Until now, three committees — Intel, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs — have been conducting impeachment interviews. Going forward, Oversight and Foreign Affairs will be out of the interview picture in favor of Intel.

Among other things, that would mean that some Republicans who have been persistent critics of the process but who have been allowed into depositions by virtue of their membership in other participating committees — two examples are Oversight Committee members Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows — will no longer be allowed in the interview room.

"It's totally one-sided," Meadows told me Wednesday evening. "They can continue to do secret depositions. They have noticed depositions for John Bolton and others next week in anticipation of a positive vote Thursday. All it does is limit the committees that will be involved in the depositions."

The resolution also gives Schiff total control over whether transcripts of depositions already completed and those yet to be done will be made public. "The chair is authorized to make publicly available in electronic form the transcripts of depositions conducted by the [Intelligence Committee] in furtherance of the investigation," says the resolution. That means Schiff can release transcripts, but it does not mean he must release transcripts.

"It says they are authorized to disclose depositions," Meadows noted, "which means they can pick and choose which depositions they will release." Perhaps Schiff will release them all. But he doesn't have to.

The resolution would also give Schiff the authority to call and conduct public hearings on impeachment. Schiff will control the witnesses. Although there has been some discussion about whether Republicans will have the right to call witnesses, the resolution only gives the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Community, Rep. Devin Nunes, the right to ask Schiff to call a witness.

"To allow for full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation," the resolution says. "Any such request shall be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance of the testimony of each requested witnesses to the investigation." Republicans will get nothing that Schiff does not approve.

"There's no guarantee we can call any witnesses," said Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a member of the Intelligence Committee, in an interview Wednesday.

"The rules the Democrats rammed through simply confirm the absolute control Schiff has been exercising this entire time," Nunes said. "He shouldn't be involved in impeachment at all since none of this has any intelligence component, but Pelosi obviously thinks Nadler is incompetent."

That was a reference to Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The Judiciary panel traditionally handles impeachments, but after disastrous hearings with Robert Mueller and Corey Lewandowski, Nadler did not inspire confidence that he could run a successful impeachment effort. So Pelosi passed him by in favor of Schiff.

In the end, Republicans expect Democrats to hold a small number of public hearings, picking a few of the witnesses they believe will be most effective on television and excluding the rest. It will all be run by Schiff, who will be, Republican Rep. Doug Collins said on Fox News Wednesday, "The sole arbiter of everything impeachment."

Republicans can't say for sure, but they expect GOP lawmakers to unanimously vote against the impeachment resolution. Even members who have some doubts about Trump will likely take a stand against the Democratic one-sidedness of the process.

Of course, that won't be enough to stop it. Democrats control the House, and they control the way impeachment will be run. That's what the 2018 election was about. And now, there's nothing Republicans can do to change it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/the-adam-schiff-empowerment-act

How the Senate Should Handle Impeachment

By Sally Zelikovsky

When Senate Republicans drafted a resolution condemning the House for hearing witness testimony behind closed doors while excluding Republicans in violation of the President’s Due Process rights, beyond the scrutiny of cross examination and the rules of evidence, and then demanded the House conduct a formal vote and provide Due Process protections as well as minority participation, cheers rang out among rank and file Republicans:  Senate Republicans finally threw away their tiddlywinks and actually stepped things up by bringing a knife to the Democrats’ gun fight!  Not unsurprisingly, the positive yields from punching back versus simply taking it have been immediate with Speaker Nancy Pelosi feeling so backed into a corner that she has been forced to formalize the impeachment process in her own resolution, set to be voted on this week. All this in a matter of hours. 

But a knife at a gun fight won’t cut it.  It’s time for Senate Republicans to take this one step further and launch a pre-emptive strike that will nuke anything the House does.  This is, after all, political war and we are fighting for our very survival.       

The Constitution is very clear.  “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.”  Any such trial shall be under “Oath and Affirmation.”  If it involves the President, “the Chief Justice shall preside” and conviction requires 2/3 of the members present.  That’s about it.  The Constitution and existing law have precious little to say about the actual Senate trial, if and how it should take place. 

The Senate is a check on the People’s House run amok -- quite literally a last stand against the barbarian mobs frothing at the gate.  What we are witnessing today with the Democrats intent on crafting from whole cloth some kind of tenuous basis for Trump’s impeachment, is just that.  And so Senate Republicans have to go on offense.  They have to be keen, strategic, and creative.  Think of it as our D-Day.

The Senate clearly has jurisdiction to conduct a trial and remove the President, but is by no means constitutionally mandated, or even obligated, to conduct a trial. Like any court, the Senate has broad discretion in deciding whether or not to hear a case, and courts have a multitude of reasons to dismiss a case -- among others, a failure to state a claim, no facts at issue, frivolous claims, and on and on.   

The Senate should change its rules or enact new rules establishing that it will summarily dismiss any impeachment from the House and not hold a trial, when that impeachment is based on any of the following: partisan politics (this can be proven since impeachment has been their clarion call since Election Night 2016);  conduct that falls squarely within the executive’s constitutionally-enumerated powers (among others, the executive’s ability to conduct foreign and national security policy, to protect the homeland, and to fully execute the laws of the United States, including investigating and prosecuting corruption carried out by citizens); hearsay evidence and any other evidence that would be inadmissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence; information protected by executive privilege or that is classified; evidence that has been obtained in violation of the accused’s constitutional guarantees or any other laws; or evidence that was illegally obtained. 

The Constitution states that the President shall be “removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  That requires that a trial take place, but if the Senate determines, in accordance with Senate rules, that there are no grounds for a trial, it’s hard to see a reason why the Senate cannot “throw out” the impeachment.  

Gutsy? You bet.  Likely to rile up the Dems?  Don’t care.  Effective?  Damn right. 

Changing existing senate rules or enacting new ones might require deploying Harry Reid’s 2013 nuclear option which allows the Senate to close debate with a simple majority (51 votes) versus 60, or the 67 votes required to amend a Senate rule.  

Republicans don’t have 60 votes but can easily meet the 51-vote threshold as long as they employ  Nancy Pelosi-style tactics to muscle every Republican senator to vote with the pack.  They will have to pressure Republicans who threaten to stray with losing committee appointments or chairmanships they might have or want.  They must be made to understand that any legislation they might propose will fall on deaf ears and that the NRSC will withhold funding for their re-election bids and support primary challenges instead.  If some pansy like Romney or Collins insists on voting his or her conscience, they should be pressed by every other Republican to, at the very least, not show up on vote day (remember:  the Constitution requires 2/3 of the members present).

Sure.  The Dems and the press will blow up, but the fact is, we have Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to thank for paving the way, including the broad discretion to act:  Pelosi has said she can do what she wants because the Constitution doesn’t speak to any details the House must follow regarding impeachment.  The same can be said with respect to the Senate regarding trial and removal. 

If Republicans remain reluctant to act because they fear how the liberal public, the Dems, or the media will respond, then they really aren’t living in reality.  We’ve already lost the public perception game.  We don’t have the media, Hollywood, or the educational system in our court.   We don’t have much left as Republicans.  Donald Trump and his unyielding devotion to punching back on our behalf is our last best hope.  When he goes -- whether through removal due to impeachment or the 2020 election -- the GOP is dead.  It could be decades before conservatives have a viable party and by then, the damage will be catastrophic. 

For once, before it’s too late, let’s outsmart the smarty pants on the left. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/how_the_senate_should_handle_impeachment.html

California has much, much bigger problems than wildfires

Days of Sunshine

A journal of our life in paradise

California has much, much bigger problems than wildfires
 saucysandpiper Uncategorized  October 13, 2019

Last weekend, I was out shopping for a new smartphone. As most people who live in Florida were not originally born here, the Millennial behind the counter asked me where I was from. I told her that I have lived in several states, but I grew up in Southern California.

She shrieked with delight at this news. “I love Los Angeles,” she said. “Don’t you just want to move back?”

Nevermind the obvious point that we did have a choice of where to live, and we clearly chose to buy a house on the beach in Florida. But asking me if I am yearning to move back to Los Angeles is a bit like asking me if I am yearning to move to Pyongyang or Tehran. Nope doesn’t exactly cover it.

I’m not so in love with the Kardashians that I want to pay more than half of our household income to taxes at every level of government. To stare at homeless camps and dirty needles in the gutter while sitting in traffic. To listen to lawmakers congratulate themselves on mandating that abortion pills be passed out on college campuses while millions of people in the state are without electricity. “Try to find a cool place to store your insulin” is not the kind of government regime that I am eager to live under. The libertarian customs of Florida may lead to a lot of bizarre and entertaining headlines, but the government here is aggressively functional and not unnecessarily expensive.

The last time I heard about mandatory rolling blackouts, it applied to Puerto Rico – a US territory that ended up going bankrupt and was incapable of managing a natural disaster in the years that followed, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people. They couldn’t keep the power on under normal circumstances, so they were certainly unprepared to deal with a hurricane. Puerto Rico taxpayers had accumulated tens of billions of dollars of debt for infrastructure projects, but you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the decrepit state of their infrastructure. Where did the money go? It went to endless corrupt deals, that’s where.

Now California is witnessing basically the same situation unfold. The California electorate has become increasingly batshit, and they send increasingly batshit people to Sacramento and to the city councils of the state’s largest municipalities. As a result, they’ve taken a paradise and managed it into dysfunction. There is far more concern over policing how people think and talk in California than there is in actually providing essential government services. If you are a middle class resident of California, you are forfeiting the opportunity build any sort of nest egg so that you can live like the poorest people in the Caribbean or Central America. There’s no glamour in that life decision, sorry.

The rolling blackouts in California is not a climate change story. It’s a perfect storm of bad management decisions and rent-seeking green energy contractors.

California gets a lot of well-deserved grief for not clearing publicly managed lands of organic debris, thus ensuring that the state is an epic tinderbox every year. This is something that does not happen here in Florida. Florida ecologists and wildlife officials supervise controlled burns throughout the state to ensure that there’s not a situation where a wildfire among the mangroves poses a threat to a major (or even a minor) city. It also protects the state’s tourism industry, which is a significant component of the state’s economy.

But that’s not where the rolling blackouts came from. California’s investor-owned utilities have dealt with the increasingly batshit people in Sacramento by taking an “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude in lobbying. And that’s what you are seeing backfiring now.

PG&E went all-in on the green energy projects that California lawmakers and their constituents love. So much so that the company was actively choosing to invest in new green projects rather than make the necessary safety upgrades to its existing transmission systems. Those investment decisions are how California got the deadliest wildfire in state history last year. They had shitty equipment that was past its useful life.

The company now has so little faith in the safety of its equipment that it decided leaving millions of Californians without power during natural cycles of high winds and dry conditions was worth the risk that people might die or be otherwise injured without power. That turning major intersections into four-way stops for days on end was a better idea than burning a large fraction of the state down. Their decision isn’t stupid. The decisions that created this dilemma in the first place were stupid.

The investment bank Credit Suisse estimated that contracts with green energy companies is costing PG&E $2.2 billion more than rates can support EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Over two billion dollars to nurse their liberal political connections, while the utility cannot afford even to inspect their 100,000 miles of power lines, let alone make repairs to them. The utility claims that inspecting the lines alone would require quadrupling their rates. That’s how long they have let their system rot in the service of liberal fantasies.

That’s the opportunity cost of turning your government over to AOC-esque personalities. Your whole system of providing essential government services is screwed beyond repair. The cumulative financial cost of bringing these systems back to normal pretty much ensures the government is going to watch its tax base walk out the door. And that’s going to create a downward spiral in the provision of all kinds of essential services. You are already seeing the warning signs that this is happening in California real estate prices and in the financial struggles of the state’s largest school districts. If you want to see governments that are further along on this trajectory, look at Puerto Rico and Chicago.

Thanks to the tens of billions of dollars in liabilities from the wildfires last year, PG&E has filed for bankruptcy. The utility’s bankruptcy has been a source of absolute chaos. It looks like PG&E shareholders will likely be completely wiped out. It is unlikely that any new controlling party will bring the utility back from the dead. So Californians should not discount the possibility that being without power is their new normal. No one seems to know how the utility is going to survive at this point, and that’s a big problem for the millions of people they support.

The incredible irony in all of this is that the green state of California has been keeping the lights on during this period with privately procured generators running on… wait for it… fossil fuels.

I am all for conservation of the natural environment. But people have to be pragmatic in making decisions as important as how infrastructure is to be managed and maintained. This is one thing the climate hysterics cannot think clearly about, and that’s why they should never be placed in leadership positions and they should not be able to control narratives about government.

The economic value these folks are capable of nuking is unreal.

https://daysofsunshine.blog/2019/10/13/california-has-much-much-bigger-problems-than-wildfires/

Whaddya Know: Ukraine Whistleblower Is a Biden, Schiff, and DNC Errand Boy

Whaddya Know: Ukraine Whistleblower Is a Biden, Schiff, and DNC Errand Boy

BY STEPHEN KRUISER 

(AP Photo/John Locher)

Real Clear Investigations (RCI) released a detailed examination of evidence that seems to support much of the speculation as to the real identity of the whistleblower that got the impeachment ball rolling after President Trump's now-infamous "Ukraine call."

RCI:

More than two months after the official filed his complaint, pretty much all that’s known publicly about him is that he is a CIA analyst who at one point was detailed to the White House and is now back working at the CIA.

But the name of a government official fitting that description — Eric Ciaramella — has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings, as well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry. Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.

RealClearInvestigations is disclosing the name because of the public’s interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office. Further, the official's status as a “whistleblower” is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate" -- as the Intelligence Community Inspector General phrased it circumspectly in originally fielding his complaint.

This is a very detailed report and I encourage everyone to read all of it, but I'll provide a few highlights here.

In addition to those mentioned in this post's headline, Ciaramella also worked for the execrable John Brennan, which makes this story all the more believable.

Ciaramella's name has been whispered for weeks but the speculation has largely been limited to social media buzz. Trump officials are fairly confident that it's him, and that the MSM knows it is:

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” said Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and national security adviser to Trump, who has fielded dozens of calls from the media.

Anti-Trump Beltway types have been leakier than a water balloon that's just taken two direct hits from a double-barrel shotgun but, as RCI notes, "a rare hush has swept across the Potomac" now. Ciaramella's party bona fides would certainly make the Democrats work overtime to protect his identity.

The transparency-free kangaroo court inquiry that Schiff is running will pretty much guarantee that the whistleblower won't be officially identified. This RCI report actually offers more concrete reasoning than 99.999 percent percent of the "anonymous source" speculative accusations "reported" about President Trump.

The Dems will tell you that the Deep State doesn't really exist but their vehement denials have made a believer out of me.

And it seems to be getting deeper by the day.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/whaddya-know-ukraine-whistleblower-is-a-biden-schiff-and-dnc-errand-boy/

It's Time for Every American Patriot to Rally Around Trump: The American Republic Is at Stake

It's Time for Every American Patriot to Rally Around Trump: The American Republic Is at Stake

 

BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., questions Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire,as he testifies before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

That's the canonical definition of chutzpah -- shameless effrontery -- and it summarizes the Democratic position on the attempted impeachment of President Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, assembled out of bits handed to ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele from his Russian intelligence sources, and the FBI used this concoction to obtain FISA warrants to bug the Trump presidential campaign. Now, THAT'S foreign interference. And those facts aren't in dispute. When the Trump administration tries to get the truth out of foreign governments about their involvement in nefarious activities in the U.S., the Democrats scream, "Impeachment!"

The Wall Street Journal editors got this exactly right:

Democrats want to impeach Donald Trump for inviting Ukraine to investigate 2020 election rival Joe Biden. But then why are they opposed to investigating whether Democrats used Russian disinformation to get the FBI to investigate Donald Trump in 2016?

That’s the double standard now on gaudy public display over multiple news reports that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the origins of the Russian fiasco of 2016 has become a criminal probe. Attorney General William Barr this year appointed Mr. Durham, a highly regarded and veteran prosecutor, to examine this part of the Russia tale that special counsel Robert Mueller chose to ignore.

Nothing less than the American republic is at stake here. It's time for every American patriot to rally around the president. Some of my neo-conservative ex-friends are cheering for the wrong side. Shame on them.

For the record, I don't care whether there was quid pro quo with Ukraine or not. If President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate foreign subversion of our political system, he was doing his job as commander-in-chief to protect this country from its external enemies. The parade of striped-pants cookie-pushers from the State Department feeding information to closed-door Democratic Party kangaroo courts in the House of Representatives is irrelevant. Trump is fighting a mutiny by the U.S. intelligence community. If the mutineers succeed, it will be the end of the republic. If a cabal of bureaucrats nestling in the bowls of our $80 billion a year intelligence bureaucracy can bring down an elected president of the United States, the republic is finished.

The impeachment issue is a load of baloney, period. No less a constitutional scholar than Prof. Alan Dershowitz wrote (on the website of the Gatestone Institute):

So, the question remains: did President Trump commit impeachable offenses when he spoke on the phone to the president of Ukraine and/or when he directed members of the Executive Branch to refuse to cooperate, absent a court order, with congressional Democrats who are seeking his impeachment?

The answers are plainly no and no. There is a constitutionally significant difference between a political "sin," on the one hand, and a crime or impeachable offenses, on the other.

Even taking the worst-case scenario regarding Ukraine -- a quid pro quo exchange of foreign aid for a political favor -- that might be a political sin, but not a crime or impeachable offense.

Dershowitz explained, "The search for the perfect impeachable offense against President Trump is reminiscent of overzealous prosecutors who target the defendant first and then search for the crime with which to charge him. Or to paraphrase the former head of the Soviet secret police to Stalin: show me the man and I will find you the crime."

As David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley write in the Wall Street Journal, this impeachment effort "subverts the Constitution:"

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly.

As Rivkin and Foley observe, there's nothing unusual about Trump's alleged delay on aid disbursements to Ukraine, and absolutely nothing criminal about it.

We now know that the FBI set up an ambush for Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, President Trump's first national security adviser, and that FBI lawyers fudged the interview (the Section 302 report) to make it appear that Flynn was lying, as Gateway Pundit reports here.

Every American should read carefully this interview with Prof. Angelo Codevilla, a former top staffer at the Senate Intelligence Committee (the interview was conducted by my friend David Samuels of Tablet Magazine). The power and capacity to abuse the power of America's intelligence services has grown to the point that it endangers our freedoms. Make no mistake: If they can railroad the president of the United States and members of the cabinet, they can do pretty much anything they want to you. Defend your freedoms. Support President Trump.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/i-killed-my-parents-and-now-i-ask-for-mercy-on-the-grounds-that-im-an-orphan/