America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond

16 05 2017

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus.  John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.[2]

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

President Trump was elected by the American people.  There are a myriad of persuasive arguments why his opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be indicted, convicted and imprisoned for the rest of her life.[3]  Yet, the drumbeat among Democrats, so-called “progressives” and the far-Left is to destroy the Trump presidency before it has begun.[4]

Many Americans felt just as strongly about the black racist Barack Obama[5], but they did not try to destroy his presidency or advocate his assassination as many in the anti-Trump camp have.  Their seditious, subversive and treasonous conduct strongly suggests that they pose a danger to our system of government. They should be arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned.

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Trump is hated by [Washington, D.C.], which gave him 4 percent of its votes, as much as Nixon was. And the deep-state determination to bring him down is as great as it was with Nixon. By 1968, the liberal establishment had lost the mandate it had held since 1933, but not lost its ability to wound and kill [Republican] presidents. Though Nixon won 49 states, that establishment took him down. Though Ronald Reagan won 49 states, that establishment almost took him down in the Iran-Contra affair. And that is the end they have in mind for President Trump.[6]

The United States and the American people are facing threats to our existence, which are unprecedented in our history, far surpassing 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.[7]  We cannot permit the seditious, subversive and treasonous conduct of some to pose a danger to our system of government and way of life.

© 2017, Timothy D. Naegele


[1]  Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (see www.naegele.com and http://www.naegele.com/documents/TimothyD.NaegeleResume.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com

[2]  See http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-lincoln-suspends-the-writ-of-habeas-corpus-during-the-civil-war (“President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War”)

[3]  See, e.g.https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”)

[4]  See, e.g.https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-10031 (“Impeachment: The Democrats’ Loonies And Wackos Are Frothing At The Mouth”)

[5]  If anyone has any doubts whatsoever that Obama is a racist, please read his book “Dreams from My Father” that sets forth his core black racist beliefs in his own words, which have undergirded his presidency.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

[6]  See http://buchanan.org/blog/comey-saturday-night-massacre-127070 (“Comey & The Saturday Night Massacre”)

[7]  See, e.g.https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10008 (“North Korea Prepares EMP Catastrophe For America”)


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18 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

End The Careers Of RINOS Curbelo And Amash Now! [UPDATED]

RINO Watch

Breitbart has reported:

As Washington D.C. was gripped once more by anti-Trump hysteria Wednesday, some Republican lawmakers scrambled to be the loudest in their condemnation of the President — with one lawmaker going so far as to contact a left-wing publication to let them know that he was the first Republican to mention a possible impeachment.

The furor gripping Capitol Hill and the mainstream media was triggered by a New York Times report Tuesday outlining a memo by fired FBI Director James Comey. The memo reportedly said that Trump had asked Comey to quash the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

While some Republicans were skeptical about what was essentially a report about part of a memo about a conversation, some anti-Trump Republican lawmakers pounced. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a long-time Trump opponent, told CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, “It’s reaching the point where it’s of Watergate size and scale.”

“Every couple of days, there’s a new aspect of this really unhappy situation… None of us, no matter what our political leanings are, no matter how we feel about Trump, feel this is not good for America,” McCain said.

On Wednesday, Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), told reporters that if the details in the memo were true, it would merit impeachment. According to The Hill, Amash was also asked if he trusted Comey or Trump’s word more. He responded: “I think it’s pretty clear I have more confidence in Director Comey.”

Quickly a number of outlets reported Amash’s remarks, calling him the first Republican to float Trump’s impeachment.

However, after left-wing outlet Mother Jones reported Amash’s remarks as such, the outlet said it was then contacted by a spokeswoman for Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), who reportedly told them: “Congressman Curbelo was actually the first Republican to mention impeachment.”

The spokeswoman was apparently referring to remarks Curbelo made Tuesday night on CNN in which he called for Comey to testify under oath, and said what was outlined in the Times report could be obstruction of justice.

“Obviously any effort to stop the federal government from conducting an investigation, any effort to dissuade federal agents from proceeding with an investigation, is very serious and could be construed as obstruction of justice,” Curbelo said.

While Curbelo said he wasn’t necessarily accusing anyone of anything, he later added, “Obstruction of justice, in the case of Nixon, in the case of Clinton in the late 90s, has been considered an impeachable offense.”

“This daily dose of controversy, of scandal, of instability, is bad for the government and I think it’s also very taxing on the American people,” he said.

Mother Jones editor Jeremy Schulman referenced the Curbelo conversation as proof of “how bad it’s gotten for Trump.”

See http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/17/amid-anti-trump-hysteria-republican-lawmakers-scramble-to-be-1st-to-float-impeachment/ (“REPUBLICAN Lawmakers Fight Over Who Floated Trump Impeachment First“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/17/mike-pence-president-trump-238525 (“Conservatives begin to whisper: President Pence“)

A RINO is a “Republican In Name Only.” Lots of us voted for John McCain when he ran for the presidency; and as each day passes, we regret having done so.

Curbelo is a freshman Member of Congress; and next year, he must be swept from office. The same thing must happen with Amash.

Curbelo and Amash

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18 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Special Prosecutor For Trump/Russia Investigation Is A Disaster [UPDATED]

EMP Attack on USA

In an article with the title above, political pundit and Trump supporter Dick Morris has written:

The Trump Administration may never recover from the decision of Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein to cave into Democratic pressure and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the totally fictitious “scandal” of Trump’s relationship with Putin.

The prosecutor, hired to investigate something that never happened, will not report Trump’s innocence. Special prosecutors never do. They justify their own existence, importance, budget, and staff by finding something to prosecute. Usually the “crime” they end up going after is one that his own investigation has created.

Remember the Valerie Plame affair? After years of work the special prosecutor found that no crime had occurred. The person who leaked her link to the CIA was authorized to do so. With no crime to come up with, Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, indicted poor Scooter Libby, an aide to VP Dick Cheney, for perjury, a crime that would never have taken place had there been no investigation.

That’s how special prosecutors work.

In the meantime, they hobble the president, drain away his political credibility, separate him from his supporters, and paralyze his administration. No legislator is willing to lend his support for fear of what the prosecutor might find. Each one will run for cover rather than work with Trump to get something done.

In appointing a prosecutor, Rosenstein has killed this Administration’s ability to function. No health care overhaul. No tax cuts. No government reform. All while we await the results of a nothing investigation into a nothing scandal.

And did Mr. Rosenstein get vested with this power to destroy? The Democrats sidelined Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General for doing his job as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and meeting with the Russian ambassador. He was forced to recuse himself when he said he knew of no instance of a Trump campaign official or aide meeting with the Russians. Of course, Sessions was no campaign aide but a Senator doing his job.

Mueller is a fair man and perhaps he will resist the temptation to look under rocks that aren’t there in search of scandal that never happened. Let us pray.

See http://www.dickmorris.com/special-prosecutor-trump-russia-a-disaster/ (emphasis added); see also https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-special-counsel-mistake-1495063725 (“The Special Counsel Mistake”—”[Mr. Mueller will] no doubt bring on young attorneys who will savor the opportunity to make their reputation on such a high-profile investigation”)

The one thing that I learned by working in the U.S. Senate is that everyone is out to screw everyone else. Destroying the lives and reputations of others is “blood sport” on Capitol Hill. Since I left there, it has only gotten far worse. Any notions of “bipartisanship,” comity and respect went out the window years ago.

The whole atmosphere is poisonous and noxious; and having watched congressmen and senators bedding young female staffers, no older than about 28, I vowed that my kids would never work there. Only one word truly fit: S-I-C-K.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“)

Fast forward to today, and I lived through Watergate too. It was breaking when I was still in the Senate; and I predicted Richard Nixon’s demise as I was leaving the Hill.

Donald Trump is essentially an Independent, and perhaps the first truly independent president in our history. This has its virtues and its vices. He is beholden to neither “establishment” political party, which is why lots of American love him and elected him.

However, he has made plenty of enemies in reaching our nation’s highest office, who want to see his presidency destroyed and Trump run out of Washington in utter disgrace. More than just reversing last year’s election results, they want to demonstrate to the nation and to the world who is really in charge of the United States.

Leave aside the fact that Hillary Clinton is a criminal who should be in prison, Trump’s enemies want to destroy him. They must be beaten, and they must be disgraced. Too much is at stake to do otherwise. North Korea and other enemies want to destroy us; and we are “inches” away from that happening.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10008 (“North Korea Prepares EMP Catastrophe For America“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-4413 (“North Korea Capable Of EMP Attack On USA“) and http://freebeacon.com/issues/fbi-warns-cyber-threat-electric-grid/ (“FBI Warns of Cyber Threat to Electric Grid”—”[The Department of Homeland Security (DHS}] and the FBI began a nationwide program warning of the dangers faced by U.S. utilities from damaging cyber attacks like the recent hacking against Ukraine’s power grid. The nationwide campaign by DHS and the FBI began March 31[, 2016] and includes 12 briefings and online webinars for electrical power infrastructure companies and others involved in security, with sessions in eight U.S. cities, including a session next week in Washington”)

This is what is at stake, and it is frightening. The “gotcha” politics of Capitol Hill and Washington are insane when viewed in the context of the dangers facing our country and every American. With the prospect of only 30 million of us surviving a nation-ending EMP Attack, a nuclear war seems to pale by comparison, and remarkably so.

. . .

Lastly, and a footnote to all of this, the first thing I did on Capitol Hill was to represent the Senate on a Joint Senate-House commission, the Presidential Commission on Mortgage Interest Rates. We had subpoena powers; and we spent months trying to reach a consensus before our final report and recommendations were made.

Young members of Robert Mueller’s staff will be cutting their teeth and building reputations and careers, just like Hillary Clinton and others have done before them. Dick Morris is correct: we can only hope and pray, for our great nation and—this time—its survival.

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18 05 2017
Rick

Not good Timothy. Not good at all. Between Trump’s woes, and an EMP attack.. Yeash.. At least I bought some military EMP proof generators that run on heating oil…

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18 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you again, Rick.

Obviously, we do not need any of this. However, the Dems are masters at spinning falsehoods; and most Republicans are rank amateurs, if not outright stupid.

Regarding an EMP Attack, it would produce chaos, anarchy, roaming gangs, total lawlessness, and cannibalism as food stocks disappear. Also, if your generator was not stolen from you violently, you would have to find heating oil, which might be impossible.

You might wish to watch Denzel Washington’s film, “The Book of Eli.” My guess is that it approximates what life would be like in America after an EMP Attack.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli (“The Book of Eli”)

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2 03 2019
Rick

Nobody gets out alive Tim…

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2 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

True enough, Rick. You are a wise seer, as always. 🙂

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18 05 2017
smilinjacksez

The coup has begun. Wake up !

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18 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

How nice to hear from you, Smilin Jack. It has been a while. 😊

. . .

If it happens, and let’s hope it does not, targets should be put on the backs of every Democrat, Liberal, far-Leftist, and GOP Neanderthal who made it happen; and there should be “open season” with respect to each of them.

This is not the Watergate era when the “Silent Majority” went silently. The “Flyover States” will be enraged, and their anger will know no bounds.

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19 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Another Despicable At The Department Of Injustice [UPDATED]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“With the stroke of a pen, Rod Rosenstein redeemed his reputation,” writes Dana Milbank of The Washington Post.

What had Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein done to be welcomed home by the Post like the prodigal son?

Without consulting the White House, he sandbagged President Trump, naming a special counsel to take over the investigation of the Russia connection that could prove ruinous to this presidency.

Rod has reinvigorated a tired 10-month investigation that failed to find any collusion between Trump and Russian hacking of the DNC. Not a single indictment had come out of the FBI investigation.

Yet, now a new special counsel, Robert Mueller, former director of the FBI, will slow-walk his way through this same terrain again, searching for clues leading to potentially impeachable offenses. What seemed to be winding down for Trump is now only just beginning to gear up.

Also to be investigated is whether the president tried to curtail the FBI investigation with his phone calls and Oval Office meetings with FBI Director James Comey, before abruptly firing Comey last week.

Regarded as able and honest, Mueller will be under media pressure to come up with charges. Great and famous prosecutors are measured by whom they convict and how many scalps they take.

Moreover, a burgeoning special counsel’s office dredging up dirt on Trump and associates will find itself the beneficiary of an indulgent press.

Why did Rosenstein capitulate to a Democrat-media clamor for a special counsel that could prove disastrous for the president who elevated and honored him?

Surely in part, as Milbank writes, to salvage his damaged reputation.

After being approved 94-6 by a Senate that hailed him as a principled and independent U.S. attorney for both George Bush and Barack Obama, Rosenstein found himself being pilloried for preparing the document White House aides called crucial to Trump’s decision to fire Comey.

Rosenstein had gone over to the dark side. He had, it was said, on Trump’s orders, put the hit on Comey. Now, by siccing a special counsel on the president himself, Rosenstein is restored to the good graces of this city. Rosenstein just turned in his black hat for a white hat.

Democrats are hailing both his decision to name a special counsel and the man he chose. Yet it is difficult to exaggerate the damage he has done.

As did almost all of its predecessors, including those which led to the resignation of President Nixon and impeachment of Bill Clinton, Mueller’s investigation seems certain to drag on for years.

All that time, there will be a cloud over Trump’s presidency that will drain his political authority. Trump’s enemies will become less fearful and more vocal. Republican Congressmen and Senators in swing states and marginal districts, looking to 2018, will have less incentive to follow Trump’s lead, rather than their own instincts and interests. Party unity will fade away.

And without a united and energized Republican Party on the Hill, how do you get repeal and replacement of Obamacare, tax reform or a border wall? Trump’s agenda suddenly seems comatose. And was it a coincidence that the day Mueller was appointed, the markets tanked, with the Dow falling 372 points?

Markets had soared with Trump’s election on the expectation that his pro-business agenda would be enacted. If those expectations suddenly seem illusory, will the boom born of hope become a bust?

A White House staff, said to be in disarray, and a president reportedly enraged over endless press reports of his problems and falling polls, are not going to become one big happy family again with a growing office of prosecutors and FBI agents poking into issues in which they were involved.

Nor is the jurisdiction of the special counsel restricted to alleged Russia interference in the campaign. Allegations about Trump’s taxes, investments, and associates, and those of his family, could be drawn into the maw of the special counsel’s office by political and business enemies enthusiastic about seeing him brought down.

More folks in Trump’s entourage will soon be lawyering up.

While it’s absurd today to talk of impeachment, that will not deter Democrats and the media from speculating, given what happened to Nixon and Clinton when special prosecutors were put on their trail.

Another consequence of the naming of a special counsel, given what such investigations have produced, will be that Vice President Pence will soon find himself with new friends and admirers, and will begin to attract more press as the man of the future in the GOP.

A rising profile for Pence is unlikely to strengthen his relationship with a besieged president.

In the United Kingdom, the odds are growing that Trump may not finish his term.

So how does he regain the enthusiasm and energy he exhibited in previous crises, with such talk in the air?

A debilitating and potentially dangerous time for President Trump has now begun, courtesy of his deputy attorney general.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/rosenstein-joins-posse-127090 (“Rosenstein Joins the Posse“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“) and http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/rosenstein-speaks-house-memo/2017/05/19/id/791166/ (“Rosenstein Defends Memo Condemning Comey Before Trump Fired Him“)

Cowardly and thoroughly despicable Rosenstein should be fired next!

Coward Rod Rosenstein

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20 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The American Left Needs To Understand: Democracy Is Not Your Plaything [UPDATED]

Donald Trump arrives . . .

Peggy Noonan has written in the Wall Street Journal:

This will be unpleasantly earnest, but having witnessed the atmospherics the past 10 days it’s what I think needs saying:

Everyone, get serious.

Democracy is not your plaything.

This is not a game.

The president of the United States has produced a building crisis that is unprecedented in our history. The question, at bottom, is whether Donald Trump has demonstrated, in his first four months, that he is unfit for the presidency—wholly unsuited in terms of judgment, knowledge, mental capacity, personal stability. That epic question is then broken down into discrete and specific questions: Did he improperly attempt to interfere with an FBI criminal investigation, did his presidential campaign collude with a foreign government, etc.

But the epic question underlies all. It couldn’t be more consequential and will take time to resolve. The sheer gravity of the drama will demand the best from all of us. Are we up to it?

Mr. Trump’s longtime foes, especially Democrats and progressives, are in the throes of a kind of obsessive delight. Every new blunder, every suggestion of an illegality, gives them pleasure. “He’ll be gone by autumn.”

But he was duly and legally elected by tens of millions of Americans who had legitimate reasons to support him, who knew they were throwing the long ball, and who, polls suggest, continue to support him. They believe the press is trying to kill him. “He’s new, not a politician, give him a chance.” What would it do to them, what would it say to them, to have him brusquely removed by his enemies after so little time? Would it tell them democracy is a con, the swamp always wins, you nobodies can make your little choices but we’re in control? What will that do to their faith in our institutions, in democracy itself?

These are wrenching questions.

But if Mr. Trump is truly unfit—if he has demonstrated already, so quickly, that he cannot competently perform the role, and that his drama will only get more dangerous and chaotic, how much time should pass to let him prove it? And how dangerous will the proving get?

Again, wrenching questions. So this is no time for blood lust and delight. Because democracy is not your plaything.

The president’s staffers seem to spend most of their time on the phone, leaking and seeking advantage, trying not to be named in the next White House Shake-Up story. A reliable anonymous source who gives good quote will be protected—for a while. The president spends his time tweeting his inane, bizarre messages—he’s the victim of a “witch hunt”—from his bed, with his iPad. And giving speeches, as he did this week at the Coast Guard Academy: “No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.” Actually Lincoln got secession, civil war and a daily pounding from an abolitionist press that thought he didn’t go far enough and moderates who slammed his brutalist pursuit of victory. Then someone shot him in the head. So he had his challenges.

Journalists on fire with the great story of their lives—the most bizarre presidency in U.S. history and the breaking news of its daily missteps—cheer when their scoop that could bring down a president gets more hits then the previous record holder, the scoop that could bring down the candidate.

Stop leaking, tweeting, cheering. Democracy is not your plaything.

There’s a sense nobody’s in charge, that there’s no power center that’s holding, that in Washington they’re all randomly slamming into each other.

Which is not good in a crisis.

For Capitol Hill Democrats the crisis appears to be primarily a chance to showboat. Republicans are evolving, some starting to use the word “unfit” and some, as a congressman told me, “talking like they’re in a shelter for abused women. ‘He didn’t mean to throw me down the stairs.’ ‘He promised not to punch me again.’ ”

We’re chasing so many rabbits, we can’t keep track—Comey, FBI, memoranda; Russia, Flynn, the Trump campaign; Lavrov, indiscretions with intelligence. It’s become a blur.

But there’s an emerging sense of tragedy, isn’t there? Crucially needed reforms in taxing, regulation and infrastructure—changes the country needs!—are thwarted, all momentum killed. Markets are nervous.

The world sees the U.S. political system once again as a circus. Once the circus comes to town, it consumes everything, absorbs all energy.

I asked the ambassador to the U.S. from one of our greatest allies: “What does Europe say now when America leaves the room?” You’re still great, he said, but “we think you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

It is absurd to think the president can solve his problems by firing his staff. They are not the problem. He is the problem. They’re not the A-Team, they’re not the counselors you’d want, experienced and wise. They’re the island of misfit toys. But they could function adequately if he could lead adequately. For months he’s told friends he’s about to make big changes, and doesn’t. Why? Maybe because talented people on the outside don’t want to enter a poisonous staff environment just for the joy of committing career suicide. So he’s stuck, surrounded by people who increasingly resent him, who fear his unpredictability and pique and will surely one day begin to speak on the record.

A mystery: Why is the president never careful? He doesn’t act as if he’s picking his way through a minefield every day, which he is. He acts like he’s gamboling through safe terrain. Thus he indulges himself with strange claims, statements, tweets. He comports himself as if he has a buffer of deep support. He doesn’t. Nationally his approval numbers are in the mid to high 30s.

His position is not secure. And yet he gambols on, both paranoid and oblivious.

History is going to judge us by how we comported ourselves in this murky time. It will see who cared first for the country and who didn’t, who kept his head and did not, who remained true and calm and played it straight.

Now there will be a special prosecutor. In the short term this buys the White House time.

Here’s an idea.

It would be good if top Hill Republicans went en masse to the president and said: “Stop it. Clean up your act. Shut your mouth. Do your job. Stop tweeting. Stop seething. Stop wasting time. You lost the thread and don’t even know what you were elected to do anymore. Get a grip. Grow up and look at the terrain, see it for what it is. We have limited time. Every day you undercut yourself, you undercut us. More important, you keep from happening the good policy things we could have done together. If you don’t grow up fast, you’ll wind up abandoned and alone. Act like a president or leave the presidency.”

Could it help? For a minute. But it would be constructive—not just carping, leaking, posing, cheering and tweeting but actually trying to lead.

The president needs to be told: Democracy is not your plaything.

See https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-is-not-your-plaything-1495149082 (“Democracy Is Not Your Plaything“) (emphasis added)

I have seldom if ever agreed with Noonan, certainly in recent years. At best, she is one of the Neanderthals in the GOP—like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, George Will and Bill Kristol—who symbolize why lots of us left the party years ago and have never looked back. They did not elect President Trump. His dedicated supporters did.

Many Americans felt and still feel just as passionately about Barack Obama as others do about President Trump today, but they did not try to destroy the Obama presidency or advocate his assassination as many in the destroy-Trump movement have and continue to do.

They believed and continue to believe, with good reason, that Obama was and is a black racist and un-American. If anyone has any doubts whatsoever that he is a racist and a divider, please read his book Dreams from My Father, which sets forth his core beliefs that undergirded his eight years in the presidency.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

The Democrats or so-called “progressives” or far-Left and their captive Mainstream Media (or “MSN”), along with despicable elements of Neanderthals in the GOP, are literally trying to bring about a coup before the Trump presidency gets under way in earnest. They are like ugly vultures circling their prey.

I was working in the U.S. Senate when Watergate began; and as I left there, I predicted that the Nixon presidency would end. I hailed from California; and my parents were dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republicans. My mother even had a photo of “Dick and Pat” in our living room; and I had three chances to vote for him and never did.

I am not a “fan” of the totally Narcissistic Noonan who considers herself one of Washington’s “elites,” and seldom read her, but she asks the right question:

What would it do to them, what would it say to them, to have [President Trump] brusquely removed by his enemies . . . ?

Put succinctly, it would shatter our democracy. This is not the Watergate era that I lived through as I was leaving the U.S. Senate. “Gotcha politics” prevailed in Washington then, and the “feeding frenzy” has begun again.

The despicable Left and its alter ego in the so-called MSM are literally salivating—and so are our enemies around the world. The “blood sport” has begun again; and for lots of us who worked on Capitol Hill, this is merely the latest chapter and déjà vu.

Noonan’s mention of Lincoln’s travails is apt. History may be repeating itself.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“)

Noonan’s statement that this may be “the most bizarre presidency in U.S. history” speaks volumes about her, not the Trump presidency. She adds: “[T]here’s an emerging sense of tragedy, isn’t there?” The tragedy is that anyone takes her seriously, or anyone else in the MSM or the thoroughly-despicable Left.

Next, she writes:

Once the circus comes to town, it consumes everything, absorbs all energy.

The “circus” never left Washington, D.C. It is a circus town, which is why it is poison and noxious to so many Americans in the “Flyover States” and elsewhere.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“)

Like so many “Never Trump” speakers and writers, who never wanted Donald Trump to become our president and want to destroy his presidency now, Noonan has no credibility with those of us who believe in this president, his lofty goals for our great nation and its people, and his place in history.

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23 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Bringing Down A President Is Exhilarating

Dike Rachel Maddow

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Who is the real threat to the national security?

Is it President Trump who shared with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the intelligence that ISIS was developing laptop bombs to put aboard airliners?

Or is it The Washington Post that ferreted out and published this code-word intelligence, and splashed the details on its front page, alerting the world, and ISIS, to what we knew.

President Trump has the authority to declassify security secrets. And in sharing that intel with the Russians, who have had airliners taken down by bombs, he was trying to restore a relationship.

On fighting Islamist terror, we and the Russians agree.

Five years ago, Russia alerted us that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become a violent radical Islamist. That was a year and a half before Tsarnaev carried out the Boston Marathon bombing.

But upon what authority did The Washington Post reveal code-word intelligence secrets? Where in the Constitution or U.S. law did the Post get the right to reveal state secrets every U.S. citizen is duty bound to protect?

The source of this top secret laptop-bomb leak that the Post published had to be someone in the intel community who was violating an oath that he had sworn to protect U.S. secrets, and committing a felony by leaking that secret.

Those who leaked this to hurt Trump, and those who published this in the belief it would hurt Trump, sees themselves as the “Resistance” — like the French Resistance to Vichy in World War II.

And they seemingly see themselves as above the laws that bind the rest of us.

“Can Donald Trump Be Trusted With State Secrets?” asked the headline on the editorial in The New York Times.

One wonders: Are these people oblivious to their own past?

In 1971, The New York Times published a hoard of secret documents from the Kennedy-Johnson years on Vietnam. Editors spent months arranging them to convince the public it had been lied into a war that the Times itself had supported, but had turned against.

Purpose of publication: Damage and discredit the war effort, now that Richard Nixon was commander in chief. This was tantamount to treason in wartime.

When Nixon went to the Supreme Court to halt publication of the Pentagon Papers until we could review them to ensure that sources and methods were not being compromised, the White House was castigated for failing to understand the First Amendment.

And for colluding with the thieves that stole them, and for publishing the secret documents, the Times won a Pulitzer.

Forty years ago, the Post also won a Pulitzer — for Watergate.

The indispensable source of its stories was FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, who repeatedly violated his oath and broke the law by leaking the contents of confidential FBI interviews and grand jury testimony.

Felt, “Deep Throat,” was a serial felon. He could have spent 10 years in a federal penitentiary had his identity been revealed. But to protect him from being prosecuted and sent to prison, and to protect themselves from the public knowing their scoops were handed to them by a corrupt FBI agent, the Post kept Felt’s identity secret for 30 years. Yet, their motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Which brings us to the point.

The adversary press asserts in its actions a right to collude with and shelter disloyal and dishonorable officials who violate our laws by leaking secrets that they are sworn to protect.

Why do these officials become criminals, and why do the mainstream media protect them?

Because this seedy bargain is the best way to advance their common interests.

The media get the stolen goods to damage Trump. Anti-Trump officials get their egos massaged, their agendas advanced and their identities protected.

This is the corrupt bargain the Beltway press has on offer.

For the media, bringing down Trump is also good for business. TV ratings of anti-Trump media are soaring. The “failing New York Times” has seen a surge in circulation. The Pulitzers are beckoning.

And bringing down a president is exhilarating. As Ben Bradlee reportedly said during the Iran-Contra scandal that was wounding President Reagan, “We haven’t had this much fun since Watergate.”

When Nixon was brought down, North Vietnam launched a spring offensive that overran the South, and led to concentration camps and mass executions of our allies, South Vietnamese boat people perishing by the thousands in the South China Sea, and a holocaust in Cambodia.

When Trump gets home from his trip, he should direct Justice to establish an office inside the FBI to investigate all illegal leaks since his election and all security leaks that are de facto felonies, and name a special prosecutor to head up the investigation.

Then he should order that prosecutor to determine if any Trump associates, picked up by normal security surveillance, were unmasked, and had their names and conversations spread through the intel community, on the orders of Susan Rice and Barack Obama, to seed the bureaucracy to sabotage the Trump presidency before it began.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/special-prosecutor-criminal-leaks-127101 (“A Special Prosecutor for Criminal Leaks“)

Those seeking to overthrow Donald Trump’s presidency, and to bring about a coup, must be destroyed. Nothing less will suffice.

They are our enemies, every bit as much as Kim Jong-un of North Korea is.

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24 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Classified Documents Show Obama Illegally Spied On Americans For Years [UPDATED}

Obama-gone

John Solomon and Sara Carter have written for Circa:

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.

The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA’s own internal watchdog found that not to be true.

“Since 2011, NSA’s minimization procedures have prohibited use of U.S.-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collections under Section 702,” the unsealed court ruling declared. “The Oct. 26, 2016 notice informed the court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries inviolation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself and safeguard American’s privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.

“I think what this emphasizes is the shocking lack of oversight of these programs,” said Neema Singh Guliani, the ACLU’s legislative counsel in Washington.

“You have these problems going on for years that only come to the attention of the court late in the game and then it takes additional years to change its practices.

“I think it does call into question all those defenses that we kept hearing, that we always have a robust oversight structure and we have culture of adherence to privacy standards,” she added. “And the headline now is they actually haven’t been in compliacne for years and the FISA court itself says in its opinion is that the NSA suffers from a culture of a lack of candor.”

The NSA acknowledged it self-disclosed the mass violations to the court last fall and that in April it took the extraordinary step of suspending the type of searches that were violating the rules, even deleting prior collected data on Americans to avoid any further violations.

“NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target,” the agency said in the statement that was dated April 28 and placed on its Web site without capturing much media or congressional attention.

In question is the collection of what is known as upstream “about data” about an American that is collected even though they were not directly in contact with a foreigner that the NSA was legally allowed to intercept.

The NSA said it doesn’t have the ability to stop collecting ‘about’ information on Americans, “without losing some other important data. ” It, however, said it would stop the practice to “reduce the chance that it would acquire communication of U.S. persons or others who are not in direct contact with a foreign intelligence target.”

The NSA said it also plans to “delete the vast majority of its upstream internet data to further protect the privacy of U.S. person communications.”

Agency officials called the violations “inadvertent compliance lapses.” But the court and IG documents suggest the NSA had not developed a technological way to comply with the rules they had submitted to the court in 2011.

Officials “explained that NSA query compliance is largely maintained through a series of manual checks” and had not “included the proper limiters” to prevent unlawful searches, the NSA internal watchdog reported in a top secret report in January that was just declassified. A new system is being developed now, officials said.

The NSA conducts thousand of searches a year on data involving Americans and the actual numbers of violations were redacted from the documents Circa reviewed.

But a chart in the report showed there three types of violations, the most frequent being 5.2 percent of the time when NSA Section 702 upstream data on U.S. persons was searched.

The inspector general also found noncompliance between 0.7 percent and 1.4 percent of the time involving NSA activities in which there was a court order to target an American for spying but the rules were still not followed. Those activities are known as Section 704 and Section 705 spying.

The IG report spared few words for the NSA’s efforts before the disclosure to ensure it was complying with practices, some that date to rules issued in 2008 in the final days of the Bush administration and others that Obama put into effect in 2011.

“We found that the Agency controls for monitoring query compliance have not been completely developed,” the inspector general reported, citing problems ranging from missing requirements for documentation to the failure to complete controls that would ensure “query compliance.”

The NSA’s Signal Intelligence Directorate, the nation’s main foreign surveillance arm, wrote a letter back to the IG saying it agreed with the findings and that “corrective action plans” are in the works.

See http://circa.com/politics/barack-obamas-team-secretly-disclosed-years-of-illegal-nsa-searches-spying-on-americans (“Obama intel agency secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years“) (emphasis added; chart omitted); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-9800 (“Investigate Obamagate!“)

Also, there are reasons to believe that Barack Obama knowingly let in MS-13 gang members, which is despicable unto itself.

See, e.g., http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/may/24/whistleblower-dhs-knowingly-let-ms-13-gang-members/ (“Obama admin knew gang members were part of illegal immigrant surge: Whistleblower“)

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28 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Evil Dems In Disarray

Hillary for Prison 2016

The New York Times has reported:

The Democratic defeat in a hard-fought special House election in Montana on Thursday highlighted the practical limitations on liberal opposition to President Trump and exposed a deepening rift between cautious party leaders, who want to pick their shots in battling for control of Congress in 2018, and more militant grass-roots activists who want to fight the Republicans everywhere.

Rob Quist, the Democratic nominee in Montana, staked his campaign on the Republican health care bill, but he still lost by six percentage points, even after his Republican opponent for the state’s lone House seat, Greg Gianforte, was charged with assaulting a reporter on the eve of the election.

The margin in this race was relatively small in a state that Mr. Trump carried by more than 20 percentage points last year. But Mr. Quist’s defeat disappointed grass-roots Democrats who financed nearly his entire campaign while the national party declined to spend heavily on what it considered, from the outset, an all-but-lost cause in daunting political territory.

This tension — between party leaders who will not compete for seats they think they cannot win and an energized base loath to concede any contests to Republicans — risks demoralizing activists who keep getting their hopes up. It also points to a painful reality for Democrats: Despite the boiling fury on the left, the resistance toward Mr. Trump has yet to translate into a major electoral victory.

In part, this is because the few special elections for Congress so far have taken place in red-leaning districts, where the near-daily barrage of new controversies involving Mr. Trump has not damaged him irreparably and where he remains fairly popular.

The Montana contest was the second special House election this year in a conservative district where rank-and-file progressives rallied behind their candidate only to see Washington-based Democrats shrink from the fight as Republicans launched ferocious attacks to ensure victory.

In Kansas last month — in a Wichita-area district that is even more conservative than Montana — national Republican groups stepped in to ensure that another lackluster candidate, Ron Estes, pulled out a win, while the Democratic nominee, James Thompson, waited in vain for his party’s cavalry to ride in.

“If the national Democratic Party would start getting more involved in these races earlier, then maybe we could flip them,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “It’s frustrating.”

For Republicans, the outcome in Montana, where Mr. Gianforte apologized in his victory speech late Thursday night to the reporter he had attacked, is likely to calm nerves at least for a while, staving off what the party feared would be a full-blown panic if Mr. Gianforte lost on such favorable turf. Washington-based Republican strategists had grown increasingly pessimistic about the race in recent weeks, bemoaning their candidate’s political deficiencies and predicting a narrow victory.

For Democrats, though, the contest pointed to an increasingly heated disagreement over where the party has a realistic chance to win. Party officials in Montana and progressive activists beyond the state’s borders grew frustrated last month watching outside Republican groups savage Mr. Quist as Democratic groups remained on the sidelines.

After a special House election in Georgia in which the Democrat Jon Ossoff received more than 48 percent of the vote — nearly averting a runoff and demonstrating the extent of voter enthusiasm on the left — Senator Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat facing re-election next year, called Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm, and implored him to consider spending money on Mr. Quist in the final weeks of the Montana race, according to two Democratic strategists briefed on the call. Mr. Tester also contacted the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, to see if he would carry the same message to the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California.

But House Democratic officials make no apology for their prudence, believing they are more likely to claim the 24 seats needed to capture the House majority in suburban districts with highly educated voters, where anger at Mr. Trump runs high. That includes districts like the one in suburban Atlanta, previously represented by Health Secretary Tom Price, where both parties have poured tens of millions of dollars into a contest that looms all the more consequential after the Democratic defeats in Kansas and Montana.

Even this week, just two days before the Montana vote, Mr. Luján announced new spending in the Georgia race. And in private, Mr. Luján was telling other House Democrats that Mr. Quist stood little chance, based on private polls showing Mr. Gianforte with a healthy, consistent lead of about 10 percentage points, according to one of those present at a closed-door meeting of the caucus. After the election was called, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee circulated a memo declaring that it had “refused to waste money on hype.”

On Friday, Democratic leaders emphasized that Mr. Quist had performed better than the party’s past congressional candidates in Montana, apparently benefiting from the enthusiasm of rank-and-file Democrats even as he fell well short of victory. The party’s nominees, they noted, are outpacing their predecessors on fairly forbidding terrain, and Democratic voters are participating at higher rates than Republicans, despite being outnumbered in these districts.

But other Democrats acknowledged that they must work harder to make inroads with voters who live far beyond major cities and their suburbs, if they want to pick up seats like the one Mr. Gianforte just captured.

While both Mr. Trump and key Republican policy proposals, like the American Health Care Act, are broadly unpopular in public polling, the president and his party retain a strong hold over rural America, potentially limiting the map on which Democrats can compete next year.

Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, the chairman of the Democratic caucus, said that the outcome in Montana had come as little surprise, and that he took heart that it was “not an easy struggle” for Republicans to retain a normally safe seat.

But Mr. Crowley said that his party’s approach to competing in rural areas was a work in progress, and that Democrats were still honing a positive message on the economy and jobs ahead of the 2018 campaign.

“What it says is we can be competitive in rural districts in states like Montana,” Mr. Crowley said of the special election, adding: “With the right candidate, with the right resources.”

The first element of that formula was on the minds of many Democrats on Friday, looking back at the avalanche of opposition research Republicans used against Mr. Quist as a sign that party leaders need to intervene more in primaries to ensure better candidates.

“I’m for grass-roots politics, but if you’re going to actually win seats, you need to focus on helping candidates who will be the most potent for the general election,” said David Axelrod, the veteran Democratic strategist, holding up Mr. Ossoff as an example of someone party officials had coalesced around early. “That’s one of the reasons there’s a competitive race there now.”

National Democratic strategists were deeply skeptical of Mr. Quist from the outset: The party’s campaign committee and House Majority PAC, a Democratic “super PAC,” dedicated only modest sums to the contest. Both groups faced harsh criticism from the left for holding back while Republican groups pounded Mr. Quist early in the race, driving up his personal unpopularity and effectively disqualifying him in the eyes of many voters.

But by not finishing more closely, Mr. Quist mitigated the postelection grumbling on the left. Two groups that had stoked enthusiasm for him — Our Revolution, a committee backed by Senator Bernie Sanders, and Democracy for America, a grass-roots liberal organization — applauded Mr. Quist for his effort but declined to fan grievances against the Democratic Party establishment.

The party will face a more telling test of its favored strategy on June 20 in the Georgia runoff. Democrats are more optimistic about that contest, and the Montana defeat increases pressure on the party to deliver a special election victory at last.

“That race becomes more of an actual test of what might happen in 2018,” Mr. Axelrod said.

The good news for Democrats is that Republicans will be unable to replicate across the map next year the kind of multimillion-dollar spending blitzes they have mounted in this year’s special elections.

Yet while it may be possible for Democrats to win control of the House without staking their fortunes on states and districts like Montana’s at-large congressional seat, the implications of being less competitive in rural precincts could have graver consequences in the Senate, where Democrats are defending a cluster of seats in conservative, sparsely populated states — including Montana.

“Democrats have to compete in Western states and rural areas,” said Tom Lopach, a Democratic strategist and former chief of staff to Mr. Tester. “For Democrats to have a governing majority, they have to listen to folks in rural America.”

Mr. Lopach, who led the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2016, said that writing off rural voters would be a betrayal of “our governing philosophy of standing up for working folks and all Americans.”

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/us/montana-special-election.html (“Liberals Wanted a Fight in Montana. Democratic Leaders Saw a Lost Cause“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.usnews.com/news/the-run/articles/2017-05-26/greg-gianforte-victory-in-montana-underscores-limits-of-democrats-trump-resistance (“Greg Gianforte Victory in Montana Underscores Limits of Democrats’ Trump Resistance“)

How sweet it is! 🙂

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31 05 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Donald Trump Is Securing Israel’s Future

Israel flag burning

George Melloan, a former deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, has written in the New York Sun:

Shortly before the Six-Day War broke out, I attended an Israeli Defense Forces demonstration of military prowess at a site outside Tel Aviv. We foreign reporters were unimpressed as young Israeli recruits scrambled clumsily over the sand dues.

That was exactly what the Israelis intended. The show of ineptitude was part of the Israeli plan to generate over-confidence among Arab forces threatening Israel’s southern and eastern borders. The Israelis even sold a highly respected New York Times military analyst on the myth that their tanks were so decrepit that they had to be hauled into battle on semi-trailers. It turns out that was the fastest way to move them — fueled, stocked with ordnance and with fresh crews — from front to front.

Egypt, Syrian and Jordan would learn the truth on June 5 when the Israeli air force launched a pre-emptive strike against Egyptian and Syrian air bases and wiped out most of their planes on the ground. The IDF thereby gained air superiority which turned Egyptian tanks in the Sinai, Jordanian armor on the west bank, and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights into shooting gallery targets for Israeli fighter-bombers.

The thing I remember best about that earlier flailing pretense of weakness was the pacifist-sounding talks I heard from a young IDF lieutenant involved in the exercise. “Wars don’t solve anything,” he said to a group of reporters with some fervor. Maybe it was premonition. He was killed in the Sinai on the first day when an Egyptian rocket-propelled-grenade hit the half-track from which he was directing fire on Egyptian infantry.

It’s a bitter irony that he was both wrong and right. The war did resolve some important matters, such as whether Israel would survive as a nation state. Israel indeed survived and has strengthened its position in the half-century since. It now has a formal peace with Egypt, thanks to the 1976 Camp David Accords and a largely tacit understanding with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab emirates that the main threat they all face is Iran.

He was right, though, in that the war that would kill him and those fought since would only further aggravate the personal hostility that separates Jews and Arabs living in the territory Israel now controls. I flew back to Israel on the fourth day of the war, landing in a blackout at Lod airport in a DC-10 piloted by the middle-aged managers of El-al, who had taken over from the younger pilots fighting the war. The few passengers, mostly reporters, cheered when they landed us safely.

On the way up to Jerusalem in a rented car next day, I gave a ride to four Israeli soldiers who were hitch-hiking, not unusual in an army noted for improvisation. I asked them if Israel was going to return the land they had just conquered. These were not the clumsy recruits the IDF had put on display weeks before, but tough, battle-hardened men with faces leathered by the desert sun. One, perhaps a Yemeni Jew, used an Arab word, sounding like “feesh,” in reply. Another, who spoke English, translated: “Nothing doing.”

Well, they were wrong about that too. Israel did give back the vast Sinai in return for peace with Egypt. It pulled its settlements out of Gaza with more ambiguous consequences. But it has kept the West Bank of the Jordan River with its largely Arab population under its effective control and shows little inclination to give up this contentious barrier to future aggression.

Israel is now a powerful state with its alliance with America under repair by the Trump administration. It has become a center for technological innovation as it has shed many of the cumbersome trappings of its socialist beginnings. With Syria crippled by civil war, the main threat it now faces is from the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and its array of missiles.

No one can predict the future, especially in the Middle East, but the young IDF lieutenant would probably be reassured by Israel’s strategic position today, had he lived to see it.

See http://www.nysun.com/foreign/how-guile-and-guts-won-israels-future-and-todays/89994/ (“How Guile and Guts Won Israel’s Future, And Today’s Optimism“) (emphasis added}

If anyone thinks that Israel’s future would be bright with a Hillary Clinton presidency (i.e., a continuation of Barack Obama’s policies), they would be star-gazing.

Donald Trump is securing Israel’s future. No one should forget that, as the Democrats work toward his ouster.

Compare https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“) with https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/is-israel-doomed/ (“Is Israel Doomed?“)

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1 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Trump Victories Ahead, And Sedition

Donald Trump Memorial Day Arlington

The Hill has reported:

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks there’s a “55 percent chance” President Trump will be reelected in 2020.

Bloomberg, who politically identifies as independent, told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni that he thought Democrats didn’t have an effective message to win the 2016 election and could repeat that mistake in 2020.

“Hillary said, ‘Vote for me because I’m a woman and the other guy’s bad,’” Bloomberg said about 2016.

He said Democrats are still looking for issues and messages. And he worries that too many Democrats are eager to jump into the 2020 race.

“They’ll step on each other and re-elect Donald Trump,” Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention, calling Trump a “dangerous demagogue.”

See http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/335844-bloomberg-55-percent-chance-trump-will-win-reelection (“Bloomberg: ’55 percent chance’ Trump will win reelection“) (emphasis added)

Bloomberg is correct.

The evil Dems and Neanderthals in the GOP, and the always-evil media, have been galvanizing the Trump faithful like never before to decimate these “enemies” and win even bigger next year and in 2020.

This is war; and they are far worse than Kim Jong-un or ISIS or Russia or Iran. They seek to destroy our great nation from within, and their practices constitute sedition and treason, as discussed in the article and comments above.

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3 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Are Afghanistan And the Middle East Lost Causes?

Time cover

In earlier comments I raised the issue, “What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan,” which was the title of a Time magazine cover story that featured an 18-year-old Afghan woman named Aisha, whose photo is shown above.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/obama-in-afghanistan-doomed-from-the-start/#comment-655 (“’What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan‘”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/barack-obama-is-a-lame-duck-president-who-will-not-be-reelected/#comment-1102 (“Why We Fight In Afghanistan, And Why American Women Should Demand Barack Obama’s Removal From Office By Impeachment Or Otherwise“)

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“We are there and we are committed” was the regular retort of Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the war in Vietnam.

Whatever you may think of our decision to go in, Rusk was saying, if we walk away, the United States loses the first war in its history, with all that means for Southeast Asia and America’s position in the world.

We face a similar moment of decision.

Wednesday, a truck bomb exploded near the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, killing 90 and wounding 460. So terrible was the atrocity that the Taliban denied complicity. It is believed to have been the work of the Haqqani network.

This “horrific and shameful attack demonstrates these terrorists’ comp[l]ete disregard for human life and their nihilistic opposition to the dream of a peaceful future for Afghanistan,” said Hugo Llordens, a U.S. diplomat in Kabul.

The message the truck bombers sent to the Afghan people? Not even in the heart of this capital can your government keep civilian workers and its own employees safe.

Message to America: After investing hundreds of billions and 2,000 U.S. lives in the 15 years since 9/11, we are further from victory than we have ever been.

President Obama, believing Afghanistan was the right war, and Iraq the wrong war, ramped up the U.S. presence in 2011 to 100,000 troops. His plan: Cripple the Taliban, train the Afghan army and security forces, stabilize the government, and withdraw American forces by the end of his second term.

Obama fell short, leaving President Trump with 8,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and Kabul’s control more tenuous than ever. The Taliban hold more territory and are active in more provinces than they have been since being driven from power in 2001. And Afghan forces are suffering casualties at the highest rate of the war.

Stated starkly, the war in Afghanistan is slowly being lost.

Indeed, Trump has inherited what seems to be an unwinnable war, if he is not prepared to send a new U.S. army to block the Taliban from taking power. And it is hard to believe that the American people would approve of any large reintroduction of U.S. forces.

The U.S. commander there, Gen. John Nicholson, has requested at least 3,000 more U.S. troops to train the Afghan army and stabilize the country while seeking a negotiated end to the war.

Trump’s conundrum: 3,000 or 5,000 more U.S. troops can at best help the Afghan security forces sustain the present stalemate.

But if we could not defeat the Taliban with 100,000 U.S. troops in country in 2011, we are not going to defeat a stronger Taliban with a U.S. force one-seventh of that size. And if a guerrilla army does not lose, it wins.

Yet it is hard to see how Trump can refuse to send more troops. If he says we have invested enough blood and treasure, the handwriting will be on the wall. Reports that both Russia and Iran are already talking to the Taliban suggest that they see a Taliban takeover as inevitable.

Should Trump announce any timetable for withdrawal, it would send shock waves through the Afghan government, army and society.

Any awareness that their great superpower ally was departing, now or soon, or refusing to invest more after 15 years, would be a psychological blow from which President Ashraf Ghani’s government might not recover.

What would a Taliban victory mean?

The Afghan people, especially those who cast their lot with us, could undergo something like what befell the South Vietnamese and Cambodians in 1975. It would be a defeat for us almost as far-reaching as was the defeat for the Soviet Union, when the Red Army was forced to pull out after a decade of war in the 1980s.

For the USSR, that Afghan defeat proved a near-fatal blow.

And if we pulled up stakes and departed, the exodus from Afghanistan would be huge and we would face a moral crisis of how many refugees we would accept, and how many we would leave behind to their fate.

Fifteen years ago, some of us argued that an attempt to remake Afghanistan and Iraq in our image was utopian folly, almost certain, given the history and culture of the entire region, to fail.

Yet we plunged in.

In 2001, it was Afghanistan. In 2003, we invaded and occupied Iraq. Then we attacked Libya and ousted Gadhafi. Then we intervened in Syria. Then we backed the Saudi war to crush the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Given the trillions sunk and lost, and the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, dead, how have we benefited ourselves, or these peoples?

As Rusk said, “We are there and we are committed.”

And the inevitable departure of the United States from the Middle East, which is coming, just as the British, French and Soviet empires had to depart, will likely do lasting damage to the American soul.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/afghanistan-lost-cause-127140 (“Is Afghanistan a Lost Cause?“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/are-afghanistan-iraq-and-pakistan-hopeless-and-is-the-spread-of-radical-islam-inevitable-and-is-barack-obama-finished-as-americas-president/ (“Are Afghanistan, Iraq And Pakistan Hopeless, And Is The Spread Of Radical Islam Inevitable, And Is Barack Obama Finished As America’s President?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/obama-in-afghanistan-doomed-from-the-start/ (“Obama In Afghanistan: Doomed From The Start?“)

Will Aisha and so many other Afghan women, men and children have suffered in vain if we cut and run?

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8 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Will Newsmax TV Replace FOX, And Star Bill O’Reilly? [UPDATED]

Bill O'Reilly

When Rupert Murdoch’s two far-Left sons fired Bill O’Reilly, they sent shock waves through America.

O’Reilly’s show on FOX had been the most-watched show on cable TV for more than 20 years, and suddenly he was gone. In his place came MSNBC’s resident dike, Rachel Maddow, who is an affront to everything that vast numbers of Americans hold sacred.

O’Reilly has been appearing on Newsmax TV (see http://www.newsmaxtv.com), in unprofessional video interviews that do not do justice to either Newsmax or him.

The interviews must be professionally prepared, instead of looking like second-rate video conferencing. Also, “pros” must be hired from FOX or elsewhere, who will turn the somewhat “hokey” Newsmax TV into a real contender (e.g., jettisoning endless commercials targeted at the geriatric sector of Americans).

Missing from America today is a totally-professional forum that will mirror the voices of conservatives like FOX has in the past.

Will Newsmax TV fill that void, or be nothing more than “small potatoes” in the vast domestic and international media hierarchy? Will it emerge as the missing voice for conservatives and others, now that FOX is in ruins?

Only time will tell.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-9911 (“Double Down: Destroy America’s Left, And Boycott Political Correctness!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10072 (“Bringing Down A President Is Exhilarating“) and http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/grrr-59-say-news-media-make-them-angry-dissatisfied/article/2625374 (“Grrr 59% say news media make them angry, dissatisfied“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/jerry-perenchio-kind-and-caring/ (Media Mogul “Jerry Perenchio: Kind And Caring“); but see http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/charles-payne-fox-business-return-1202552001/ (“Charles Payne Will Return to Fox Business”—”Fox Business Network host Charles Payne will return to his early-evening perch at the outlet following an investigation into claims of sexual harassment”—”Payne was suspended in June after a female political analyst who had made regular appearances on Fox News and CNN contacted the law firm of Paul Weiss, which has been working for Fox for several months, and alleged she was banned from Fox after ending an extramarital affair she had with the anchor in 2015. The analyst alleged her Fox appearances were reduced after she terminated the relationship”—”21st Century Fox remains under scrutiny as it strives to acquire the remaining shares in European broadcaster Sky PLC that it does not own and its bid is examined by British government regulators. Proving that the company has taken steps to improve a working culture that had been rife with claims of harassment wouid serve to curtail criticism as its effort to buy Sky progresses. In recent months, the parent company has parted ways with former Fox News chief Roger Ailes, primetime host Bill O’Reilly[, Fox News host Eric Bolling] and Fox Sports programming chief Jamie Horowitz, all of whom had been accused of sexual harassment”); but see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5009109/Megyn-Kelly-reveals-complained-Bill-O-Reilly.html?offset=409&max=100&jumpTo=comment-250733795#comment-250733795 (“It’s WAR: Megyn Kelly goes after Bill O’Reilly and Fox News PR over $32M payout [reportedly to Lis Wiehl] – prompting disgraced anchor to say she is LYING before reading her multiple thank you notes and declaring he ‘dramatically helped her career'”)

. . .

Tragically, with the passage of time, what looms largest is that O’Reilly purportedly paid $32 million to FOX’s Lis Wiehl, and he has never denied it.

No one pays a staggering sum of money to someone else, and especially $32 million, unless they are guilty as sin.

See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/21/business/media/bill-oreilly-sexual-harassment.html (“Bill O’Reilly Settled New Harassment Claim, Then Fox Renewed His Contract“)

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9 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

This Is War: To Save Our Democracy, The Far-Left Media And Elites Must Be Destroyed

The Impeach Trump Conspiracy

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Pressed by Megyn Kelly on his ties to President Trump, an exasperated Vladimir Putin blurted out, “We had no relationship at all. . . . I never met him. . . . Have you all lost your senses over there?”

Yes, Vlad, we have.

Consider the questions that have convulsed this city since the Trump triumph, and raised talk of impeachment.

Did Trump collude with Russians to hack the DNC emails and move the goods to WikiLeaks, thus revealing the state secret that DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was putting the screws to poor Bernie Sanders?

If not Trump himself, did campaign aides collude with the KGB?

Now, given that our NSA and CIA seemingly intercept everything Russians say to Americans, why is our fabled FBI, having investigated for a year, unable to give us a definitive yes or no?

The snail’s pace of the FBI investigation explains Trump’s frustration. What explains the FBI’s torpor? If J. Edgar Hoover had moved at this pace, John Dillinger would have died of old age.

We hear daily on cable TV of the “Trump-Russia” scandal. Yet, no one has been charged with collusion, and every intelligence official, past or prevent, who has spoken out has echoed ex-acting CIA Director Mike Morrell:

“On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire, at all. . . . There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there’s no spark.”

Where are the criminals? Where is the crime?

As for the meetings between Gen. Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Sen. Jeff Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, it appears that Trump wanted a “back channel” to Putin so he could honor his commitment to seek better relations with Russia.

Given the Russophobia rampant here, that makes sense. And while it appears amateurish that Flynn would use Russian channels of communication, what is criminal about this?

Putin is not Stalin. Soviet divisions are not sitting on the Elbe. The Cold War is over. And many presidents have used back channels. Woodrow Wilson sent Col. Edward House to talk to the Kaiser and the Brits. FDR ran messages to Churchill through Harry Hopkins.

As for Trump asking Director James Comey to cut some slack for Flynn, it is understandable in human terms. Flynn had been a loyal aide and friend and Trump had to feel rotten about having to fire the man.

So, what is really going on here?

All the synthetic shock over what Kushner or Sessions said to Kislyak aside, this city’s hatred for President Trump, and its fanatic determination to bring him down in disgrace, predates his presidency.

For Trump ran in 2016 not simply as the Republican alternative. He presented his candidacy as a rejection, a repudiation of the failed elites, political and media, of both parties. Americans voted in 2016 not just for a change in leaders but for a revolution to overthrow a ruling regime.

Thus this city has never reconciled itself to Trump’s victory, and the president daily rubs their noses in their defeat with his tweets.

Seeking a rationale for its rejection, this city has seized upon that old standby. We didn’t lose! The election was stolen in a vast conspiracy, an “act of war” against America, an assault upon “our democracy,” criminal collusion between the Kremlin and the Trumpites.

Hence, Trump is an illegitimate president, and it is the duty of brave citizens of both parties to work to remove the usurper.

The city seized upon a similar argument in 1968, when Richard Nixon won, because it was said he had colluded to have South Vietnam’s president abort Lyndon Johnson’s new plan to bring peace to Southeast Asia in the final hours of that election.

Then, as now, the “t” word, treason, was trotted out.

Attempts to overturn elections where elites are repudiated are not uncommon in U.S. history. Both Nixon and Reagan, after 49-state landslides, were faced with attempts to overturn the election results.

With Nixon in Watergate, the elites succeeded. With Reagan in Iran-Contra, they almost succeeded in destroying that great president as he was ending the Cold War in a bloodless victory for the West.

After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson sought to prevent Radical Republicans from imposing a ruthless Reconstruction on a defeated and devastated South.

The Radicals enacted the Tenure of Office Act, stripping Johnson of his authority to remove any member of the Cabinet without Senate permission. Johnson defied the Radicals and fired their agent in the Cabinet, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

“Tennessee” Johnson was impeached, and missed conviction by one vote. John F. Kennedy, in his 1956 book, called the senator who had voted to save Johnson a “Profile in Courage.”

If Trump is brought down on the basis of what Putin correctly labels “nonsense,” this city will have executed a nonviolent coup against a constitutionally elected president. Such an act would drop us into the company of those Third World nations where such means are the customary ways that corrupt elites retain their hold on power.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/impeach-trump-conspiracy-127163 (“The Impeach-Trump Conspiracy“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War“)

Again, to save our democracy, the far-Left media and so-called elites must be destroyed. Nothing less will suffice.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10140 (“Trump Victories Ahead, And Sedition“)

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11 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

SUMMER SHOWDOWN: Mueller Adds Muscle To Russia Investigation [UPDATED]

Obama Mueller Comey

Mike Allen of Axios has written:

“The Worst Thing That Happened to Donald Trump this Week” — Paul Rosenzweig, on the Lawfare blog: Special counsel “Robert Mueller has hired Michael Dreeben, on a part-time basis, to help with his investigation. Dreeben, a deputy in the Office of the Solicitor General, has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. His specialty has, for the last 20 years, been criminal matters and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law.”

Be smart: Mueller is amassing the talent arsenal you’d build to bring criminal charges.

• Why it matters: “[H]e is quite possibly the best criminal appellate lawyer in America (at least on the government’s side). That Mueller has sought his assistance attests both to the seriousness of his effort and the depth of the intellectual bench he is building.”

• National Law Journal: “The move signals that Mueller is seeking advice on the complexities that have arisen already in the investigations, including what constitutes obstruction of justice.”

• Mueller’s has had a spate of other high-octane hires, including Andrew Weissmann, chief of the fraud section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

• Weissmann was director of Justice’s Enron Task Force, where he oversaw the prosecutions of Jeffrey Skilling, Ken Lay, and Andrew Fastow. While at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, Weissmann helped prosecute high-ranking members of the Genovese, Colombo and Gambino crime families, and fought the infiltration of organized crime on Wall Street.

Coming attractions … Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was going to be pummeled with Russia questions during what was supposed to be a budget hearing before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, switched yesterday and will appear Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

• Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein will take his place answering appropriations questions. See Sessions’ letter to the Intelligence Committee.

• AP: “The House intelligence committee sent a letter Friday asking White House counsel Don McGahn whether any tape recordings or memos of Comey’s conversations with the president exist now or had existed in the past.”

• “The committee also sent a letter to Comey asking for any notes or memos in his possession about the discussions he had with Trump before being abruptly fired last month. The committee is seeking the materials by June 23.”

The takeaway: All these moves show the Russia probe will remain constantly in Washington’s forefront.

See https://www.axios.com/mueller-adds-muscle-for-russia-investigation-2439721714.html (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10039 (“Special Prosecutor For Trump/Russia Investigation Is A Disaster”—”Young members of Robert Mueller’s staff will be cutting their teeth and building reputations and careers, just like Hillary Clinton and others have done before them”) and http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/robert-mueller-stocks-staff-democrat-donors/ (“Robert Mueller Stocks Staff with Democrat Donors“)

It is clear that a witch hunt is underway, and the targets are Donald Trump and his presidency; and the goals are to reverse last November’s election results, and destroy a democratically-elected American presidency.

The players include Barack Obama, Comey and possibly Mueller himself, wittingly or unwittingly. They are handmaidens with the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi (who may suffer from the onset of dementia), Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings, Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and others.

This is treason and sedition, and war; and it must be recognized as such, and dealt with accordingly.

See http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-trump-comey-20170611-story.html (“Trump attorney signals a firm stance in dealing with special prosecutor”—”Jay Sekulow . . . questioned the appropriateness of Mueller’s advance review of the prepared testimony that former FBI Director James B. Comey delivered last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee”—”Sekulow declined to rule out ordering at some later date the firing of the widely praised Mueller, who preceded Comey as FBI director”—”[B]y vetting his [prepared Senate testimony with Mueller and his aides], Comey provided Trump’s defense team an opening to question his coziness with Mueller. The two had worked together during the George W. Bush administration when Comey was deputy attorney general and Mueller was FBI director”)

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13 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

America Is In A Civil War


[Donald Trump’s America]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration.

Thus far, it is a nonviolent struggle, though street clashes between pro- and anti-Trump forces are increasingly marked by fistfights and brawls. Police are having difficulty keeping people apart. A few have been arrested carrying concealed weapons.

That the objective of this city is to bring Trump down via a deep state-media coup is no secret. Few deny it.

Last week, fired Director of the FBI James Comey, a successor to J. Edgar Hoover, admitted under oath that he used a cutout to leak to The New York Times an Oval Office conversation with the president.

Goal: have the Times story trigger the appointment of a special prosecutor to bring down the president.

Comey wanted a special prosecutor to target Trump, despite his knowledge, from his own FBI investigation, that Trump was innocent of the pervasive charge that he colluded with the Kremlin in the hacking of the DNC.

Comey’s deceit was designed to enlist the police powers of the state to bring down his president. And it worked. For the special counsel named, with broad powers to pursue Trump, is Comey’s friend and predecessor at the FBI, Robert Mueller.

As Newt Gingrich said Sunday: “Look at who Mueller’s starting to hire. . . . (T)hese are people that . . . look to me like they’re . . . setting up to go after Trump … including people, by the way, who have been reprimanded for hiding from the defense information into major cases. . . .

“This is going to be a witch hunt.”

Another example. According to Daily Kos, Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War.

The State Department was tasked with working out the details.

Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received “panicky” calls of “Please, my God, can you stop this?”

Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded.

“It would have been a win-win for Moscow,” said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own.

Not in memory have there been so many leaks to injure a president from within his own government, and not just political leaks, but leaks of confidential, classified and secret documents. The leaks are coming out of the supposedly secure investigative and intelligence agencies of the U.S. government.

The media, the beneficiaries of these leaks, are giving cover to those breaking the law. The real criminal “collusion” in Washington is between Big Media and the deep state, colluding to destroy a president they detest and to sink the policies they oppose.

Yet another example is the unfolding “unmasking” scandal.

While all the evidence is not yet in, it appears an abnormal number of conversations between Trump associates and Russians were intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies.

On orders higher up, the conversations were transcribed, and, contrary to law, the names of Trump associates unmasked.

Then those transcripts, with names revealed, were spread to all 16 agencies of the intel community at the direction of Susan Rice, and with the possible knowledge of Barack Obama, assuring some would be leaked after Trump became president.

The leak of Gen. Michael Flynn’s conversation with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, after Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for the hacking of the DNC, may have been a product of the unmasking operation. The media hit on Flynn cost him the National Security Council post.

Trump has had many accomplishments since his election. Yet his enemies in the media and their deep state allies have often made a purgatory of his presidency.

What he and his White House need to understand is that this is not going to end, that this is a fight to the finish, that his enemies will not relent until they see him impeached or resigning in disgrace.

To prevail, Trump will have to campaign across this country and wage guerrilla war in this capital, using the legal and political weapons at his disposal to ferret out the enemies within his own government.

Not only is this battle essential, if Trump hopes to realize his agenda, it is winnable. For the people sense that the Beltway elites are cynically engaged in preserving their own privileges, positions and power.

If the president cannot rewrite Obamacare or achieve tax reform, he should not go around the country in 2018 wailing about Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. They are not the real adversaries. They are but interchangeable parts.

He should campaign against the real enemies of America First by promising to purge the deep state and flog its media collaborators.

Time to burn down the Bastille.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/nearing-civil-war-127177 (“Are We Nearing Civil War?“) (emphasis added)

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13 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The Fix Was In On The Hillary Investigation From The Start [UPDATED]

Ed Klein: Guilty As Sin

In comments entitled “When Comey Did Obama’s Bidding,” Edward Klein—one of America’s most celebrated journalists, and a New York Times best-selling author—has written:

Several people have asked me if I was shocked when James Comey, the former FBI director, admitted under oath that his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, ordered him to call the investigation of Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server “a matter”—which was how the Clinton campaign characterized it— rather than what it actually was, “a criminal investigation.”

I wasn’t.

Was I shocked that Comey agreed to Lynch’s language, using the excuse, “This isn’t a hill worth dying on, and so I just said, ‘OK’?

I wasn’t shocked about that, either.

The truth is, the fix was in on the Hillary investigation from the start. President Obama, you will recall, did his best to defend Hillary and her indefensible use of an unsecure and easily hackable e-mail system.

“This,” Obama told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft at the very beginning of the investigation, “is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

After that remark, Comey asked to meet with Obama. This wasn’t their first meeting; they had had dinner several months before. Apparently, Comey developed an aversion to meeting with a president only after Donald Trump moved into the White House.

In addition, Loretta Lynch paid visits to the White House to brief Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s consigliere, about the status of the investigation. It was Jarrett, acting on behalf of Obama, who urged Lynch to order Comey to call the investigation “a matter.”

The meeting between Comey and Obama didn’t go well.

“Comey and Obama held each other in contempt,” I wrote in my book, Guilty As Sin. “Comey complained to his top assistants that . . . the president treated him with a tone of condescension. To Obama, the FBI was like any other cop shop, not the premier law enforcement organization in the country.”

Comey was more worried about appearances than he was about substance. He didn’t want it to appear that the White House was pressuring him to let Hillary go free.

But that is exactly what Obama, Jarrett, and Lynch did.

And we all know how that turned out.

Though Comey found Hillary “extremely careless in the handling of classified information,” he did his bosses’ bidding and refused to press charges against her.

Emphasis added.

A criminal conspiracy has existed between Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Comey, Valerie Jarrett, Loretta Lynch and others, which must be investigated thoroughly—and the participants must be indicted, convicted and sent to prison.

This is the scandal that is plaguing America, aside from the “deep-state” leaks and the despicable efforts to destroy the Trump presidency and change last November’s election results—which go to the very essence of our democracy!

See also http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP_RUSSIA_PROBE_THE_LATEST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-06-13-15-14-11 (“SESSIONS HITS COMEY OVER TALK OF CLINTON EMAILS”—”Attorney General Jeff Sessions says fired FBI director James Comey’s decision to announce that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted over her emails was a ‘usurpation’ of the Justice Department’s authority. Sessions says he recommended Comey’s firing after a number of concerns about his job performance. But his very public handling of the Clinton email investigation was chief among them. He says Comey’s decision to announce the results of the investigation without Justice Department approval was ‘a stunning development’ because ‘the FBI is the investigative team. They don’t decide prosecution'”) and http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/12/comey-conundrum-liberal-critics-embrace-him-now-that-hes-attacking-trump.html (“The Comey Conundrum: Liberal critics embrace him now that he’s attacking Trump”—”This goes back to 2004, when Comey was Attorney General John Ashcroft’s deputy, got an urgent call and rushed to the bedside of his hospitalized boss. Comey was able to block other Bush administration officials from having Ashcroft sign a reauthorization of the president’s domestic surveillance program. And who did Comey take with him? FBI Director Robert Mueller, who’s now investigating Comey’s charges as special counsel in the Russia investigation”)

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14 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

LEFTIST HATRED PRODUCES MURDER [UPDATED]

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

The gunman who was killed by cops after opening fire on a Republican congressional baseball practice on Wednesday, the president’s 71st birthday, was a Trump-hating Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter with a long criminal history which included of domestic violence.

James T. Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Illinois, was killed by Capitol Police after firing up to 100 rounds from an assault rifle at a baseball park in Alexandria, Virginia, leaving five injured including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise at 7am on Wednesday.

Scalise’s condition worsened throughout the afternoon and was deemed critical by hospital staff at around 2pm after undergoing emergency surgery on his hip.

The shooter was a staunch Sanders supporter and campaigned for the left-wing senator to get the Democratic nomination for president last year.

A married union tradesman with a home inspection business, Hodgkinson had threatened to ‘destroy’ the president and his administration on social media but was not known to Secret Service.

His criminal record included arrests for punching a woman in the face in 2006 then pointing a gun at her boyfriend. Other charges include DUI and obstructing a police officer.

According to the gunman’s family, he was distraught about Trump’s November election win. They said he traveled to Virginia two months ago and had signed up for a membership at the YMCA opposite the baseball field he attacked.

Relatives said he had been living ‘out of a gym bag’ and had set up a mailbox at a UPS near the baseball field which he visited several times before carrying out his bloody attack.

Shortly after 7am on Wednesday, Hodgkinson opened fire from behind the third base dugout after asking one of the lawmakers if they were Republican or Democrat.

Two Capitol Police officers who were accompanying Scalise were shot as they returned fire. As bullets flew across the field, the congressmen fled to a dugout and huddled on top of one another, using their belts as makeshift tourniquets to treat the wounds of those who were shot.

Zachary Barth, a congressional staffer for Texas Rep. Roger Williams, was shot in the leg but is expected to recover. The two Capitol Police officers, Krystal Griner and David Bailey, are also expected to make a full recovery.

Lobbyist Matt Mika was also injured and is in hospital while Scalise is in critical condition at MedStar Washington Center after undergoing emergency surgery on his hip. Hodgkinson died in hospital.

Afterward the shooting, witnesses told how the shooter turned the park into a ‘killing field’ and seemed determined to murder ‘as many Republicans as possible’.

Hodgkinson documented his hatred for the president in Facebook and Twitter posts where he threatened to ‘destroy Trump & co’ and labeled him a ‘traitor’.

He has a history of gun violence, previously pointing one at a man during a family argument in 2006. He was once arrested for domestic battery and faced other charges for DUI, attempting to elude police and obstructing a police officer.

In 2006, he was arrested for punching a woman in the face. A separate incident, which was recorded in a police report obtained by The Daily Beast, says he also beat his underage daughter.

In that report, officers described how he was seen throwing her around a bedroom. When she tried to escape him, they said he pulled her hair. Another incident involved him cutting the girl’s seat-belt with a knife.

His violent tendencies came as a surprise to people who worked with him on Sanders’ 2016 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

One told The Washington Post: ‘I met him on the Bernie trail in Iowa, worked with him in the Quad Cities area.

‘He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics. He was more on the really progressive side of things,’ Charles Orear said, adding that Hodgkinson was ‘quite mellow’.

A friend of the man spoke outside his home in Belleville, Illinois – 800 miles from where the shooting occurred – to say he was a ‘nice guy’.

Despite his hateful social media posts and criminal history, sources told CNN the man was not on the Secret Service’s radar.

Sanders resisted criticism directed at him on Wednesday, and his aides stayed between him and reporters milling near the Senate chamber.

The Vermont democratic socialist said in a statement on the Senate floor that he was aware the shooter ‘apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.’

‘I am sickened by this despicable act,’ he said. ‘Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.’

‘Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.’

The president spoke at a White House press conference at around 11am.

He made a plea for unity and thanked the police and emergency responders involved, making no mention of the gunman other than to confirm his death.

President Trump revealed he had spoken to Scalise’s wife to offer her his support and described the injured Whip as a ‘true friend’ and ‘patriot’.

Scalise was shot in the hip and taken to hospital by air ambulance shortly after the attack. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks tried to stop the bleeding from his wound as Sen. Paul, a trained doctor, cut his baseball uniform to examine the injury.

Scalise was on the field when he was shot but was able to drag himself to safety in the dugout, where the other men were hiding, as the two Capitol Police who had accompanied him for the practice exchanged gunfire.

Michigan Rep. Mike Bishop earlier described how one man – thought to be part of Scalise’s Capitol Police protection detail – stood his ground to return fire as the congressmen and at least one of their children dove for cover in a dugout and Scalise dragged himself across the field after being hit, leaving a trail of blood behind him.

He told CBS Detroit: ‘As we were standing here this morning, a gunman walked up to the fence line and just began to shoot. I was standing at home plate and he was in the third base line. He had a rifle that was clearly meant for the job of taking people out, multiple casualties, and he had several rounds and magazines that he kept unloading and reloading.’

He said: ‘The only reason why any of us walked out of this thing, by the grace of God, one of the folks here had a weapon to fire back and give us a moment to find cover.’

‘We were inside the backstop and if we didn’t have that cover by a brave person who stood up and took a shot themselves, we would not have gotten out of there and every one of us would have been hit — every single one of us.’

‘He was coming around the fence line and he was looking for all of us who had found cover in different spots. But if we didn’t have return fire right there, he would have come up to each one of us and shot us point-blank.’

_______________________

Trump pleads for unity after GOP baseball shooting as Donald Jr. says attack proves why jokes about his father’s assassination AREN’T funny

The president pleaded for unity at a White House press conference to address an attack on his GOP colleagues on Wednesday.

Speaking hours after leaders including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others were injured by gunman James Hodgkinson, Trump said: ‘We are stronger when we are unified and when we work together for the common good.’

Trump referred to the gunman once to confirm his death, describing him only as ‘the assailant’. He devoted the rest of his speech to praising the Capitol Police and emergency responders who attended the attack.

‘Melania and I are grateful for their heroism and praying for the swift recovery of all victims. Congressman Scalise is a friend and a very good friend, He is a patriot and a fighter and he will recover from this assault.

‘Steve, I want you to know, you have the prayers not only of the entire city but of an entire nation and, frankly, the entire world. America is praying for you and America is praying for all of the victims of this shooting. I have spoken with Steve’s wife Jennifer and I pledged to her our full and absolute support. Anything she needs, we are with her and the entire Scalise family.

‘I have also spoken with Chief Matthew Verderosa (of the Capitol Police), he’s doing a fantastic job, to express our sympathies for his wounded officers and to express my admiration for their officers. They perform a challenging job with incredible skill and their sacrifice makes democracy possible.

‘We also commend the brave first responders from Alexandria Fire and Rescue who rushed to the scene. Everyone on that field is a public servant – our courageous police, our aides, and our dedicated members of congress who represent our people.

We can all agree that we are blessed to be Americans and that our children deserve to grow up in a nation of safety and peace,’ he said.

Donald Jr. had an angrier public response. He re-tweeted a post which read: ‘Events like today are EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our President.’

He was referring to New York’s Public Theatre and its current production of Julius Caesar in which the doomed emperor is portrayed as his father. The play has sparked outrage and accusations that its directors are glorifying violence against the president.

It comes after the comedian Kathy Griffin’s shocking participation in a photo-shoot in which she appeared to be holding a fake representation of the president’s severed head. She apologized for the stunt after receiving angry backlash.

_______________________

The group was practicing for a charity game which is due to take place on Thursday at Nationals Park when they were attacked. Three men escaped and took shelter in an apartment building nearby.

Another witness, Marty Lavor, dove on top of a congressman. He told CNN that after the gunman’s first shot, there was a break in the gunfire but it began shortly afterwards.

Republican Rep. Mo Brooks was also there but was not hurt. He described using his belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding on Scalise’s leg.

Speaking to FM Talk 1065 moments after the shooting, he told how the group was practicing batting when he suddenly saw the shooter.

‘Suddenly there’s this face. I noticed the guy’s got a rifle and he’s shooting at us,’ he said.

As he took shelter with others in the group, which also included Rep. Gary Palmer, Brooks said he watched Scalise crawl to them as the police exchanged gunfire with pistols.

‘He was dragging his body away from second base to get away from the shooter. He was shot in the hip. I think it was not a life-threatening wound. … There was no exit wound I could see.’

‘There was a blood trail about 10 to 15 yards long from where he was shot to wear he crawled to right field,’ he told CNN.

Brooks caught a brief glimpse of the shooter and described him as a white, middle-aged male. He said he described him as being ‘a little on the chubby side’ but not obese. No more information about him is being offered by police.

Scalise, as a member of the House leadership, was the only one in the group who had been accompanied by a Capitol Police security detail.

Senator Rand Paul, who was not hurt, said that without the armed officers, all of those targeted would have died.

‘Had they not been there, it would have been a massacre. As terrible as it is, it could have been a lot worse.

‘Had it not been for them, we would have been at the mercy of the shooter and he had a lot of ammo. All we would have had was baseball bats.’

‘The Capitol Hill police cannot get enough praise for really saving everyone’s life out there,’ he said.

Describing the scene as a ‘killing field’, he added: ‘He would have shot anybody who ran out.’

Ohio Republican Rep. Brad Robert Wenstrup, a doctor and an Army Reserve officer, was on the scene and helped treat the wounded before paramedics arrived.

‘I felt like I was back in Iraq, but without my weapon,’ he told Fox News. Arizona Rep. Senator Jeff Flake described watching as the gunman sprayed bullets on the field, where Scalise lay on the ground.

As his Capitol Hill protection officers exchanged fire, he said the group were helpless. ‘I wanted to get to Steve Scalise, laying out there in the field, but while there were bullets flying overhead, I couldn’t,’ he told ABC.

Scalise’s office initially said while he was undergoing emergency surgery at MedStar Washington Hospital Center that he was in ‘stable condition.’

‘Prior to entering surgery, the Whip was in good spirits and spoke to his wife by phone,’ a spokesperson said.He is grateful for the brave actions of U.S. Capitol Police, first responders, and colleagues.’

The two Capitol Police officers who were shot are both in a ‘good condition’ and are expected to recover.

All who have spoken since the attack said they were saved by having two trained doctors, including Wenstrup, on the team.

He administered immediate aid to Scalise before handing over to Brooks while he cut off his clothing. ‘We were very fortunate to have a physician on the team.’

Sen. Paul is a trained opthalmologist. He said he was unable to get to Scalise because he was separated by part of the field and a fence while the active situation was ongoing.

One local resident was in his apartment with his wife when they were woken by the gunshots. They sheltered three members of the team after seeing them run for their lives from the field.

‘We were able to get them in a safe space for a couple of minutes. They were pretty shaken up,’ he said.

President Trump issued a statement shortly after the shooting to say he was ‘deeply saddened’ and was monitoring the situation closely.

‘We are deeply saddened by this tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the members of Congress, their staffs, Capitol Police, first responders and all others affected,’ the president said.

Vice President Mike Pence cancelled a scheduled speech in order to meet with the president at The White House.

By mid-morning, the president had canceled a planned 3:00 p.m. event at the Department of Labor that was to have focused on his apprenticeship initiative.

All members of the House of Representatives were summoned to a private 11:15 a.m. briefing about the shooting investigation, and all votes were canceled for the day.

Scalise is the Republican majority whip in the House of Representatives – the congressman responsible for counting votes and maintaining party discipline.

The Louisianan, a 51-year-old father of two, is counted among conservatives in Congress who tend to back President Donald Trump’s more controversial initiatives, including calling his famous travel ban a ‘prudent’ measure. [H]e endorsed Trump unreservedly last year.

Scalise came under fire in 2014 for remarks he made in 2002 at a conference run by a group that he later learned was a white supremacist organization.

The infamous former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who founded the group, blasted Scalise as a ‘sellout’ for apologizing.

The congressional baseball game is an annual tradition pitting members of the Democratic and Republican parties against each other. The game is set to take place on Thursday at Nationals Park.

Democratic members of Congress canceled their own baseball practice on Wednesday morning after news broke about the shooting. Many of those lawmakers gathered to pray for their political opponents in a concrete dugout before leaving under the guard of a Capitol Police escort.

As talk in Washington turned to the political ramifications of a high-profile shooting that affected lawmakers, fault lines began to emerge.

‘This kind of mindless violence must stop,’ California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a statement that hinted at her longstanding support for gun-control laws.

‘I’m dedicated to doing all I can to putting an end to these senseless tragedies.’

On the other side of the aisle, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he doesn’t know who the shooter is ‘or how he got a gun.’

‘We’ve got plenty of gun laws,’ Graham told a Bloomberg reporter. ‘I own a gun. I don’t go around shooting people with it.’

‘People get shot, run over by cars, stabbed, it’s just a crazy world,’ he said. ‘If we had that debate it’d end like it always ends. We’re not going to tell law-abiding people they can’t own a gun because of some nut-job.’

‘One thing I hope we’ll all do is just watch our words a little bit,’ Graham added. ‘Knock down the rhetoric. That’d be a good thing.’

In corners of the U.S. Capitol where business resumed as usual, the shooting seemed to hit home.

‘Several members of this committee were there,’ Republican Rep. Ed Royce of California declared as he convened a hearing featuring Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

‘This is a sad day for our country.’

‘We still don’t have all the details,’ said Royce, ‘but we do know that there are those who want to use acts of violence to create chaos, to disrupt our democracy.’

‘The American people will not let them win.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4604130/Steve-Scalise-baseball-gunman-James-T-Hodgkinson-pictured.html (“Congress baseball gunman was a Trump-hating Bernie supporter: Hero cops kill white Illinois man, 66, who opened fire on Republican lawmakers on the President’s birthday, leaving five injured“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4604280/Donald-Trump-Jr-tweets-Congress-shooting.html (“Donald Trump Jr weighs in on Congress shooting as he retweets post saying it shows why ‘we took issue with New York elites glorifying assassination’ of his father“) and http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article156092134.html (Killer was “SUPERFAN” of dike Rachel Maddow—”One of my favorite TV shows is ‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ on MSNBC”) and http://humanevents.com/2017/06/14/the-resistance-goes-live-fire/ (Ann Coulter: “The ‘Resistance’ Goes Live-Fire”—”The explosion of violence against conservatives across the country is being intentionally ginned up by Democrats, reporters, TV hosts, late-night comedians and celebrities, who compete with one another to come up with the most vile epithets for Trump and his supporters. They go right up to the line, trying not to cross it, by, for example, vamping with a realistic photo of a decapitated Trump or calling the president a ‘piece of s—’ while hosting a show on CNN. The media are orchestrating a bloodless coup, but they’re perfectly content to have their low-IQ shock troops pursue a bloody coup”—”There is more media coverage for conservatives’ ‘microaggressions’ toward powerful minorities -– such as using the wrong pronoun — than there is for liberals’ physical attacks on conservatives, including macings, concussions and hospitalizations. And now some nut Bernie Sanders-supporter confirms that it’s Republicans standing on a baseball field, before opening fire”—”The fake news insists that Trump’s White House is in ‘chaos.’ No, the country is in chaos. But just like Kathy Griffin and her Trump decapitation performance art — the perpetrators turn around in doe-eyed innocence and blame Trump”) and http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/a_partial_list_of_threats_against_gop_and_trump_from_hollywood_celebrities_.html (“A partial list of threats against GOP and Trump from Hollywood celebrities“)

Obviously, Donald Trump, Jr. and Ann Coulter are correct. Not since the last Civil War—which produced Abraham Lincoln’s assassination—have Americans experienced such viciousness, sedition and treason . . . which has been fanned by the black racist Barack Obama.

If anyone has any doubts whatsoever that he is a despicable racist, please read his book “Dreams from My Father.” It is all there, in his own words and beliefs, which undergirded eight years of his failed presidency—and gave rise to racial and political divisions not seen in our great country in decades.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10074 (“Classified Documents Show Obama Illegally Spied On Americans For Years“)

As I have stated previously:

A criminal conspiracy has existed between Barack Obama, Susan Rice, Comey, Valerie Jarrett, Loretta Lynch and others, which must be investigated thoroughly—and the participants must be indicted, convicted and sent to prison.

This is the scandal that is plaguing America, aside from the “deep-state” leaks and the despicable efforts to destroy the Trump presidency and change last November’s election results—which go to the very essence of our democracy!

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10238 (“The Fix Was In On The Hillary Investigation From The Start“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10232 (“America Is In A Civil War”)

The latest is a move by special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Robert Mueller, to widen the probe to include an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/special-counsel-is-investigating-trump-for-possible-obstruction-of-justice/2017/06/14/9ce02506-5131-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html (“Special counsel is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice, officials say”—”Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10232 (“SUMMER SHOWDOWN: Mueller Adds Muscle To Russia Investigation“)

For those of us who lived through Watergate, as I did when I was leaving the U.S. Senate, such investigations take on an insidious and odious life of their own. The Department of Justice, from which Mueller and Comey hail—along with Rod Rosenstein who appointed Mueller—is totally corrupt. Mueller, Rosenstein and others should be fired immediately; and the Mueller witch hunt should be shut down completely.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10051 (“Another Despicable At The Department Of Injustice“) and http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/gingrich-republicans-emulate-sessions/2017/06/14/id/795954/ (“[Newt] Gingrich: Republicans Would Do Well to Emulate Sessions”—”Republicans need to realize that ‘this is a real war,’ the former speaker said, as ‘the left wants to destroy them, and being passive and being slow doesn’t count'”—”‘If we elect a Republican to follow Trump, the left is going to keep going crazy'”) and http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Dershowitz-Special-Counsel/2017/06/15/id/796267/ (Renowned civil-rights lawyer and a long-time Harvard Law professor, Alan Dershowitz: “The fact that Mueller is opening an investigation on obstruction doesn’t answer the two basic questions. One — can a president be indicted while sitting? And two — can a president be indicted for obstruction — which is simply doing his job, being the head of the executive branch? I think the answer to both of these questions is still going to be no and no. . . . I think Trump benefits from the fact that [Mueller is] hiring experts on a president’s power, because I think they’ll tell him that the president’s power [is legitimate] ending the investigation”)

The forces within the United States that are trying to destroy the democratically-elected Trump presidency are every bit as evil as external enemies such as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and ISIS. They must be destroyed, summarily.

Nothing less will suffice.

Like

20 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Round One Goes To President Trump

President Donald J. Trump

Conrad Black—the Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in the New York Sun:

It is easy to forget that the credibility battle between President Trump and James Comey is just the latest round in Donald Trump’s long struggle to overwhelm, single-handedly at first, the entire national political power structure. No one who followed closely really believed that the war was over on election night.

The Democrats contested some local results, unsuccessfully, and then, in their stark disbelief, took out television advertisements reaching tens of millions of people, to ask some of the 538 people elevated to the electoral college to break their pledges and vote for Clinton instead of Trump. It was an absurd fiasco.

Democratic Senate leaders Charles Schumer and Richard Durbin made prodigious efforts to block virtually every nominee of the incoming administration to high office. Apart from knocking down Trump’s first candidate for labor secretary, their only achievement was delay and harassment.

From the day after the election Mrs. Clinton fabricated the contention that, first among all those responsible for her defeat (amongst whom she never thought of herself), were the Russians. This wild allegation was first advanced by the egregious John Podesta, Democratic campaign chairman, who had extensive links to Russia himself.

It was then amplified by former Senate leader Harry Reid, and then Mrs. Clinton got the bit in her teeth. Alleging collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign quickly became the favorite theme of the Democratic leaders in the Congress, and the vast gallery of Never-Trump fanatics in the national press, their ranks swollen and made more raucous by the self-exiled snobs of the intellectual conservative movement.

Since Mr. Trump had gone to war against all factions of both parties; Hollywood, Wall Street, the national press, academia, the lobbyists, and the bureaucracy, there could not be a honeymoon, merely a few pleasantries on inauguration day, like a Christmas truce on the Western Front in World War I, followed by the resumption of hostilities. The outgoing Obama administration helpfully conducted surveillance in the Trump Tower and unmasked and leaked to the press the names of prominent Republicans, which had arisen in these dubious practices, but no evidence was found.

The Russians jubilantly exploited the near anarchy in the angry and terrified Washington political and press elites, by an imaginative campaign of disinformation. They planted the infamous Steele dossier, including the claim that Mr. Trump had organized a group urination by prostitutes on a bed in a Moscow hotel because the Obamas had once slept there.

The upper reaches of the Washington civil-service became spigots of malicious and almost certainly criminal leakage to the Trumpophobic press. Every charge, no matter how fantastic, against the incoming president was given immense play by the morally bankrupt, unrelievedly partisan mainstream press, led by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC. All of these outlets had gagged on election night, and all of them refused to accept the legitimacy of the new administration.

There had never been an argument to reelect the Democrats on the merits of the largely failed Obama administration, so their entire campaign was a smear job on Trump. This continued with the Russian collusion scam and as soon as the administration was in place, with the nonsense about racism over the partial travel ban. (The Supreme Court will almost certainly take immigration back from the district and circuit courts and restore it to the president.)

Donald Trump definitely did not make his task easier by some of the bumptious and tasteless comments that he made as this war unfolded. He has generally held the support of his followers, who understood that his assault upon the political establishment was so comprehensive, it would require a full term to implement.

Those well acquainted with the key Democratic personalities in Washington confirm that they realize that they have absolutely nothing to work with for an impeachment but are aiming at the immobilization of the regime until the mid term elections of 2018 when the Democrats will try to retake at least part of the Congress against a do-nothing, blustering government.

Mr. Trump has fought like a fearless but calculating bull. His greatest problem is not spurious charges or press hostility, which is not uniform and provokes a heavy backlash, but the cowardice of congressional Republicans. Most of them are in the Washington sleaze factory Trump initially attacked, but they owe their majority status and the House passage of repeal of Obamacare to the president.

Speaker Paul Ryan was unable as the appointment of a special counsel was announced, even to allow the president a presumption of innocence, and confined himself to declining “to prejudge” the outcome. Soon, they will have to realize that the anti-Trump campaign is just a mudslide and that their only chance of retaining control of the Congress is to pull together and put the president’s radically sensible program through.

The firing of FBI director James Comey, apparently for needlessly dragging out the Russian collusion nonsense, though his ham-handed political meddling had irritated both parties, and his appearance before the Senate intelligence committee last week, and Trump’s press conference the following day, have torqued up the war to new heights of acrimony, but Mr. Trump is finally winning.

Even relatively unbiased commentators have failed to see how one-sided the exchange has been, though the comparisons with Richard Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox, like the collusion charge itself, the complaints of a back-channel between the Russians and the president’s son-in-law, and the charge of misuse of Israeli intelligence (denied by Prime Minister Netanyahu), have vanished, almost forgotten.

Mr. Comey conceded that he did not object when former Attorney General Lynch told him to refer to the Clinton investigation as the Clinton “matter.” He admitted, as Mr. Trump had claimed and Mr. Comey had not previously acknowledged and the press failed to publish, that even after many months of investigation Mr. Trump was not suspected of collusion with the Russians. He acknowledged that while Russia had tried to interfere with the election, there was no evidence that their efforts had changed any votes.

Mr. Comey admitted that he had leaked his hotly contested version of a conversation with the president about the investigation of former national security advisor General Michael Flynn, in order to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. He did attack the press, and generated a retraction at CNN and extreme evasions by the New York Times.

No one is satisfied with Mr. Comey’s explanation of why he took it upon himself as a police chief to recite the likely offenses of Mrs. Clinton with her emails and then declare she should not be prosecuted, which was not his decision to make; nor why he reopened and then quickly closed the “Clinton matter” in the last week of the campaign.

In all of these areas, there is little argument that Mr. Comey exceeded the powers of his position, and compromised the political impartiality and integrity of the Bureau. The chief takeaways are that the Russian collusion argument against Mr. Trump is dead and that the obstruction argument is reduced to trying to claim, as no sane prosecutor would, that the president’s unwise and inconsequential expression of a hope that General Flynn would not be prosecuted constituted an obstruction of justice.

The chances of getting any traction on this issue are also zero. Even the endless brayings of Mr. Schumer and Adam Schiff, the unfeasibly sanctimonious congressman from Hollywood, and Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate intelligence Committee, may have to be modulated, (to the acoustical relief of the nation). There is little chance that Special Counsel Mueller will find anything that significantly embarrasses the president.

Donald Trump has won this round, but the war will continue for a while longer.

See http://www.nysun.com/national/round-one-goes-to-trump-even-if-more-tests-await/90013/ (“Round One Goes To Trump, Even If More Tests Await the New President”) (emphasis added); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black (“Conrad Black“)

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Black when he states:

The Supreme Court will almost certainly take immigration back from the district and circuit courts and restore it to the president.

Our Supreme Court is as corrupt as any other political institution in this great country. Anyone who has practiced law at the highest levels knows this, in spades.

It is a disgrace.

Like

22 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

LONG KNIVES OUT FOR DEMENTED NANCY PELOSI [UPDATED]

Nancy Pelosi

See http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/21/nancy-pelosi-fallout-georgia-special-election-239804 (“Pelosi faces growing doubts among Dems after Georgia loss“) and http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/nancy-pelosi-faces-heat-democrats-after-georgia-loss-n775301 (“Nancy Pelosi Faces Heat From Democrats After Georgia Loss“) and http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/338878-cher-get-pelosi-out-of-dems-leadership (“Cher: ‘GOP runs against’ Pelosi“) and http://thehill.com/homenews/house/338811-michael-moore-dems-have-no-message-no-plan-no-leaders (“Michael Moore: Dems have ‘no message, no plan, no leaders'”) and http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-had-the-worst-may-fundraising-since-2003/article/2626603 (“Democrats had the worst May fundraising since 2003“) and http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/22/who-is-plotting-nancy-pelosi-ouster-239864 (“Pelosi’s Democratic critics plot to replace her“) and http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-pelosi-repeats-words-garbles-speech-asks-want-sing-praises/ (“VIDEO: Pelosi repeats words, garbles speech, asks ‘So you want me to sing my praises?'”)

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has added:

In the first round of the special election for the House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff swept 48 percent. He more than doubled the vote of his closest GOP rival, Karen Handel.

A Peach State pickup for the Democrats and a huge humiliation for President Trump seemed at hand.

But in Tuesday’s final round, Ossoff, after the most costly House race in history, got 48 percent again, and lost. If Democratic donors are grabbing pitchforks, who can blame them?

And what was Karen Handel’s cutting issue?

Ossoff lived two miles outside the district and represented the values of the Democratic minority leader, whom he would vote to make the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

The Pelosi factor has been a drag on Democrats in all four of the special elections the party has lost since Trump’s November triumph.

Prediction: Democrats will not go into the 2018 Congressional elections with San Fran Nan as the party’s face and future. No way. As President Kennedy said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Post-Trump, it is hard to see Republicans returning to NAFTA-GATT free-trade globalism, open borders, mass immigration or Bushite crusades for democracy. A cold realism about America’s limited power and potential to change the world has settled in.

And just as Trump put Bush-Romney Republicanism into the dumpster in the 2016 primaries, Hillary Clinton’s defeat, followed by losses in four straight special elections, portend a passing of the guard in the Democratic Party.

So where is the party going?

Clearly, the energy and fire are on the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren left. Moreover, the crudity of party chair Tom Perez’s attacks on Trump and the GOP, being echoed now by Democratic members of Congress, suggest that the new stridency to rally the angry left is gaining converts.

Trump’s rough rhetoric, which brought out the alienated working class in the ten of thousands to his rallies, is being emulated by “progressives” — imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Nor is this unusual. After narrow presidential defeats, major parties have often taken a hard turn back toward their base.

After Richard Nixon lost narrowly to JFK in 1960, the Republican right blamed his “me-too” campaign, rose up and nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. A choice, not an echo.

After Hubert Humphrey lost narrowly to Nixon in 1968, the Democratic Party took a sharp turn to the left in 1972 and nominated George McGovern.

A 21st-century variant of McGovernism seems be in the cards for Democrats today. The salient positions of the party have less to do with bread-and-butter issues than identity politics, issues of race, gender, morality, culture, ethnicity and class.

Same-sex marriage, abortion rights, sanctuary cities, Black Lives Matter, racist cops, La Raza, bathroom rights, tearing down Confederate statues, renaming streets, buildings and bridges to remove any association with slave-owners or segregationists, putting sacred tribal lands ahead of pipelines, and erasing the name of the Washington Redskins.

The Democrats’ economic agenda?

Free tuition for college kids, forgiveness of student loan debt, sticking it to Wall Street and the 1 percent, and bailing out Puerto Rico.

And impeachment — though a yearlong FBI investigation has failed to find any Trump-Kremlin collusion to dethrone Debbie Wasserman Schultz or expose the debate-question shenanigans of Donna Brazile.

And where are the Democratic successes since Obamacare?

The cities where crime is surging, Baltimore and Chicago, have been run for decades by Democrats. The worst-run state in the nation, Illinois, has long been dominated by Democratic legislators.

The crisis of the old order is apparent as well across the pond.

Jeremy Corbyn, a Bernie Sanders radical socialist, led his party to major gains in the recent parliamentary elections, as Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May saw her majority wiped out and faces the same seditionist grumbling as Nancy Pelosi.

Western elites are celebrating the victory of Emmanuel Macron, the “youngest French President since Napoleon,” who defeated Marine Le Pen by a ratio of almost 2-to-1 and whose new party, En Marche! (In Motion!), captured the Assembly. But the celebrating seems premature.

For the first time in the history of De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, neither the center-left Socialists nor center-right Republicans, the parties that have ruled France for 60 years, made it into the finals in a presidential election.

And while the first round of that election saw the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate run fifth, with 6 percent, the votes of the rightist Le Pen and far left-Communist Jean-Luc Melenchon together topped 40 percent. It is the flanks of European politics that seem still to be hard and growing, and the center that seems shaky and imperiled.

Moreover, Macron faces daunting problems. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent, with youth unemployment twice that. Terrorist attacks from within Muslim communities continue to rise, as do the number of boats of Third Worlders migrating from across the Med.

Can anyone believe that, as these trends continue, Europeans will continue to back centrist policies and moderate politicians to deal with them?

Dream on. That is not the history of Europe.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/passing-pelosi-era-127255 (“The Passing of the Pelosi Era“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-pelosi-confused-time-day-forgets-latest-russia-accusations-6-mins-later/ (“Nancy Pelosi struggles to remember latest Russia accusation — 6 mins after making it!“) and http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-nancy-pelosi-loses-breath-during-short-sentences-suffers-brain-freezes-repeats-words/ (“WINDED: Pelosi loses breath during short sentences, suffers brain freezes, repeats words“)

Like

22 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

GREAT AGAIN! [UPDATED]

President Donald J. Trump

The Hill has reported:

The Republican sweep of four contested House special elections this year has handed President Trump and his party a much-needed boost to move a healthcare bill and perhaps more of their stalled legislative agenda.

GOP officials in Washington breathed a sigh of relief after their candidate, Karen Handel, fended off Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday night — a race that Democrats had poured tens of millions of dollars into and billed as a referendum on the unpopular president and his policies.

Republican Ralph Norman on Tuesday defeated Democrat Archie Parnell by an even narrower margin — a little more than 3 percentage points — in a South Carolina race that received far less national attention.

If energized Democrats had claimed either of those long-held GOP seats, they could have argued that even traditionally red seats are in play in 2018 and Republicans who back Trump’s agenda do so at their own peril.

But the GOP’s perfect 4-0 contested special-election record in 2017 now gives Capitol Hill Republicans some cover to pass their ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill, a major tax-reform package and other legislative priorities. And the media will shift its focus from the special elections back to policy, lawmakers said, even as the Russia investigation continues to dominate the headlines.

“It certainly boosts Republican morale,” said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the House GOP’s campaign arm.

“There are local reasons [why Ossoff lost]. He didn’t live in the district,” added Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “But I think it bodes well for the president’s agenda for now.”

More specifically, staunch repeal advocates will point to the Georgia results to argue that skeptical Senate Republicans can back repeal of the health law without risking reelection. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) plans to unveil his own healthcare bill on Thursday and put it on the floor next week.

“Clearly Karen Handel defended us on [healthcare] and ran on ‘We need to get this stuff done. This is something we need to finish,’ ” Cole said, “so I think that’s an important message from our base to our members.”

The White House, too, sees the GOP victories in Georgia and South Carolina Tuesday night as a clear-cut vote of confidence for its policy agenda — and proof the Democrats don’t have a winning platform.

“They thought the elections last night were going to be a referendum on this president,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday on “Fox and Friends.” “And once again, he proved, never underestimate him, and that the American people put him and other Republicans in place for a reason: They have an agenda.”

She added, “Frankly, I think Republicans are going to get tired of winning at some point if the Democrats don’t ever get an agenda.”

While many Republicans took a victory lap on Wednesday, not all had been so confident about holding the 6th District seat in the Atlanta suburbs.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who ran the NRCC during the 2014 and 2016 cycles, said he thought Democrats were going to pull off the victory. After all, he said, Democrats appeared to be more energized, had a bigger army of volunteers and outspent the GOP roughly $32 million to $23 million in what was the most expensive House race in U.S. history.

“I didn’t think we were going to win in Georgia three weeks ago … given the overall political environment, the ‘Resist’ movement, the hyperactivity at our town halls,” Walden told The Hill. But the voters “decided the Democrat brand didn’t have the right message, that you can’t just be against something.”

Trump last year narrowly won Georgia’s 6th District, which was vacated when Tom Price became secretary of Health and Human Services.

Vulnerable Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), a top 2018 Democratic target who voted for ObamaCare repeal in May, also called the Georgia victory a “surprise” and “impressive win.”

“Obviously, I wasn’t too confident about it, as the Democrats had this massive fundraising advantage and there was all of this enthusiasm” on the left, said Curbelo, who represents a district that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won last year.

But he said he wouldn’t take his foot off the gas after the Georgia win: “We always run like we’re behind. Either you run scared or unopposed.”

Publicly, Democratic leaders aren’t panicking. Despite their four defeats in the Kansas, Montana, South Carolina and Georgia specials, Democrats said they see a silver lining.

“If you look at the numbers, these are all seats where just seven months ago [Republicans] won by double digits, and they were nail-biters after Trump takes office,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. “I think that shows that people have serious questions about whether the Trump agenda is working for them.

“I look at the results and say, ‘Let’s keep competing in places like Georgia and South Carolina where we didn’t necessarily compete before,’ ” he continued. “If people understand that we are for them and he has not delivered for them, I think 2018’s in play.”

To win back the House next year, Democrats need to pick up 24 seats.

See http://thehill.com/homenews/house/338892-special-election-sweep-boosts-trump-agenda (“Special election sweep boosts Trump agenda“) (emphasis added); but see https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10035 (“End The Careers Of RINOS Curbelo And Amash Now!“)

It is time to shut down the Robert Mueller investigation completely; fire Rod Rosenstein; and indict, convict and imprison James Comey, Hillary Clinton and others!

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25 06 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Donald Skunks the Democrats [UPDATED}

President Donald J. Trump

This is the title of an article by Leftist Maureen Dowd in the New York Times, which states:

YOU know who is really sick and tired of Donald Trump winning, to the point where they beg, “Please, Mr. President, sir, it’s too much”?

Democrats.

The Democrats just got skunked four to nothing in races they excitedly thought they could win because everyone they hang with hates Trump.

If Trump is the Antichrist, as they believe, then Georgia was going to be a cakewalk, and Nancy Pelosi was going to be installed as speaker before the midterms by acclamation. But it turned into another soul-sucking disappointment.

“It’s Trump four and us zero,” says the Democratic congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio. “I don’t want to admit that. When it comes out of my mouth, it bothers me. But Trump does robo calls. He tweets. He talks about the races. He motivates his base, and he moves the needle, and that’s a problem for us. Guys, we’re still doing something wrong here because a) he’s president and b) we’re still losing to his candidates.”

The 43-year-old Ryan, who failed to unseat Pelosi as House minority leader last year, says that the Democrats’ brand is toxic, and in some places worse than Trump’s. Which is beyond pathetic.

The Republicans have a wildly unpopular, unstable and untruthful president, and a Congress that veers between doing nothing and spitting out vicious bills, while the Democratic base is on fire and appalled millennials are racing away from Trump. Yet Democrats are stuck in loser gear.

Trump’s fatal flaw is that he cannot drag himself away from the mirror. But Democrats cannot bear to look in the mirror and admit what is wrong.

“We congenitally believe that our motives are pure and our goals are right,” Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, told me. “Therefore, we should win by default.” But, he added dryly: “You’ve got to run a good campaign. In elections, politics matter. Oooh, what a surprise.”

As Ryan sighs: “If you don’t win, you don’t have power, and you can’t help on any of these issues we care about.”

Democrats cling to an idyllic version of a new progressive America where everyone tools around in electric cars, serenely uses gender-neutral bathrooms and happily searches the web for the best Obamacare options. In the Democrats’ vision, people are doing great and getting along. It is the opposite of Trump’s dark diorama of carnage and dystopia — but just as false a picture of America.

With Jon Ossoff, as with Hillary Clinton, the game plan was surfing contempt for Trump and counting on the elusive Obama coalition. Heavy Hollywood involvement is not necessarily a positive in Georgia, though. Alyssa Milano drove voters to the polls but couldn’t bewitch the Republicans. And not living in the district is bad anywhere.

Democrats are going to have to come up with something for people to be for, rather than just counting on Trump to implode. (Which he will.) The party still seems flummoxed that there are big swaths of the country where Democrats once roamed that now regard the Democratic brand as garbage and its long-in-the-tooth leadership as overstaying its welcome. The vibe is suffocating. Where’s the fresh talent?

In a new piece in The Atlantic, Emanuel and Bruce Reed — who engineered their party’s last takeover of Congress in 2006, the first since 1994 — argue that Democrats need to channel their anger and make 2018 a referendum on Trump’s record, not his impeachment.

In dwindling swing districts, Emanuel told me, Democrats need to choose candidates who are pro-middle class, not merely pro-poor.

They can’t just waltz in and win seats held by Republicans. And they can’t go full Bernie. They have to drum up suburban candidates who reflect their districts, Emanuel says, noting that they wrenched back control of Congress by recruiting a football player in North Carolina, an Iraq veteran in Pennsylvania and a sheriff in Indiana.

It’s shocking that Hillary couldn’t be bothered to come up with an economic message or any rationale other than “It’s My Turn.” “Hillary never got a real message out,” Michael Bloomberg, who eviscerated Trump at Hillary’s convention, told Anderson Cooper. “It was ‘Don’t vote for that guy’ and the gender issue. Whereas Donald had us saying ‘Make America Great Again.’ ”

Ryan says Democrats need to stop microtargeting. “They talked to a black person about voting rights, a brown person about immigration, a gay about gay rights, a woman about choice and on and on, slicing up the electorate,” he said. “But they forgot that first and foremost, people have to pay their mortgages and get affordable health care.”

He also urged his fellow Democrats to stop obsessing about Trump and Russia and start obsessing on globalization, automation and wage stagnation.

“The crazy thing is that there’s a great opportunity here, because neither party has figured out how to thrive in the new economy,” he said.

Carrier and Boeing, where Trump visited to boast about saving jobs, announced layoffs last week, and Ford is shifting some production to China. And news flash for Donald: King Coal has been dethroned.

“Trump leveraged his wealth to convince working-class people that he could deal with these changes,” Ryan said. “But just saying, ‘The Chinese rent from me,’ doesn’t mean he’s figured this stuff out.”

Trump may be nuts enough to blow up the world. But the Democrats are nuts if they think his crazy is enough to save them.

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-jon-ossoff-democrats.html?_r=0 (emphasis added)

Liberal Dan Balz has added in the Washington Post:

The loss in last week’s special congressional election in Georgia produced predictable hand-wringing and finger-pointing inside the Democratic Party. It also raised anew a question that has troubled the party through a period in [which] it has lost ground politically. Simply put: Do Democrats have a message?

Right now, the one discernible message is opposition to President Trump. That might be enough to get through next year’s midterm elections, though some savvy Democratic elected officials doubt it. What’s needed is a message that attracts voters beyond the blue-state base of the party.

The defeat in Georgia came in a district that was always extremely challenging. Nonetheless, the loss touched off a hunt for scapegoats. Some Democrats, predictably, blamed the candidate, Jon Ossoff, as failing to capitalize on a flood of money and energy among party activists motivated to send a message of opposition to the president. He may have had flaws, but he and the Democrats turned out lots of voters. There just weren’t enough of them.

Other critics went up the chain of command and leveled their criticism at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She has held her party together in the House through many difficult fights — ask veterans of the Obama administration — but she also has become a prime target for GOP ad makers as a symbol of the Democrats’ liberal and bicoastal leanings. Pelosi, a fighter, has brushed aside the criticism.

Perhaps Democrats thought things would be easier because of Trump’s rocky start. His presidency has produced an outpouring of anger among Democrats, but will that be enough to bring about a change in the party’s fortunes?

History says a president with approval ratings as low as Trump’s usually sustain substantial midterm losses. That could be the case in 2018, particularly if the Republicans end up passing a health-care bill that, right now, is far more unpopular than Obamacare. But Trump has beaten the odds many times in his short political career. What beyond denunciations of the Republicans as heartless will the Democrats have to say to voters?

Though united in vehement opposition to the president, Democrats do not speak with one voice. Fault lines and fissures exist between the ascendant progressive wing at the grass roots and those Democrats who remain more business-friendly. While these differences are not as deep as those seen in Trump’s Republican Party, that hasn’t yet generated a compelling or fresh message to take to voters who aren’t already sold on the party.

Hillary Clinton, whose rhetoric often sounded more poll-tested than authentic, never found that compelling message during her 2016 campaign. She preferred to run a campaign by demonizing Trump and, as a result, drowned out her economic platform. This was a strategic gamble for which she paid a high price.

The absence of a convincing economic message did not start with Clinton. Former president Barack Obama struggled with the same during his 2012 reelection. He wanted to claim credit for a steady but slow recovery while acknowledging forthrightly that many Americans were not benefitting from the growth. It was a muddle at best, but he was saved by the fact that Mitt Romney couldn’t speak to those stressed voters either. In 2016, however, Trump did.

Clinton’s loss forced Democrats to confront their deficiencies among white working-class voters and the vast areas between the coasts that flipped in Trump’s direction. Their defection from the Democratic Party began well before Trump, but until 2016, Democrats thought they could overcome that problem by tapping other voters. Trump showed the limits of that strategy.

The Georgia loss put a focus on a different type of voter, the well-educated suburbanites, particularly those who don’t live in deep-blue states. While losing ground among working-class whites, Democrats have been gaining support among white voters with college degrees. In the fall, Clinton advisers believed she would do well enough with those college graduates to overcome projected erosion among those without college educations. She fell short of expectations, however, allowing Trump to prevail in the pivotal Midwest battlegrounds.

The Georgia district had the highest percentage of college graduates of any in the nation. Ossoff tried to win over those suburban voters with a moderate message on economic issues, but it wasn’t powerful or persuasive enough to overcome the appeal of the Republican brand in an election in which the GOP made Pelosi-style Democrats a focus. Loyalty to party was strong enough to allow Karen Handel to prevail.

The long-running debate over the Democrats’ message probably will intensify as the party looks to 2018 and especially to 2020. It is a debate that the party needs. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, writing in the American Prospect, sees a problem that goes beyond white working-class voters to those within the Democratic base who also were left behind by the post-2008 economic gains. He argues that the party’s problem is with working-class voters of all types, not just whites.

Greenberg has long been critical of the tepidness of the party’s economic message and puts some of the blame on Obama. He believes the former president’s economic message in 2012 and 2016 focused on progress in the recovery largely to the exclusion of the widespread pain that still existed. “That mix of heralding ‘progress’ while bailing out those responsible for the crisis and the real crash in incomes for working Americans was a fatal brew for Democrats,” he argues.

For progressives, the answer to this problem is clear: a boldly liberal message that attacks big corporations and Wall Street and calls for a significant increase in government’s role in reducing income and wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been aggressive in promoting exactly that, as he did during the 2016 campaign, with calls for a big investment in infrastructure and free college tuition at public colleges and universities. He has said he intends to introduce legislation he calls “Medicare for All.”

That kind of message probably will spark more internal debate, particularly among Democrats from swing districts or swing states. It points to one of the biggest challenges Democrats face as they move beyond being the anti-Trump party. That is the question of whether they are prepared to make a robust and appealing case in behalf of government in the face of continuing skepticism among many of the voters they are trying to win over. Trump might not succeed in draining the swamp, but he has tapped into sentiments about Washington that Democrats ignore at their peril.

Nor can Democrats ignore voters’ concerns about immigration. The Democrats’ message on immigration and immigrant rights (and some other cultural issues) plays well in many blue states, but it draws a much more mixed reception in those parts of the country where Trump turned the election in his direction.

In this divided era, it’s easy for either party to look at the other and conclude the opposition is in worse shape. That’s the trap for Democrats right now as they watch Trump struggle in office. But Democrats are in the minority in the House, Senate, governorships and state legislatures. Clinton may have won the popular vote, but that proved about as satisfying as coming close while losing last week in Georgia. It’s no substitute for the real thing. If continued frustration with losing doesn’t prompt rethinking about the message, what will?

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/beyond-opposing-trump-democrats-keep-searching-for-a-message/2017/06/24/6bb05b54-5857-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html (“Beyond opposing Trump, Democrats keep searching for a message“) (emphasis added)

Notwithstanding all the hang-wringing by the looney and totally-despicable Left, it is clear that Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein must be fired; Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin and others must be investigated, indicted, convicted and imprisoned; and Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings, Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and others must be destroyed politically.

Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2017-06-24-US–House%20Democrats-Pelosi/id-874858ed7bcf46978f9adbb98ff04e7a (“Some House Democrats mull over how to oust Pelosi as leader“) and http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/23/senate-announced-probe-loretta-lynch-behavior-2016/ (“Senate announces probe of Loretta Lynch behavior in 2016 election“) and http://nypost.com/2017/06/24/inside-the-shadowy-intelligence-firm-behind-the-trump-dossier/ (“Sketchy firm behind Trump dossier is stalling investigators“) and https://www.infowars.com/napolitano-fmr-attorney-general-lynch-could-face-5-10-years-in-prison/ (“NAPOLITANO: FMR. ATTORNEY GENERAL LYNCH COULD FACE 5-10 YEARS IN PRISON“) and http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/798180 (“Gingrich: Mueller’s Team of Liberal Lawyers on ‘Hunting Expedition'”)

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1 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

FRUSTRATED DEMS PLOT TO REMOVE TRUMP [UPDATED]

Trumps depart White House

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

A Democratic congressman has proposed convening a special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors whose job would be to determine if President Donald Trump is fit to serve in the Oval Office.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who also teaches constitutional law at American University, has predictably failed to attract any Republicans to his banner.

But the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment does allow for a majority of the president’s cabinet, or ‘such other body as Congress may by law provide,’ to decide if an Oval Office occupant is unable to carry out his duties – and then to put it to a full congressional vote.

Vice President Mike Pence would also have to agree, which could slow down the process – or speed it up if he wanted the levers of power for himself.

The 25th Amendment has been around since shortly after the John F. Kennedy assassination, but Congress has never formed its own committee in case it’s needed to judge a president’s mental health.

Raskin’s bill would allow the four Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to each choose a psychiatrist and another doctor. Then each party would add a former statesman – like a retired president or vice president.

The final group of 10 would meet and choose an 11th member, who would become the committee’s chairman.

Once the group is officially seated, the House and Senate could direct it through a joint resolution to conduct an actual examination of the president ‘to determine whether the president is incapacitated, either mentally or physically,’ according to the Raskin bill.

And if the president refuses to participate, the bill dictates, that ‘shall be taken into consideration by the commission in reaching a conclusion.’

Under the 25th Amendment, such a committee – or the president’s cabinet – can notify Congress in writing that a sitting president is unfit. In either case the vice president must concur, and he would immediately become ‘acting president.’

Presidents have voluntarily transferred their powers to vice presidents in the past, including when they are put under anesthesia for medical procedures.

In the case of Raskin’s plan, the Constitution holds that both houses of Congress would hold a vote within three weeks.

If two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate agreed that the president couldn’t discharge his duties, he would be dismissed.

Raskin’s plan could have a fatal flaw, however: Legal scholars tend to agree that when the Constitution’s framers first provided for the replacement of a president with an ‘inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office,’ they weren’t talking about mere eccentricities.

And when the 25th Amendment was sent to the states for ratification in 1965, the Senate agreed that ‘inability’ meant that a president was ‘unable to make or communicate his decisions’ and suffered from a ‘mental debility’ rendering him ‘unable or unwilling to make any rational decision.’

So far two dozen members of the House, all Democrats, have signed on to cosponsor the bill.

Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a far-left liberal Democrat, claimed Friday in a Fox Business Channel interview that Congress can remove ‘incompetent’ presidents.

‘The 25th Amendment is utilized when a president is perceived to be incompetent or unable to do his or her job,’ she said.

Raskin has made no bones about the fact that his intentions are specific to President Trump.

‘Trump’s mental incapacity is no laughing matter,’ he tweeted last month. ‘#25thAmendment gives us a way to deal with this problem.’

Raskin summed up his reasoning for Yahoo News on Friday: ‘In case of emergency, break glass.’

‘I assume every human being is allowed one or two errant and seemingly deranged tweets,’ he said.

‘The question is whether you have a sustained pattern of behavior that indicates something is seriously wrong.’

Also on Friday, MSNBC co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski authored an op-ed in The Washington Post whose headline argued ‘Donald Trump is not well.’

The pair were responding to a widely criticized tweet in which Trump complained about their behavoior around the New Year and alleged that Brzezinski was bleeding from a bad facelift.

During a press conference on Thursday, Raskin called Trump a ‘barbarian’ and said: ‘Something is deeply wrong at the White House.’

He called on ‘whoever is in control over there’ to ‘pull back from this terrible situation.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4655964/Democrats-lay-foundation-remove-Trump-mental-grounds.html (“Two dozen Democrats get behind bill to lay foundation for removing Trump for being mentally ‘incapacitated’ (but they’d need Mike Pence to agree)“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10245 (“LEFTIST HATRED PRODUCES MURDER“)

As indicated at the link cited immediately above:

The gunman who was killed by cops after opening fire on a Republican congressional baseball practice on Wednesday, the president’s 71st birthday, was a Trump-hating Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter. . . .

Can we expect that the Democrats (e.g., Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings, Al Sharpton, Kamala Harris, Rachel Maddow) will be targeted as well?

At the very least, it would not be surprising if Jamie Raskin, Sheila Jackson Lee and others were targeted.

See, e.g., http://thehill.com/homenews/house/340309-threats-against-lawmakers-spiked-this-year (“Threats against lawmakers already higher than all of 2016“)

While the black racist Barack Obama’s presidency was opposed, no attempts were made by his opponents to assassinate him or destroy his presidency.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

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3 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The Press Will Lose To Donald Trump

President Trump

Piers Morgan has written in the UK’s Daily Mail:

‘Good publicity is preferable to bad,’ said Donald Trump in his best-selling book Art of the Deal, ‘but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.’

Never has this mantra seemed more appropriate than today.

Trump’s savagely personal assault on the US mainstream media – aka the MSM – in the past week has ignited a firestorm of controversy and bad publicity.

It began when he tweeted that MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ host Mika Brzezinski was ‘low IQ crazy Mika’ and claimed she had been ‘bleeding badly from a face-lift’ during a New Year’s Eve visit to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort.

This was obviously a grotesquely offensive thing for the President of the United States to publicly state about anyone.

To say it about a woman, any woman, also smacks of crass misogyny.

But before we martyr poor Ms Brzezinksi too fervently, it is worth pointing out that she herself is no innocent little lamb in the personal abuse stakes.

The reason for Trump’s tirade was that she spent the previous day’s ‘Morning Joe’ repeatedly mocking him for his ‘teensy hands’.

In fact, she devotes a lot of her time to ridiculing Trump for the way he looks and behaves.

And let’s not be naïve here, she does it knowing full well that Trump will eventually retaliate, and when he does, she and her show will dominate the news for a few days and get a substantial ratings boost.

Those increased ratings lead to increased profits.

Controversy, in short, sells.

Trump responded to the inevitable furore with another stinging tweet about Brzezinksi and her co-host and fiance, branding them ‘Crazy Joe Scarborough and dumb as a rock Mika’.

Now, I happen to think Scarborough and Brzezinksi are two very smart and able broadcasters. But since their old friend Trump won the White House they’ve gone rogue on him. Why? Partly because I believe they genuinely have issues with the way he has started his presidency. But also, I suspect, because MSNBC is making a fortune from whacking the president.

Indeed, at the weekend Joe Scarborough was able to boast on Twitter about record ratings for their show.

Trump then turned his Twitter turret sights onto his favored enemy: my old employers, CNN.

They gifted him a massive PR goal last week by firing three top journalists for an entirely false story linking a Trump associate to Russian financial skullduggery.

And, as I predicted, the president has embarked on immediate ball-spiking frenzy.

‘I am extremely pleased to see that @CNN has finally been exposed as #FakeNews and garbage journalism,’ Trump tweeted. ‘It’s about time!’

Doubling down, he re-tweeted a mashed-up viral video of an old clip of him at a World Wrestling Entertainment event in which he appears to be pummeling an opponent, who now has the CNN logo on his head.

Trump leaves his battered opponent lying on the ground and walks off triumphant.

‘#FakeNewsCNN,’ was his simple, scathing caption.

This sparked outrage, not least from CNN [that] said in a statement: ‘It is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters. We will keep doing our jobs, he should keep doing his.’

But Trump, who recently had to endure CNN star Kathy Griffin posing for a photo with his mocked-up severed head, would argue that challenging the hyper-aggressive, and in his case, endlessly mocking media IS part of his job.

At a rally in Washington on Saturday night, he made his position crystal clear. ‘The fake media is trying to silence us. But we will not let them because the people know the truth. The fake media tried to stop us from going to the White House. But I’m president and they’re not!’

The partisan crowd leaped to their feet and cheered.

I don’t agree that networks like CNN or NBC, or papers like the New York Times are ‘fake news’.

But they are all driven by a very liberal view of life.

And what the MSM forgets, or chooses to ignore, is that there are vast swathes of the country that don’t share those liberal views.

These are the swathes that voted for Trump and all the polls suggest they would do so again tomorrow.

The more the MSM self-indulgently clears their news schedules to pompously fume and rage about Trump’s attacks on them, the more people outside the liberal elite media bubble just shake their heads in amusement or dismay at what they see as rank hypocrisy.

The American public have good memories.

They know what happened in the election campaign when the MSM competed to give Trump as much friendly airtime as they possibly could.

Back then, the MSM loved candidate Trump’s incendiary tweets because that gave them another ratings-surging bone for their pundits to gnaw on all day long.

They lapped it up when Trump branded his opponents ‘Little Marco’, ‘Lying Ted’ or ‘Low Energy Jeb’ – more outrageous headlines, more outrageous ratings, more outrageous profits.

Controversy, in short, sells.

Then Trump won the GOP nomination and everything changed.

The MSM, having joyously played along with the Trump Train for months, suddenly realised to their horror he might actually win the presidency. Even worse, THEY might get the blame!

So they abruptly turned on him and tried to kill the monster they had themselves created.

To their delight, they found that Trump-bashing was even more popular than Trump-slathering.

Negative headlines came thick and fast, and ratings soared ever higher, as did profits.

Controversy, in short, sells.

Trump, as his is way, fought fire with fire.

The harder the MSM punched him, the harder he punched back.

And to HIS delight, he found that HIS popularity rocketed too. So much so that he ended up beating Hillary Clinton, the ‘most qualified candidate in presidential history’.

Controversy, in short, sells.

After Trump won the White House, I hoped there might be some kind of truce called between these warring parties.

Fat chance.

The battle has grown ever more ferocious, the rhetoric ever more vulgar.

On both sides, it’s ugly, puerile, self-obsessed and frankly, pathetic.

Yet they continue doing it because they’re all winning.

The MSM’s relentless Trump-bashing is driving record newspaper subscription numbers, and cable news and late night show ratings.

But Trump’s winning too, because his base likes nothing more than their guy standing up to the big, bad media beast and going at them toe-to-toe, slug-for-slug.

Controversy, in short, sells.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks on in bemused horror and wonders what the hell is happening to America?

As someone who worked with and likes Donald Trump, and who worked for and likes CNN, I don’t have a sensible answer to that question.

But I do know this: Trump is deliberately sucking his media foes into a spiders-web from which they will not be able to easily escape.

He’s got the MSM all mindlessly hooked on his drug of choice: Twitter.

Trump knows ego-fuelled journalists can’t resist his abusive and personal tweets about them, and so long as they obsess about those then they are not doing their real job, which is to examine the issues most important to the American people like healthcare, jobs or immigration.

It’s a rough, tough, occasionally very nasty strategy that provokes perpetual outrage in the hysterical liberal community still reeling from the fact he ever won the presidency in the first place.

But it’s also crudely very effective.

I was down in Florida recently and they love Trump more than ever.

They especially love him beating up on the MSM.

As one of the very few people to repeatedly predict Donald Trump had a good chance of becoming President of the United States, let me now make another prediction: if the MSM in America continues to make the biggest story in town their own mutually abusive battle with Trump, it will help not hinder him and he will be re-elected in 2020.

Controversy, in short, sells.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4661406/PIERS-MORGAN-Trump-press-winning-fight.html (“Winning all round: The dirtier the fight gets between Trump and the media the more they BOTH seem to gain but it’s his game, his rules and in the long-run the press will lose, writes PIERS MORGAN“) (emphasis added)

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14 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Do Not Blame Trump: Clinton And Bush Are Two Failed Ex-Presidents, And Obama Is A Racist

Clinton and Bush

The UK’s Daily Mail has reported:

Taking veiled jabs at President Donald Trump, former US presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton told a forum in Dallas on Thursday that they were able to forge mutual bonds of respect and friendship because the other had been gracious in victory and respectful of presidential power.

The two did not mention Trump once during a nearly hour-long discussion where they traded quips and insights.

But they offered indirect references that many in the crowd of about 300 people at the George W. Bush Presidential Library took to be references to the current president.

‘He (Clinton) was humble in victory, which is very important in dealing with other people,’ Bush said at the event to mark a graduation at the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, a partnership among the Bush, Clinton, Lyndon Johnson and George H.W. Bush presidential centers.

The 43rd president said he was impressed by the fact that his predecessor was gracious to his father when he defeated him to win the presidency in 1992.

‘[It] starts with [him] being a person refusing to lord his victory over dad,’ Bush said.

‘Dad was willing to rise above the political contest. Both men displayed strong character. Why do I have a friendship with him? Well, he’s called a brother with a different mother.’

Clinton said: ‘If you want to be president, realize it’s about the people, not about you.

‘You want to be able to say “things were better off when I quit, kid´s had a better future, things were coming together”. You don´t want to say, “God, look at all the people I beat”.’

Current President Trump has come under criticism from Democrats who have said he fires off excessive and unwarranted criticism against his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama and the person he beat in the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton.

______________________

CLINTON’S AND BUSH’S ADVICE FOR TRUMP

When asked by a moderator what is the most important attribute for anyone who aims to be president of the United States, Bush said: ‘Humility.’

‘I think it’s really important to know what you don’t know and listen to people who do know what you don’t know,’ Bush added.

‘Realize it’s about the people, not you,’ Clinton said.

‘A lot of these people who are real arrogant in office, they forget. … You don’t want to say, “God, look at all those people I beat”.’

Bush spoke of the friendship that developed between Clinton and his father, George H.W. Bush.

‘[Clinton] was humble in victory which is very important in dealing with other people,’ Bush said.

‘And I think Dad was willing to rise above the political contest.

‘In other words, it starts with the individual’s character and both men, in my judgment, displayed strong character.’

______________________

Republican Bush said while in office he sought Democrat Clinton’s advice.

Clinton said when he left office he told incoming President Bush that he would offer him help and treat him with respect.

Bush and Clinton said they have enjoyed their lives after the presidency but would not trade their current status for their eight years in office.

‘The decisions you make have a monumental effect on people,’ Bush said, adding humility is a key quality for any president.

‘Presidency is often defined by the unexpected. It makes the job interesting,’ he said.

Clinton said: ‘If you don´t deal with the incoming fire, it will undermine your ability to do anything else. If all you deal with is incoming fire, you can´t keep the promises you made when you were running.’

The two also exchanged jokes about being grandfathers, with Bush saying his grandchildren call him ‘jefe,’ Spanish for ‘chief.’

‘The best thing that can happen to you when you are in politics is to be consistently underestimated,’ Clinton said.

‘I was pretty good at that,’ Bush returned.

______________________

BUSH AND CLINTON – A HISTORY OF AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP

Political opposites turned friends, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush could easily be mistaken for a comedy routine when they get together.

The two former presidents – one a Democrat, the other a Republican – shared laughs and a buddy-like banter on stage Monday, talking about presidential leadership while trading stories about their famous families and life after the White House.

Bill Clinton said he and Bush laughed about people coming up to them at restaurants and asking to take ‘selfie’ photos.

Quipped Bush: ‘At least they’re still asking.’

Clinton revealed that he and Bush would speak twice a year during Bush’s second term, 30-to-45 minute conversations about policy and politics.

While they didn’t always agree, Clinton said he never talked about their discussions and said the talks ‘meant a lot to me.’

Clinton said the test of any democracy is finding ways of having a vigorous debate and still reaching resolution to the nation’s problems.

‘If you read the Constitution, it ought to be subtitled: “Let’s make a deal”,’ Clinton said.

Assessing each other’s leadership qualities, Clinton said Bush did things he thought was right and ‘consistently benefited by being underestimated – and so did I for totally different reasons.’

Bush said Clinton was empathetic and ‘an awesome communicator’ who could ‘really lay out a case and get people all across the political spectrum.’

Ending his comments, he asked Clinton: ‘Is that enough?’

George W. Bush campaigned for president in 2000 on restoring ‘honor and dignity’ to the White House following Clinton’s impeachment over a sex scandal.

But the two former presidents have developed a bond, strengthened by their mutual admiration for the elder Bush, whom Clinton has visited in Maine.

Clinton and the younger Bush worked together on relief efforts after Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010 and have been active in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Bush noted that his book, called ’41: A Portrait of My Father,’ is a ‘love story. It’s a story about seeing someone you admire and learning from them.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4695126/Presidents-Bush-Clinton-Be-humble-victory-responsible-power.html (“‘He’s my brother with a different mother’: George W. Bush gushes over his tight friendship with Bill Clinton as both former presidents hit out at Trump with some veiled jabs about ‘humility’ and ‘arrogance'”) (emphasis added)

Both Clinton and Bush are failed ex-presidents, whose terms in office opened the way for eight years of a black racist being elected.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

Clinton should be in prison with his wife, Hillary.

Lots of us voted for Bush, and are ashamed now that we did so. He and the neocons and their state sponsor were responsible for the Iraq War in which thousands of Americans were killed or maimed, and trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing.

To defame President Trump diminishes their tawdry statures and legacies even more, not his. They are part and parcel of the official Washington “Swamp” that must be drained.

It is sickening to watch these two abject failures, Clinton and Bush, berating their successor. Needless to say, our enemies both domestically and abroad (e.g., North Korea, Russia, China) are salivating.

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15 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Each And Every Democrat Must Be Targeted For Removal Next Year [UPDATED]

Black Racist Maxine Waters

Fred Lucas of the Daily Signal has reported:

It’s a movement that began before President Donald Trump was sworn into office and the drive for impeachment has gone through many iterations.

The earliest rationale was the Constitution’s “emoluments clause,” which came amid loose talk of the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia and emerged as the dominant theme. In lieu of a smoking gun in the Russian matter, the prevailing justification became that Trump tried to obstruct an FBI probe of his former national security adviser.

More recently, the emoluments issue re-emerged when Democratic lawmakers filed lawsuits.

MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and other progressive or “resistance” groups have been advocating for it. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., appears to have gotten the most airtime of anyone in Congress talking about impeaching the president on talk shows and public events.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, delivered the first House floor speech calling for impeaching Trump. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., called impeachment “really the only way we can go.”

But only Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., actually has introduced articles of impeachment. Green’s speech and Sherman’s measure focused on allegations of obstruction of justice.

The House’s Democratic leadership hasn’t taken up the call, in part because such actions are unlikely, based on known facts, to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.

Before getting elected to anything, Boyd Roberts, a California congressional candidate, filed documents with the Federal Election Commission to start a political action committee called Impeach Trump Leadership PAC, as The Hill reported.

The shifting rationales demonstrate a weak argument, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.

“If they had a good case based on real information, I think they would mention it by now and put their cards on the table,” Boehm, a former Pennsylvania state prosecutor and former counsel for the board of directors at the Legal Services Corporation, told The Daily Signal. “They don’t have high crimes and misdemeanors. They don’t have low crimes and misdemeanors.”

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution includes “high crimes and misdemeanors” as grounds for impeachment, along with treason and bribery.

But impeachment is ultimately a political question and Republicans control the House of Representatives. Even if Democrats managed to flip the House and Senate in the 2018 election, it would require a majority vote in the House to impeach a president and two-thirds of the Senate to remove a president from office.

Boehm said overheated impeachment talk now will delay justice if the president is involved in a legitimate, verifiable scandal.

“Democrats should save the heavy artillery for substance,” Boehm said. “They run the risk of being the boy who cried wolf if they say ‘impeach’ about everything.”

The early framework was set in December 2016, six weeks before Inauguration Day, when five Senate Democrats—Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon—sponsored a bill that would require the president, vice president, and their family members to divest from anything that could create a conflict of interest.

The Democrats’ bill also states:

Adopting a sense of the Congress that the president’s violation of financial conflicts of interest laws or the ethics requirements that apply to executive branch employees constitute a high crime or misdemeanor under the impeachment clause of the U.S. Constitution . . .

Before he took office, Trump put his liquid properties such as hotels and golf courses into a trust and resigned from official positions with his businesses, turning the Trump Organization over to his adult sons.

In January, a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, began raising questions about Trump’s businesses and the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which states that:

. . . no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Essentially, the clause prohibits personally profiting from public office. Trump’s children run his businesses now, but there is not a blind trust.

In February, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., filed a “resolution of inquiry” into Trump’s investments that a Huffington Post column framed as the “first legislative step toward impeachment.”

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 22, two days after Trump took office.

“We did not want to get to this point. It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the Constitution before he took office,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.”

A spokeswoman for the organization told The Daily Signal she would try to set up an interview with board Chairman Norman Eisen. However, Eisen didn’t respond as of publication deadline.

However, emoluments faded as grounds for impeachment as some juicy stories about Trump and Russia emerged. After a report in The Washington Post accused Trump of talking about classified information with two Russian officials in the Oval Office, Waters said it rose to the level of impeachment.

In May, Waters referred to that alleged sharing of secrets during the Oval Office discussion at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research organization. The California congresswoman said:

We don’t have to be afraid to use the word impeachment. We don’t have to think that impeachment is out of our reach. All we have to do is make sure that we are talking to the American public, that we are keeping them involved, that we are resisting every day, and we are challenging every day.

Yet another major story occurred after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey while the bureau’s Russia investigation was going on. Some politicians and commentators compared to President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” the multiple firings related to the investigation of the Watergate scandal.

Through a leak Comey admitted to planting, Americans learned of his accusation that the president asked him to “let go” of the FBI’s investigation of his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for misrepresenting his pre-inaugural conversations with the Russian ambassador.

Comey said Trump told him, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Democrats were quick to suggest this amounted to obstruction of justice.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told CNN that Trump’s request to Comey “may well produce another United States vs. Nixon on a subpoena that went to the United States Supreme Court. It may well produce impeachment proceedings, although we’re very far from that possibility.”

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “If these allegations, Senator, are true, are we getting closer and closer to the possibility of yet another impeachment process?”

King replied: “Reluctantly, Wolf, I have to say yes, simply because obstruction of justice is such a serious offense.”

Obstruction of justice has a significant place in impeachment history. President Bill Clinton was impeached on this charge in the House in 1998, and it was the basis of one article of impeachment passed by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 before Nixon resigned.

Obstruction of justice also is the basis for Sherman’s impeachment draft.

After Comey’s June 8 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee provided few revelations, and the obstruction case became more difficult to make, the focus shifted back to the emoluments clause. Democratic state attorneys general sued for information on Trump’s business ties—including his elusive income tax returns.

Comey told the panel the president didn’t order him to drop the case and, when questioned, said he knew of no prosecution based on someone’s “hope.”

Numerous legal scholars said they didn’t believe there was a viable obstruction charge based on the Feb. 14 Oval Office conversation between Trump and Comey.

With an impeachment case based on Russia and obstruction of justice not as strong, emoluments made a comeback in June.

“The I-word is not something you should throw around that much, and the Democrats are playing fast and loose with the emoluments lawsuits, where the merits are weak and the standing claims are laughable,” John-Michael Seibler, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation who has written about Democrats’ various suits, told The Daily Signal.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, both Democrats, sued over the emoluments clause, accusing the president of violating the Constitution regarding foreign governments doing business with the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Following that, 198 congressional Democrats filed a lawsuit making essentially the same claim.

“The lawsuits would define emoluments so broadly [that the provision] would be used against anyone,” Seibler said. “It’s basically an op-ed before the court.”

“You look at the bill Sen. Warren sponsored,” he added. “The lawsuits ask for declaratory judgment to fill in very wide gaps and reasoning.”

See http://dailysignal.com/2017/07/10/democrats-hatch-plans-a-b-and-c-to-impeach-trump/ (“Democrats Hatch Plans A, B, and C to Impeach Trump“) (emphasis added)

This is war!

The removal of each and every Democrat must begin with the despicable black racist Maxine Waters, who is worse than Barack Obama.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-9716 (“Why Do So Many Americans Hate This Woman?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

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20 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The Ugly And Twisted Face Of A Vile Disgusting Black Racist [UPDATED]

Black Racist Maxine Waters

Kyle Olson has written in the American Mirror:

Is 78-year-old “Auntie” Maxine Waters seriously going to make a run for the White House in 2020?

Speculation is increasing as it’s revealed the California congresswoman and darling of Trump haters nationwide will be making an appearance in the early presidential primary state of New Hampshire on Sunday.

“According to an invitation, obtained by WMUR from Democratic sources, Waters will be in the state on July 23 for the picnic to be held at the Miller Farm in New Durham,” WMUR reports, where she will hobnob with the Strafford County Democratic Committee.

President Trump has been a favorite punching bag for Waters, who seems to spin a new conspiracy theory about his administration and aides every few days.

Waters has been intentionally antagonistic towards the president’s supporters, as well.

During a screed on the House floor in March, Waters played the race card and the patriotism card against supporters of the president.

“Mr. Speaker, my position against this president and his administration is clear. I oppose this president. I do not honor this president. I do not respect this president,” Waters said during a nearly 9-minute speech.

“African-Americans have struggled and fought historically, many African-Americans have paid a huge price fighting for justice and equality in this country, have died for it. I don’t have to call the names of Martin Luther King and all the others. We have paid a price, we have fought.

“But guess what? Despite the fact that America has not always been there for us, we’ve always been there for America. We have fought in America’s wars. We have suffered discrimination, we have suffered isolation and undermining. But we stand up for America, oftentimes when others who think they are more patriotic, who say they are more patriotic, do not,” Waters said.

“When we fight against this president, and we point out how dangerous he is for this society and for this country, we’re fighting for the democracy. We’re fighting for America. We’re saying to those who say they’re patriotic but they’ve turned a blind eye to the destruction that he’s about to cause this country, ‘You’re not nearly as patriotic as we are.’”

Waters made it clear her mission is not to represent her constituents, but destroy Trump.

The president “is not good for America,” she said.

“African-Americans know this. The Black Caucus understands this. And for those members of the Black Caucus representing our leadership, who went to meet with him, they have laid out to him all of this, what our care and concerns are all about. But in the final analysis, we really don’t expect anything from him.

“And my mission and my goal is to make sure that he does not remain president of the United States of America,” Water said.

Waters already has the backing of key far-left thought leaders.

In April, Salon Editor-at-Large d. Watkins published a video on Twitter in which he provided 5 reasons “why Maxine Waters should be our next president.”

“Maxine understands the people,” Watkins said as his #5 reason.

“Number 4, Maxine Waters has an amazing reputation of being a fearless, outspoken advocate for women, the poor, children, people of color — pretty much everybody that was left out of the Trump campaign,” he said.

Watkins said #3 is because of her opposition to the war in Iraq.

“That’s something that (Hillary) Clinton, (George W.) Bush, (Donald) Trump, (John) McCain, all of those people couldn’t really figure out,” he said.

Watkins said Waters “loves the Millennials and we love her back,” he said.

His justification was that Waters’ is “learning our language and using the internet.”

Watkins’ number one reason?

“She’s not afraid to attack the right,” he said.

“These are tough times and in tough times we need a tough leader,” Watkins said. “That’s why I nominate Maxine Waters to be our next president.”

See http://www.theamericanmirror.com/maxine-2020-waters-appearance-nh-sunday/ (“MAXINE 2020? Waters appearance in NH on Sunday“); see also
https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-10070 (“This Is The Twisted Face Of Pure Evil“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10446 (“Each And Every Democrat Must Be Targeted For Removal Next Year“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-9716 (“Why Do So Many Americans Hate This Woman?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

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21 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Shut Down The Mueller Witch Hunt, And Drain The Swamp! [UPDATED]

President Trump

Justin Sink and Steven T. Dennis have written for Bloomberg Politics:

President Donald Trump’s interview with the New York Times on Wednesday has stirred speculation he may consider firing Special Counsel Robert Mueller for investigating Trump’s business dealings as part of the Russia probe.

But Trump can’t fire Mueller directly, according to the law that authorizes Mueller’s probe. If he tried, he could set off a chain-reaction that would throw the Justice Department into upheaval.

Only the person acting as attorney general, currently Rod Rosenstein on matters related to the probe, can fire Mueller, and he’s said he won’t do it without “good cause.” So Trump would first have to purge the upper ranks of the Justice Department until he finds someone willing to follow his orders and dismiss the special counsel.

He’d almost certainly begin by dismissing Rosenstein, whose political loyalties Trump questioned in the Times interview on Wednesday in which he also warned Mueller against broadening his investigation. Such a scenario would parallel President Richard Nixon’s 1973 “Saturday Night Massacre,” when Nixon forced out the top two officials in the Justice Department in order to oust the Watergate special counsel.

“I don’t think that’s politically survivable, and it’s not clear how much collateral damage he has to do to in order to put himself into a position to have somebody fire Mueller,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island.

Expanding Investigation

Mueller’s investigation has expanded to examine a broad range of transactions involving the president’s businesses, including dealings by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a person familiar with the probe told Bloomberg News. Trump told the Times that if Mueller examined his family’s finances beyond any relationship with Russia he’d consider it “a violation.”

“There is no possible way anybody at the White House could be seriously thinking about firing Mueller,” said Senate Bob Corker of Tennessee, a Republican. “I don’t even want to comment on that because that’s so far out of bounds it couldn’t possibly be a serious discussion.”

Undercutting Mueller

Trump has indicated he would try to undercut Mueller’s credibility. In the New York Times interview, Trump said Mueller has “many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

Separately, the Washington Post reported Thursday night that Trump’s legal team is exploring ways to question Mueller by building a case that he has conflicts of interest in overseeing the investigation. The Post also cited one unidentified person familiar with the effort as saying that Trump has asked his advisers about his authority to grant pardons to aides, family members or even himself.

A conflict of interest is one of the grounds that an attorney general can cite to remove a special counsel under Justice Department regulations, according to the Post.

A Congressional Research Service report lays out how a special prosecutor can be removed.

“To comply with the regulations, the Attorney General himself must remove the special counsel, not the President or a surrogate (unless, as noted previously in this report, the Attorney General has recused himself in the matter under investigation),” the agency concluded from its legal research.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when asked on Thursday if Trump would try to remove Mueller, said that “the president has no intention to do so at this time.”

Brand, Boente

But Trump does possess authority to fire Rosenstein for any reason, including refusal to remove Mueller from the post. If Trump did so, the decision would then fall to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the third-ranking official in the Justice Department.

That’s what happened in 1973, when then-Solicitor General Robert Bork became the acting attorney general and fired the special counsel after the department’s top two officials quit rather than carry out Nixon’s order.

Brand is a conservative who served in the department under President George W. Bush and doesn’t have a background in criminal prosecutions. If Trump fired Rosenstein, Brand might resign because she and Rosenstein were nominated together, have a close working relationship and went through their confirmation hearings as a team.

Dana Boente, the acting assistant attorney general for national security, would be next in line if Trump also removed Brand. Boente has carried out controversial Trump orders before; in January, when Acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to defend the president’s travel ban against predominantly Muslim nations, Trump replaced her with Boente, who defended the ban.

‘No Intention’

To be sure, there’s plenty of reason to believe Trump will not actually carry out his implicit threat against Mueller. For one, there is not yet indication that the special counsel is probing Trump Organization businesses outside of its connections to Russia or Russian citizens.

And while Trump allies have floated the idea of firing Mueller before, Sanders said he wasn’t planning to do so.

Still, Trump’s other precedent-shattering decisions have underscored that he doesn’t feel bound by Washington’s traditions, or a fear of the political ramifications.

He defended his dismissal of former FBI Director James Comey in his interview Tuesday with the Times, saying that while he agreed it had caused him a political headache, it was “a great thing for the American people.”

The president’s attack on his own attorney general in the same interview also reinforced notions that he is agitated by the Russia investigation.

Trump said Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation after failing to disclose contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. during his confirmation hearing was “very unfair to the president.” And he indicated that had he known Sessions would give up control of the Russia probe, he never would have appointed him to the job.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

‘Constitutional Crisis’

Across town, the Trump interview and the larger controversy over the Russia investigation was palpable in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing during which the panel unanimously advanced Comey’s replacement, Christopher Wray.

“Now what happens next?” said Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “Will the president move again to try and dismiss Mr. Mueller, the special counsel? Will he do his best to try and end the investigation of the FBI? Will Attorney General Sessions be complicit if he moves in that direction?

“We don’t know the answers to those questions but I would tell you that we’re on the footsteps, doorstep I should say, of a constitutional crisis in this country.”

See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/trump-move-to-fire-mueller-likely-would-trigger-purge-at-justice (“Here’s the Chain Reaction Trump Could Set Off by Trying to Fire Mueller“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/mueller-is-said-to-expand-probe-to-trump-business-transactions (“Mueller Expands Probe to Trump Business Transactions“)

Clearly, both Presidents Clinton and Obama used their constitutional pardon powers broadly (e.g., the pardoning of Marc Rich, in the case of Clinton).

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich#U.S._indictment_and_pardon (Marc Rich: “U.S. indictment and pardon”) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon#United_States

Politics is a rough-and-tumble business, which is especially true in our nation’s capital these days—where the Democrats, their far-Left “Mainstream Media” (MSN) cohorts, and Neanderthals in the GOP are bent on destroying the Trump presidency and reversing last year’s presidential election results.

This has been “war” since the Left realized that our President might actually be elected. It must be fought as a war, with no niceties involved. Those of us who lived through Watergate understand the stakes, and know who our domestic enemies are—which are just as “lethal” to this great nation’s future as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and our other enemies globally.

President Trump’s supporters elected him to “drain the Swamp” in Washington, D.C., which is putrid to say the least, and has been for decades. Most Americans realize this; and there will be a “constitutional crisis” if it is not drained as the president promised.

No guts, no glory. President Trump did not get his party’s nomination and become our president by being a timid soul. We elected him to be bold and to defy Washington’s decadent, “do nothing”-positive traditions.

For openers, he should pardon those close to him who are or may become targets of the despicable Mueller’s witch hunt, and shut it down completely.

Nothing less will suffice.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“)

Lastly, Christopher Wray is not a Trump loyalist, and his nomination for FBI Director should be pulled by the Trump White House.

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28 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Trump Needs A Leader At Justice [UPDATED]

President Trump

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Given the bravery he showed in stepping out front as the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions deserves better from his boss than the Twitter-trashing he has lately received.

The attorney general has not only been loyal to Trump and his agenda, he has the respect and affection of ex-colleagues in Congress and, more broadly, of populists and conservatives nationally.

Trump’s tweets about Sessions are only demoralizing his base.

Yet the president is not wrong to be exasperated and enraged.

A yearlong FBI investigation into Russian hacking has failed to produce a single indictment. Yet the president watches impotently as a special counsel pulls together a lethal force, inside his own administration, whose undeclared ambition is to bring him down.

Trump’s behavior suggests that he sees the Mueller threat as potentially mortal.

How did we get to this peril point when there is no evidence that Trump or any senior aide colluded in the hacking? As for the June 2016 meeting with the Russians, called by Donald Trump Jr. when told by a friend that Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton, even that was no crime.

Foolish, yes; criminal, no. So, again, how did we get to where talk of impeachment and presidential pardons fills the air?

First, Attorney General Sessions, as a campaign adviser and surrogate for Trump who had met with the Russian ambassador, had to recuse himself from the investigation. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein then assumed oversight authority.

Trump then fired FBI Director James Comey and boasted to Russia’s foreign minister about having gotten the “crazy nut job” off his case. His Oval Office comments leaked. Comey then leaked notes of his meeting with Trump. Rosenstein then washed his hands of the mess by naming a special counsel.

And he chose a bulldog, ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Hence, where are we? Despite zero evidence of Trump or his aides colluding in the hacking, a counterintelligence investigation is evolving into a criminal investigation. Mueller is now hiring veteran investigators and prosecutors specializing in white-collar crime.

This is not a witch hunt. It is an Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn, where the most colorful eggs are likely to be the tax returns and the financial records of Trump, who built a real estate empire in a town where winners brag about how they gutted the losers.

Every enemy of Trump is going to be dropping the dime on him to Mueller. Moreover, there is no history of special counsels being appointed and applauded by the press, who went home without taking scalps.

Trump understands this. Reports of his frustration and rage suggest that he knows he has been maneuvered, partly by his own mistakes, into a kill box from which there may be no bloodless exit.

What Trump needs is a leader at Justice who will confine the Mueller investigation to the Russian hacking, and keep Mueller’s men from roaming until they hit prosecutorial pay dirt.

Consider now Trump’s narrowing options.

He can fire Jeff Sessions. But that will enrage Trump’s base to whom the senator is a loyal soldier. And anyone Trump nominates as AG would not be confirmed unless he or she pledged not to interfere with Mueller.

He could direct Rosenstein to fire Mueller. But Rosenstein would assume the Elliot Richardson role in the Saturday Night Massacre, when that AG refused to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, resigned, and was canonized as a martyr by the Never-Nixon media.

Even if Trump finds a Justice Department loyalist to play the role of Solicitor General Robert Bork, who carried out Nixon’s orders and fired Cox, this would only mean Mueller’s departure. Mueller’s staff of prosecutors and investigators would still be there, beavering away.

When Archibald Cox was fired, Nixon ordered his entire office shut down. Yet, within days of the firestorm, it was up and running again with a new special prosecutor. And impeachment resolutions were blossoming in the House.

Another Trump option would be to leave Mueller alone and hope for a benign outcome. But from reports of his rage at the recusal of Sessions and unwillingness of Rosenstein to restrict Mueller to the Russian hacking scandal, Trump seems to sense that an unrestricted investigation represents a mortal threat to his presidency.

And all the talk of impeachment and pardons suggests that this city can also see what lies over the next hill. After all, we have been here before.

From his history, Mueller is not a man to be intimidated by charges of bias. These will only steel his resolve to pursue with his subpoena power every document he wants, including tax returns, until he has satisfied himself.

The president is unlikely to view this process with indulgence, and patience does not appear to rank high among his virtues.

We are headed for a collision between President Trump and Director Mueller.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-entering-kill-box-127396 (“Is Trump Entering a Kill Box?“) (emphasis added)

One option would be to fire Sessions and the despicable Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who launched the Mueller “witch hunt”—and withdraw the nomination of the disloyal Christopher Wray to be FBI Director—and name new recess appointments, which would not require immediate Senate confirmation.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment (“Recess appointment”—”[A] recess appointment must be approved by roughly the end of the next calendar year”)

Coupled with the President’s exercise of his pardon powers to “exonerate” and protect those closest to him, this would allow the new Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General to effectively shut down the Mueller witch hunt, and for the new FBI Director to launch investigations into the criminal actions of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others of their ilk. But such decisive actions would reverberate around the world, like former President Richard Nixon’s actions did.

Obviously the overarching concern is America’s survival in this very dangerous world; and this may break in the President’s favor, with hitherto unknown dimensions.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10505 (“North Korea EMP Threat Advancing Faster Than Expected“)

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30 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Defund The Left’s PBS And NPR

Daniel Holloway of Variety has reported:

PBS chief Paula Kerger is sounding an alarm over the undecided future of federal funding for public broadcasting.

“This is a dynamic situation and the outcome is uncertain,” Kerger said Sunday at the Television Critics Association press tour. Kerger’s bi-annual exchange with reporters was dominated by the looming threat of defunding — which Kerger said would have a catastrophic effect.

“For stations in rural parts of the country, it is a significantly greater part of their budget,” Kerger said of Corporation for Public Broadcasting money. “If that funding goes away, it represents an existential crisis.”

In May, President Donald Trump proposed a federal budget that would eliminate most funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB received an advanced appropriation of $445 million for 2020 — funding for public broadcasting is set two years in advance — with Trump proposing to eliminate nearly all of that. The bulk of CPB money is distributed through grants to PBS and NPR member stations, who use it primarily to cover operational costs.

In rural areas where broadband access is limited and local public television stations are among the only programming options, CPB funding can account for more than 50 percent of a station’s budget.

“PBS itself will not go away, but a number of our stations will,” Kerger said, talking about the possible outcome should CPB be defunded. “There isn’t a plan B for that. For all of us in public media, we have linked arms to make an effective case because we know what’s at risk if that funding disappears.”

Kerger singled out Alaska as one state where public broadcasting would be especially hard hit.

Two weeks ago, the House appropriations committee passed a bill that approved full funding for public broadcasting. But the House budget committee has voted against continuing federal funding. Budget legislation still must wind its way through the Senate and a possible full House vote.

The loss of funding for local stations would have a trickle-up effect for PBS. “If our resources are diminished, we’ll have to make some very tough decisions in terms of what we can afford to do,” Kerger said.

The PBS chief also spoke about the death last year of “PBS NewsHour” co-host Gwen Ifill. Kerger said that a permanent replacement for Ifill to join host Judy Woodruff should be announced “sometime in the next few months.”

Kerger also stated that PBS will continue to explore original American drama series production following the cancellation in March of “Mercy Street,” the public broadcaster’s first original American drama in more than a decade. “We’re not withdrawing from that arena,” Kerger said. “We’re really very interested in scripted American drama and American stories.”

See http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/pbs-federal-funding-1202510494/ (“PBS Chief Paula Kerger: ‘Outcome Is Uncertain’ for Federal Public-Television Funding“) (emphasis added)

Aside from being blatant shills for America’s despicable Left, PBS, NPR, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and their related entities have paid advertising just like CNN, MSNBC and other FAKE NEWS organs.

They should not receive one penny of governmental funding of any kind, not just federal funding. They are propaganda arms of the Left, and they must be treated as such.

Nothing less will suffice.

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31 07 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Democrats And Republicans Are Brain Dead

President Trump

Donald Trump is America’s first Independent president. According to Gallup polling, approximately 42 percent of Americans, on average, identify as political Independents.

Lots of us were Democrats once, or Republicans, and we left both parties and will not go back. We elected President Trump and will reelect him in 2020.

Some of us worked on Capitol Hill, or elsewhere in official Washington, and we know how deep and putrid the “Swamp” is, and it must be drained.

There is enormous collective wisdom on the part of the American people, and they know intuitively that it will not be drained overnight.

At a time when both Democrats and some in the GOP are trying to destroy the Trump presidency, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has ambitious plans for us, which will end all of our dreams.

Today, a nation-ending EMP Attack can be launched from North Korea, or from a sub or barge located in the Atlantic or Pacific, or in the Gulf of Mexico or the Sea of Cortez. Our military is partially hardened, but the civilian sector is not.

Only 30 million Americans would survive, which is scary to say the least. This should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout our great nation, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10505 (“North Korea EMP Threat Advancing Faster Than Expected“) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article itself)

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2 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Robert Mueller’s Partisan Witch Hunt Must Be Shut Down, And Its Staff Fired [UPDATED]

Reuters has reported:

A former U.S. Justice Department official has become the latest lawyer to join special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a spokesman for the team confirmed.

Greg Andres started on Tuesday, becoming the 16th lawyer on the team, said Josh Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel.

Most recently a white-collar criminal defense lawyer with New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, Andres, 50, served at the Justice Department from 2010 to 2012. He was deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, where he oversaw the fraud unit and managed the program that targeted illegal foreign bribery.

Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election, among other matters. Congressional committees are also investigating the matter.

That Mueller continues to expand his team means the probe is not going to end anytime soon, said Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr as independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration.

“It’s an indication that the investigation is going to extend well into 2018,” said Ray. “Whether it extends beyond 2018 is an open question.”

The special counsel last month asked the White House to preserve all of its communications about a June 2016 meeting that included the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Russian officials have denied meddling in the U.S. election, and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign.

Among the cases Andres oversaw at the Justice Department was the prosecution of Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford, who was convicted in 2012 for operating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme.

Before that, Andres was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn for over a decade, eventually serving as chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office there. He prosecuted several members of the Bonanno organized crime family, one of whom was accused of plotting to have Andres killed.

A graduate of Notre Dame and University of Chicago Law School, Andres was a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin from 1989 to 1992.

He is married to Ronnie Abrams, a U.S. district judge in Manhattan nominated to the bench in 2011 by Democratic President Barack Obama.

Others on the special counsel team include Andrew Weissmann, chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section; Andrew Goldstein, former head of the public corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan; and James Quarles, who was an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard Nixon.

See http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-lawyer-exclusive-idUSKBN1AH5F9 (“Former Justice Department official joins Mueller team“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-impanels-washington-grand-jury-in-russia-probe-1501788287 (“Special Counsel Robert Mueller Impanels Washington Grand Jury in Russia Probe“)

Like the despicable new FBI Director, Christopher Wray, Andres is an alumnus of the corrupt “Department of Injustice,” and neither of them should have been allowed to serve in our government again, in any capacity. The same thing is true of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“) and http://time.com/4854755/donald-trump-fbi-director-christopher-wray-james-comey-loyalty/ (“President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday that nobody has asked him to take a loyalty pledge. ‘I sure as heck didn’t offer one,’ said Trump FBI nominee Christopher Wray during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. He added that he would not make such a pledge if asked” . . . Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and any possible collusion between Trump’s electoral campaign and the Russian government“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/#comment-10052 (“Another Despicable At The Department Of Injustice“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10484 (“Shut Down The Mueller Witch Hunt, And Drain The Swamp!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix“)

As I have stated previously, investigations must be launched into the criminal actions of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Huma Abedin, James Comey and others in the Obama administration; and they must be indicted, convicted and sent to prison, where true justice will be meted out by their fellow inmates.

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3 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Sad: Nancy Pelosi Holds Aide’s Hand While Navigating Sidewalk [UPDATED]

The American Mirror has reported:

Nancy Pelosi appears to be growing feeble of mind, but now of body, too?

The 77-year-old, three-decade member of Congress was recently approached by a citizen with an ominous message: “Prison time is coming soon. Be ready.”

After leaning in to hear the man’s statement, Pelosi didn’t react and instead, turned and walked away.

An aide approached Pelosi and grabbed her hand as she navigated the sidewalk.

The American Mirror has been documented Pelosi’s bizarre behavior regularly.

In mid-July, the House Minority Leader had a bizarre reaction as a reporter was asking her about North Korean aggression: She giggled.

Pelosi was fielding questions from reporters during her weekly press conference, and as she finished an answer about arts funding, one said, “Speaking of the arts,” as Pelosi giggled.

“Kim Jung In,” he continued, “has been celebrating their ICBM launch with some cultural” events, the reporter said as Pelosi laughed strangely.

Pelosi regained her composure as the reporter went on, before she sighed loudly into the microphone.

As the reporter finished asking his question about whether Pelosi thinks the administration will be able to protect the West Coast from an attack, she justified her bonafides by saying she’s “one of the few members of Congress to have visited Pyongyang.”

During a late June event at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, Pelosi would awkwardly stop mid-sentence repeatedly, stare at the audience, and then continue speaking.

Speaking about her father, Pelosi said, “He was part of a group called the Berkson Group and they did rallies and pageants and parades and um, and when he stood up on the floor of Congress, ‘I stand here as a representative of the—” she said before halting and staring at the audience.

Then she resumed, “members of the Jewish army.”

Moments later, while she was talking about a planning an agenda after losing four special elections, she said, “For us, we have to make sure that our members—-participate in that.”

While urging liberals to tell their Obamacare story, Pelosi said, “At least go to Facebook, Twitter, whatever— Instagram— any platform that you want.”

A short time later, she froze as she was talking about the Republican healthcare overhaul bill.

“Home care— some, you know, people are at home but they still get care from, uh— from Medicaid,” she said, after momentarily staring at the audience and seemingly groping for words.

She added, “It will have a tremendous impact on what families can do for their children—” she said, continuing to motion with her hands with no words being said, before finally saying, “with relationship to what they need to do.”

Pelosi’s continued strange behavior will likely do little to alleviate the concerns many Democrats are now voicing about their leader.

And now she has to have her [hand] held as she navigating a sidewalk?

See http://www.theamericanmirror.com/video-nancy-pelosi-holds-aides-hand-navigating-sidewalk/ (emphasis added; videos omitted)

The Democrats’ long knives are out for Pelosi already.

As Harry Truman remarked, if one wants a friend in official Washington, buy a dog.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10301 (“LONG KNIVES OUT FOR DEMENTED NANCY PELOSI“) and http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article165213507.html (“Democrats begin to see Pelosi as a 2018 problem“) and http://www.theamericanmirror.com/whats-wrong-nancy-orders-lgbt-group-clap-obama-laments-bulleting-youth/ (“WHAT’S WRONG WITH NANCY? Orders LGBT group to clap for Obama, laments ‘bulleting’ of youth“) and http://www.theamericanmirror.com/pelosi-struggles-form-sentences-tv-interview-calls-robert-mueller-mother/ (“Pelosi struggles to form sentences during TV interview, calls Robert Mueller ‘mother’”)

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3 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Mueller The Face Of Evil [UPDATED]

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10544 (“Robert Mueller’s Partisan Witch Hunt Must Be Shut Down, And Its Staff Fired”—”[I]nvestigations must be launched into the criminal actions of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Huma Abedin, James Comey and others in the Obama administration; and they must be indicted, convicted and sent to prison, where true justice will be meted out by their fellow inmates”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10484 (“Shut Down The Mueller Witch Hunt, And Drain The Swamp!”—”[President Trump] should pardon those close to him who are or may become targets of the despicable Mueller’s witch hunt, and shut it down completely. Nothing less will suffice”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10530 (“At a time when both Democrats and some in the GOP are trying to destroy the Trump presidency, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has ambitious plans for us, which will end all of our dreams. Today, a nation-ending EMP Attack can be launched from North Korea, or from a sub or barge located in the Atlantic or Pacific, or in the Gulf of Mexico or the Sea of Cortez. Our military is partially hardened, but the civilian sector is not. Only 30 million Americans would survive, which is scary to say the least. This should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout our great nation, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials: ‘Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.’ We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln”); see also http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/politics/republicans-congress-approval-drops/index.html (“Congress sank to a 10% approval rating in a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday, with roughly five in six Americans saying they disapprove of the country’s legislative body“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10051 (“Another Despicable At The Department Of Injustice“)

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5 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

CIVIL WAR IF TRUMP TAKEN DOWN

Trump faithful

Radio Host Michael Savage’s views are discussed at INFOWars:

Americans could even “resort to mob violence” because they’ll have nothing to lose once they “are finally aware of the fact that they’ve been tricked by their society, and that no matter how hard they work as middle-class people” they have nothing to gain, the Savage Nation host said Friday.

“That is what’s going to happen in this country,” he pointed out. “You have not yet seen mob violence in this country. You’ve seen some mob violence instigated by George Soros’ mobs.”

“But you haven’t seen the thing I’m telling you is coming in this country. You haven’t seen the ‘Day of the Locust’ yet.”

Savage was referring to the 1939 novel The Day of the Locust, which analyzes the violent rage of Americans who slaved away their entire lives only to realize that the American dream was impossible for them to achieve.

“When Eddie finally gets up and says that’s the end of the road, and Eddie’s eyes turn red, and blood is in his eyes, Eddie will turn this society upside down,” the Savage Nation host said. “And if [the left] take(s) Trump down, through Mueller or through any other source and deny Eddie his vote, there will be a civil war in this country.”

“I’m warning you. All of you leftists who think you’re going to steal our vote, you’re wrong.”

“. . . But if you do the next step and steal our president, I warn you. You’ve seen nothing yet,” he added. “You will see the ‘Day of the Locust’ in this country.”

That said, the battle lines for a civil war were drawn even before Trump entered politics.

“Not since the run-up to the Civil War has the nation been more divided,” Savage wrote in his 2014 book Stop the Coming Civil War. “The battle lines have been drawn: The haves against the have-nots.”

However, the globalists may want a civil war: it’ll give them the chance to “transform” America into an EU-style technocratic tyranny which they control.

“Unfortunately for individual people living in this new system, it will also require authoritarian and centralized control over all aspects of life, from cradle to grave,” wrote Patrick Wood in his book Technocracy Rising.

See https://www.infowars.com/savage-civil-war-if-trump-taken-down/ (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10556 (“Mueller The Face Of Evil“)

Of course Savage is correct: Americans – not Russians – elected Donald Trump.

As I have written:

[If Trump was taken down,] targets should be put on the backs of every Democrat, Liberal, far-Leftist, and GOP Neanderthal who made it happen; and there should be “open season” with respect to each of them.

This is not the Watergate era when the “Silent Majority” went silently. The “Flyover States” will be enraged, and their anger will know no bounds.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10048; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10446 (“Each And Every Democrat Must Be Targeted For Removal Next Year“)

Lots of us would take to the streets, and make the racist “Black Lives Matter” movement seem like child’s play.

I was at Berkeley during the “Free Speech Movement” and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, which in retrospect will seem like “amateur night” too.

. . .

If anyone thinks that Mike Pence is the GOP’s “savior,” they are delusional. Many of us never heard of him until Donald Trump picked him; and he and the other Republicans do not have our support, any more than the evil Democrats have.

We rejected both parties, and will never look back. As former Democrats and Republicans, our goal is to destroy both corrupt political parties that do not serve the American people.

See also https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/us/politics/2020-campaign-president- (“Republican Shadow Campaign for 2020 Takes Shape as Trump Doubts Grow“) and http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/democrats-trump-russia-blowback-241346 (“Democrats fear Russia probe blowback“)

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9 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Armageddon: America’s New Civil War Continues Unabated [UPDATED]

EMP Attack on USA

Conrad Black—the Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in the New York Sun:

The battle lines have been so sharply drawn, in what is now a bloodless civil war for direction of U.S. public policy, that the two sides cannot really communicate with each other. There is a commendable candor in Kellyanne Conway’s statement: “They hate us and we hate them.”

I don’t hate the Never Trumpers. I know many of their principal and most articulate spokesmen who have defected from the conservative Republican ranks, and in many cases I have known them for a great many years. I could never entertain allowing a matter of political differences to interfere in a valued friendship. And while I am hopeful that Donald Trump (also a friend) will be a successful president, and am glad that he has the opportunity to govern, I am not so impassioned on the subject that it blinds me to the virtues of some of his detractors or to the president’s shortcomings.

It is, though, impossible to receive a serious hearing from a Never Trumper for a pro-Trump argument, and the pro-Trumpers are generally convinced of the discreditable motives of the Never Trumpers. There is now unfolding what must be the last civilized debate about the trajectory of events in Washington before the civil war moves from the heavy and frequent skirmishing that has intensified since the election to the fight to the death that seems inevitably to impend.

The president said in a powerful address to a very enthusiastic audience in West Virginia last week, where he received the grace of conversion to the Republican party of the formerly Democratic governor, Jim Justice, that the entire special-counsel investigation into relations between the Russian government and the Trump campaign is “a total fabrication” and “an attempt to [reverse] one of the greatest political defeats in American history.” So it is.

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, said on television over the weekend that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could not go beyond the parameters of his specific assignment — Trump campaign — Russia relations and “relevant matters” — without Mr. Rosenstein’s approval. When it was pointed out by Chris Wallace on Fox News that the special-prosecutor investigation of President Clinton had started with financial activities in the Whitewater affair in Arkansas before Mr. Clinton became president and ended with the blue dress and Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Rosenstein made the point that in that case, the special prosecutor, Judge Starr, had to ask the authority of the then-attorney general, Janet Reno, to follow this trail and that any attempt to replicate the pattern by Mr. Mueller would require Mr. Rosenstein’s approval. He stated squarely that he would not approve “a fishing expedition.”

It is also reported by his own counsel that the president has communicated in the appropriate manner, through his counsel, with Mr. Mueller, and that this channel has been entirely constructive. It is possible to believe that Mueller is a man of integrity who will confine himself to his brief and not be transmogrified by his position into an assassin leaking a dumpster-load of tendentious allegations and innuendos to the press every day, in the time-honored manner of U.S. special prosecutors where the president is in the frame.

There is yet to emerge any serious evidence that anyone committed a crime in this area. The entire confection of Russian collusion arose immediately after the election, despite the fact that Democratic officials such as John Podesta had a great deal more to do with the Russians than the Republicans did, and that by historic criteria, there was no justification for a special counsel to be named at all. Some laws had been broken in the Watergate and Iran-Contra and Whitewater matters, apparently by people in or close to the administrations, and although all three investigations were undistinguishedly conducted and led to more injustice than justice, there was at least a reason for them.

In this case, James Comey was fired for cause. He then produced a (vigorously contested) self-addressed memo summarizing a conversation with the president, and leaked it to the New York Times, possibly illegally, for what he volunteered to be the motive of causing the appointment of a special prosecutor to rummage through the administration of the man who fired him. The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had mistakenly told his confirmation hearing he had not met with Russians when he had, and left himself no choice but to recuse.

Mr. Comey’s sour grapes back-stab on the president may have left the just-confirmed deputy attorney general, Mr. Rosenstein, little choice, but he might have found someone other than the close friend and career benefactor of the man who had just, with questionable ethics and legality, generated the apparent need for a special counsel. Some of the president’s public reflections on the subject have muddied the waters, but his chagrin is understandable.

This is the same Comey who whitewashed Hillary Clinton by usurping the role of deciding whether she should be prosecuted in the e-mail controversy. This is not the role of a police chief, but he made a clear case for indictment and then announced that he had decided not to prosecute. Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, had disqualified herself by improperly meeting with President Clinton, but Mr. Comey should have reported to the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, and left the decision to his superiors in the Justice Department.

After the storm he caused by making this decision — ultra vires to him, but popular in the administration — he tried to square things with a brief reopening of the investigation, before slamming it shut again a few days before the election. Comey tried to be the queen-maker, then the nonpartisan investigator and judge, then the returning queen-maker, and then the coup leader against the new king.

This is not the role of the FBI director, and it is irritating to see hostile references to J. Edgar Hoover as the original over-mighty FBI director. Hoover had his faults, but in 47 years in fundamentally the same position as Mr. Comey, he never attempted to influence presidential elections or incite a presidential impeachment, and never presumed to speak for the attorney general.

Whether Mr. Mueller conducts himself professionally or not, there is no excuse for a special counsel to have been appointed, and the president was (as he need not have mentioned publicly) badly let down by Mr. Sessions. The scramble of nominal Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, and drooling partisan Democrats such as Chris Coons, to pass redundant, grandstanding legislation to protect Messrs. Sessions and Mueller is nauseating.

Mr. Trump ran against and defeated both parties, the Clintons, the Bushes, and Obama, and most of their close collaborators in the Congress. The war continues and until the president has enough economic progress, or enough time without gaffes that the hostile press can amplify into a wall of noise, or a sudden foreign-policy success such as with North Korea or even Venezuela, if he wants to start moving the needle of the polls upwards, he will face the problem of cowardice and lethargy in his own party.

Senator McConnell’s statement in Kentucky this week that Mr. Trump was responsible for the almost total failure of the Republican Congress to achieve anything in the past six months was just more self-serving claptrap from a familiar and tiresome source. A lengthy pastiche of picayune snobberies in the New Yorker this week, from discredited journeymen such as Eliot Cohen, typifies the vacuity of most of the Trump-hate.

The attacks are on Trump’s admittedly grating (but steadily less frequent) flippancies and inattention to precise detail, but comparisons with Warren Harding in the New Yorker piece prove merely that, as in the 2016 Clinton campaign, there is no opposition argument except defamation and the pomposities of aspiring salonniers.

The president’s course is clear: Speak and tweet more carefully, as he is generally doing; show more focus; shut down the nonsense and indiscretions in the White House; prepare an unstoppable tax bill; take a strong line in North Korea (after three successive administrations have failed and dropped this horrible mess into his lap); denounce the Mueller investigation for the outrage that it is; do the necessary to set another special counsel on the backs of the Clintons, Lynch, Comey, Wasserman Schultz, and the unmaskers and leakers (the Democrats deserve the heat more than Trump does and this one-way shooting gallery must end); and, if Mr. Rosenstein allows Mr. Mueller to go fishing, challenge it in the courts.

This is a civil war and the apostate conservatives should realize that, if Mr. Trump loses, they don’t get a new Reaganism in the Republican party and renewed importance and self-importance for themselves; they get the semi-permanent return of those responsible for the decline of America, the sleazy transformation of America into an ineffectual force in the world and into an inert, economically stagnant welfare state. The choice, for sane conservatives, is Mr. Trump or national disaster, and it’s time for my learned friends on the highbrow right to come back to (the troubled American part of) this planet — though I see no sign of its happening.

See http://www.nysun.com/national/a-bloodless-civil-war-is-coming-into-focus-with/90049/ (“A Bloodless Civil War Is Coming Into Focus With Attacks on Trump“) (emphasis added)

The “fight to the death” that Conrad Black describes is on, already.

All of the forces that were arrayed against Donald Trump as he sought the presidency are focused now on destroying him. They must be vanquished like never before in America’s history.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10559 (“CIVIL WAR IF TRUMP TAKEN DOWN”—”[If Trump was taken down,] targets should be put on the backs of every Democrat, Liberal, far-Leftist, and GOP Neanderthal who made it happen; and there should be ‘open season’ with respect to each of them. This is not the Watergate era when the ‘Silent Majority’ went silently. The ‘Flyover States’ will be enraged, and their anger will know no bounds”)

There was no need for the appointment of a special counsel, and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should be fired, summarily. Mr. Black’s assertion that the counsel’s authority might be challenged in the courts is, of course, pathetic and laughable. The judiciary is the very worst of the legal profession, and cannot be trusted.

As discussed in my article above, like Abraham Lincoln, Donald Trump must ignore it and continue to go about this great nation’s business. Our enemies around the world (e.g., China, Russia, North Korea, terrorists) are salivating over our plight.

Indeed, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is steps away from launching a nation-ending EMP Attack, which might kill all except 30 million Americans. The rest would be highly vulnerable to secondary attacks by conventional forces or biological weapons.

This should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout America, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency—which are seditious and treasonous, and constitute madness.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10505 (“North Korea EMP Threat Advancing Faster Than Expected“)

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11 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The Democrats Are Thoroughly Evil

Democrats are evil

Mark Lilla has written in The Wall Street Journal:

Donald Trump’s surprise victory in last year’s presidential election has finally energized my fellow liberals, who are networking, marching and showing up at town-hall meetings across the country. There is excited talk about winning back the White House in 2020 and maybe even the House of Representatives in the interim.

But we are way ahead of ourselves—dangerously so. For a start, the presidency just isn’t what it used to be, certainly not for Democrats. In the last generation, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won the office with comfortable margins, but they were repeatedly stymied by assertive Republicans in Congress, a right-leaning Supreme Court and—what should be the most worrisome development for Democrats—a steadily growing majority of state governments in Republican hands.

What’s more, nothing those presidents did while in office did much to reverse the rightward drift of American public opinion. Even when they vote for Democrats or support some of their policies, most Americans—including young people, women and minorities—reject the term “liberal.” And it isn’t hard to see why. They see us as aloof, elitist, out of touch.

It is time to admit that American liberalism is in deep crisis: a crisis of imagination and ambition on our side, a crisis of attachment and trust on the side of the wider public. The question is, why? Why would those who claim to speak for and defend the great American demos be so indifferent to stirring its feelings and gaining its trust? Why, in the contest for the American imagination, have liberals simply abdicated?

Ronald Reagan almost single-handedly destroyed the New Deal vision of America that used to guide us. Franklin Roosevelt had pictured a place where citizens were joined in a collective enterprise to build a strong nation and protect each other. The watchwords of that effort were solidarity, opportunity and public duty. Reagan pictured a more individualistic America where everyone would flourish once freed from the shackles of the state, and so the watchwords became self-reliance and small government.

To meet the Reagan challenge, we liberals needed to develop an ambitious new vision of America and its future that would again inspire people of every walk of life and in every region of the country to come together as citizens. Instead we got tangled up in the divisive, zero-sum world of identity politics, losing a sense of what binds us together as a nation. What went missing in the Reagan years was the great liberal-democratic We. Little wonder that so few now wish to join us.

There is a mystery at the core of every suicide, and the story of how a once-successful liberal politics of solidarity became a failed liberal politics of “difference” is not a simple one. Perhaps the best place to begin it is with a slogan: The personal is the political.

This phrase was coined by feminists in the 1960s and captured perfectly the mind-set of the New Left at the time. Originally, it was interpreted to mean that everything that seems strictly private—sexuality, the family, the workplace—is in fact political and that there are no spheres of life exempt from the struggle for power. That is what made it so radical, electrifying sympathizers and disturbing everyone else.

But the phrase could also be taken in a more romantic sense: that what we think of as political action is in fact nothing but personal activity, an expression of me and how I define myself. As we would put it today, my political life is a reflection of my identity.

Over time, the romantic view won out over the radical one, and the idea got rooted on the left that, to reverse the formula, the political is the personal. Liberals and progressives continued to fight for social justice out in the world. But now they also wanted there to be no space between what they felt inside and what they did in that world. They wanted their political engagements to mirror how they understood and defined themselves as individuals. And they wanted their self-definition to be recognized.

This was an innovation on the left. Socialism had no time for individual recognition. Rushing toward the revolution, it divided the world into exploiting capitalists and exploited workers of every background. New Deal liberals were just as indifferent to individual identity; they thought and spoke in terms of equal rights and equal social protections for all. Even the early movements of the 1950s and ’60s to secure the rights of African-Americans, women and gays appealed to our shared humanity and citizenship, not our differences. They drew people together rather than setting them against each other.

All that began to change when the New Left shattered in the 1970s, in no small part due to identity issues. Blacks complained that white movement leaders were racist, feminists complained that they were sexist, and lesbians complained that straight feminists were homophobic. The main enemies were no longer capitalism and the military-industrial complex; they were fellow movement members who were not, as we would say today, sufficiently “woke.”

It was then that less radical liberal and progressive activists also began redirecting their energies away from party politics and toward a wide range of single-issue social movements. The forces at work in healthy party politics are centripetal; they encourage factions and interests to come together to work out common goals and strategies. They oblige everyone to think, or at least to speak, about the common good.

In movement politics, the forces are all centrifugal, encouraging splits into smaller and smaller factions obsessed with single issues and practicing rituals of ideological one-upmanship. Symbols take on outsize significance, especially in identity-based movements.

The results of this shift are now plain to see. The classic Democratic goal of bringing people from different backgrounds together for a single common project has given way to a pseudo-politics of self-regard and increasingly narrow and exclusionary self-definition. And what keeps this approach to politics alive is that it is cultivated in the colleges and universities where liberal elites are formed. Here again, we must look to the history of the New Left to understand how this happened.

After Reagan’s election in 1980, conservative activists hit the road to spread the new individualist gospel of small government and free markets and poured their energies into winning out-of-the-way county, state and congressional elections. Also on the road, though taking a different exit on the interstate, were former New Left activists heading for college towns all over America.

Conservatives concentrated on attracting working people once attached to the Democratic Party—a populist, bottom-up strategy. The left concentrated on transforming the outlook of professional and party elites—a top-down strategy. Both groups were successful, and both left their mark on the country.

Up until the 1960s, those active in the Democratic Party were largely drawn from the working class or farm communities and were formed in local political clubs or on union-dominated shop floors. That world is gone. Today they are formed primarily in our colleges and universities, as are members of the overwhelmingly liberal-dominated professions of law, journalism and education.

Liberal political education, such as it is, now takes place on campuses that are far removed, socially and geographically, from the rest of the country—and particularly from the sorts of people who once were the foundation of the Democratic Party. And the political catechism that is taught is a historical artifact, reflecting more the idiosyncratic experience of the ’60s generation than the realities of power politics today.

The experience of that era taught the New Left two lessons. The first was that movement politics was the only mode of engagement that actually changes things; the second was that political activity must have some authentic meaning for the self, making compromise seem like a self-betrayal.

These lessons, though, have little bearing on liberalism’s present crisis, which is that of being defeated time and again by a well-organized Republican Party that keeps tightening its grip on our institutions. Where those lessons do resonate is with young people in our highly individualistic bourgeois society—a society that keeps them focused on themselves and teaches them that personal choice, individual rights and self-definition are all that is sacred.

It is little wonder that students of the Facebook age are drawn to courses focused on their identities and movements related to them. Nor is it surprising that many join campus groups that engage in identity movement work. But the costs need to be tallied.

For those students who will soon become liberal and progressive elites, the line between self-discovery and political action has become blurred. Their political commitments are genuine but are circumscribed by the confines of their self-definitions. Issues that penetrate those confines take on looming importance, and since politics for them is personal, their positions tend to be absolutist and nonnegotiable. Those issues that don’t touch on their identities or affect people like themselves are hardly perceived. And classic liberal ideas like citizenship, solidarity and the common good have little meaning for them.

As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.

Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X . . . This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.

Conservatives complain loudest about today’s campus follies, but it is really liberals who should be angry. The big story is not that leftist professors successfully turn millions of young people into dangerous political radicals every year. It is that they have gotten students so obsessed with their personal identities that, by the time they graduate, they have much less interest in, and even less engagement with, the wider political world outside their heads.

There is a great irony in this. The supposedly bland, conventional universities of the 1950s and early ’60s incubated the most radical generation of American citizens perhaps since our founding. Young people were incensed by the denial of voting rights out there, the Vietnam War out there, nuclear proliferation out there, capitalism out there, colonialism out there. Yet once that generation took power in the universities, it proceeded to depoliticize the liberal elite, rendering its members unprepared to think about the common good and what must be done practically to secure it—especially the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort.

Every advance of liberal identity consciousness has marked a retreat of liberal political consciousness. There can be no liberal politics without a sense of We—of what we are as citizens and what we owe each other. If liberals hope ever to recapture America’s imagination and become a dominant force across the country, it will not be enough to beat the Republicans at flattering the vanity of the mythical Joe Sixpack. They must offer a vision of our common destiny based on one thing that all Americans, of every background, share.

And that is citizenship. We must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals for solidarity—including ones to benefit particular groups—in terms of principles that everyone can affirm.

Black Lives Matter is a textbook example of how not to build solidarity. By publicizing and protesting police mistreatment of African-Americans, the movement delivered a wake-up call to every American with a conscience. But its decision to use this mistreatment to build a general indictment of American society and demand a confession of white sins and public penitence only played into the hands of the Republican right.

I am not a black male motorist and will never know what it is like to be one. If I am going to be affected by his experience, I need some way to identify with him, and citizenship is the only thing I know that we share. The more the differences between us are emphasized, the less likely I will be to feel outrage at his mistreatment.

The politics of identity has done nothing but strengthen the grip of the American right on our institutions. It is the gift that keeps on taking. Now is the time for liberals to do an immediate about-face and return to articulating their core principles of solidarity and equal protection for all. Never has the country needed it more.

See https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-liberal-crackup-1502456857 (“The Liberal Crackup“) (emphasis added)

There is no hope for the evil Democrats—or “progressives,” as they prefer to style themselves, in a vain attempt to mask the truth about them.

The face of the party consists of the demented Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, the despicable black racists Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings and Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and others of their ilk.

They are the reasons why lots of us left the party years ago, and will never come back.

We are outraged at their attacks on our president. Needless to say, our enemies around the world are salivating.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is steps away from launching a nation-ending EMP Attack, which might kill all except 30 million Americans. The rest would be highly vulnerable to secondary attacks by conventional forces or biological weapons.

As I have written above, this should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout America, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency—which are seditious and treasonous, and constitute madness.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10477 (“The Ugly Face Of A Vile Disgusting Black Racist“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10555 (“Sad: Nancy Pelosi Holds Aide’s Hand While Navigating Sidewalk“)

Black Racist Maxine Waters

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14 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

End The Left’s Crusade Against America [UPDATED]

An editorial in the New York Sun states:

The issue in Virginia is, in our view, the statue of Robert E. Lee. Why is it there at Charlottesville? For what does it stand? Was the city right to decide to take it down? What about all the other places that have monuments to the general? We read that there are more than a thousand. There is also Arlington House-the Robert E. Lee Memorial, amid America’s national cemetery (once the Lee estate). Congress, by a unanimous vote in 1925, made it a memorial to the confederate commander. Currently being refurbished, it is due to reopen next month.

It is important for all Americans to take a stand against the violence that erupted at Charlottesville. The Sun is in the camp that reckons President Trump made a mistake, since corrected, in failing at first to focus his condemnation of the violence on that was perpetrated by the white supremacists and anti-Semites. It’s not that Mr. Trump’s reference to violence on “many sides” was wrong in the abstract. But there will be time for the rest of it. Mr. Trump failed to hit mark that had presented itself at Charlottesville.

Instead, the president gave us a dodge of the kind we hear so often from the left — like the New York Times reacting to Palestinian Arab attacks on Israelis by denouncing the cycle of violence. It’s off. It makes readers imagine the Times doesn’t take seriously violence against Jews. In reference to Virginia, it appeared, if briefly, that Mr. Trump dasn’t irk the ilk of David Duke, whose presence at Charlottesville was one of the signals of the overt racism and anti-Semitism that riddled the event.

Yet Mr. Trump is not the cause of this crisis. The fact is that people were in a fury over Lee before the violence erupted at Charlottesville and before Mr. Trump was elected. We can see why (and not just because the greatest editor to have flown the flag of the Sun, Charles Dana, rode against Lee with U.S. Grant and helped make Grant president of the Republic Lee betrayed). The central act of Lee’s life — levying war against the United States — was the constitutional definition of treason. He was lucky to escape the gallows.

It is said that in Lee’s post-war years, the ex-general stood for reconciliation. It’s hard , though, to say that reconciliation was advanced by the movement to erect so many monuments to him. It was pursued by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Charlottesville monument was one of theirs. They were animated by the Lost Cause movement. Their work was launched decades after the war, and over the years has, in our opinion, wreaked incalculable damage on our Republic.

The cause of the Union itself would have been better pursued by a proper lustration. And we suppose a form of that is what is underway in all the protests against the Lee monuments. It’s a dangerous moment, though, for the process of lustration can ignite its own kind of illiberalism. Which is why national leadership is at a premium. The National Park Service’s Web site says that it plans to reopen Arlington House-the Robert E. Lee Memorial, in September. Maybe President Trump will seize the occasion to speak about the meaning of a Lee memorial in the capital even as Charlottesville dismantles its own.

See http://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-robert-e-lee-lustration/90051/ (“The Robert E. Lee Lustration”) (emphasis added)

Unlike the totally-despicable black racists on the Left—such as Barack Obama and his wife Moochie, Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings and Al Sharpton—Robert E. Lee was an American patriot, albeit he fought on the losing side of our first Civil War.

Today, many Americans (including yours truly) have ancestors who served on both sides of that tragic and brutal war. We salute Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, in particular, for holding our Union together against all odds.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero“)

If Lee deserved the gallows for treason as the Sun‘s editorial suggests, then surely those on America’s Left today who are trying to destroy the Trump presidency deserve it too.

They want to erase our history and destroy the past; and institute revisionist history, and regimented thinking and speech control aka “political correctness.”

Whether their focus is on statues or so-called man-made “global warming” or thousands of other issues, large and small, their efforts are the fulfillment of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where all of the animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-7531 (“The Thought Police Are At It Again“)

It is important for all Americans to take a stand against the violence that the thoroughly-evil “Black Lives Matter” and similar Leftist groups have incited across the country, with surely more to come.

It is important for all Americans to take a stand against the witch hunt that is being perpetrated by Robert Mueller and his treasonous urchins, and shut them down completely.

Our great nation’s future is at stake; and our enemies around the world are salivating. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is steps away from launching a nation-ending EMP Attack, which might kill all except 30 million Americans. The rest would be highly vulnerable to secondary attacks by conventional forces or biological weapons.

This should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout America, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency—which are seditious and treasonous, and constitute madness.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10575 (“Armageddon: America’s New Civil War Continues Unabated“)

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15 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Charlottesville Was A Disgrace, George Orwell Was Right [UPDATED]

Animal Farm in America

In George Orwell’s timeless and prescient Animal Farm, all animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme and subjugated the other animals. The “Pigs” today in America are its far-Left, Democrats and so-called “progressives.”

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/global-chaos-and-helter-skelter/#comment-10419 (“The Obama-Merkel Vision Of A New World Order Is A Utopian Fantasy And Orwellian“)

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson.

Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee’s statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park.

With Heyer’s death, the brawl was elevated to a moral issue. And President Donald Trump’s initial failure to denounce the neo-Nazi and Klan presence was declared a moral failure.

How did we get here, and where are we going?

In June of 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof gunned down nine Christians at an evening Bible study in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. A review of Roof’s selfies and website showed him posing with the Confederate battle flag.

Gov. Nikki Haley, five years in office, instantly pivoted and called for removal of the battle flag from the Confederate war memorial on the State House grounds, as a “deeply offensive symbol of a brutally offensive past.”

This ignited a national clamor to purge all statues that lionize Confederate soldiers and statesmen.

In Maryland, demands have come for removing statues and busts of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision. Statues of Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson, President Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee have been pulled down in New Orleans.

After Charlottesville, pressure is building for removal of the statues of Lee, Jackson, Davis and Gen. “Jeb” Stuart from historic Monument Avenue in Richmond, capital of the Confederacy.

Many Southern towns, including Alexandria, Virginia, have statues of Confederate soldiers looking to the South. Shall we pull them all down? And once all the Southern Civil War monuments are gone, should we go after the statues of the slave owners whom we Americans have heroized?

Gen. George Washington and his subordinate, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, were slave owners, as was Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson. Five of our first seven presidents owned slaves, as did James K. Polk, who invaded and annexed the northern half of Mexico, including California.

Jefferson, with his exploitation of Sally Hemings and neglect of their children, presents a particular problem. While he wrote in the Declaration of Independence of his belief that “all men are created equal,” his life and his depiction of Indians in that document belie this.

And Jefferson is both on the face of Mount Rushmore and has a memorial in the U.S. capital.

Another term applied to the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville is that they are “white supremacists,” a mortal sin to modernity. But here we encounter an even greater problem.

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

They believed European Man had the right to rule the world.

Beginning in the 16th century, Western imperialists ruled much of what was called the civilized world. Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?

And if being a segregationist disqualifies one from being venerated in our brave new world, what do we do with Woodrow Wilson, who thought “Birth of a Nation” a splendid film and who re-segregated the U.S. government?

In 1955, Prime Minister Churchill, imperialist to the core, urged his Cabinet to consider the slogan, “Keep England White.”

Nor is a belief in the superiority of one’s race, religion, tribe and culture unique to the West. What is unique, what is an experiment without precedent, is what we are about today.

We have condemned and renounced the scarlet sins of the men who made America and embraced diversity, inclusivity and equality.

Our new America is to be a land where all races, tribes, creeds and cultures congregate, all are treated equally, and all move ever closer to an equality of results through the regular redistribution of opportunity, wealth and power.

We are going to become “the first universal nation.”

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

Nevertheless, on to Richmond!

See http://buchanan.org/blog/if-we-erase-our-history-who-are-we-127510 (“If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.yahoo.com/news/pressure-builds-us-remove-confederate-monuments-152424959.html (“Pressure builds in US to remove Confederate monuments“) and http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/08/15/abrams-calls-for-removal-of-confederate-faces-off-stone-mountain/ (“Abrams calls for removal of Confederate faces off Stone Mountain“) and https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/texlege/2017/08/15/exclusive-political-divisions-escalate-between-red-states-and-blue-cities/557806001/ (“Divisions escalate between red states and blue cities“) and https://spectator.org/hypocrisy-at-charlottesville/ (“Hypocrisy at Charlottesville”—”We do not have to agree with what the Nazis and white nationalists stand for to defend their constitutional right to assemble and speak. The courts have long ruled that even hate speech is protected speech. Had there been no counter demonstration and media spotlight, a few hundred racists would have gathered in Charlottesville and had no impact on the national conversation. Instead, they were met by the ongoing violence of the Antifa and the hate group Black Lives Matter and a police force that stood down, just as the campus police did when the Antifa attacked people at the University of California, Berkeley”—”It did not take long for President Trump to be blamed for the violence in Charlottesville. Yet, President Trump did not invite white nationalists to the White House and give them legitimacy as President Obama did with Black Lives Matter”)

It has been reported that the Jewish “White Supremacist Leader” in Charlottesville, Jason Kessler, had been a supporter of Barack Obama.

See http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/08/report-white-supremacist-unite-right-leader-jason-kessler-obama-occupy-supporter/ (“White Supremacist Leader in Charlottesville Jason Kessler Was Obama Supporter – Occupy Protester“)

Freedom of speech is protected in the United States, for radical skinheads (or neo-Nazis) and the followers of “Black Lives Matter” alike. However, when they cross the line and engage in violence, they must be condemned in the strongest of terms, arrested and prosecuted, which has not happened with the BLM groups and it should.

The idea of removing statues and “revisionist history” is repugnant to lots of Americans (including yours truly) who had ancestors that served on both sides of our tragic and brutal Civil War, which was a mass exercise in carnage.

We salute Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, in particular, for holding our Union together against all odds.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero“)

. . .

Clearly, Barack Obama is a black racist. If one has any doubts, please read his book, “Dreams from My Father.” It is all there, in his own words.

And he despised the British Empire, and removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

If the Left wants to “correct” history, what about two of its fallen heroes, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. All references to both of them must be removed.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-2830 (“The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. Emerges . . . Finally“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10559 (“CIVIL WAR IF TRUMP TAKEN DOWN”)

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17 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Moronic Political Correctness In Montana [UPDATED]

Confederate Fountain at Hill Park in Helena

Angela Brandt has written in Helena, Montana’s Independent Record:

Though no official vote was taken, the Helena City Commission has directed the city manager to remove a Confederate memorial from a city park.

Native American lawmakers in Montana called on the city to remove the granite fountain from Hill Park in downtown Helena Tuesday, following a weekend of violence, including a death, at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. During an administrative meeting that included nearly two hours of public comment Wednesday, commissioners said the removal should be completed as quickly as possible, citing public safety concerns.

Helena City Manager Ron Alles said he will meet with his staff to figure out the best process of removal. The timing will be part of the discussion.

“Now, it’s up to me,” Alles said after the meeting. “I need to digest it as well.”

“I need to get the logistics and specs,” he added.

Helena Mayor Jim Smith said city officials have not yet decided what will happen to the monument after it is removed.

Smith has previously said he opposed removing or altering the fountain, which was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and dedicated in 1916, but he has changed his mind in light of recent events.

“I believe the time has come for the removal of the fountain,” Smith said.

Commissioners Dan Ellison, Robert Farris-Olsen and Ed Noonan agreed that the fountain should be removed. They did not waver after listening to statements from 40 people, whose comments ranged from pleas to keep to monument honoring fallen soldiers to queries about the possibility of rededicating the fountain.

Ellison spoke to the urgency of the matter. In the past, he has expressed concern with quick action without much community involvement. He said he will “accept any reproaches that result from my doing the same today.”

“I believe that if the fountain remains in the park there will likely be a confrontation where high emotions coupled with strong beliefs spill over into violence,” Ellison said.

“Rather than the commission’s usual approach of starting with a discussion, gathering input, resolution of intention, public hearings and proceeding deliberately to a consensus decision, taking action today seems to be the best option before us,” he added.

Commissioner Andres Haladay, who in 2015 proposed that the commission give the fountain a new name, said Wednesday he was conflicted about whether it should be removed altogether.

“I’m still equivocal on it,” he said.

In their letter to the city commission, members of the American Indian Caucus in the Montana Legislature said such monuments have stood for segregation, secession and slavery.

The monument first gained significant public attention two years ago, after a man who had been photographed with the Confederate flag shot and killed nine people at a South Carolina church. At the time, Smith cautioned against “obliterating history.” Commissioners instead decided to install a plaque to explain the origin of the fountain and the group that dedicated it. The plaque has not yet been installed.

Smith said the monument would be removed even if the signage were in place today. Officials said they have been working to perfect and condense the wording for the sign, which has contributed to the delay.

The plaque was to have acknowledged that the United Daughters of the Confederacy openly supported the Ku Klux Klan and its mission of white supremacy.

Alles said the first draft of the wording was so long, a billboard would have been needed to fit it all. Requirements of the Americans with Disability Act also contributed to the delay, he said.

Noonan said he wasn’t on the commission when the decision to install sign was made, but he is in support of the signage. He said that because that didn’t happen, the monument needs to be removed.

“Underneath it all is a history of racism,” he said, adding his concern that the fountain could be used as an excuse for violent acts. “At the history of this moment, that’s what these monuments have become.”

“I see the seriousness of it,” Noonan added.

Farris-Olsen also voiced safety concerns but said the racism issue is a much larger one.

“I think we have an obligation to take it down,” he said. “I wish we would have two years ago.”

***

Public comments

Of all the citizens who voiced their views at Wednesday’s meeting, a slight majority supported the removal of the fountain. One speaker called the fountain a “blight on the City of Helena.” Another referred to the monument as a stain on the city.

A group of Helena-area legislators, some of whom spoke at the meeting, released a statement earlier in the day encouraging the council to remove the fountain. The letter was signed by Sens. Mary Caferro and Jill Cohenour, as well as Reps. Kim Abbott, Mary Ann Dunwell, Jenny Eck, Janet Ellis and Moffie Funk.

“White Supremacy, Neo-Nazism, and White Nationalism should not be accepted or supported in any way here in Helena. Our city embraces diversity and pluralism,” they wrote.

“This fountain stands as a symbol of racism and slavery. It simply has no place in our city. Elected officials in cities and states in the east and southeast are removing similar statues and symbols and Helena should join them.”

A few asked if the monument could be rededicated or repurposed in some fashion.

“By removing the fountain, we’re erasing history,” said Paul Pacini, who serves on the Helena Citizens’ Council. Pacini said the monument could serve as a catalyst for further conversations for which residents could learn and grow. “We need to make a change,” he said.

Wilmot Collins, who is running against Smith for mayor, said he wanted to support a plaque but now believes removal is the right decision. He said it’s not about erasing the past but more a safety concern.

“This is about it’s time to move on,” he said.

The ACLU of Montana and the Montana Racial Equity Project also supported the removal in a joint statement released Wednesday.

“This monument romanticizes one of the most dehumanizing, violent, and destructive periods in our history. It honors those who fought with the Confederacy to preserve slavery and willfully disregards the horrific legacies of the Confederacy, including lynchings, segregation, and the systemic oppression of Black Americans, Native Americans, and immigrants that continues to this day,” the statement reads. “We must ensure that each person who walks the streets and parks of our town feels welcome. We, as Helenans and Montanans, cannot expect to communicate such equality when a symbol of racism, inequality, and oppression stands prominently in Hill Park.”

Some asked for the fountain to be relocated and preserved, saying it belongs in a museum with extensive background information.

Barbara Kirkland said the fountain is a testament to grieving women and should remain in place.

“They were not making a political statement. And it’s not a political statement,” she told the commission.

“It isn’t that important. It’s a fountain,” Kirkland said.

“Why don’t we just get on with living?”

See http://helenair.com/news/local/city-of-helena-to-remove-confederate-fountain/article_606b058a-4e09-5802-a7b8-dc07f2b0a27e.html (“City of Helena to remove Confederate fountain“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10601 (“Charlottesville Was A Disgrace, George Orwell Was Right“)

The City Commission should be removed.

Our family’s first ancestors in America were a husband and wife from Rottweil, Germany (near Stuttgart), who arrived on a sailing ship in New York City in 1849, long before Ellis Island became an immigrant inspection station in 1892. They had 16 kids, and settled in New Ulm, Minnesota, near Minneapolis.

When the Civil War began, the husband served with the Union Army, having become assimilated that quickly. In the late 1800s, cousins settled in Helena and have been there ever since.

On my mother’s side were Brits, Scots and Irish, the first of whom came to the Charlottesville area of Virginia in 1760. He was a successful merchant and befriended Thomas Jefferson, who lived not far away at Monticello.

The idea of removing statues and “revisionist history” is repugnant to lots of Americans who had ancestors that served on both sides of our tragic and brutal Civil War as mine did, which was a mass exercise in carnage.

We salute Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, in particular, for holding our Union together against all odds, which was a monumental task.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero“)

If the Left wants to “correct” history, what about two of its fallen heroes, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., who had “feet of clay.” Perhaps all references to them should be removed as well. And what about the black racist, Barack Obama? If one has any doubts about his racist beliefs, please read his book, “Dreams from My Father.” It is all there in his own words.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-2830 (“The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. Emerges . . . Finally“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

As a footnote, I was counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where I staffed former Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black American senator since Reconstruction after the Civil War—with Barack Obama being the third. Later, I was Brooke’s chief of staff.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/edward-w-brooke-is-dead/ (“Edward W. Brooke Is Dead“)

Lastly, what about shutting down all of the casinos of so-called “Native Americans,” and eliminating their “indian reservations” completely. Surely, they committed violence and engaged in atrocities, which should be remedied. If we are going to revisit history, let’s do that too.

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19 08 2017
Juan vega

Tim great to join you in the trenches to do battle against the enemies of those that hate this great nation. Last October I wrote an essay predicting a Hillary Rodham Clinton loss because that’s what Obama wanted so he could lead the shadow government. I was amazed that I was so right and ashamed to see so called American patriots from the GOP being accomplices to national suicide.

Liked by 1 person

19 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Juan, for your kind words and prescient thinking.

I remember some of your wonderful and important comments at the Wall Street Journal:

(1) “[C]riminality in the Democratic Party is a badge of honor.”

(2) “[T]he growth of those that you and I must fight want a politically correct world to dominate in a world devoid of feelings. To them the STATE is the new god. To those of us that live with faith as a guideline[,] life is much easier even in the face of pain and insults because or our innate optimism in the human race.

“Notice how moral relativism in [the] left works with a couple of examples.

“Public service ads for animal shelters plead for funds to save animals in shelters is played with music that can make you tear up. Where are the ads for saving the unborn. Is the life of a puppy or a kitten worth more than a child in the womb?

“The fight for gay marriage is not about the need to allow two human beings to live in peace and to be entitled to spousal benefits. The agenda is to destroy a key foundation of Christian faith for a man and woman to be joined in marriage. Gay unions need not be called marriage but a contract.

“These two issues alone attack faith in many levels.”

Here is my latest: https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10610 (“Charlottesville Is Biggest Fake News Of Summer, And The War Against White America”)

Keep up the good work! 🙂

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18 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

America’s Second Civil War: We Are Not The Same Country [UPDATED]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“They had found a leader, Robert E. Lee – and what a leader! . . . No military leader since Napoleon has aroused such enthusiastic devotion among troops as did Lee when he reviewed them on his horse Traveller.”

So wrote Samuel Eliot Morison in his magisterial “The Oxford History of the American People” in 1965.

First in his class at West Point, hero of the Mexican War, Lee was the man to whom President Lincoln turned to lead his army. But when Virginia seceded, Lee would not lift up his sword against his own people and chose to defend his home state rather than wage war upon her.

This veneration of Lee, wrote Richard Weaver, “appears in the saying attributed to a Confederate soldier, ‘The rest of us may have . . . descended from monkeys, but it took a God to make Marse Robert.’”

Growing up after World War II, this was accepted history.

Yet, on the militant left today, the name Lee evokes raw hatred and howls of “racist and traitor.” A clamor has arisen to have all statues of him and all Confederate soldiers and statesmen pulled down from their pedestals and put in museums or tossed onto trash piles.

What has changed since 1965?

It is not history. There have been no great new discoveries about Lee.

What has changed is America herself. She is not the same country. We have passed through a great social, cultural and moral revolution that has left us irretrievably divided on separate shores.

And the politicians are in panic.

Two years ago, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called the giant statues of Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson on Richmond’s Monument Avenue “parts of our heritage.” After Charlottesville, New York-born-and-bred McAuliffe, entertaining higher ambitions, went full scalawag, demanding the statues be pulled down as “flashpoints for hatred, division and violence.”

Who hates the statues, Terry? Who’s going to cause the violence? Answer: The Democratic left whom Terry must now appease.

McAuliffe is echoed by Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic candidate in November to succeed McAuliffe. GOP nominee Ed Gillespie wants Monument Avenue left alone.

The election is the place to decide this, but the left will not wait.

In Durham, North Carolina, our Taliban smashed the statue of a Confederate soldier. Near the entrance of Duke University Chapel, a statue of Lee has been defaced, the nose broken off.

Wednesday at dawn, Baltimore carried out a cultural cleansing by taking down statues of Lee and Maryland Chief Justice Roger Taney who wrote the Dred Scott decision and opposed Lincoln’s suspension of the right of habeas corpus.

Like ISIS, which smashed the storied ruins of Palmyra, and the al-Qaida rebels who ravaged the fabled Saharan city of Timbuktu, the new barbarism has come to America. This is going to become a blazing issue, not only between but within the parties.

For there are 10 Confederates in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, among them Lee, Georgia’s Alexander Stephens, vice president to Jefferson Davis, and Davis himself. The Black Caucus wants them gone.

Mount Rushmore-sized carvings of Lee, Jackson and Davis are on Stone Mountain, Georgia. Are they to be blasted off?

There are countless universities, colleges and high schools like Washington & Lee named for Confederate statesmen and soldiers. Across the Potomac from D.C. are Jefferson Davis Highway and Leesburg Pike to Leesburg itself, 25 miles north. Are all highways, streets, towns and counties named for Confederates to be renamed? What about Fort Bragg?

On every Civil War battlefield, there are monuments to the Southern fallen. Gettysburg has hundreds of memorials, statues and markers. But if, as the left insists we accept, the Confederates were traitors trying to tear America apart to preserve an evil system, upon what ground do Democrats stand to resist the radical left’s demands?

What do we do with those battlefields where Confederates were victorious: Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville?

“Where does this all end?” President Trump asked.

It doesn’t. Not until America’s histories and biographies are burned and new texts written to Nazify Lee, Jackson, Davis and all the rest, will a newly indoctrinated generation of Americans accede to this demand to tear down and destroy what their fathers cherished.

And once all the Confederates are gone, one must begin with the explorers, and then the slave owners like Presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison, who seceded from slave-free Britain. White supremacists all.

Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay of Kentucky and John Calhoun must swiftly follow.

Then there are all those segregationists. From 1865 to 1965, virtually all of the great Southern senators were white supremacists.

In the first half of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson and FDR carried all 11 states of a rigidly segregationist South all six times they ran, and FDR rewarded Dixie by putting a Klansman on the Supreme Court.

While easy for Republicans to wash their hands of such odious elements as Nazis in Charlottesville, will they take up the defense of the monuments and statues that have defined our history, or capitulate to the icon-smashers?

In this Second American Civil War, whose side are you on?

See http://www.wnd.com/2017/08/americas-2nd-civil-war-2/ (“AMERICA’S 2ND CIVIL WAR“) (emphasis added)

The Black Caucus should be banned from Congress. Followers of the violent “Black Lives Matter” group should be arrested and imprisoned. Barack Obama should be tried for treason, having sown racial divisions in our great country starting with the racist beliefs that he expressed in his book, Dreams from My Father.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

If Lee deserved the gallows for treason, then surely those on America’s Left today who are trying to destroy the Trump presidency deserve it too. They want to erase our history and destroy the past; and institute revisionist history, and regimented thinking and speech aka “political correctness.”

Are the graves of Confederates to be dug up next, or otherwise desecrated? Will the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials in our nation’s capital be torn down? After all, Lincoln’s original solution for slavery was to ship them back to Africa and create a state for them there.

Should Washington, D.C. be renamed? As I have written:

If the Left wants to “correct” history, what about two of its fallen heroes, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., who had “feet of clay.”

. . .

[W]hat about shutting down all of the casinos of so-called “Native Americans,” and eliminating their “indian reservations” completely. Surely, they committed violence and engaged in atrocities, which should be remedied. If we are going to revisit history, let’s do that too.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10604 (“Moronic Political Correctness In Montana“); see also http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/21/christopher-columbus-monument-in-baltimore-smashed/ (“Christopher Columbus monument in Baltimore smashed to combat ‘white supremacy’”)

And what about the Left’s father, hero and “saint,” Franklin D. Roosevelt? After all, he refused to allow the MS St. Louis to dock here, and sent the Jews aboard back to Europe to meet their fates. And what about FDR and others in his administration who knew about the Nazi death camps, but did nothing about them?

Where does it stop? Or does it, short of our second Civil War? Are we in the midst of it now?

It is important for all Americans to take a stand against the witch hunt that is being perpetrated by Robert Mueller and his treasonous urchins, and shut down their investigation of President Trump completely.

Our great nation’s future is at stake; and our enemies around the world are salivating. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is steps away from launching a nation-ending EMP Attack, which might kill all except 30 million Americans. The rest would be highly vulnerable to secondary attacks by conventional forces or biological weapons.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10505 (“North Korea EMP Threat Advancing Faster Than Expected“)

This should be the number one issue in Washington and throughout America, instead of the nonstop efforts to cripple or destroy the Trump presidency and eradicate our great nation’s history—which are seditious and treasonous acts, and constitute sheer madness.

As George Orwell wrote in his classic, Animal Farm, when the “Pigs” take over and subjugate the other animals, all hope is lost. This is what the evil Left is seeking to accomplish now, and despicable members of the Republican party are joining with them.

May God save the United States of America, the country that so many of us cherish!

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10601 (“Charlottesville Was A Disgrace, George Orwell Was Right“)

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19 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Charlottesville Is Biggest Fake News Of Summer, And The War Against White America [UPDATED]

David Horowitz—a leading conservative thinker, and the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller “Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America,” whose book predicted the anti-Trump left would use race to divide America and undermine the Trump presidency—has written:

The tragedy in Charlottesville could have been an occasion to stop and consider how the tolerance for politically correct violence and politically correct hatred is leading the nation towards civil war.

Instead the media and the political left have turned this incident into the biggest fake news story of the summer, transforming its real lessons into a morality play that justifies war against the political right, and against white people generally.

The organizers of the “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville were repellent racists.

But they came to defend a historic monument honoring a complex man and cause, and not to attack it or presumably anyone else.

They applied for a permit and were denied. They re-applied successfully in a petition supported by the local ACLU.

If they had come to precipitate violence, why would they have gone to the tedious trouble of applying for a permit?

Who knows what — if anything — would have happened if that had been the end of the story and no one had showed up to oppose them.

What Unite the Right actually demonstrated was that the assortment of neo-Nazis, pro-Confederates and assorted yahoos gathered under the banner of the “Alt-Right” is actually a negligible group.

This supposed national show of strength actually attracted all of 500 people.

Compare that to the tens of the thousands who can readily be marshaled by two violent groups of the left — Black Lives Matter and Antifa — and you get an idea of how marginal “white supremacists” are to America’s political and cultural life.

Yet “white supremacy” and its evils became the centerpiece of all the fake news reporting on the event, including all the ludicrous attacks on the president for not condemning enough a bogeyman the whole nation condemns, and that no one but a risible fringe supports.

Talk about virtue signaling!

Omitted from the media coverage were the other forces at work in precipitating the battle of Emancipation Park, specifically Black Lives Matter and Antifa, two violent leftwing groups with racial agendas who came to squelch the demonstration in defense of the monument.

Unlike the Unite the Right demonstrators, the leftist groups did not apply for permits, which would have been denied since there was another demonstration scheduled for that park on that day.

But why should they have applied for a permit, since the mayhem they had previously caused in Ferguson, Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland and other cities, was accomplished without permits, while their criminality was presented by the media as “protests,” and their rioting went completely unpunished.

In other words, there were two demonstrations in Charlottesville — a legal protest by Unite the Right and an illegal protest by the vigilantes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Who started the fight is really immaterial. Both sides were prepared for violence because these conflicts are already a pattern of our deteriorating civic life.

Once the two sides had gathered in the same place, the violence was totally predictable.

Two parties, two culpabilities; but except for the initial statement of President Trump, condemning both sides, only one party has been held accountable, and that happens to be the one that was in the park legally.

What is taking place in the media accounts and political commentaries on this event is an effort by the left to turn the mayhem in Charlottesville into a template for their war against a mythical enemy — “white supremacy” — which is really a war on white people generally.

The ideology that drives the left and divides our country is “identity politics” — the idea that the world consists of two groups — “people of color” who are guiltless and oppressed, and white people who are guilty and oppressors.

This is the real race war.

Its noxious themes inform the mindless, hysterical hatred of President Trump, and the equally mindless support of racist mobs like Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

It is a war from which no good can come. But it won’t be stopped unless enough people have the courage to stand up and name it for what it is.

Emphasis added; see also http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/20/antifa-rise-after-charlottesville-alarms-free-spee/ (“Rise of antifa after violence in Charlottesville alarms free-speech advocates”—”[David] Horowitz warned people to beware [of] the antifa movement. ‘They are the fascists. What other group in America is running around trying to shut down people from speaking by violent methods and defaming them at the same time?’ he asked. ‘That’s what fascism is'”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10606 (“America’s Second Civil War: We Are Not The Same Country“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10614 (“Democrat Alan Dershowitz: Weaponized Russia Probe Endangers Democracy“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/america-a-rich-tapestry-of-life/ (“America: A Rich Tapestry Of Life“)

The demonic Left in the United States must be struck down in the harshest of ways—crushed like cockroaches, or put down like rabid animals.

And yes, lots of us were Democrats once—like Ronald Reagan—but we left that party and will never go back!

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20 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Democrat Alan Dershowitz: Weaponized Russia Probe Endangers Democracy [UPDATED]

Newsmax has reported:

The Russian investigation and the appointment of FBI special counsel Robert Mueller has become a political weapon of the left, one that “really endangers democracy,” self-proclaimed “liberal,” author, and law professor Alan Dershowitz said.

“The idea of trying to create crimes just because we disagree with [Trump] politically, and target him, really endangers democracy,” Dershowitz told “The Cats Roundtable” on 970 AM-N.Y. “[It] reminds me of what Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB, said to Stalin: ‘Show me the man, and I will find you the crime.’

“We shouldn’t be targeting people. We shouldn’t be looking for crimes they’ve committed. We should only [be] using the criminal justice system against obvious crimes. Crimes that are not not stretched and manufactured to fit a particular person.”

Dershowitz’s position is discussed in his new book “Trumped Up: How Criminalization of Political Differences Endangers Democracy,” available on Amazon.

“It’s about how you can disagree with President Trump – you can agree with him – that’s every American’s right,” Dershowitz said.

Dershowitz, who said he will be criticized from all sides – “right, left, and center” – told host John Catsimatidis [that] the U.S. has long been a centrist country and the burgeoning extremes on both left and right are doing it damage. The U.S. needs to move back to the middle, where it belongs, he said.

Also, back to the Russia investigation into meddling in the U.S. election, this is not a left or right issue, it is an American issue that has been going on a long time, Dershowitz said. Having it be settled by Mueller’s special counsel keeps the discussion from where it should be: in the public view.

“[This is] where things happen in darkness and secrecy,” Dershowitz told Catsimatidis. “The American public doesn’t learn about it.

“This [is] exactly the wrong way to approach the problem of Russia’s attempt to influence [the] American election. We do not know what is going on. We get leaks, but the leaks are selective leaks.”

See http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/808642 (emphasis added); see also
<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/22/alan-dershowitz-violent-antifa-movement-is-trying-/http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/22/alan-dershowitz-violent-antifa-movement-is-trying-/<a (Alan Dershowitz: “‘Violent’ Antifa movement is ‘trying to tear down America’”—”Dershowitz said the movement sweeping the country to take down Confederate-era statues that some find offensive is setting a dangerous precedent.
‘Do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues,’ he said. ‘Many of these people, not all of them, many of these people are trying to tear down America. Antifa is a radical anti-American, anti-free market, communist, socialist, hard, hard left censorial organization that tries to stop speakers on campuses from speaking,’ Mr. Dershowitz said. ‘They use violence. And just because they’re opposed to fascism and to some of these monuments shouldn’t make them heroes of the liberals'”
) and href=”https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10610″ target=”_blank”>https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10610 (“Charlottesville Is Biggest Fake News Of Summer, And The War Against White America“)

Amen!

Tragically, as I have written above, America’s second Civil War has begun already, brought to our great nation by the same forces who brought us the last Civil War; namely, the evil Democrats who promoted and perpetuated slavery and racism—and their far-Left sword carriers.

This time, they are being aided and abetted by some in the GOP, who are too stupid to understand what is happening, much less the consequences of their un-American actions!

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22 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Things Are Getting Odd All Over The World

Helter Skelter

Wesley Pruden, editor in chief emeritus of The Washington Times, has written:

We owe Chicken Little an apology. Maybe the sky really is falling. Evidence is everywhere. Cries and whimpers suddenly grow deafening as the landscape is dusted with snowflakes, who imagine they’re unique and have in common with other snowflakes only an extremely low melting point.

Mr. Little seems to have many relatives, most of them Americans. Millions of them went gaga Monday over the eclipse of the sun, a wondrous sight to behold, a reminder once more of God’s dazzling handiwork. But when the eclipse was done many felt greatly let down.

“You mean that’s all there is?” asked one stalled motorist in a traffic jam on U.S. Highway 26 outside Madras, Oregon, where the path of the eclipse first touched the United States. “I thought it would be better than this.”

This recalls the man in landlocked Missouri who took his aged mother, approaching 100, to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She took a long, solemn look, and said, “I thought it would be bigger than this.”

Some of the animals, sometimes smarter than either man or his mate, were more impressed by the sun retreating to a place behind the moon. Birds hushed their singing in Pennsylvania. Contented cows lay down in the potato fields in Idaho. Giraffes and rhinos ran about crazily in a zoo in Tennessee.

But in all fairness to the hard to impress (including the giraffes and rhinos), we’ve all had an exhausting fortnight in America. Pulling down monuments, plastering marble men who had been American heroes only yesterday with paint and contempt, is exhausting work. In Baltimore, vandals got to a statue of Christopher Columbus and tried to punish it, too. Chris was not a Confederate general, so far as any historian knows, but you wouldn’t expect a faithful soldier of the righteous mob to know that. Besides, who knows? If he had come along a little later he would probably have rooted for the Rebs.

Whether anti-Confederate fever or just the dog days of August, things are getting odd all over the world. A judge in India granted a woman a divorce because her husband, who spends freely on tobacco and a mobile phone, declined to build an outhouse and she had to answer nature’s urgent call right out in the open. “In villages women have to wait until sunset to answer nature’s call,” the judge, a man, said. “This is not only physical cruelty, but also outraging the modesty of a woman.”

In Germany, a minister in the government’s finance department who is regarded as a likely successor to Angela Merkel, had a fit when he couldn’t get an English-speaking waiter to answer his summons to table, and proposed a crackdown on anyone speaking English in such places. “Coexistence can only work in Germany if we all speak German,” said Jen Spahn, who like every good German deplores the racism of Donald Trump and the grim bigotry of the millions of American deplorables. “We can and should expect [speaking German] from every immigrant.”

Being holier than thou (and almost everyone else) is hard work, too. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, the heartthrob of the politically correct everywhere, was so put off months ago by President Trump’s Twitter disdain for illegal immigration that he invited everyone everywhere to come on in. “To those fleeing persecution, terror and war,” he tweeted, “Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength.”

But that was then. He didn’t imagine that any of the tired, the poor and the huddled masses in the Middle East could understand English. So he had to warn them this week that asylum seekers shouldn’t imagine they could just rush in to Canada as if they were huddled Mexicans rushing illegally into Texas and Arizona. “If I could directly speak to people speaking asylum,” he told a press conference this week in Montreal, “I’d like to remind them there’s no advantage. Our rules, our principles and our laws apply to everyone.” Imagine that.

With the sky falling across the world, Donald Trump is blamed now even for famine in Africa and the indifference of many people who should be viewing with alarm. “News stories about the famine remain few and far between,” complains Jackson Diehl, deputy editor of the editorial page of The Washington Post. “The reason is fairly obvious. The continuing Trump circus sucks up so much media attention that issues that otherwise would be urgent, such as millions of people starving, are asphyxiated.”

Mr. Diehl is sorry about the indifference of his own newspaper and his well-meaning colleagues, and all that, but the devil makes them do bad things no matter how hard they try. It’s one of the greater ironies of our time.

See http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/21/donald-trump-gets-blamed-for-everything/ (“Madness! Even the giraffes have gone crazy“) (emphasis added)

As I have written:

The demonic Left in the United States must be struck down in the harshest of ways—crushed like cockroaches, or put down like rabid animals.

And yes, lots of us were Democrats once—like Ronald Reagan—but we left that party and will never go back!

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10610 (“Charlottesville Is Biggest Fake News Of Summer, And The War Against White America“)

Like

24 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Democrat Axelrod: Talk Of Removing Trump Is A Very Dangerous Road [UPDATED]

Dead Jackals

Mallory Shelbourne has written for TheHill:

Former Obama advisor David Axelrod on Wednesday cautioned against talk that President Trump is unfit for office, saying it opens the door to a potentially “dangerous road.”

“The inference was that somehow there should be some effort to remove him, or at least that’s how some people would have heard it,” Axelrod told CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

“And I think we have to be very, very careful when we have these discussions because we have a system, a Constitutional system.”

Axelrod specifically referenced comments made by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who said he questions Trump’s fitness for the presidency following his remarks at a Tuesday night rally in Phoenix, Ariz.

“I really question … his fitness to be in this office,” Clapper said late Tuesday.

“I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it, maybe he is looking for a way out.”

Axelrod said while he took Clapper’s remarks seriously, they made him “nervous.”

“And if people get a sense that there’s some extraordinary measure that’s going to be taken to effect what they would view as a bloodless coup,” Axelrod explained.

“Remember a third of the country supports this president, that’s a very dangerous road to go down. And if you ever did go down that road, you’re open a Pandora’s box that will never end.”

See http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/347727-axelrod-warns-talk-of-removing-trump-a-very-dangerous-road (emphasis added)

Finally, a voice of reason from within the far-Left’s pack of dead or semi-dead rabid jackals. Democrat Alan Dershowitz has been a similar positive voice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10614 (“Democrat Alan Dershowitz: Weaponized Russia Probe Endangers Democracy“)

As I have written:

America’s second Civil War has begun already, brought to our great nation by the same forces who brought us the last Civil War; namely, the evil Democrats who promoted and perpetuated slavery and racism—and their far-Left sword carriers.

This time, they are being aided and abetted by some in the GOP, who are too stupid to understand what is happening, much less the consequences of their un-American actions!

See id.

And I added:

The demonic Left in the United States must be struck down in the harshest of ways—crushed like cockroaches, or put down like rabid animals.

And yes, lots of us were Democrats once—like Ronald Reagan—but we left that party and will never go back!

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10610 (“Charlottesville Is Biggest Fake News Of Summer, And The War Against White America“)

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29 08 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

THE GOP SUCKS, BUT . . . [UPDATED]

Black Racist Maxine Waters

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016, Republicans awoke to learn they had won the lottery. Donald Trump had won the presidency by carrying Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three states had gone Democratic in the last six presidential elections.

The GOP had won both houses of Congress. Party control of governorships and state legislatures rivaled the halcyon years of the 1920s.

But not everyone was jubilant. Neocons and Never-Trumpers were appalled, and as morose as they had been since the primaries produced a populist slaughter of what GOP elites had boasted was the finest class of presidential candidates in memory.

And there was this sobering fact: Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote. Her margin would rise to near three million, making this the sixth in seven presidential elections that the GOP lost the popular vote. Trump had cracked the Democrats’ “blue wall,” but a shift of 70,000 votes would have meant a third straight GOP defeat.

Seven months into the Trump presidency, the promise of a new Republican era has receded. It is not because Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have proven to be such formidable adversaries, but because the GOP coalition has gone to battle stations — against itself.

Trump has taken to disparaging Senate Leader Mitch McConnell for failing to pass health care reform, though the decisive vote to kill the bill came from John McCain, who, for his own motives and to media cheers, torpedoed McConnell’s effort and humiliated his party.

And as Allan Ryskind writes in The Washington Times, McConnell is responsible for Neil Gorsuch being on the Supreme Court. Had Mitch not kept his troops in line to block a Senate vote on President Obama’s election-year nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, there would have been no vacancy for Trump to fill with Gorsuch.

McConnell is also indispensable to the Trump-GOP effort to repopulate federal appellate courts with disciples of Antonin Scalia.

What purpose is served by the coach trashing his quarterback — in midseason?

Undeniably, Congress, which the voters empowered to repeal Obamacare, reduce tax rates and rebuild America’s infrastructure, has thus far failed. And if Congress fails to produce on tax reform, the GOP will have some serious explaining to do in 2018.

As for Trump, while public approval of his performance is at record lows for a president in his first year, he has fulfilled some major commitments and has had some major achievements.

He put Gorsuch on the court. He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Accord. He persuaded NATO allies to put up more for defense. He approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

Border security is markedly better. The economic news has been excellent: Record run-ups in the stock market, near full employment, growth approaching the 3 percent he promised. The coal industry has been liberated, and the Trump folks are renegotiating NAFTA.

Yet the divisions over policy and the persona of the president are widening. Trump is disliked and disrespected by many in his own party on Capitol Hill, and much of the Republican media proudly despise him.

And that form of bribery so familiar to D.C. — trashing one’s president at the coaxing of the press, in return for plaudits to one’s “courage” and “independence” — is openly practiced.

More critically, there are disputes over policy that again seem irreconcilable.

Free-trade Republicans remain irredeemably hostile to economic nationalism, though countries like China continue to eat our lunch. In July, the U.S. trade deficit in goods was $65 billion, an annual rate of more than $780 billion.

Interventionists continue to push for confrontation with Russia in the Baltic States and Ukraine, for more U.S. troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, for scrapping the nuclear deal with Iran.

On social issues, the GOP seems split, with many willing to soft-peddle opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion and wait on a Supreme Court that ignited the culture wars to reverse course with new Trump appointees.

Even Cabinet members and Trump aides have let the media know they sharply dissent from Trump’s stand in the Charlottesville brawl. And the coming clash over statues of Confederate soldiers and statesmen is likely to split Northern and Southern Republicans.

The white working class that provided Trump’s his margins in the Middle West wonders why affirmative action, reverse discrimination at their expense, has not been abolished.

As for Speaker Paul Ryan and others committed to entitlement reform — paring back Social Security and Medicare benefits, while raising the contributions of the well-to-do to ensure the long-term solvency of the programs — they have not been heard from lately.

What seems apparent is that the historic opportunity the party had in January, to forge a coalition of conservatives and populists who might find common ground on immigration, trade, border security, spending, culture and foreign policy, is slipping away.

And the battle for the soul and future of the GOP, thought to have been suspended until 2020, is on once again.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/can-gops-shotgun-marriage-saved-127596 (“Can the GOP’s Shotgun Marriage Be Saved?“) (emphasis added)

The Democrats are anti-white, far-Left racists, who—their leaders neglect to mention—gave us slavery and fought to preserve it. They are pure evil; and their violent Antifa and “Black Lives Matter” groups are far far worse.

The face of the party today consists of the demented Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, the despicable black racists Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings and Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and others of their ilk.

They are the reasons why lots of us left the party years ago, and will never go back.

They must be crushed. Nothing less will suffice.

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8 09 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESIDENT NAPOLITANO IS A DISGRACE, AND MUST BE FIRED [UPDATED]

Janet Napolitano

Teresa Watanabe has written for the Los Angeles Times:

The University of California sued the Trump administration Friday for rescinding protections for immigrant students without legal status, saying it unconstitutionally violates their rights on “nothing more than unreasoned executive whim.”

The lawsuit filed in the northern district of California is the first legal effort by a university to block the Trump administration’s decision to end protection from deportation of nearly 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally before age 16, completed high school-level education and stayed out of trouble.

UC President Janet Napolitano, who was an architect of the program in 2012 as U.S. Homeland Security secretary, said the decision to sue the federal government was not taken lightly. The 10-campus system educates about 4,000 students — with teachers, researchers and healthcare providers — who are in the country illegally.

“It is imperative, however, that we stand up for these vital members of the UC community,” Napolitano said in statement. “They represent the best of who we are — hard working, resilient and motivated high achievers. To arbitrarily and capriciously end the DACA program, which benefits our country as a whole, is not only unlawful, it is contrary to our national values and bad policy.

“As a result of the defendants’ actions, the Dreamers face expulsion from the only country that they call home, based on nothing more than unreasoned executive whim,” the complaint reads.

“The University faces the loss of vital members of its community, students and employees. It is hard to imagine a decision less reasoned, more damaging, or undertaken with less care. … Defendants’ capricious rescission of the DACA program violates both the procedural and substantive requirements of the APA (Administrative Procedure Act), as well as the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

The lawsuit was filed with the pro bono support of the law firm Covington & Burling LLP.

Napolitano has said UC campuses will continue to provide services for its immigrant students without legal status, also known as “Dreamers.” Those efforts include:

• Providing in-state tuition

• Maintaining the DREAM loan program for financial aid

• Free legal services

• Campus-based student-service centers

• Directions given to campus police not to contact, detain, question or arrest individuals based on their documentation status, or to enter agreements to undertake joint efforts to make arrests for federal immigration law violations.

See http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-essential-education-updates-southern-uc-sues-the-trump-administration-for-1504896004-htmlstory.html (“UC sues the Trump administration for rescinding DACA protections for immigrant students“)

First, the UC system—of which many of us are graduates—should not be educating anyone who is in our great nation illegally, much less 4,000 of them.

Second, as Barack Obama admitted, what he did was illegal. Yet, the disgraceful Obama-shill Napolitano has double-downed on his illegality, and is seeking to perpetuate it.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/illegal-immigration-the-solution-is-simple/#comment-2203 (“The Immigration Fiat: Another Reason To Remove Obama From The Presidency”—”In his article entitled, ‘Obama’s amnesty-by-fiat: Naked lawlessness,’ [the Washington Post‘s Charles] Krauthammer writes: ‘With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification? Prosecutorial discretion, says Janet Napolitano”—”[B]y Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness”—”What has been done by Obama could be done by a Republican administration; for example, in shutting down all abortion programs, practices and facilities, and arresting those involved—again, by presidential fiat”)

Third, there are reasons to believe that Napolitano is a bull dyke, who certainly should be fired summarily from the UC system for her lawlessness.

See, e.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/geraldo-rivera-janet-napolitano-lesbian-rumors_n_1836793.html (“Geraldo Rivera Addresses Lesbian Rumors About Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary“) and http://www.theblaze.com/news/2012/08/10/ready-janet-napolitano-run-homeland-security-routinely-humiliated-male-staffers-federal-discrimination-lawsuit-alleges/ (“Janet Napolitano-Run Homeland Security Routinely Humiliated Male Staffers, Federal Discrimination Lawsuit Alleges“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186507/Janet-Napolitano-favoured-woman-long-relationship-job.html (“Big Sis Janet Napolitano ‘promoted [a] woman with whom she had a long relationship’ while her female staff tormented male colleagues with ‘sexually charged games'”)

Fourth, unlike Ronald Reagan who put down violence in the UC system when he was California’s governor, Napolitano did nothing when despicable lawless and racist “Black Lives Matter” and Antifa thugs rioted on the Berkeley campus, and prevented the exercise of free speech by conservatives.

For this alone, Napolitano should have been fired. However, her latest actions with respect to illegal aliens are equally repugnant.

As stated previously, all federal funding to Berkeley and other UC campuses must cease until Napolitano and others of her ilk are gone from the UC system.

Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/illegal-immigration-the-solution-is-simple/#comment-9619 (“Cut Off All Federal Funding To Berkeley And Fire The U.C. President!“)

Lastly, three University of California campuses—U.C., Santa Barbara, UCLA and Berkeley—have been named in the top twenty of America’s most dangerous universities. Santa Barbara and UCLA top the list.

Even though the study’s methodology and results may be challenged, this is merely an attempt to shoot or kill the messenger or the bearer of bad news, which occurred in antiquity. To address crime on the UC campuses requires concerted and able leadership, and none exists on the part of the Leftist Napolitano.

See https://insurify.com/insights/ivory-tower-incidents-americas-most-dangerous-universities/ (“Ivory Tower Incidents: America’s Most Dangerous Universities“)

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11 09 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

THE ANTI-TRUMP MUELLER WITCH HUNT MUST BE SHUT DOWN! [UPDATED]

Robert Mueller

Dan Boylan and Guy Taylor have reported in The Washington Times:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is obsessed with President Trump’s network of business interests for suspected money laundering as a critical focus of his investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election last year, according to sources from the intelligence community close to the former FBI director.

One of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the special counsel, who this year hired a staff of 16 lawyers with significant experience prosecuting such financial crimes, is focused on unraveling the Trump family’s tangled financial and real estate empire in a bid to find any connections to “dark money” investments from Russian oligarchs and organized crime figures.

Another source, close to the White House legal defense team, told The Times that subpoenas issued by Mr. Mueller’s office during recent weeks have been focused on financial records of key Trump associates. The subpoenas have come since the special prosecutor began using a District of Columbia grand jury this summer, according to the source, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The special counsel’s office overseeing Mr. Mueller’s probe declined to comment on the specific money laundering claim but suggested in an email to The Times that its probe could extend in a range of directions and may not be limited to the months leading up to the presidential election.

Peter Carr, the top spokesman for the office, pointed specifically to comments that James B. Comey made to Congress as the probe gained momentum last spring. At the time, the former FBI director said the inquiry could involve “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

With the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., talking with congressional investigators late last week behind closed doors for more than five hours over his contacts with Russian government and private figures during the campaign, the agenda of the more buttoned-up Mueller probe has become a popular Beltway guessing game.

On Friday, news broke that Mr. Mueller’s team had approached the White House to interview four top advisers and two recently departed officials regarding what was thought to be a misleading statement crafted to divert attention from a meeting Mr. Trump Jr. held with a Russian lawyer last year.

White House communications director Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer, former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, White House counsel Don McGahn, senior associate counsel James Burnham, and Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman who works with the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner — were among those Mr. Mueller’s team seeks to interview.

The roster of legal talent Mr. Mueller is assembling, legal analysts say, is a clear tell of his investigative priorities in a probe that has infuriated the president and distracted the White House from the day Mr. Trump took office.

In late July, when reports first emerged that investigators were scrutinizing a broad range of transactions involving the business dealings of Mr. Trump, his family and associates, the president said Mr. Mueller would be crossing a red line.

Legal analysts told The Times that Mr. Mueller appears to have barreled over that line. Late last month, his team began working with the IRS’s criminal investigations unit, which specializes in uncovering financial crimes such as tax evasion and money laundering. Martin Sheil, a former criminal investigations agent, told The Daily Beast online news site that the unit’s investigators are the “very best in the business of conducting financial investigations.”

“They will quickly tell you that it took an accountant to nab Al Capone, and it’s true,” Mr. Sheil said.

The focus on financial wrongdoing and money laundering may reflect a desire by Mr. Mueller, a former FBI director, to bring his special counsel probe to the fore with bona fide criminal charges, not political findings, legal analysts argue.

A June assessment by The Heritage Foundation pointed out the hurdles to bringing charges on more politically driven accusations such as that of collusion or obstruction of justice.

In May, Richard Dearlove, former director of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service, told London’s Prospect magazine that past financial dealings have the best chance to haunt Mr. Trump, who has long refused to release his tax returns.

“What lingers for Trump may be what deals — on what terms — he did after the financial crisis of 2008 to borrow Russian money when others in the West apparently would not lend to him,” Mr. Dearlove said.

Ethical issues

Legal analysts told The Times that Mr. Trump’s refusal to make a clean break from his past business and divest his extensive private holdings complicate the probe but also give Mr. Mueller’s investigators a broader field to explore.

“We have seen generations of presidents go out of their way to show the American people they could not be bought,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokesman Jordan Libowitz said, noting that Republican presidents after the Watergate scandal led the charge for stronger protections and disclosure on financial conflict of interest issues.

The election last year presented a unique set of challenges in that regard from both of the major presidential candidates.

In addition to Mr. Trump’s labyrinthine business empire, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced questions stemming from the Clinton Foundation, run by her husband, former President Bill Clinton. The couple were repeatedly accused of using Mrs. Clinton’s position as secretary of state to help fill the nonprofit’s coffers.

Mr. Trump said the ties were so corrupt that the Clinton Foundation should be “shut down immediately.”

“In 2016, we saw the influence of money in politics to an extent that people hadn’t ever seen before — with dark money hiding in places people could not follow,” Mr. Libowitz said. “We are in a time of severe influence of money in politics.”

Three major lawsuits against Mr. Trump argue that he has violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause because of his continued ownership of businesses that receive payments from foreign governments.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is involved in one lawsuit suit. The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Maryland filed another, claiming their jurisdictions have been harmed. In the third lawsuit, almost 200 congressional Democrats said Mr. Trump needs the consent of Congress before accepting foreign payments to any of his businesses.

The Justice Department, on behalf of Mr. Trump, has attempted to block the case from the Washington-based watchdog. The Southern District of New York court is scheduled to hear next month whether the case should continue.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington declined to comment on whether Mr. Mueller was investigating money laundering, but the spokesman said the watchdog was closely watching all developments.

“The issues around payments, particularly around foreign payments, are incredibly serious issues,” Mr. Libowitz said. “So we would not be surprised if that shows up.”

Focus on Manafort

While the Mueller financial probe reaches as far back as a decade before Mr. Trump’s election, one clear focus is on individuals who became involved — if only briefly — with his presidential campaign.

This summer, federal agents raided the house of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a longtime Washington lobbyist. Reports in June and July said Mr. Mueller’s staff, in addition to the House and Senate panels also probing the Russia election issue, had begun working with the Treasury Department’s financial crimes enforcement network, which tracks illicit money flow, to investigate Mr. Manafort’s business dealings.

According to financial records filed last year in Cyprus, Mr. Manafort’s bank accounts showed he was $17 million in debt to pro-Russia interests before he joined the Trump campaign in March 2016. Before his involvement with Mr. Trump, Mr. Manafort worked in Ukraine and invested with a Russian oligarch.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. are also reportedly investigating Manafort real estate transactions for any fraud and money laundering. Investigators are also combing over details from a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan where Donald Trump Jr., senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr. Manafort met with a group of Russians with ties to Russia’s intelligence service and clients accused of money laundering who offered information on Mr. Trump’s election opponent, Mrs. Clinton.

Far-reaching empire

Mr. Trump’s family business, operating as the Trump Organization, is involved in more than 500 subsidiaries and entities. Just over half bear the Trump name, and another 54 include his initials, according to his 92-page Federal Election Commission financial disclosure forms released in 2015.

Trump Organization investments include developing hotels, resorts, residential towers and golf courses in various countries, as well as property management, investing, brokerage and sales and marketing. There is also several hundred thousand square feet of prime Manhattan real estate.

Reuters this year conducted a lengthy investigation of Trump Organization-related public documents, interviews and corporate records that explored the extent of international investment exposure. The analysis found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses had bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in seven Trump-branded luxury towers in southern Florida.

Although the Reuters review unearthed no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr. Trump or his real estate organization, the analysis did find the buyers included several politically connected investors, such as a former Moscow construction firm executive who builds military and intelligence facilities and a St. Petersburg investment bank founder.

At the time, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, dismissed the story. “I can say definitively that this is an overblown story that is media-created,” Mr. Garten told Reuters.

In July, Bloomberg reported that in addition to investigators scrutinizing Russian purchases of apartments in Trump company buildings, they were also examining the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Trump New York real estate deals with Russians and the 2008 sale of a Trump property to a Russian oligarch.

When asked to elaborate, a high-ranking Justice Department official referenced the shroud of secrecy Mr. Mueller has effectively employed to keep Washington guessing his next move.

“Only a very narrow group of people actually know what’s going on,” the source told The Times.

See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/10/robert-muellers-donald-trump-investigation-hints-a/ (“Mueller’s probe focusing on potential money laundering ties to Russian oligarchs“) (emphasis added)

Like so many who have risen up in the lawless confines of the FBI and “Justice” Department, Robert Mueller is an odious creature who is in search of a crime, and determined to destroy the Trump presidency that is changing the face of Washington, D.C.

See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/us/politics/trump-republicans-third-parties.html (“Bound to No Party, Trump Upends 150 Years of Two-Party Rule“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10614 (“Democrat Alan Dershowitz: Weaponized Russia Probe Endangers Democracy“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10556 (“Mueller The Face Of Evil“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10484 (“Shut Down The Mueller Witch Hunt, And Drain The Swamp!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10051 (“Another Despicable At The Department Of Injustice“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10039 (“Special Prosecutor For Trump/Russia Investigation Is A Disaster“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“)

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics In Washington, or “CREW,” is a totally-Leftist group that has no credibility at all.

Where do these witch hunts stop? Or do they, short of our second Civil War? Are we in the midst of it now?

As I have stated previously:

It is important for all Americans to take a stand against the witch hunt that is being perpetrated by Robert Mueller and his treasonous urchins, and shut down their investigation of President Trump completely.

Our great nation’s future is at stake; and our enemies around the world are salivating. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is steps away from launching a nation-ending EMP Attack, which might kill all except 30 million Americans. The rest would be highly vulnerable to secondary attacks by conventional forces or biological weapons.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10606 (“America’s Second Civil War: We Are Not The Same Country“); see also
https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive/#comment-10505 (“North Korea EMP Threat Advancing Faster Than Expected“)

Lastly, investigations must begin—and indictments, convictions and imprisonment must follow—with respect to a broad range of crimes committed by Hillary and Bill Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Huma Abedin and others.

Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/11/judge-order-clinton-lawyers-face-bar-investigation/ (“Judge orders Clinton lawyers to face bar investigation in Maryland“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”)

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13 09 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

TEFLON DON . . . [UPDATED]

Teflon Don

Edward-Isaac Dovere has written in Politico:

Democrats tried attacking Donald Trump as unfit for the presidency. They’ve made the case that he’s ineffective, pointing to his failure to sign a single major piece of legislation into law after eight months in the job. They’ve argued that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and that his campaign was in cahoots with Russia.

None of it is working.

Data from a range of focus groups and internal polls in swing states paint a difficult picture for the Democratic Party heading into the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election. It suggests that Democrats are naive if they believe Trump’s historically low approval numbers mean a landslide is coming. The party is defending 10 Senate seats in states that Trump won and needs to flip 24 House seats to take control of that chamber.

The research, conducted by private firms and for Democratic campaign arms, is rarely made public but was described to POLITICO in interviews with a dozen top operatives who’ve been analyzing the results coming in.

“If that’s the attitude that’s driving the Democratic Party, we’re going to drive right into the ocean,” said Anson Kaye, a strategist at media firm GMMB who worked on the Obama and Clinton campaigns and is in conversations with potential clients for next year.

Worse news, they worry: Many of the ideas party leaders have latched onto in an attempt to appeal to their lost voters — free college tuition, raising the minimum wage to $15, even Medicare for all — test poorly among voters outside the base. The people in these polls and focus groups tend to see those proposals as empty promises, at best.

Pollsters are shocked by how many voters describe themselves as “exhausted” by the constant chaos surrounding Trump, and they find that there’s strong support for a Congress that provides a check on him rather than voting for his agenda most of the time. But he is still viewed as an outsider shaking up the system, which people in the various surveys say they like, and which Democrats don’t stack up well against.

“People do think he’s bringing about change, so it’s hard to say he hasn’t kept his promises,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.

In focus groups, most participants say they’re still impressed with Trump’s business background and tend to give him credit for the improving economy. The window is closing, but they’re still inclined to give him a chance to succeed.

More than that, no single Democratic attack on the president is sticking — not on his temperament, his lack of accomplishments or the deals he’s touted that have turned out to be less than advertised, like the president’s claim that he would keep Carrier from shutting down its Indianapolis plant and moving production to Mexico.

Voters are also generally unimpressed by claims that Trump exaggerates or lies, and they don’t see the ongoing Russia investigation adding up to much.

“There are a number of things that are raising questions in voters’ minds against him,” said Matt Canter, who’s been conducting focus groups for Global Strategy Group in swing states. “They’re all raising questions, but we still have to weave it into one succinct narrative about his presidency.”

Stop, Democratic operatives urge voters, assuming that what they think is morally right is the best politics. A case in point is Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville. The president’s equivocation on neo-Nazis was not as much of a political problem as his opponents want to believe, Democratic operatives say, and shifting the debate to whether or not to remove Confederate monuments largely worked for him.

“He is the president. The assessment that voters will make is, is he a good one or not? While Democrats like me have come to conclusions on that question, most of the voters who will decide future elections have not,” Canter said.

Many of the proposals Democrats are pushing fall flat in focus groups and polling.

The call for free college tuition fosters both resentment at ivory tower elitism and regret from people who have degrees but are now buried under debt. Many voters see “free” as a lie — either they’ll end up paying for tuition some other way, or worse, they’ll be paying the tuition of someone else who’ll be getting a degree for free.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Gerstein Bocian Agne Strategies conducted online polling of 1,000 Democrats and 1,000 swing voters across 52 swing districts for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Their advice to candidates afterward: Drop the talk of free college. Instead, the firms urged Democrats to emphasize making college more affordable and reducing debt, as well as job skills training, according to an internal DCCC memo.

“When Democrats go and talk to working-class voters, we think talking to them about how we can help their children go to college, they have a better life, is great,” said Ali Lapp, executive director of House Majority PAC, which supports Democratic House candidates. “They are not interested. . . . It’s a problem when you have a growing bloc in the electorate think that college is not good, and they actually disdain folks that go to college.”

Medicare-for-all tests better, but it, too, generates suspicion. The challenge is that most voters in focus groups believe it’s a pipe dream — they ask who will pay for it and suspect it will lead to a government takeover of health care — and therefore wonder whether the politicians talking to them about it are being less than forthright, too. Sen. Bernie Sanders is scheduled to release a single-payer bill on Wednesday, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Tammy Baldwin among those joining him.

Health care is one bright spot for Democrats. Obamacare is less unpopular than it used to be, and voters generally want the law to be repaired. Data also show that voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on the issue: Voters rated Trump and Democrats about equally on health care at the start of his term, but Democrats now have a large double-digit lead, according to DCCC polling.

But attacking Republicans on the issue is tricky. The specifics of GOP alternatives are unpopular, but most voters don’t realize Republicans had a plan, so it’s hard to persuade them to care about the details of something that never came to be.

Raising the minimum wage to $15 is as unpopular as it was when the Obama White House tried to make it Democrats’ rallying cry in the 2014 midterms. Participants in battleground-state focus groups said they see that rate as relatively high and the issue in general as being mostly about redistributing money to the poor.

The DCCC memo urges candidates instead to talk about a “living wage,” or to rail against outsourcing jobs.

“What you’re seeing is this thing that Democrats cannot seem to figure out — this notion that somehow if we just put the words together correctly that’ll be the winning message and we’ll win,” Kaye said. “That is the opposite of how the electorate is behaving.”

On immigration and trade, voters remain largely aligned with Trump. Data show that voters believe that the economy is moving in the right direction and resent Democrats attacking its progress.

Late last month, Democratic pollster Peter Hart ran a 12-person focus group in Pittsburgh that shocked him for how quickly and decisively it turned against the president. But he came away wary of Democrats who take that as evidence that attacking Trump will win them elections — even as DCCC and other polling shows voters are turned off by members of Congress who vote with the president 90 percent of the time or more.

“People would like more of a sense of reassurance … than we’ve had so far,” Hart said. “For the Democrats, part of that is recognizing that it’s not that there’s an overwhelming agenda item on the part of the American public — it’s not the economy or health care or some single issue — but it is the sense that somehow things are very out of sorts, and it touches so many different issues.”

That’s the main difference between 2018 and 2006, when Democrats’ strategy primarily consisted of running against an unpopular president, George W. Bush, and an unpopular war.

“It may have worked then,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, the DCCC chair in the 2012 and 2014 cycles and the leader of messaging for House Democrats last year. “I’m not sure it’s going to work now, because the middle class is clamoring for help. Just saying we’re not Trump isn’t going to help.”

More and more, Democratic operatives are gravitating toward pushing for an argument that Trump is just out to make his rich friends richer, at the expense of everyone else. They believe they could include all sorts of attacks on his decisions under that umbrella, from stripping regulations on credit cards to trying to end Obamacare to pushing for corporate tax breaks.

DCCC polling showed that on the question of who “fights for people like me,” Trump and Democrats were split at 50 percent each in February but that Democrats are now ahead by 17 points.

“Everything is a trade-off,” said Guy Cecil, reflecting polling done by his Priorities USA super PAC. Republicans “want to give tax cuts to the rich, and they want to screw the rest of us. This is a quintessential question of whose side are you on.”

Bill Burton, a former Obama aide now at SKDKnickerbocker, said he’s worried Democrats are still not making a convincing argument on economic issues.

But he sees some cause for optimism.

“The question has to be what counts as working — the guy’s approval ratings are in the mid-30s,” Burton said of Trump. “So the other way of looking at this is, everything is working.”

See http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/13/teflon-trump-democrats-messaging-242607 (“Teflon Don confounds Democrats“) (emphasis added)

As I have written previously:

The Democrats are anti-white, far-Left racists, who—their leaders neglect to mention—gave us slavery and fought to preserve it. They are pure evil; and their violent Antifa and “Black Lives Matter” groups are far far worse.

The face of the party today consists of the demented Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, the despicable black racists Maxine Waters, Elijah Cummings and Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow and others of their ilk.

They are the reasons why lots of us left the party years ago, and will never go back.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10652 (“THE GOP SUCKS, BUT . . .“)

BUT . . .

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10716 (“THE ANTI-TRUMP MUELLER WITCH HUNT MUST BE SHUT DOWN!“)

Ban Robert Mueller

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20 09 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

What Did Barack Obama Know, And When Did He Know It?

James Freeman has written for the Wall Street Journal:

This week CNN is reporting more details on the Obama Administration’s 2016 surveillance of people connected to the presidential campaign of the party out of power. It seems that once President Obama’s appointee to run the FBI, James Comey, had secured authorization for wiretapping, the bureau continued its surveillance into 2017. CNN reports:

US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election, sources tell CNN, an extraordinary step involving a high-ranking campaign official now at the center of the Russia meddling probe.

The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.

Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. Two of these sources, however, cautioned that the evidence is not conclusive.

This means the wiretapping was authorized more than ten months ago and perhaps more than a year ago. It was presumably a tough decision for a judge to issue a secret warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enabling the administration to spy on someone connected with the presidential campaign of its political adversaries.

One would presumably only approve such an order if the request presented by the executive branch was highly compelling and likely to produce evidence that the subject of the wiretap was in fact working with Russia to disrupt U.S. elections. Roughly a year later, as the public still waits for such evidence, this column wonders how this judge is feeling now, especially now that CNN has reported that at least two of its three sources believe the resulting evidence is inconclusive.

One would also presume—or at least hope—that seeking to wiretap associates of the leader of the political opposition is not an everyday occurrence in any administration. At the very least, it seems highly unlikely that such a decision would be made by a mid-level official. CNN notes, “Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.”

It seems reasonable for the public to know exactly which officials made this decision and who else they consulted or informed of their surveillance plans. Was the President briefed on the details of this investigation?

And as for the information showing suspicion, where did the FBI come up with that? A September 7 column from the Journal’s Kim Strassel raises disturbing questions, based on recent events and a Washington Post story from last winter. Ms. Strassel writes:

The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation took a sharp and notable turn on Tuesday, as news broke that it had subpoenaed the FBI and the Justice Department for information relating to the infamous Trump “dossier.” That dossier, whose allegations appear to have been fabricated, was commissioned by the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and then developed by a former British spook named Christopher Steele. ..

The Washington Post in February reported that Mr. Steele “was familiar” to the FBI, since he’d worked for the bureau before. The newspaper said Mr. Steele had reached out to a “friend” at the FBI about his Trump work as far back as July 2016. The Post even reported that Mr. Steele “reached an agreement with the FBI a few weeks before the election for the bureau to pay him to continue his work.”

Oddly, even though CNN is the source of this week’s news, the media outlet seems less interested in President Obama’s knowledge of the surveillance activities that occurred on his watch and against his political adversaries than in how President Trump has described them. CNN’s scoop doesn’t even mention Mr. Obama except in the context of Mr. Trump’s accusations of wiretapping against the former president that appeared on Twitter in March. CNN has followed up with another story saying that Mr. Trump’s accusations have still not been proven.

That’s true, although Mr. Trump’s argument may be getting stronger. And whatever Donald Trump’s tweets say, Americans deserve to know how our government came to spy on people associated with the presidential campaign of the party out of power.

See https://www.wsj.com/articles/did-obama-know-about-comeys-surveillance-1505852932 (“Did Obama Know about Comey’s Surveillance?“) (emphasis added)

There is no question that the Obama-Comey-Mueller relationship is an unholy alliance whose goal has been to take down the Trump presidency and reverse last November’s election results.

It is time for history to focus on this threesome, and their “fellow travelers”—Loretta Lynch, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Susan Rice, Huma Abedin and others—and investigate, indict, convict and imprison each of them . . . where true justice can be meted out by their fellow prisoners.

Nothing less will suffice.

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20 09 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Jeff Sessions Must Resign As Attorney General Of The United States

Jeff Sessions

Gregg Jarrett, a Fox News legal analyst and former defense attorney, has written:

Jeff Sessions should never have accepted the position of Attorney General of the United States. His leadership has proven unproductive and ineffectual.

There are two reasons for this.

First, he deceived President Trump by concealing his intent to recuse himself from the federal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Hours after he was sworn in, Sessions began setting his recusal in motion by meeting with Department of Justice officials to discuss stepping aside from the probe. Failing to disclose such a material matter to the president was an egregious betrayal.

Trump was reportedly disgusted and angry with Sessions when he learned of the recusal – rightly so. “If he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me prior to taking office, and I would have picked someone else,” said Trump at a news conference. The president was entitled to know the truth, but Sessions actively hid it from him. Sessions’ deception deprived him of Trump’s confidence and trust which are essential to the job of Attorney General. This ethical impropriety renders him unfit to serve.

Second, Sessions appears either incapable or incompetent. He has resisted producing the documents relevant to the anti-Trump dossier which were subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee. He has failed to appoint a special counsel to reopen the case against Hillary Clinton for likely violations of the Espionage Act in the use of her email server, obstruction of justice for destroying 33,000 emails under congressional subpoena, and potential self-dealing for profit through her foundation. The evidence is compelling.

Moreover, Sessions has taken no action to investigate the unmasking of Trump aides during intelligence surveillance by the Obama Administration. Evidence continues to mount that the incoming president was spied upon for political reasons. Transition officials were unmasked, perhaps illegally. And in one case, the unmasking was leaked to the media which is a crime. Yet Sessions is twiddling his thumbs.

And why hasn’t Sessions investigated the possible criminal conduct of James Comey? The fired FBI Director appears to have falsely testified before Congress, stolen government documents, and leaked them to the media.

Jeff Sessions may have been a fine Senator, but he has proven to be a feckless Attorney General. He should resign. But before he does, he can attempt to rectify the wreckage he has wrought by initiating several necessary criminal investigations and/or appointing a special counsel to do so.

James Comey

Comey was asked, under oath, by the House Judiciary Committee if he decided not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton before or after he interviewed her. He testified, “After.”

Yet, a document uncovered by the Senate Judiciary Committee belies his testimony. A full two months before the FBI ever interviewed Clinton and her top aides, Comey drafted a statement exonerating Clinton. Absent some extraordinary explanation, it appears that Comey’s investigation of Clinton was nothing more than a charade and that he may have lied under oath. If it can be proven, it would constitute the crime of perjury under 18 USC 1621 or a false statement under 18 USC 1001.

This document establishes persuasive evidence that Comey predetermined that Clinton would not be charged. What prosecutor writes a statement absolving a suspect before the evidence is fully gathered, especially from the principal witnesses? No prosecutor I know of. Unless, of course, the fix was in. Unless someone instructed him to protect Clinton or he decided to do it all on his own with a presidential election hanging in the balance.

Either way, it might well constitute obstruction of justice. It is a felony to interfere with a criminal investigation. It is also illegal to use your public office for a political purpose, if that is what Comey was doing.

But Comey’s misconduct and potential illegality don’t stop there. As FBI Director, he converted government documents to his own personal use and leaked at least one of them to the media. As FBI Director, he crafted seven presidential memorandums which are government property, took them into his personal possession when he was fired, and then conveyed one or more of them to a friend for the sole purpose of leaking them to the media. Under 18 USC 641, this could be a crime.

Under no circumstances were these memos “personal,” as Comey claims. They were authored during the course and scope of his employment, composed on a government computer, shared with government employees, and pertained directly to meetings with the president that were central to his job as FBI Director.

Under the Federal Records Act, they are government records. This is indisputable, regardless of what Comey and his lawyers allege. They know this because Comey signed an “Unauthorized Disclosure Agreement” promising that, under penalty of legal action, he would not disseminate workplace documents. If the facts are as stated, he should be prosecuted under the Privacy Act.

Finally, four of the seven memos were “classified,” according to the FBI. If Comey conveyed any of them to an outside source, this would constitute an Unauthorized Removal of Classified Documents (18 USC 1924) or a violation of the Espionage Act (18 USC 798) under which Clinton should have been charged when Comey was FBI Director. The irony is lost on no one. Yet, Sessions appears to have taken no action.

Before he resigns, Sessions must open a full investigation and convene a grand jury to determine whether criminal charges should be brought against Comey. In the alternative, he can appoint a second special counsel to investigate the case. The current special counsel, Robert Mueller, is a long-time friend, ally and mentor to Comey. Mueller is not likely to include Comey in his current investigation, even though he has authority to do so under the directive he received.

Hillary Clinton

The case against Clinton is, by now, self-evident. She stored 110 emails containing classified information on her home computer server, an unsecured and unauthorized place. It is a crime to mishandle classified information under the Espionage Act.

Yet Comey misinterpreted the criminal statute by claiming Clinton did not “intend to violate the law.” This is not the legal standard, as any knowledgeable lawyer will tell you. The standard is whether she committed intentional acts, such as intentionally setting up her personal server and knowingly using it for her work documents, including classified materials. Clinton clearly intended to do these things.

Regardless, the law under 18 USC 793 requires only “grossly negligent” behavior. Here, Comey insisted Clinton was “extremely careless.” However, the two terms are synonymous under the law. Indeed, there is a frequently used jury instruction which explains that gross negligence is extremely careless behavior. So, in essence, Comey was admitting Clinton violated the law, although he twisted the statute to conclude otherwise.

There is strong evidence that Clinton obstructed justice. All of her emails were under a congressional subpoena. She was required to preserve and produce every single one of them. She did not. Instead, she deleted roughly 33,000 emails in defiance of the subpoena and cleansed her server of any incriminating evidence. Destruction of evidence under a lawful subpoena constitutes obstruction. Under the law, it is no excuse to claim that some of the emails were personal in nature.

Growing evidence suggests that Clinton used her office as Secretary of State to confer benefits to donors and foreign governments in exchange for financial contributions to her foundation and cash to her husband. If proven, it would support various crimes of corruption.

It has been reported that Clinton helped UBS avoid the IRS. Thereafter, Bill Clinton got paid $1.5 million and the Clinton Foundation received a ten-fold increase in donations by the bank. It has also been reported that Clinton’s state department approved billions of dollars in arms sales to several nations whose governments gave money to the Foundation.

And then, there is the infamous Uranium One deal. After the State Department under Clinton signed off on the U.S. sale of one-fifth of our nation’s uranium production capacity to the Russians, millions of dollars from Russian sources connected to the Kremlin began to flow to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow. Coincidence? Or criminal “pay-to-play?”

In his confirmation hearing, Sessions promised to recuse himself from any matter involving Hillary Clinton. Therefore, before he resigns, Sessions must appoint a special counsel to reopen the Clinton investigation and decide anew whether criminal charges are merited.

Susan Rice

In March, the former National Security Adviser to President Obama insisted she “knew nothing” about Trump transition officials swept up in surveillance at the end of the Obama administration. Her statement was not true, and not the first time Rice conjured a false narrative. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, she admitted she knew of the incidental collection and, further, she is the one who requested that names be unmasked.

If Rice or UN Ambassador Samantha Power or any other person requested the unmasking of names for a reason other than national security, it is a crime. And so too is the leaking of those names to the media which clearly occurred. Under the Hatch Act, it is against the law for a public official to use his or her office for a political purpose.

Congress is vigorously investigating Rice and others. Yet Sessions seems detached and unconcerned. As the nation’s top lawyer, he is duty-bound to pursue such a substantial breach of intelligence operations.

Before he resigns, Sessions should launch a criminal investigation into the unmasking of names or appoint a special prosecutor to do the same.

Jeff Sessions either wittingly or unwittingly bungled his confirmation hearing, which led to the recusal that is said to have angered Trump and alienated the AG from the president. Regardless, Sessions’ performance as Attorney General ever since has been notable only for a series of failures to act when action is demanded.

The moment the President of the United States no longer has confidence in his Attorney General, it is time for him to submit his letter of resignation. But first, Sessions can restore integrity to the Department of Justice and salvage his own tattered reputation by taking aggressive action against Comey, Clinton and Rice.

Then he should quietly bow out.

See http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/09/19/gregg-jarrett-sessions-should-resign-but-not-before-taking-action-against-clinton-comey-and-rice.html (“Sessions should resign, but not before taking action against Clinton, Comey and Rice“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/#comment-10765 (“What Did Barack Obama Know, And When Did He Know It?“)

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1 10 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

MORE PC MADNESS!

Political correctness

Jonathan Petre and Chris Hastings have written in the UK’s Daily Mail:

Schools across the [UK] have stopped using the terms BC and AD in religious education lessons for fear of offending non-Christians.

The traditional terms BC, Before Christ, and AD, Anno Domini, are being ditched for BCE – Before Common Era, and CE – Common Era.

The new terms still denote the periods before and after the birth of Christ.

Local authority committees drawing up religious education syllabuses say the old terms may upset minorities or non-believers. But critics blasted the move as a ‘capitulation to political correctness’.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey said the rulings by the religious education committees were a ‘great shame’.

Muslim and Jewish leaders were also mystified, saying they were not offended by the familiar terms.

Local authority committees – known as Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACREs) – from Brighton and Essex are among a growing number urging heads to ditch BC and AD.

The syllabus for schools in East Sussex, for example, reads: ‘BCE and CE are now used in order to show sensitivity to those who are not Christians.’

Lord Carey said: ‘I have never met a Muslim or Jewish leader who is offended by the Gregorian calendar’ while leading Imam Ibrahim Mogra said: ‘I don’t believe it causes Muslims offence.’ A spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said: ‘I don’t think anyone would mind if in mainstream schools they use BC and AD.’

Chris McGovern, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: removing BC and AD ‘is a capitulation to political correctness’.

National Association of Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education chair Paul Smalley said: ‘Individual SACREs and schools can make a judgment over which form of dating is appropriate.’

_______________

HUMPHREYS’ FURY AT HIMSELF FOR USING ‘COMMON ERA’ ALTERNATIVE

Mastermind inquisitor John Humphrys has revealed he was ‘angry with himself’ for using the ‘ridiculous’ PC term BCE – meaning Before Common Era – instead of the traditional BC in a recent edition of the quiz.

The slip happened as he asked about an event in ‘the 6th Century BCE’. A rueful Humphrys told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I did use that ridiculous expression and I am angry with myself because I can’t stand BCE and all that sort of stuff.

‘It was a last-minute question or something which I hadn’t had time to check over. So I just read what was in front of me. And then you think, “My God, did I really read that?” ’

In 2011, The Mail on Sunday revealed that the BBC’s religion and ethics website suggested using CE and BCE instead of BC and AD so as not to ‘offend or alienate non-Christians’. Humphrys, 74, said last night: ‘I hope you do not hear myself saying BCE again or anything like it again.

‘Everyone knows where we are when we say BC and AD and that is how I want to keep it.’

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4937310/Now-schools-ditching-AD-BC-lessons.html (“Now schools are ditching AD and BC in RE lessons to avoid offending non-Christians… but critics blast the ‘capitulation to political correctness'”) (emphasis added)

Clearly, the inmates are taking over the “asylum.”

Like the hoax of man-made “global warming,” and deviant sexual behavior, and the destruction of statues, and violence in the United States by “Black Lives Matter” and Antifa groups, will this madness ever stop?

Again, George Orwell was prescient in his acclaimed Animal Farm, where all of the animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme and subjugated the other animals.

The despicable Left embodies and personifies the Pigs today.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm”)

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15 10 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Cantorize Flake, And Teach Him A Lesson He Will Never Forget [UPDATED]

Good Bye Eric Cantor!

Sheryl Gay Stolberg has written in the New York Times:

Before Bob Corker, there was Jeff Flake.

Mr. Flake, the even-tempered Republican senator from Arizona, has for months offered stinging critiques of President Trump’s character, demeanor and truthfulness — the same message forcefully echoed a week ago by Mr. Corker, a Republican colleague from Tennessee, who warned that Mr. Trump’s reckless behavior could lead to “World War III.”

But there is one crucial difference between the two: Mr. Flake, unlike Mr. Corker, is running for re-election. And now he finds himself in grave political peril.

Mr. Flake is perhaps the most endangered Senate Republican, with an approval rating in one recent poll of just 18 percent among Arizonans. Mr. Trump has savaged Mr. Flake as “toxic” and a “flake,” and has encouraged a primary challenge against him that has left the senator squeezed not only from the left but also the right.

His fate is an object lesson for other Republicans who might consider voicing dire thoughts about the president’s fitness: Cross Mr. Trump, and your political career could well be over.

Mr. Flake, a Mormon known more for his decency than his independent streak, said he had no regrets.

In an interview here, he ticked off some of his earliest criticisms of the president — from the days when Mr. Trump peddled the false theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to the time Mr. Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” to his call for a complete ban on travel to the United States by Muslims — before looking up and stopping himself.

“In which of those instances,” the senator asked, “should I not have spoken out? At what point should you not stand up and say, ‘This is not right; this is not conservative; this is not where Republicans ought to be?’”

Mr. Flake said he had known from the start that taking on Mr. Trump might do him political harm. Even before he declared the president’s brand of populism a corruption of conservative values, he anticipated a tough primary challenge, given his policy differences with Mr. Trump on issues like immigration, trade and Cuba.

“The truth is, if my only goal were to be elected, re-elected to mark time in the Senate, there are much easier paths,” he said.

Mr. Flake is not the Senate’s only vulnerable Republican; Senator Dean Heller of Nevada is also facing a tough re-election race. And Republicans will now have to field a candidate to succeed Mr. Corker, who announced late last month that he was not running next year.

Last weekend, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican, even if few have spoken out. Mr. Flake, by contrast, has put pen to paper with his criticism; his new book, “Conscience of a Conservative,” published in August, is a blistering indictment of the Republican Party and of a president who, despite record-low overall approval ratings, has retained the support of about 80 percent of his party.

Mr. Flake’s main primary challenger at the moment, Kelli Ward, made clear in an interview that she intended to paint Mr. Flake as “an obstructionist to the America First agenda that Donald Trump touted on the campaign trail, and that the American people want to see enacted.”

Ms. Ward, an osteopathic physician and a former state senator who ran unsuccessfully against Arizona’s other senator, John McCain, in 2016, was busy preparing last week for her campaign kickoff. It is scheduled for Tuesday night with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham as the featured guest.

Andy Surabian, senior adviser to the Great America Alliance, a Trump-aligned group whose political action committee has been supportive of Ms. Ward, said Mr. Flake’s troubles were “entirely self-inflicted.”

“If Flake wants to know why he’s vulnerable, all he needs to do is look in the mirror,” said Mr. Surabian, who had a stint in the White House as deputy to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. He added: “No one told him to go out and be the face of the anti-Trump resistance in the Republican Party. No one told him to go out and write a book that was basically an anti-Trump screed. The reason the race is in play is because of Jeff Flake’s actions.”

Mr. Flake said he felt compelled to write the book because Republicans had lost their way with the rise of Mr. Trump. His assessment of the president is biting.

“We pretended the emperor wasn’t naked,” Mr. Flake wrote. “Even worse: We checked our critical faculties at the door and pretended that the emperor was making sense.”

While Mr. Corker had likened the White House to an “adult day care center” and said Mr. Trump was treating his office like a reality show, Mr. Flake said in the interview that he might not have used those words. But he clearly agrees with his Tennessee colleague.

“A conservative is conservative in demeanor and comportment — not just policy,” he said. “And the way you conduct foreign policy as a conservative is that you are steady and measured and predictable. And that’s not what we have now.”

Such comments have not gone over well at home, said Mayor Jim Lane of Scottsdale. The mayor, who calls himself a conservative Republican, said he was not currently backing Mr. Flake, whom he views as exacerbating divisions within the party and undermining the president’s agenda.

“It’s difficult, particularly when there’s a lot of people who feel very, very strongly about the president’s agenda and party’s agenda,” Mr. Lane said, adding, “Any time we sense that is not a priority, for any of our delegation, that becomes a bit of a problem.”

Mr. Flake favors immigration and free trade — stances that put him at philosophical odds not only with the president, but also with many Arizonans. In 2013, he was part of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” group of senators who put forth an immigration overhaul that would have offered immigrants in the country illegally a path to citizenship. It passed the Senate with 68 votes but died in the House. He also worked closely with Mr. Obama to open relations with Cuba.

Ms. Ward, his Republican challenger, is aligned more closely with Mr. Trump, though her critics in the party have portrayed her as a fringe candidate, and Mr. Trump, while praising her on Twitter, has not given her an explicit endorsement. Mr. Bannon, who has declared “war” on establishment Republicans, is said to be hunting for stronger candidates than Ms. Ward to take on Mr. Flake.

Among them are Robert Graham, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, and Jay Heiler, a wealthy businessman. Both said in interviews that they were contemplating jumping into the race, and expected to make decisions by the end of the month. When Mr. Trump went to Arizona in August for a rally, he met privately with Mr. Graham and the Arizona state treasurer, Jeff DeWit, to urge them to consider running, Mr. Graham said.

“This is more about protecting the seat for Republicans,” Mr. Graham said, adding, “Candidly, I think we need a viable candidate.”

If Mr. Flake survives his primary — a big if, many Republicans here say — he will have to worry about his left flank: Representative Kyrsten Sinema, a centrist Democrat with a powerful biography, recently announced that she would seek Mr. Flake’s seat.

Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist here, said Ms. Sinema’s entry into the race would make it more difficult for Mr. Flake — who has a firmly conservative voting record, though his mild temperament can make him seem more moderate — to appeal to swing voters.

“You’ve got a situation now where the swing constituency, independent women, are looking at this guy and saying, ‘He’s real right wing,’ and then you’ve got the right-wing voters saying he hasn’t been respectful enough to Trump,” Mr. McLeod said. “And the liberal base is fired up, and they can turn out in big numbers.”

Indeed, each Friday at noon in the sweltering Arizona heat, a group calling itself “Stand for Sane Government” pickets Mr. Flake’s office here.

Among the regulars is William Riley, a family practice doctor who complains that despite Mr. Flake’s criticisms of Mr. Trump, he almost always votes with the president. (An analysis by FiveThirtyEight, the political blog, found that Mr. Flake had voted with Mr. Trump 91.5 percent of the time.)

“He wrote a book about the conscience of a libertarian, yet he’s voted along the lines of the things he has criticized,” Dr. Riley said. “So my only conclusion is he doesn’t have a conscience.”

Mr. Flake, 54, is a scion of a pioneer Mormon family and a product of the American West; he grew up on a ranch in the tiny Northern Arizona town of Snowflake, which is named in part named for his ancestors. Family legend has it that Brigham Young, the early Mormon leader, sent Mr. Flake’s great-grandfather from Utah to settle in Arizona.

The Flakes are a political family — the senator’s father was once mayor of Snowflake — and Mr. Flake ran a libertarian think tank, the Goldwater Institute, named for the deeply conservative Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, before being elected to the House in 2000.

In his early years in Congress, he developed a reputation as a budget hawk who challenged party leaders to get rid of so-called earmarks, in which federal money is steered to lawmakers’ pet projects. But in the Senate, which he joined in 2013, Mr. Flake has not carved out much of a reputation, other than for being a nice guy.

“He’s going to have to define who he is, what his record is and what he’s accomplished,” said David Winston, a Republican strategist in Washington. “This is really going to be a vote about him and his incumbency.”

As to who he is, Mr. Flake puts it this way: “I’m a conservative in, I think, the traditional sense of the word: a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan conservative that believes in limited government, economic freedom, free trade, pro-immigration. That’s the kind of conservative I am, and that’s my record.”

But is that the kind of conservative who is welcome in the Republican Party in the Trump era? Mr. Flake smiled wanly.

“That,” the senator said, “is the question.”

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/us/politics/jeff-flake-trump.html (“Jeff Flake’s Lesson for Republicans: Cross Trump at Your Own Risk“) (emphasis added)

For those who have forgotten about “Eric Ivan Cantor”—which is certainly understandable—he was House Majority Leader and before that House Minority Whip, and ostensibly a Republican congressman from Virginia.

In June 2014, in his bid for re-election, Cantor lost the Republican primary to an economics professor; he resigned as House Majority Leader; and he announced his resignation from Congress.

Nobody has missed him since.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cantor (“Eric Cantor“)

As if there were not enough reasons to “Cantorize” Flake already, he has plagiarized the title of Barry Goldwater’s book, Conscience of a Conservative.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater (“Barry Goldwater“)

Going, going, gone. Good riddance!

See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-24/urgent-arizona-gop-sen-flake-to-retire-had-tangled-with-trump (“Arizona GOP Sen. Flake to Retire, Had Tangled With Trump“)

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19 10 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

An Empty Barrel

Barack Obama and Frederica Wilson

See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/10/19/what-to-know-about-frederica-wilson-florida-democrat-who-criticized-trump.html (“What to know about Frederica Wilson, Florida Democrat who criticized Trump“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

White House Chief of Staff, General John F. Kelly, put it best:

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kelly (“John F. Kelly“)

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27 10 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

A Truly Uncivil War In This Country

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“More is now required of us than to put down our thoughts in writing,” declaimed Jeff Flake in his oration against President Trump, just before he announced he will be quitting the Senate.

Though he had lifted the title of his August anti-Trump polemic, “Conscience of a Conservative,” from Barry Goldwater, Jeff Flake is no Barry Goldwater.

Goldwater took on the GOP establishment in the primaries, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, defiantly declared, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and then went down to defeat battling to the end after the assassination of JFK made LBJ invincible.

The real “Mr. Conservative” was a true profile in courage.

Flake, with only 18 percent approval in Arizona, decided to pack it in rather than get waxed in his own primary. With Falstaff, Flake appears to believe that “discretion is the better part of valor.”

Sen. Bob Corker is another summertime soldier calling on colleagues to stand and fight Trump while he retires to Tennessee.

It’s no wonder the establishment is viewed with such derision.

Flake calls Trump “dangerous to our democracy.” But the real threat Trump represents is to the GOP establishment’s control of the party’s agenda and the party’s destiny.

U.S. politics have indeed been coarsened, with Trump playing a lead role. Yet, beneath the savagery of the uncivil war in the party lies more than personal insults and personality clashes.

This is a struggle about policy, about the future. And Trump is president because he read the party and the country right, while the Bush-McCain Republican establishment had lost touch with both.

How could the Beltway GOP not see that its defining policies — open borders, amnesty, free trade globalism, compulsive military intervention in foreign lands for ideological ends — were alienating its coalition?

What had a quarter century of Bushite free trade produced?

About $12 trillion in trade deficits, $4 trillion with China alone, a loss of 55,000 plants and 6 million manufacturing jobs.

We imported goods “Made in China,” while exporting our future.

U.S. elites made China great again, to where Beijing is now challenging our strategic position and presence in Asia.

Could Republicans not see the factories shutting down, or not understand why workers’ wages had failed to rise for decades?

What did the democracy crusades “to end tyranny in our world” accomplish?

Thousands of U.S. dead, tens of thousands of wounded, trillions of dollars sunk, and a Mideast awash in blood from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, with millions uprooted and homeless. Yet, still, the GOP establishment has not repudiated the mindset that produced this.

With the Cold War over for a quarter of a century, what is the case now for America, $20 trillion in debt, going abroad in search of monsters to destroy?

Consider. Bush-Obama “open borders” brought in tens of millions of Third World peoples, legally and illegally, to rising resistance from Americans forced to bear the economic and social costs.

What was the GOP establishment’s reply to the opposition to amnesty for illegals and calls for a moratorium on legal immigration, to assimilate the tens of millions already here?

To call them nativists and parade their moral superiority.

Flake and Corker are being beatified by the Beltway elites, and George W. Bush and John McCain celebrated for their denunciations of Trumpism.

Yet no two people are more responsible for the blunders of the post-Cold War era than McCain and Bush.

About which of half a dozen wars were they right?

Yesterday’s New York Times recognized Trump’s triumph:

“Despite the fervor of President Trump’s Republican opponents, the president’s brand of hard-edged nationalism — with its gut-level cultural appeals and hard lines on trade and immigration — is taking root within his adopted party.”

Moreover, a new question arises:

Can the GOP establishment believe that if Trump falls, or they bring him down, they will inherit the estate and be welcomed home like the Prodigal Son? Do they believe their old agenda of open borders, amnesty, free trade globalism and democracy-crusading can become America’s agenda again?

Trumpism is not a detour, after which we can all get back on the interstate to the New World Order.

For though unpleasant, it is not unfair to say that if there was one desire common to Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump voters, it was be rid of the regime resting on top of all of us.

Should Trump fall, and a restored establishment attempt to reimpose the old policies, there will be a truly uncivil war in this country.

After the Trumpian revolt, there is no going back. As that most American of writers, Thomas Wolfe, put it, “You can’t go home again.”

Traditionalists have been told that for years. Now it’s the turn of the GOP establishment to learn the truth as well.

Goldwater lost badly, but the establishment that abandoned him never had its patrimony restored. It was the leaders they abhorred, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, to whom the future belonged.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/trumps-party-now-2-127791 (“It’s Trump’s Party Now“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10951 (“Cantorize Flake, And Teach Him A Lesson He Will Never Forget“)

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29 10 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

A REAL HERO [UPDATED]

George Washington

With so much “anti-history” or revisionist history being spewed by America’s insidious and demented Left—and yes, I began as a Democrat, but will never go back—many Americans have described our founder George Washington as a “real hero,” which is an understatement.

I do not believe the United States would exist today as it does without him.

I have been to Mount Vernon many times; and my wife and I sailed there one day from the Washington Sailing Marina in Alexandria (just below Reagan Airport), in a small boat without an engine. The winds died on our way back, and I thought we’d be stuck in the Potomac River for days. 🙂

Mount Vernon is a relatively simple, yet elegant house, which sits on a hill above the river. As we know, there are so many monuments to him in this great country; and my guess is that he would be embarrassed.

He loved our country; that much is certain. He could have lived a life of privilege, and not done what he did.

But I believe he would be proud of the country and its multi-faceted and multi-colored Americans, for what we have accomplished and the path that we are on.

. . .

After I had written the comments above, the following story appeared.

See http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/10/28/george-washington-church-plaque-honoring-first-president-must-come-down (“George Washington’s Church Says Plaque Honoring First President Must Come Down”—”Leaders at the church that George Washington attended decided that a plaque honoring the first president of the United States must be removed. Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia will take down a memorial marking the pew where Washington sat with his family, saying it is not acceptable to all worshipers. ‘The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome,’ leaders said, a reference to the fact that Washington was a slaveholder”—”A memorial to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee will also come down“)

This is outrageous.

ALL actions honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. must be undone. He was as bad as Harvey Weinstein.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-2830 (“The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. Emerges . . . Finally“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-10901 (“HOLLYWOOD HAS BEEN SICK FOR DECADES“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the extensive comments beneath this article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“) (see also the extensive comments beneath this article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin”—”Those Americans involved in this [treasonous] pay-to-play ‘Uranium One’ scandal of epic proportions . . . include Barack Obama, the Clintons, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Robert Mueller, James Comey and Rod Rosenstein of the FBI and the Department of ‘Injustice’”)

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4 11 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Sour Grapes’ Bushes Attack Trump, And Yearn For The Past And Their Dynasty [UPDATED]

GWB and GHWB

Peter Baker has written in the New York Times:

President Trump is not a favorite in the extended Bush household. Former President George Bush considers him a “blowhard,” only interested in feeding his own ego. Former President George W. Bush, his son, thinks Mr. Trump fans public anger and came to office without any understanding of the job.

And both worry that Mr. Trump has blown up a Republican Party that they spent two lifetimes building, a party that was once committed to removing boundaries to trade and immigration, promoting democracy and civil society and asserting a robust American leadership role in the world, according to an author who has interviewed them.

A new book on the two Bushes who served in the White House provides a glance at their apprehension over Mr. Trump’s rise to power and what it means for the country. The first book ever written with their cooperation about their relationship, it also opens a window into the only father-and-son tandem to hold the presidency since John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

In “The Last Republicans,” Mark K. Updegrove chronicles an era that feels almost dated in today’s reality-show politics, when the Republican establishment controlled the party and Washington, and when a single family could occupy the presidency and vice presidency for a combined 20 years.

Neither of the two Republican former presidents voted for Mr. Trump — the father voted for Hillary Clinton and the son voted for “none of the above,” as he told Mr. Updegrove.

Indeed, at one point during the 2016 presidential campaign, the younger Mr. Bush confided to the author, “I’m worried that I will be the last Republican president.”

That inspired the title of the book — which will be published Nov. 14 by HarperCollins — as a quote that seemed to carry a double meaning.

“At the time, I think he was concerned that Hillary Clinton would win,” Mr. Updegrove, the author of several books on the presidency, said in an interview. “But if you look at his values and those shared by his father and Ronald Reagan, they are very much in contrast to the values of the Republican Party today, in particular the platform that Donald Trump ran on, which is essentially protectionism and a certain xenophobia.”

In discussing Mr. Trump, the elder president was blunter. “I don’t like him,” Mr. Bush said in May 2016. “I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.” Rather than being motivated by public service, Mr. Bush said Mr. Trump seemed to be driven by “a certain ego.”

The younger Mr. Bush was more circumspect, but also clearly disapproving. The Bushes felt stung by Mr. Trump’s ground-burning attacks that helped destroy the campaign of Jeb Bush, the son and brother of the presidents.

“You can either exploit the anger, incite it,” George W. Bush told Mr. Updegrove, “or you can come up with ideas to deal with it.” Jeb, he said, came up with solutions, “but it didn’t fit with the mood.”

“If you’re angry with the powers that be,” he added, “you’re angry with the so-called establishment, and there’s nothing more established than having a father and brother that have been president.”

When Mr. Trump first entered the race, Mr. Bush thought he would not last and was surprised by the real estate developer’s success at capturing the nomination. Still, he was not impressed.

When Mr. Trump declared that “I’m my own adviser,” Mr. Bush thought he did not understand the presidency. He also lamented Mr. Trump’s lack of humility. “As you know from looking at my family, it is a certain heritage, that’s what they expect, and we’re not seeing that” in Mr. Trump.

The release of the book comes weeks after the younger Mr. Bush delivered a speech seen as a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s approach to the presidency and the world.

Addressing a conference in New York, Mr. Bush decried what he called the “nativism” of today’s policies and the “casual cruelty” of today’s politics. Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Bush said that “bigotry seems emboldened” and “our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.”

Mr. Updegrove, the former director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum and now the founding chief executive of the National Medal of Honor Museum, got to know both Bushes in recent years and persuaded them to talk with him for a book on their relationship, a subject that they had been allergic to while their political careers were still active.

The two men disputed Shakespearean assumptions about father-son rivalries and insisted they remained close throughout the younger Mr. Bush’s presidency, despite suspicions about a rift over the Iraq war. But George W. Bush’s parents were clearly disturbed by the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney and neoconservative advisers.

The elder Mr. Bush, Mr. Updegrove reported, counseled his son to consider “shaking up the ticket” in 2004, meaning to replace Mr. Cheney as his running mate — just as the younger Mr. Bush suggested to his father about Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992. Like his father, the son disregarded the advice.

Barbara Bush told Mr. Updegrove that she believed Mr. Cheney changed because of his health troubles, including a heart attack followed by a stent operation shortly after the 2000 election. “I do think he was different,” she said. “I think his heart operation made a difference. I always liked him, but I didn’t like him so much for a while because I thought he hurt George. I wasn’t that fond of him. I think he pushed things a little too far right.”

The younger Mr. Bush resented the implication that anyone was steering him. “The fact that there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about who the president was blows my mind,” he said. He added that Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, his defense secretary, “didn’t make one fucking decision.”

But he insisted Mr. Cheney served him well and said that the vice president’s sometimes dark reputation was inevitable. “I understand the way the system works,” he said. “Somebody has to be the bad guy.”

See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/us/politics/bush-president-book-trump.html (“Both Bush Presidents Worry Trump Is Blowing Up the G.O.P.“) (emphasis added); see also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5049599/George-HW-Bush-calls-Trump-blow-hard-new-book.html (“George H.W. Bush calls Trump a ‘blowhard’ while his son says he lacks the ‘humility’ to be president in new father-son biography as White House immediately punches back with scathing Iraq war comment”—”The White House shot back Saturday. ‘If one presidential candidate can disassemble a political party, it speaks volumes about how strong a legacy its past two presidents really had. And that begins with the Iraq war, one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in American history'”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-10432 (“Do Not Blame Trump: Clinton And Bush Are Two Failed Ex-Presidents, And Obama Is A Racist“) and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/04/both-bush-presidents-openly-condemned-trump-book-claims-one-even-voted-for-clinton/ (“White House attacks legacies of both Bush presidents after reports that they refused to vote for Trump“)

Lots of us voted for both Bushes, but are ashamed today of the fact that we did so—although the alternatives that the Democrats presented (i.e., Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry) were far worse.

They lament the end of Jeb Bush’s quest for the presidency, which imploded because of his own shrill, outdated voice.

They launched two wars in Iraq; and thousands of Americans were killed or maimed, while trillions of dollars were wasted, for nothing.

Their GOP is dead or dying, with a new and more vibrant party emerging, shaped in the image of President Donald Trump—which is a logical extension of Ronald Reagan’s GOP, not that of the Bushes.

The fact that the senior Bush voted for the criminal Hillary Clinton—who, hopefully, will be sent to prison in the future—speaks volumes, although it has been rumored for a long time that he has been in declining health, both physically and mentally.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”)

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23 11 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

The Partisan Divide In America Is Widening [UPDATED]

This is the title of an article in the UK’s Economist:

AS MILLIONS of Americans travelled home for Thanksgiving this week advice columns were filled with the perennial—but increasingly fraught—question of what to talk about at the dinner table. (“When your liberal aunt shows up at Thanksgiving in Trump country” ran one headline in the Washington Post.) In recent years generational and partisan attitudes towards a range of political issues have diverged, with political-party stalwarts holding increasingly negative views of the followers of the party they oppose. Yet at the same time, there is some hope to be drawn from growing agreement on a range of social issues.

Polls suggest that on a number of measures the partisan divide is wider than ever. Surveys by Pew Research Center, for example, report that in 1994 there was a 20-point disparity in the percentage of Republicans and Democrats who thought government should do more to help the needy; by 2017 that had increased to 47 percentage points. That reflects divergence in views about the fairness of the economic system—with the gap on opinions like “people can get ahead if they work hard” and “the economy in this country favours powerful interests”—also growing.

Pew’s analysis suggests that more people are consistently liberal or conservative in their outlook across issues, part of a trend towards greater partisan purity. Duane F. Alwin and Paula A. Tufis, sociologists, examined the General Social Survey to report a growing national alignment between views across a liberal-conservative spectrum and party identification. They also found that the percentage of people who describe themselves as moderate, slightly liberal or slightly conservative (as opposed to simply or “extremely” liberal or conservative) fell from 71% in 1974 to 62% in 2010, and that party supporters’ antipathy towards the other party had grown significantly since the 1960s. In 2016, 70% of Democrats felt that Republicans were close-minded and 52% of Republicans felt the same about Democrats.

This growing partisan rancour may be one reason people seem to be increasingly dissatisfied with the state of the country. Median household income climbed almost $6,000 between 2012 and 2016 to its highest ever level while the unemployment rate, at 4.1%, is at its lowest since 2001. But at just over one fifth, the proportion of voters reporting to Gallup that they are satisfied with the way things are going in America is only marginally up from a nadir of 7% in 2008, and still 50 percentage points lower than the three-decade high of 71% reached in February 1999.

And yet, partisan antipathy has its limits. Research by Jonathan Mummolo and Clayton Nall from Stanford University suggests there is no evidence to support the idea that Democrats and Republicans are moving to communities filled with those who share their politics, despite a widespread stated preference to do precisely that. Other factors still trump partisanship in choosing where to live: crime levels, school quality, and commuting time. And there are still issues on which both sides can agree. The majority of supporters of both parties believe that the average global temperature is rising, that America’s involvement in the global economy is a good thing, and that the cost of health care is too high. More than two thirds of supporters of both parties still back the right to protest, free speech, the constitutional system of checks and balances and the importance of free and fair elections.

For all that Republicans and Democrats may increasingly dislike each other, meanwhile, the partisan divide over attitudes towards other social groupings is shrinking. Only 3% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans believe that increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups and nationalities in America makes the country a worse place to live. The proportion of Republican supporters who see immigrants as a burden on the country has fallen from 64% in 1994 to 44% today, which means that a majority in both parties now have positive views towards migrants. Democrats profess greater tolerance of sexual minorities, but the percentage of Republicans who think homosexuality should be accepted, at 54%, now matches the percentage of Democrats who favoured tolerance in 1994. According to analysis of the General Social Survey by Landon Schnabel and Eric Sevell of Indiana University, Republicans are also moving towards acceptance of gay marriage at similar rates to Democrats, if from a lower base level of support.

On the importance of racism in determining outcomes for African Americans, partisan disagreement remains. Yet most supporters of the Republican Party back affirmative action (along with 84% of Democrats). Because of shifting attitudes that have spread across partisan divides, Gallup surveys also report that 87% of people backed inter-racial marriage by 2013; more recent statistics show 73% of Americans back divorce and 69% find unmarried sex morally acceptable. That suggests that whatever the marital history, colour, nationality or gender of the partner that Americans turn at up at home with for Thanksgiving, they are more likely to be welcomed with open arms than in the past.

There also seems to be an improvement in the way that Americans think their own lives are going. Some 86% of Republicans believe they are on the way to achieving the “American Dream” or have achieved it, along with 80% of Democrats. In 2017 the proportion of Americans who reported they were satisfied with the way their life was going reached 87%, up from 78% in 2011 and only one percentage point below the highest number reported since the poll question was first asked by Gallup in 1979. It seems that many dinner tables divided by party politics will still be united by the idea that there is much to give thanks for—even if everyone agrees that America has a lot to worry about.

See http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/11/holiday-hopes (emphasis added)

First, the despicable Robert Mueller’s “witch hunt” must be shut down completely, whose aim is to reverse last year’s election victory for our President Donald Trump.

Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, Barack Obama, the Clintons and others must be prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for the rest of their lives—for T R E A S O N, relating to their roles in the “Uranium One”-Russian scandal, which former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (and historian) Newt Gingrich has described as “the greatest scandal in American history.”

Put succinctly, it involves the payment of approximately $145 million to Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their foundation, in exchange for the sale of 20 percent of America’s critical Uranium assets to Russia’s despotic killer, Vladimir Putin.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) (see also the comments beneath the article)

Second, more and more Americans have turned their backs on both political parties, the Democrats and the GOP (or Republicans). According to recent Gallup polling, approximately 42 percent of Americans “identify” as Independents. Yet, the Economist article and its data seem to be premised on having polled Democrats and Republicans, even though both parties are fragmenting as we write these words.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/the-rise-of-independents/#comment-3244 (“Record-High 42 Percent Of Americans Identify As Independents“)

Third, more and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that man-made so-called “global warming” or “climate change” is a hoax and the “Great Green Con,” and in reality nothing more than a $34 trillion wealth transfer. If Europe and its insufferable bureaucrats want to hobble their economy and growth, so be it—while the United States and China will be laughing at them, all the way to the bank.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/a-34-trillion-swindle-the-shame-of-global-warming/ (“A $34 Trillion Swindle: The Shame Of Global Warming“) (see also the comments beneath the article)

Fourth, the sex scandals that have been breaking in Hollywood, Washington, New York and elsewhere—in the sacred bastions of the Left and far-Left—and the steps taken by the Clintons to “rig” last year’s elections against Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and others, are taking their toll. A “cleansing” effect is possible, but do not bet on it inasmuch as sex and sexual abuses accompany power wherever it exists.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11304 (“FINALLY, THE LEFT IS EATING ITS OWN: BRAVO!“)

Fifth, political pundit, former Clinton advisor and now Trump supporter Dick Morris believes that President Trump is shrewdly engaging in “triangulation” by going after “Middle-American voters.” They have been abandoned by the Leftist Democrats; and they constitute a crucial bloc of Americans who were described in years past as the “Silent Majority” that propelled Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to their resounding election victories.

See http://www.dickmorris.com/trumps-historic-triangulation-lunch-alert/ (“Trump’s Historic Triangulation“)

Lastly, America is a vibrant democracy. It always has been, and it always will be. Those who look at our great nation from abroad do not understand this, much less fully.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/america-a-rich-tapestry-of-life/ (“America: A Rich Tapestry Of Life“) (see also the comments beneath the article)

Nonetheless, in our “survival-of-the-fittest,” capitalistic society, some Americans are being left behind, through no fault of their own. Their children are suffering, which must be rectified.

Their plight is our plight.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/poverty-in-america/#comment-11340 (“Numbers Of Homeless Rise To Levels Not Seen Since The Great Depression“)

Capitol

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4 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS? [UPDATED]

Alan Dershowitz

Sandy Fitzgerald has reported for Newsmax:

If Congress charged President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice for firing former FBI Director James Comey, that would trigger a constitutional crisis, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz argued Monday.

“I think if Congress ever were to charge him with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, we’d have a constitutional crisis,” Dershowitz told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program.

“You cannot charge a president with obstruction of justice for exercising his constitutional power to fire Comey and to tell the Justice Department who to investigate and who not to investigate.”

His comments were in response to those made by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who on Sunday told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” program “what we’re beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice.”

President Donald Trump was quick to weigh in on Dershowitz’ opinion, tweeting that the interview was a “must watch.”

Dershowitz further commented that presidents throughout the nation’s history have exercised their constitutional powers on investigations, said Dershowitz.

“We have precedents that clearly establish that,” he said. “When George Bush, the first, pardoned Caspar Weinberger in order to end the investigation that would have led to him, nobody suggested obstruction of justice.”

To bring such charges, there must be evidence of “clearly illegal acts,” Dershowitz continued.

“With [Richard] Nixon, hush money was paid,” he said, “[There was] telling people to lie, destroying evidence. Even with [Bill] Clinton they said that he tried to influence potential witnesses not to tell the truth. But there’s never been a case in history where a president has been charged with obstruction of justice for merely exercising his constitutional authority.”

Dershowitz said that he hopes special counsel Robert Mueller, who is in charge of the probe into possible links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, does not press charges against the president.

“That would cause a constitutional crisis in the United States, and I hope Mueller doesn’t do that,” said Dershowitz. “Sen. Feinstein simply doesn’t know what she’s talking about, when she says it’s obstruction of justice, to do what a president is completely authorized to do under the Constitution.”

Trump also has the authority to speak to members of Congress, ask that the investigation be wrapped up, said Dershowitz, but Congress has the power to invoke the Constitution’s provision for separation of powers.

“You can’t have obstruction of justice by each party exercising their authority,” said Dershowitz. “The president could have pardoned [former national security adviser] Michael Flynn if he were really thinking about trying to end this investigation.”

Had that happened, Flynn would not have cooperated with the prosecution, or had been indicted, said Dershowitz.

“I think the fact that the president hasn’t pardoned Flynn, even though he has the power to do so, is very good evidence there’s no obstruction of justice going on here,” he added.

See https://www.newsmax.com/politics/dershowitz-obstruction-trump-constitutional/2017/12/04/id/829675/ (“Dershowitz: Obstruction Charges on Trump Would Bring ‘Constitutional Crisis'”) (emphasis added)

Of course Dershowitz is correct.

What he does not address, at least in this article, is the fact that the Clintons, Mueller and others must be indicted, convicted and sent to prison for their roles in the “Uranium One”-Russian scandal.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) (see also the comments beneath the article); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11073 (“MUELLER’S INDICTMENTS“)

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6 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

TARGET ALL ANTI-TRUMP MEMBERS OF CONGRESS FOR EXTINCTION!

Al Green

Alex Pappas has reported for Fox News:

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to impeach President Trump after a liberal Texas congressman forced a vote on his effort.

Democratic Rep. Al Green, who has repeatedly called for the president’s removal, introduced two articles of impeachment against Trump on Wednesday.

But lawmakers immediately voted to effectively kill his resolution, with 364 voting to table it and 58 Democrats voting to move ahead.

In a dramatic speech on the floor ahead of the vote, Green called Trump “unfit” for office and accused him of “high misdemeanors.”

The symbolic vote had been expected to fail in the Republican-controlled House. It put some lawmakers in competitive districts in a tough spot by forcing them on the record about impeachment.

Lawmakers did not actually vote on the actual articles of impeachment, but on a procedural measure that would have led to a vote on them.

“As I have said before, this is not about Democrats, it is about democracy,” Green wrote in a memo to his colleagues. “It is not about Republicans, it is about the fate of our Republic. May everyone vote their conscience knowing that history will judge us all.”

Green has discussed his intention to impeach Trump since last spring. In October, Green filed impeachment articles that nearly forced a vote — until House Democratic leaders persuaded him to abandon the effort.

At the time, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called the effort “pathetic.”

In his memo to lawmakers, Green didn’t allege “obstruction of justice” or reference the ongoing investigation into the 2016 presidential campaign’s connection with Russia.

Instead, Green highlighted Trump’s supposed association with “White Nationalism, Neo-Nazism and Hate,” as well as “Inciting Hatred and Hostility,” as offenses worthy of impeachment.

“Friends, whether we like it or not, we now have a bigot in the White House who incites hatred and hostility,” Green wrote in a letter.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has insisted that any impeachment effort should be put on hold until there is evidence of an impeachable offense.

See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/06/us-rep-al-green-plans-trump-impeachment-resolution.html (“House rejects Trump impeachment resolution after Dem Rep. Al Green forces vote“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-11468 (“A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS?“)

Beginning with Al Green and Maxine Waters, the following 58 members of Congress must be targeted for defeat:

Adams
Barragán
Bass
Beatty
Brady (PA)
Capuano
Clark (MA)
Clarke (NY)
Clay
Clyburn
Cohen
Davis, Danny
DeSaulnier
Doggett
Ellison
Engel
Espaillat
Evans
Frankel (FL)
Fudge
Gomez
Green, Al
Grijalva
Hastings
Higgins (NY)
Huffman
Jackson Lee
Jayapal
Kelly (IL)
Lawrence
Lee
Lewis (GA)
Lieu, Ted
McCollum
McGovern
McNerney
Moore
Moulton
Napolitano
Norcross
Pallone
Pascrell
Pingree
Polis
Raskin
Richmond
Rush
Schakowsky
Sherman
Slaughter
Thompson (MS)
Titus
Vargas
Vela
Walz
Waters, Maxine
Watson Coleman
Wilson (FL)

Black Racist Maxine Waters

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15 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

TRUMP IS NOT NIXON!

Lincoln and Trump

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

On Aug. 9, 1974, Richard Nixon bowed to the inevitability of impeachment and conviction by a Democratic Senate and resigned.

The prospect of such an end for Donald Trump has this city drooling. Yet, comparing Russiagate and Watergate, history is not likely to repeat itself.

First, the underlying crime in Watergate, a break-in to wiretap offices of the DNC, had been traced, within 48 hours, to the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

In Russiagate, the underlying crime – the “collusion” of Trump’s campaign with the Kremlin to hack into the emails of the DNC – has, after 18 months of investigating, still not been established.

Campaign manager Paul Manafort has been indicted, but for financial crimes committed long before he enlisted with Trump.

Gen. Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying about phone calls he made to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but only after Trump had been elected and Flynn had been named national security adviser.

Flynn asked Kislyak for help in blocking or postponing a Security Council resolution denouncing Israel, and to tell Vladimir Putin not to go ballistic over President Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats.

This is what security advisers do.

Why Flynn let himself be ensnared in a perjury trap, when he had to know his calls were recorded, is puzzling.

Second, it is said Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to cut slack for Flynn.

But even Comey admits Trump acted within his authority.

And Comey had usurped the authority of Justice Department prosecutors when he announced in July 2016 that Hillary Clinton ought not to be prosecuted for having been “extremely careless” in transmitting security secrets over her private email server.

We now know that the first draft of Comey’s statement described Clinton as “grossly negligent,” the precise statute language for an indictment.

We also now know that helping to edit Comey’s first draft to soften its impact was Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. His wife, Jill McCabe, a candidate for state senate in Virginia, received $467,000 in campaign contributions from the PAC of Clinton bundler Terry McAuliffe.

Comey has also admitted he leaked to the New York Times details of a one-on-one with Trump to trigger the naming of a special counsel – to go after Trump. And that assignment somehow fell to Comey’s predecessor, friend and confidant Robert Mueller.

Mueller swiftly hired half a dozen prosecutorial bulldogs who had been Clinton contributors and Andrew Weissmann, a Trump hater who had congratulated Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to carry out Trump’s travel ban.

FBI official Peter Strzok had to be been removed from the Mueller probe for hatred of Trump manifest in texts to his FBI lady friend.

Strzok was also involved in the investigation of Clinton’s email server and is said to have been the one who persuaded Comey to tone down his language about her misconduct, and let Hillary walk.

In Mueller’s tenure, still no Trump tie to the hacking of the DNC has been found. But a connection between Hillary’s campaign and Russian spies – to find dirt to smear and destroy Trump and his campaign – has been fairly well-established.

By June 2016, the Clinton campaign and DNC had begun shoveling millions of dollars to the Perkins Coie law firm, which had hired the oppo research firm Fusion GPS to go dirt-diving on Trump.

Fusion contacted ex-British MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who had ties to former KGB and FSB intelligence agents in Russia. They began to feed Steele, who fed Fusion, which fed the U.S. anti-Trump media with the alleged dirty deeds of Trump in Moscow hotels.

While the truth of the dirty dossier has never been established, Comey’s FBI rose like a hungry trout on learning of its contents.

There are credible allegations Comey’s FBI sought to hire Steele and used the dirt in his dossier to broaden the investigation of Trump – and that its contents were also used to justify FISA warrants on Trump and his people.

This week, we learned that the Justice Department’s Bruce Ohr had contacts with Fusion during the campaign, while his wife actually worked at Fusion investigating Trump. This thing is starting to stink.

Is the Trump investigation the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree?

Is Mueller’s Dump Trump team investigating the wrong campaign?

There are other reasons to believe Trump may survive the deep state-media conspiracy to break his presidency, overturn his mandate and reinstate a discredited establishment.

Trump has Fox News and fighting congressmen behind him, and the mainstream media are deeply distrusted and widely detested. And there is no Democratic House to impeach him or Democratic Senate to convict him.

Moreover, Trump is not Nixon, who, like Charles I, accepted his fate and let the executioner’s sword fall with dignity.

If Trump goes, one imagines, he will not go quietly.

In the words of the great Jerry Lee Lewis, there’s gonna be a “whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”

See http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/unlike-nixon-trump-will-not-go-quietly/ (“UNLIKE NIXON, TRUMP WILL NOT GO QUIETLY“) (emphasis added)

As my article above indicates, Donald Trump is more akin to Abraham Lincoln than he is to Richard Nixon. Lincoln fought hard, against all who opposed him, and was triumphant.

Nixon was not a billionaire “street fighter” like Trump is—to Trump’s credit.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11487 (“THE FACE OF EVIL: ROBERT MUELLER“)

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28 12 2017
Timothy D. Naegele

Newt Gingrich: The Stage Is Being Set For GOP landslide In 2018

Teflon Don

Jessica Chasmar has written in The Washington Times:

Newt Gingrich said Thursday that Democrats are headed for a major political upset in 2018, mostly due to the mainstream media’s dishonesty and the party’s inability to learn from its own mistakes.

“The great political surprise of 2018 will be the size of the Republican victory,” the former Republican House Speaker wrote in a column for Fox News. “After members of the elite media have spent two years savaging President Trump, lying about Republican legislation, and reassuring themselves that Republican defeat was inevitable, the size of the GOP victory in 2018 will be an enormous shock.”

Mr. Gingrich said the most glaring example of “fake news” is the media’s handling of the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which he said will be “the 2018 proving ground of media liberal bias and dishonesty.”

“First, the media lied about the tax bill in an effort to convince most Americans their taxes would go up,” he wrote. “Then, the media took surveys of people who opposed the GOP bill based on the false information supplied by the media. Then, the media talked again and again about how unpopular the Republican plan was and how it was going to weaken Republican candidates in 2018. Then, the bill passed, and unsurprisingly, it turned out to be dramatically better for Americans than the elite media had described.”

Mr. Gingrich cited a recent CBS News report that interviewed three different families about their initial impressions of the GOP tax bill, which Mr. Trump signed into law last week. All three families believed they either wouldn’t be affected or would have to pay more under the tax plan, only to be told that they would actually be paying significantly less. In fact, CBS News reported that “most Americans” will get a tax cut next year under the plan. Mr. Gingrich said the report is just one example of how the media’s attempts to paint the tax bill as a tax hike on the middle class have negatively shaped public opinion.

“The gap between the news media falsehoods and the dramatically better reality of the GOP tax cuts will have three huge effects on the 2018 campaign,” Mr. Gingrich wrote.

First, he said the American people will be swayed by the Republican Party’s ability to follow through on its promises. Second, an increasing number of people will come to distrust the media after they compare their personal experiences with its “fake reporting and endless bias.” And lastly, the Democrats who voted against the bill “will live to regret it” and face major political upsets in the states that Mr. Trump won in 2016, Mr. Gingrich wrote.

“The stage is being set for a definitive election,” he said.

“Do you want higher taxes, bigger bureaucracy, more power in Washington, and a smaller economy with lower take-home pay and fewer jobs? If yes, vote Democrat, because that is what they stand for and will continue to vote for next year,” he continued. “If you want a bigger economy, more jobs, more take-home pay, less power with Washington bureaucrats, and lower taxes with more money in your pocket, then vote Republican.”

“If Republicans can learn to tell the truth better than the elite media and Democrats lie, the GOP will win an astonishing victory in 2018,” Mr. Gingrich concluded.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/28/newt-gingrich-the-stage-is-being-set-for-gop-lands/ (emphasis added)

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6 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

WILL BARACK OBAMA GO TO PRISON? [UPDATED]

The facts are mounting that he should!

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) (see also the comments beneath the article) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5362821/FBI-lovers-texts-Obama-wanted-info-Clinton-email-probe.html (“Texts between FBI lovers reveal Obama wanted to be briefed on EVERYTHING happening in Clinton email investigation – after he ‘guaranteed’ he wouldn’t get involved“) and https://www.westernjournal.com/dick-morris-obama-eyeballs/ (“Dick Morris: Obama Was in It up to His Eyeballs“)

Barack Obama - prison

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9 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

TRUMP IS AT WAR WITH PROGRESSIVES, LIKE MANY OF US ARE WHO LOVE AMERICA AND USED TO BE DEMOCRATS!

Bald Eagle and American flag

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

President Trump is the leader of America’s conservative party.

Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley.

In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party’s heart.

Who, then, and what is Donald Trump?

In a Federalist essay, “Trump Isn’t a Conservative — And That’s a Good Thing,” Frank Cannon comes close to the mark.

Trump, he writes, “would more accurately be described as a ‘radical anti-progressive'” who is “at war with the progressives who have co-opted American civil society.” Moreover, Trump “is willing to go further than any other previous conservative to defeat them.”

Many “elite conservatives,” writes Cannon, believe the “bedrock institutions” they treasure are “not subject to the same infectious politicization to which the rest of society has succumbed.”

This belief is naive, says Cannon, “ridiculous on its face.”

“Radical anti-progressives” recognize that many institutions — the academy, media, entertainment and the courts — have been co-opted and corrupted by the left. And as these institutions are not what they once were, they no longer deserve the respect they once had.

Yet most conservatives will only go so far in criticizing these institutions. We see this in how cradle Catholics find it difficult to criticize the Church in which they were birthed and raised, despite scandals and alterations in the liturgy and doctrine.

Trump sees many institutions as fortresses lately captured by radical progressives that must be attacked and besieged if they are to be recaptured and liberated. Cannon deals with three such politicized institutions: the media, the NFL and the courts.

Trump does not attack freedom of the press but rather the moral authority and legitimacy of co-opted media institutions. It is what CNN has become, not what CNN was, that Trump disrespects.

These people are political enemies posturing as journalists who create “fake news” to destroy me, says Trump. Enraged media, responding, reveal themselves to be not far removed from what Trump says they are.

And, since Trump, media credibility has plummeted.

Before 2016, the NFL was an untouchable. When the league demanded that North Carolina accept the radical transgender agenda or face NFL sanctions, the Tar Heel State capitulated. When Arizona declined to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday in 1990, the NFL took away the Super Bowl. The Sun State caved.

This year, the league demanded respect for the beliefs and behavior of NFL players insulting Old Glory by “taking a knee” during the national anthem.

Many conservative politicians and commentators, fearing the NFL’s almost mythic popularity in Middle America, remained mute.

But believing instinctively America would side with him, Trump delivered a full-throated defense of the flag and called for kicking the kneelers off the field, out of the game, and off the team.

“Fire them!” Trump bellowed.

And Trump triumphed. The NFL lost fans and viewers. The players ended the protests. No one took a knee at the Super Bowl.

Before Trump, the FBI was sacrosanct. But Trump savaged an insiders’ cabal at the top of the FBI he saw as having plotted to defeat him.

Trump has not attacked an independent judiciary, but courts like the Ninth Circuit, controlled by progressives and abusing their offices to advance progressive goals, and federal judges using lifetime tenure and political immunity to usurp powers that belong to the president — on immigration, for example.

Among the reasons Congress is disrespected is that it let the Supreme Court seize its power over social policy and convert itself into a judicial dictatorship — above Congress.

Trump is no Beltway conservative, writes Cannon.

“Trump doesn’t play by these ridiculous rules designed to keep conservatives stuck in a perpetual state of losing — a made-for-CNN version of the undefeated Harlem Globetrotters versus the winless Washington Generals. Trump instead seeks to fight and delegitimize any institution the Left has captured, and rebuild it from the ground up.”

The Trump supporters who most relish the wars he is waging are the “Middle American Radicals,” of whom my columnist-colleague and late friend Sam Francis used to write.

There was a time such as today before in America.

After World War II, as it became clear our long-ruling liberal elites had blundered horribly in trusting Stalin, patriots arose to cleanse our institutions of treason and its fellow travelers.

The Hollywood Ten were exposed and went to jail. Nixon nailed Alger Hiss. Truman used the Smith Act to shut down Stalin’s subsidiary, the Communist Party USA. Spies in the atom bomb program were run down. The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair.

Liberals call it the “Red Scare.” And they are right to do so.

For when the patriots of the Greatest Generation like Jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy came home from the war and went after them, the nation’s Reds had never been so scared in their entire lives.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-middle-american-radical-128704 (“Trump — Middle American Radical“) (emphasis added); see also https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/05/trump-isnt-conservative-thats-good-thing/ (Frank Cannon: “Trump Isn’t a Conservative — And That’s a Good Thing”)

First, there is no such thing as a “progressive.” It is an evil term like “National Socialist,” or Nazi. It has been seized upon by America’s Left and far-Left to mask their sinister motives and activities.

Their efforts are the fulfillment of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where all of the animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme and subjugated the other animals.

Second, like Reagan before us, the Democratic Party left him and us. We did not leave the party. Many of us were once-proud Democrats, but not anymore.

Third, JFK was evil—not a “patriot”—and the worst president in American history, whose recklessness almost brought about a “nuclear winter” of epic proportions. Barack Obama is an un-American racist and almost JFK’s equal, in terms of the damage he has done to the fabric of our great nation and its people.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-11898 (“WILL BARACK OBAMA GO TO PRISON?“) (see also the article itself, and the extensive comments beneath it) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism (“Nazism“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm”)

Lastly, our legal system has become perverted beyond all recognition; and the “sanctity” of the law no longer exists. Many very successful lawyers are ashamed of their profession, and advise their kids and others to pursue non-legal careers.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/the-state-bar-of-california-is-lawless-and-a-travesty-and-should-be-abolished/ (“The State Bar Of California Is Lawless And A Travesty, And Should Be Abolished“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/the-american-legal-system-is-broken-can-it-be-fixed/ (“The American Legal System Is Broken: Can It Be Fixed?“)

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10 02 2018
Rick

Tim.. What the hell is Jeff Sessions actually doing? You almost never hear from him… Why is he such an inert AG? I know he cowardly reclused himself from this Russia nonsense, but jeez…also, I realize it’s a loaded question, but do you think we will keep the house and senate, and will Trump survive this 24/7 onslaught, without losing his sanity, or getting somehow impeached?.. Looks like the media has no problem digging into the personal life of Trump and anyone associated with him, and weaponizing it…I am really frightened for president Trump….

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10 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you as always, Rick, for your thoughtful and timely comments.

Sessions is a “creature” or “product” of the GOP side of the U.S. Senate, and of the South. He is a “go along, get along” former senator, who has been successful in that legislative body by dealing with members of both political parties, in a collegial manner. I have seen many like him on the Hill over the years.

He is not a rough-and-tumble, take-no-prisoners, bare-knuckles, ball-busting fighter. Indeed, when he became an advocate for President Trump during the campaign, I was a bit surprised, but pleasantly so. He was an advocate, but in a gentlemanly way, which provided credence to “candidate Trump” . . . which is among the reasons why Trump picked him as the Attorney General, or so I believe.

Perhaps watching him at the State of the Union speech was a sobering, tell-tale sign: he looked like a “deer caught in the headlights,” and way over his head in relation to his colleagues in the Cabinet.

What is needed is a tough AG, who serves the President well, and is loyal. Clearly, the DOJ and FBI have been corrupt at the highest levels, which has been true for a very long time now. Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein and others took the level of corruption to new heights (or depths), and have engaged in criminality if not outright treason. All of them should go to prison, or our legal system is worthless and a travesty.

I have felt for a long time that the President needed to replace Sessions with a Rudy Giuliani-type, hard-hitting prosecutor, who will clean up both agencies and indict and convict the wrongdoers, possibly even including Barack Obama, but surely including those whom I have just mentioned . . . and the Clintons. The President could name Sessions’ replacement as a “recess appointment,” thereby bypassing the Senate confirmation process.

His concern and that of his lawyers, I believe, is that the outright replacement of Sessions would be portrayed by the Democrats and their Leftist Media “stablemates” as tantamount to Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre (“Saturday Night Massacre”)

Fortunately, the economy is purring along—notwithstanding the stock market swings of late (e.g., “what goes up, comes down”)—and the President’s approval ratings exceed those of Barack Obama at this stage of their respective presidencies.

See, e.g., http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_feb09 (“Daily Presidential Tracking Poll – Rasmussen Reports”)

Also, the President has had a long string of victories and successes since he took office; and the American people seem to be sensing that he is not the “madman” that the Dems and the Left’s media brethren have described him.

As you correctly ascertain, the “wild card” is the Mueller probe. I firmly believe that Mueller should go to prison; and perhaps the best analyses have been set forth by Mark Levin in his appearance on the Sean Hannity show, the video of which I have posted above . . . and the articles beneath it.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-11898 (“WILL BARACK OBAMA GO TO PRISON?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-11933 (“TRUMP IS AT WAR WITH PROGRESSIVES, LIKE MANY OF US ARE WHO LOVE AMERICA AND USED TO BE DEMOCRATS!”)

My gut sense is that our President will ride through this and triumph. Watergate was breaking just as I was leaving the Senate; and I lived through it, and predicted that Nixon would not survive. He won the election in 1960, but was too much of a patriot and constitutionalist to fight what the Kennedys and Mafia had done in Chicago and West Virginia to rig that election. Then, when Watergate was breaking, he did not fight to the bitter end and destroy the tapes.

Hillary Clinton learned that lesson well, from having served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate inquiry. She and Huma Abedin and others tried to destroy all of the evidence of their wrongdoing.

However, in a word, Trump is not Nixon, as I have written. He is a tough SOB. 🙂

Interestingly, I ran into an old friend and his wife about a week ago, who were very close to the Nixons, and moved to San Clemente with them; and the husband later became Reagan’s chief speechwriter. He is a “devout” Republican of the “old school,” and not part of the new breed of Trump Republicanism.

Mueller’s stature has been tarnished beyond belief, and criminalized—or so I believe. As time passes, I believe it will get far worse, and that there is “no way out” for Mueller unless he is fair and wraps up his probes without seeking any recourse against the President or his inner circle. If, however, Mueller goes the “whole nine yards,” then I do not envy his place in history, at the very least.

Lastly, the “face” of the Democrats today—and I began as a Democrat—consists of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi (who may suffer from the onset of dementia), Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren, Maxine Waters, DNC deputy chairman Keith Ellison, Elijah Cummings, Al Sharpton, Kamala Harris, Frederica Wilson, Rachel Maddow and others of their ilk. For most Americans, and certainly those in the “Flyover States” who love Donald Trump, these Leftist misfits are like lepers.

This and other factors may determine the 2018 and 2020 elections.

See, e.g., http://freebeacon.com/politics/ellison-attended-private-dinner-iranian-president-louis-farrakhan-2013/ (“Ellison Attended Private Dinner With Iranian President and Louis Farrakhan in 2013″—”Writing under the name ‘Keith Hakim,’ Ellison proclaimed that Farrakhan was ‘a role model for black youth’ and defended a University of Minnesota campus speaker who claimed that ‘the Zionists joined with the Nazis in murdering Jews, so they would flee to Palestine'”)

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14 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

George W. Bush And Ruth Bader Ginsburg Have Become Blights On America

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Conrad Black—the Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in the New York Sun:

A couple of utterances of prominent American public figures recently have reminded us of why the country voted for a complete change in 2016. President George W. Bush, speaking in Dubai, violated the custom, until now scrupulously upheld, of a former president not criticizing the incumbent in remarks given in a foreign country. Generally, ex-presidents observe a decorous silence about their successors, even when speaking within the United States, but it has always been considered unseemly and an indignity to the great office for a former holder of it to criticize, while abroad, the incumbent.

We were reminded of George W. Bush’s gaucheries, of how he pronounced Iraq “eye-rack,” and of his malapropisms: “This sucker could go down” (in the financial crisis of 2008); “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job,” to the emergency-relief director in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, while the police deserted, looters ruled whole neighborhoods, and chaos reigned; and “Yo, Blair,” as he greeted the British prime minister at a G-7 meeting when his mouth was full of food.

There have been some embarrassments with President Trump: invented words, very odd tweets, and outbursts of ego. But in general, his syntax is correct, and when he cites some phrase or truism, it comes out right. Not for Mr. Trump such jangling tautologies as “We’ve got them on the run, and . . . they’re running.”

The burden of Mr. Bush’s reflections in Dubai was that the United States should leave its southern border open because Americans won’t bale cotton when it’s 105 degrees. Every complacent cliché about immigration tumbled inelegantly out in one dumb sentence. Cotton harvesting has been automated for 50 years, and not more than a fifth of illegal migrants are now drawn to agriculture.

There is also something fundamentally irritating about hearing jibes at Mr. Bush’s latest successor from the Gulf States (where the Bushes have allegedly flourished personally), from the man who committed the United States and many allies to the Iraq War, which then fragmented in a human tragedy and ended up with Iran being the leading influence in Iraq. It was all undertaken in the name of democracy, a crusade that elevated the anti-democratic Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; in Iraq, the Islamic State eventually arose (no direct fault of Mr. Bush).

What could this warrior for democracy, who announced “mission accomplished” with great triumphalism on the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, have been thinking in extolling the virtues of illegal migration, to do menial work in inhuman conditions in the U.S. Southwest, to people in the Emirates? In this merciless tyranny of American political correctness, such reflections, if made by Donald Trump, would get a hundred Democratic House votes for impeachment.

Now, for the frenzied and frightened American Left, the danger is so great that their former bête noire, George W., whose verbal limitations had them splitting their sides with laughter for ten years, now merely brings a nostalgic sigh for the times of so ineffectual and unthreatening an adversary of the inexorable bipartisan march of the liberal elites.

As was often the case with Mr. Bush when he was president, his remarks in Dubai were unpresidential — an allegation much bandied about against the present president over the past year. In fact, it is a myth even that President Trump is inarticulate. His speech is actually more adroit, fluent, and grammatical than were many of the extempore remarks and answers to press questions of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Carter, and both Bushes.

Mr. Trump is slightly less articulate than Presidents Clinton and Obama, who never said anything memorable but made their points smoothly. Mr. Trump is not as thoughtful a speaker or public conversationalist as John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon, and not a great orator like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan. But he handles press questions better than Reagan did, and delivers extempore addresses better and more animatedly and effectively than Mr. Obama did.

Mr. Trump’s improvised addresses to large crowds of fierce partisans in the heartland of America are effective and always entertaining. But the Washington press corps professed to believe him incapable even of reading a speech off a teleprompter, until after he had sewn up the Republican nomination. His address on foreign policy on April 27, 2016, was the first such teleprompter speech.

These speeches are now commonplace, and he speaks with authority, holding the podium and looming over it, a large and confident man who enunciates clearly (unlike some of his predecessors), is never flustered, rarely syncopated, and only occasionally repetitive. The emerging fact, which will take a long time to be admitted because it is so unpalatable, is that he looks, and largely sounds, like a president.

Another voice that recently reminded us of what Donald Trump is delivering us from was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking at a forum at Columbia University. (Disclosure: Justice Ginsburg wrote an opinion for the whole Court, except one recusal, vacating four counts of fraud and obstruction of justice of which I had been spuriously convicted, in 2010. Any bias I might have is in the justice’s favor.)

Justice Ginsburg had threatened to leave the country if Mr. Trump were elected, an inappropriate public reflection for someone in her position, and at Columbia she took it upon herself to blame a “macho” public attitude for the defeat of Hillary Clinton. This was completely gratuitous opining from a source who is required to avoid deliberate agitation of partisan sentiments.

And it is false: The majority of white women voted for Trump, and not because men threatened to chain them to their kitchen sinks if they dared vote for the first major-party female presidential candidate. Justice Ginsburg’s intervention was gratuitous, provocative, and factually inaccurate. That is not what Supreme Court justices do for a living, and the chief justice should rebuke her.

Having passed tax reform for the first time in 30 years, and now tackling both immigration, a problem that had been allowed to fester rampantly for 50 years, and reconstruction of the decayed infrastructure of America, Donald Trump is slowly climbing in the polls. He is steadily more widely perceived as a president who identified the country’s problems that the political class had ignored for years, campaigned to address them, and is carrying out his promises.

A year ago, the Republican congressional leaders were waiting to see whether Mr. Trump would be impeached, while their Democratic colleagues worked like beavers to achieve that goal. Six months ago, the Republican congressional delegations had joined forces with the president, but the Democrats were still in scorched-earth guerrilla war. Now, even Chuck Schumer acts as if he understands that Mr. Trump is the president and not just a freakish placeman whose presence in the White House causes the Statue of Liberty to burst into tears like a rural Irish Madonna (a recurring fantasy for that senator).

Even the briefest glimpse of personifications of the complacency and incompetence that Trump displaced should make the heart beat faster. The incumbent is not without his limitations, but a few words from George W. and Justice Ginsburg remind us that the thought of almost any combination of current Bushes, Clintons, and Obamas having another crack at it is both nightmarish and sobering.

See https://www.nysun.com/national/bush-and-ginsburg-remind-how-long-gone-is-era/90190/ (“Bush and Ginsburg Remind How Long Gone Is the Era Of Obama, Clinton & Bushes“) (emphasis added)

Lots of us voted for both GHWB and GWB, and were prepared to vote for Jeb Bush too, until his shrill voice became his undoing. Since then, we have revisited GWB’s record, and found it appalling.

At the urging of the “neoocons” and their state sponsor Israel, he marched us into Iraq; and is responsible for thousands of Americans killed or maimed, and the wasting of trillions of dollars that might have been used here at home.

The battle cry today is NEVER AGAIN, period, even if Israel’s existence is at stake.

The United States is becoming energy independent, and a net exporter of energy products. We do not need the Middle East for anything anymore.

With respect to Ginsburg—the Jewish Maxine Waters—she is a senile old bitch who should retire from the court gracefully . . . and should have done so long ago.

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20 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Impeachment: Like So Much Of America’s Failing Media, The Wall Street Journal Is A Relic Of The Past [UPDATED]

Newspapers are dead

The Wall Street Journal is not alone in being a relic of the past. For all intents and purposes, newspapers are dead. They are irrelevant in today’s Internet world—like the horse-and-buggy that was eclipsed by the automobile, which changed the face and mobility of America.

They are purveyors of FAKE NEWS, like the once-respected New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and CNN. They are mere shadows of their former selves, and “on the ropes.”

Will they disappear completely? What is left of the fabled horse-and-buggy today, except for horse shows and their quaint usage in America’s Amish country of Pennsylvania? Also, what is left of other dinosaurs?

William McGurn has written for the Wall Street Journal:

Democrats have a single goal when it comes to Donald Trump : impeachment. Their strategy is likewise clear: Resist! What no one seems to ask is whether resistance is really the best path to the House majority Democrats would need to pass articles of impeachment.

Democrats do have a few things going for them this year. On average, the party that holds the White House loses 30 seats or so in midterm elections—and the GOP has only a 24-seat majority. Moreover, 35 House Republicans are leaving their seats, more than twice the number of Democrats who are.

That’s not all. The intense dislike for Mr. Trump energizes the Democratic base the way Barack Obama energized the Republican one. Many swing districts will be in suburban areas where the vote margin may be decided by college-educated women, one of Mr. Trump’s weakest demographics.

But the idea that Mr. Trump’s unpopularity makes a blue wave inevitable overlooks some Republican advantages. Mr. Trump’s popularity is beginning to move upward with the growing economy, which points to a key weakness in the Resist! strategy:

Because the tax reform passed without a single Democratic vote, good news about the economy is bad news for Democratic candidates. It further means the Democratic message is rooted in enabling Washington dysfunction, because they cannot run as people willing to reach across the aisle to get things done.

It’s too early to know how last week’s failure to pass an immigration bill will play out politically. But if Mr. Trump goes around the country saying he offered to compromise but Democrats refused because they’d rather have a political issue, that could hurt them too. Especially because he will remind voters this is the same party willing to shut down the government for people here illegally.

There’s also the problem of candidates. Among this year’s crop of Democratic hopefuls are some military veterans. But it’s not a uniform message. A progressive Democrat backed by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is targeting seven-term Rep. Dan Lipinski in Chicago, a pro-life Democrat who voted against ObamaCare. If the goal is a Democratic majority, purity campaigns are a distraction. When Rahm Emanuel was engineering the party’s retaking of the House in 2006, his strategy was to settle on a candidate who would be competitive in the district (even if not as liberal as the party would like) and then reduce the primary bloodshed.

It’s not clear Democrats are following that path today. In the California district where Republican Darrell Issa is retiring, for example, five Democrats are vying to replace him. Does anyone believe that in this competition a centrist Democrat will rise to the top?

In California, there’s an added problem: Under the state’s jungle-primary law, the two largest vote getters run in the general even if they are from the same party. So California Democrats are worried that their five candidates may split the vote and send two Republicans into November contention.

Finally there’s Mr. Trump. Even with his recent bump in the polls, he remains divisive. But he’s not the only divisive politician who will figure in this election. The most recent Politico/Morning Consult poll suggests that Nancy Pelosi has pulled off a largely unheralded achievement: In the Age of Trump, she is arguably the most unpopular politician in America.

What does that mean for impeachment? Well, in 69 House districts surveyed by the Congressional Leadership Fund (a super PAC devoted to maintaining the GOP majority), Mrs. Pelosi is underwater in every one. She is also toxic among independents.

Take California’s 10th District, held by Republican Jeff Denham. Hillary Clinton carried this district in 2016, and Mr. Trump’s approval rating is at minus four. But again, Democrats are split among eight primary contenders. And the CLF survey showed that voters in Mr. Denham’s district prefer Paul Ryan as speaker to Mrs. Pelosi by 13 points. Come this fall, expect many GOP ads featuring Mrs. Pelosi calling tax cuts for workers “crumbs” and reminding voters that even if they find their Democratic candidate for the House reasonable, a vote for him will be a vote for Speaker Pelosi.

Of course it’s still early, and the polls remain volatile. The received orthodoxy may well turn out to be true, and the blue tsunami will wash over Congress in November, which will be followed by President Trump’s impeachment the following year.

Even so, the Resist! card remains a huge gamble. If Democrats cannot take back the House or Senate in an election year when they enjoy many advantages, they will wake up Nov. 7 in worse shape than when Mr. Trump beat Mrs. Clinton. And they will then enter the 2020 race without the White House, without either chamber of Congress and without a message.

See https://www.wsj.com/articles/impeachment-or-bust-1519070042 (“Impeachment or Bust“) (emphasis added)

First, with few exceptions—and McGurn is not one of them—the WSJ is not worth reading anymore when it comes to politics. It has been consistently anti-Trump since Day One of his quest for the presidency, and is still fighting the rear-guard effort to unseat him, like the Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands who were never told that World War II had ended, and they lost.

Second, the issue should not be impeachment but the many crimes committed by the Democrats—and I began as a Democrats but will never vote for one again—including Barack Obama and his corrupt DOJ/FBI (e.g., Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Robert Mueller), the Clintons and others.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-11898 (“WILL BARACK OBAMA GO TO PRISON?“) (see also the article itself, as well as the other comments beneath it)

Third, McGurn’s article concentrates on California, which is not a “bellweather” state, electorally. Those who live in the “Flyover States” hate California and everything that it represents. It is the Left Coast, which is despised.

California is a state that I will always love because of fond memories growing up there, and its natural beauty and weather. But governmentally, it is a cesspool.

See, e.g., http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-housing-gaps-20180217-story.html (“L.A. County’s homeless problem is worsening despite billions from tax measures“) and https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html (“Survey of Downtown San Francisco Reveals Trash on Every Block, 303 Piles of Feces and 100 Drug Needles“) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/22/donald-trump-threatens-pull-us-immigration-agents-/ (“Trump threatens to pull U.S. immigration agents out of California due to ‘sanctuary’ status“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/the-state-bar-of-california-is-lawless-and-a-travesty-and-should-be-abolished/ (“The State Bar Of California Is Lawless And A Travesty, And Should Be Abolished“) and
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/California-worst-quality-of-life-states-US-news-12713468.php (“Study: California has worst ‘quality of life’ in the nation“) and http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-homelessness-impact-on-others-20180301-htmlstory.html (“How can a place with 58,000 homeless people continue to function?“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5457041/impoverished-communities-people-living-Winnebagos-LA.html (“‘I feel like we’re worse than the homeless’: Inside the impoverished communities of THOUSANDS living in Winnebagos across LA“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5486171/Thousands-pounds-human-waste-discovered-California-river.html (“Thousands of pounds of hazardous waste, 14,000 needles and 400 tons of debris are found at site of California tent city that was home to 700 homeless people before it was cleared last month“)

Fourth, the “face” of the Dems today consists of the demented Nancy Pelosi; the racists Maxine Waters and DNC “leader” Keith Ellison; Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren; Chuck Schumer and others of their ilk. They are out of step with America today.

Lastly, the Web is FREE. Why should anyone pay a penny for a newspaper these days?

Have any doubts? Please click on the following link, which sets forth Web sites galore, which you can access without spending a penny.

See http://www.naegele.com/links.html (“LINKS“)

Wall Street Journal

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26 02 2018
woodNfish

The WSJ has had leftwing editorial for as long as I can remember. Only the opinion pages were conservative and when Trump ran for president those were anti-Trump like all the rest of the far left LSM. I stopped subscribing to the leftist WSJ 30 years ago because of their leftwing propaganda. Today, I don’t subscribe to any (fake) news media, and don’t watch any (fake) news broadcasts except the weather because anything they report on Trump never contains any substance, it is just to smear him, such as how he held his glass of water with two hands while in Japan. Nothing about his speeches or negotiations, no useful information at all. Pravda is more truthful than American fake news media.

Your blog is very hard to read. It is chronologically backwards. Why are your oldest articles at the top? This is like a newspaper putting their front page on the back of the paper.

Liked by 1 person

27 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comments.

I agree completely with your first paragraph.

As mentioned at the end of my comment immediately above, I began compiling a listing of useful links many years ago (see http://www.naegele.com/links.html), most of which are totally free. No one needs to pay attention to the FAKE NEWS at all. At most, I look at the headlines, and then move on to something more worthwhile and accurate.

I am sorry that you find this blog difficult. I post articles on a periodic basis (see https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/), and not many of them. Then, comments appear beneath each article, which is the way of updating them. In essence, the articles represent “themes,” which the comments expand on.

If you look at the right column, it begins with “RECENT ARTICLES,” and then toward the bottom is a listing of “RECENT COMMENTS” including both of yours. Then, below that are my Tweets. Indeed, most of my comments appear here, and go out over Twitter.

Again, I am sorry if this does not make sense, but it is the way that this blog is set up.

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26 02 2018
woodNfish

Now, because your blog is in reverse chronological order, the first article I read is your post about Lincoln’s suspension of Habeus Corpus: The US never has had a “civil war”. The South never tried to overthrow the government of the United States. We had a war of succession, and the Southern states had a constitutional right to secede. The butcher, Lincoln, started an unconstitutional war against the South by re-arming Fort Sumpter.

Not one leader of the South was ever charged with treason or given a trial. Jefferson Davis was released without charges because Lincoln knew his war was unconstitutional and he would have lost in court.

The phony “civil war” was also never about slavery. Lincoln used slavery the same as Constantine used the Christains – as a rallying point for the mob. Lincoln didn’t give a rats behind about the slaves in the South which is why it was still legal in several northern states while the war raged. Kentucky, Missouri, Rhode Island and Delaware all permitted slavery, and remained with the Union during the Civil War. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to join the Union.

Of course the victors get to write the history books, but that does not change the fact that the history as told is nothing more than lies and propaganda. And rather than being the greatest president, Lincoln deserves nothing but derision. Please stop helping to continue this lie.

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27 02 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for these comments as well.

I agree that the war was not about slavery. As I have written:

Perhaps most striking is how the tide of events carried Lincoln and changed his views (e.g., with respect to the slavery issue alone, from colonization to emancipation).

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/jefferson-lincoln-and-america/ (“Jefferson, Lincoln And America”)

He preferred that the slaves be “repatriated” to Africa, and then changed his views when that was deemed impractical.

I believe George Washington was our greatest president.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/america-a-rich-tapestry-of-life/#comment-11038 (“A REAL HERO”)

However, yes, I believe Lincoln was great too, in no small part because he and Grant held our country together, when it might otherwise have fragmented.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero”)

Lastly, my first ancestor to arrive in America did so in 1760, from Bristol, England; and he settled not far from Thomas Jefferson in Virginia. Later ancestors (from Germany, Ireland and Scotland) served on both sides of our Civil War.

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1 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

FREAKS DRIVE MIKE HUCKABEE FROM COUNTRY MUSIC

Mike Huckabee

Hollywood and its Harvey Weinstein-Roman Polanski warped mindset, and “fellow travelers” in country music, have struck again. This time, the victim is Mike Huckabee—former governor of Arkansas, and a candidate in the U.S. Republican presidential primaries in both 2008 and 2016—whom many of us respect immensely.

Chris Willman has written in Variety:

Almost as quickly as he was appointed, conservative radio host Mike Huckabee has resigned from the board of the CMA Foundation, an educational arm of the Country Music Association. “The CMA Foundation has accepted former Governor Mike Huckabee’s resignation from its Board of Directors, effective immediately,” the CMA said in a statement late Thursday afternoon, just a day after revealing that Huckabee had joined the board, an announcement that immediately set off a firestorm in the country music community.

The CMA had obviously seen Huckabee’s appointment as apolitical, since the former Arkansas governor had long been a champion of putting the arts in schools, which is the CMA Foundation’s mission. But hardly everyone thought it was possible to view Huckabee’s philanthropic efforts as separate from his hardline politics. “Basically, every gay man in town is furious,” said one artist manager, before the resignation was announced — and the chatter around Nashville made it clear that many of the straight men and women heading the town’s biggest label groups and management firms were every bit as angry.

The writing appeared to be on the wall for Huckabee’s day-long tenure after one of the most influential managers in Nashville, Jason Owen, wrote a letter to the CMA announcing that his artists would no longer work on Foundation efforts. Owen even suggested that cooperation with the entire CMA was in question. Owen’s clients include Little Big Town, whose Kimberly Fairchild sits on the Foundation board, and was seen as likely to resign if Owen intended to carry out his words. Owen also represents Kacey Musgraves, whose gay-friendly “Follow Your Arrow” politics might be seen as not exactly aligning with Huckabee’s.

Owen’s letter to the CMAs’ CEO, Sarah Trahern, and director of community outreach, Tiffany Kerns, read: “It is with a heavy heart that I must let you know moving forward, Sandbox [his management firm] and Monument [Sandbox’s Sony-distributed label] will no longer support the CMA Foundation in any way (this includes everyone we represent collectively) considering the heartbreaking news shared today regarding Mike Huckabee appointee/elected to the CMA Foundation. Further, we find it hard to support the organization as a whole as a result. As you may know I have a child and two on the way. This man has made it clear that my family is not welcome in his America. And the CMA has opened their arms to him, making him feel welcome and relevant. Huckabee speaks of the sort of things that would suggest my family is morally beneath his and uses language that has a profoundly negative impact upon young people all across this country. Not to mention how harmful and damaging his deep involvement with the NRA is. What a shameful choice.

“I will not participate in any organization that elevates people like this to positions that amplify their sick voices,” Owen’s letter continued. “This was a detrimentally poor choice by the CMA and its leaders. I only wish the best for you and I know how hard you work for the foundation but a grossly offensive decision like this only makes your job harder and diminishes the foundation’s purpose.”

See http://variety.com/2018/music/news/mike-huckabee-resigns-country-music-foundation-nashville-controversy-1202714847/ (“Mike Huckabee Resigns From Country Music Association Board as Nashville Firestorm Ignites“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/1/mike-huckabee-resigns-cma-board-after-backlash/ (“Mike Huckabee resigns from CMA board after backlash“) and http://variety.com/2018/music/news/mike-huckabee-country-music-association-resignation-letter-1202715320/ (“Mike Huckabee Says ‘Hate Wins,’ Publishes Resignation Letter to CMA Foundation”)

One commenter asked:

So country music hates and will not tolerate Christians?

Another stated:

Strangely intolerant and self aggrandizement on the part of Mr. Owen who is now officially on the growing list of people who use their position of power to banish people they disagree with.

Welcome to the 1950’s world and mindset used by the Russians and their Communist Party tactics.

You’d think the once stigmatized Gay Community would know better!! Intolerance is the diseased symptom of Hate.

Lots of us have loved country music for decades; and one should not be surprised in the least if Owen and his clients and related entities are boycotted—along with the CMA and its foundation.

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4 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

THE VERY ESSENCE OF HOLLYWOOD’S DEPRAVITY [UPDATED]

Harvey Weinstein on casting couch

Despite all of the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and its past, perhaps what symbolizes it most today—and yes, personifies it—is the depraved Harvey Weinstein’s “casting couch” and everything that it represents in perversion.

The hundred-year-old veil of secrecy has been pulled back for the world to see what Hollywood is really like; and the sight is not pretty, but sick and despicable.

For women (and men) to rise up in Hollywood, they have been required to sacrifice their bodies and everything else. The price of becoming whores, quite literally, is very steep to pay. Yet, they have paid it again and again, only to be discarded like rubbish when they lost their looks and everything else.

Instead of worshipping the stars and starlets, we should pity them.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-12172 (“FREAKS DRIVE MIKE HUCKABEE FROM COUNTRY MUSIC“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11735 (“HOLLYWOOD’S SICKNESS CONTINUES UNABATED: BOYCOTT ITS FILMS!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11585 (“BOYCOTT HOLLYWOOD AND ITS FILMS!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11474 (“SICKO SEXUAL PREDATOR ROMAN POLANSKI IS TARGETED FINALLY!“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/#comment-10966 (“HOW HYPOCRITICAL: A KENNEDY PROPOSES ZERO TOLERANCE IN WEINSTEIN WAKE“) and https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-oscars-eye-new-low-early-numbers-1091636 (“TV Ratings: Oscars Drop to All-Time Low 26.5 Million Viewers“)

However, there are reasons to believe that nothing will change in Hollywood. One hundred years of depravity is cultural and ingrained.

See, e.g., http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5511035/Terry-Gilliam-criticizes-MeToo-movement-Weinsteins-victims.html (“‘A night with Harvey, that’s the price you pay’: Director Terry Gilliam hits out at #MeToo ‘mob rule’, claiming some women ‘did very well’ after meeting with Weinstein”—”‘The ones who did knew what they were doing. These are adults, we are talking about adults with a lot of ambition'”)

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12 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

LYING POCAHONTAS REFUSES TO BE TESTED [UPDATED]

Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren

Marisa Schultz has written in the New York Post:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren batted down calls for her to take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage in an interview that aired Sunday.

“I know who I am. And never used it for anything. Never got any benefit from it anywhere,” Warren said of her ancestry on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The Massachusetts Democrat has been under increased pressure to provide evidence of ​her ​Native American roots, with President Trump repeatedly mocking her as “Pocahontas” as recently as Saturday.

An editorial this month in Massachusetts’s Berkshire Eagle urged Warren to buy a DNA test for $99 to resolve the issue once and for all.

“All the senator needs to do is spit into a tube, wait a few weeks and get her answer,” the paper said.

Asked whether she’d take an ancestry test, Warren said she wants to hold onto the folklore of her parents’ love story.

“My mother and daddy were born and raised in Oklahoma,” Warren said. “My daddy first saw my mother when they were both teenagers. He fell in love with this tall, quiet girl who played the piano. Head over heels. But his family was bitterly opposed to their relationship because she was part Native American. They eventually eloped.”

She said her parents survived the Great Depression and other hardships as they raised her and her three brothers.

“That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our mom and our dad, from our grandparents,” Warren said. “It’s a part of me and nobody’s going to take that part of me away.”

But Warren’s story has come under scrutiny for relying on family lore rather than official tribal documentation of Native American heritage.

As Trump continues to use a “racial slur” against her, she’ll continue to use the opportunity to urge the federal government to put more resources to help tribes, including​ to combat​ sexual violence.

“This is a group that is being injured every single day,” Warren said. “We need to bring some attention to it and we need to put some resources on it.”

Also Sunday, Warren denied she intends to challenge Trump in 2020.

“I am not running for president of the United States,” ​she​ said.

Warren said she also is concerned Trump’s lack of staffing and expertise at the State Department could undercut his planned meeting with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

“I am very worried that they’re going to take advantage of him,” Warren said.

See https://nypost.com/2018/03/11/elizabeth-warren-refuses-dna-test-to-prove-native-american-heritage/ (“Elizabeth Warren refuses DNA test to prove Native American heritage“) (emphasis added)

Also, Jonathan S. Tobin has written in the New York Post:

If you had any doubt that Sen. Elizabeth Warren has her eye on the White House, it was dispelled this past weekend when she showed up on the Sunday morning talk shows to say she wasn’t running for president.

By issuing a deliberately non-Shermanesque denial, Warren signaled her strong interest in 2020. But while the former law professor has learned to speak Washington doubletalk like a native, her other tribal connections — or lack thereof — may yet trip her up.

Rather than retracting or apologizing for past assertions of Native American identity that have been refuted by genealogists and historians, the Massachusetts Democrat is doubling down on her story about being a Cherokee or a Delaware.

Last month, The Post dared her to take a DNA test to prove her story and now a Bay State paper (The Berkshire Eagle) has issued the same challenge. The test results would either compel critics like President Donald Trump to stop calling her “Pocahontas” or force her to admit it was all a lie.

But while Warren won’t take the test, she also won’t shut up about being a Native American. On the Sunday shows, she repeated the story she’s been telling for years about her parents’ epic romance in which her father’s family opposed the match because of her mother’s supposed Indian ancestry.

It’s a sweet tale — but, given that no member of her family has ever shown up on a list of tribe members or any other birth, marriage or death records dating back to the early 19th century — it’s hard to imagine why the blonde-haired, blue-eyed senator’s grandparents would have rejected her mother on those grounds.

At this point, she’s only a degree away from being another Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who passed as African-American while becoming a local NAACP official.

Yet Warren keeps telling America that she “knows who she is” and that “no one is going to take that part of me away.”

Why is she doing this?

Like most people and politicians, Warren is allergic to admitting fault even if just saying you’re sorry and moving on from this mess would be the smart thing to do.

Then, too: In a Democratic Party where identity politics and minority status is the political gold standard, having to give up her claim would be painful.

Despite her denials of profiting from her claims of Native American ties, she likely never would have been appointed to the faculty of Harvard Law without the distinction of being the first “Indian” there. It was a key point in her rise from an obscure academic to her current position as one of the leading lights of her party’s left wing.

Last month, she showed up at a convention of Native Americans and admitted that without a tribal identity — something that must be based on actual proof — you can’t call yourself an Indian. That’s particularly true nowadays when income from casinos has enabled some tribes to prosper.

Yet she still stuck to her myth while saying she would be working to defend Native American interests. It sounded as if what she was looking for was some sort of honorary status — a modern version of “honorary Sioux” Annie Oakley — as a mark of gratitude for her advocacy.

But as perhaps she’s starting to realize, the higher her ambitions, the rougher will be the treatment from the press and even popular culture outlets that liberals assume will always be on their side.

In November, Trevor Noah said on “The Daily Show” that Trump was being “woke” for calling out Warren for not telling the truth and never apologizing for her Indian lies. That should have been the wake-up call she needed. But, like taking a test that might produce the truth, that’s not something she seems able to do.

It’s only going to get worse for Warren. In 2020, she will likely be facing off in Democratic primaries against some real minorities, like Sens. Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Cory Booker (NJ). So she’s not going to get the same free pass for her Native American fairy tale that Democratic voters in deep blue Massachusetts have given her.

It’s long past time for Warren to back down. If she doesn’t, the cries of “Fauxcohantas” from Trump and other conservatives will be the least of her problems.

See https://nypost.com/2018/03/12/warrens-native-american-problem-is-only-going-to-get-worse/ (“Warren’s ‘Native American’ problem is only going to get worse“); see also https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/3/elizabeth-warren-mounts-pr-blitz-insisting-cheroke/ (“Warren mounts PR blitz insisting Cherokee claims never helped her career“)

. . .

See also https://thepoliticalinsider.com/trump-responds-elizabeth-warrens-native-heritage/ (“Trump Responds to Elizabeth Warren’s Native Heritage Claim”—”[S]he ‘proved’ that she’s – maybe – 1/1024th, or 0.098% Native American. . . . It’s unclear why she thought proving she’s – maybe – 1/1024th Native would dispel her lie. . . . While Warren – again, may – be 0.098% Native, the average European American is 0.18% native. In other words, the average white person you see on the street is nearly twice as Native American as Elizabeth Warren”) (emphasis in original)

Most importantly, the Cherokee Nation issued the following statement:

A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship. Current DNA tests do not even distinguish whether a person’s ancestors were indigenous to North or South America. Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation. Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong. It makes a mockery out of DNA tests and its legitimate uses while also dishonoring legitimate tribal governments and their citizens, whose ancestors are well documented and whose heritage is prove[n]. Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.

See https://www.kjrh.com/news/local-news/cherokee-nation-issues-statement-on-sen-elizabeth-warren-s-dna-test-results (“Cherokee Nation issues statement on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test results“)

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14 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

86 Percent Of University Presidents Cite Negative Effects Of Liberal Political Bias On Campus

Animal Farm in America

Jennifer Harper has written in the Washington Times:

Public confidence in American universities has eroded in recent years, and campus administrators have taken notice, blaming not only the high cost of a 4-year degree but the impact of liberal bias in the academy, a new survey of college presidents finds.

“Asked to assess which of several factors were most responsible for declining public support, 98 percent of college and university presidents cited ‘concerns about college affordability and student debt’, 95 percent said ‘concerns over whether higher education prepares students for careers,’ and 86 percent cited the perception of liberal political bias,” reports an extensive new poll from Inside Higher Ed, an independent media company and industry source which tracks higher education.

“About a third of campus leaders agree with the statement that ‘the perception of colleges as places that are intolerant of conservative views is accurate.’ And 51 percent agree the 2016 election ‘exposed that academe is disconnected from much of American society’,” the poll analysis said.

“Perception” is an important term here, the presidents also fretted that the public does not have an realistic impression of the nation’s schools.

“Only 13 percent of college and university presidents agree that ‘most Americans have an accurate view of the purpose of higher education,’ and just 16 percent say the public has an accurate view of the purpose of their sector of higher education. The leaders of research institutions feel especially misunderstood: just 5 percent of presidents of public doctoral universities and 11 percent at private doctoral and master’s-level institutions say the public understands their sector, compared to 22 percent of community college leaders, for example,” the poll said.

It also revealed that a majority of the presidents say they are more politically active; 55 percent say they spoke out more on political issues in 2017.

“To the extent that concerns about liberal bias are harming the public’s view of colleges, the damage is likely greatest among Republican voters, as recent polls have shown that group is most likely to have lost more faith in higher education. That divide clearly troubles presidents. More than three-quarters say they worry about Republicans’ increasing skepticism, even as 71 percent disagreed that ‘Republican doubts about higher education are justified’,” the analysis said.

The findings are complex. The poll also found that 77 percent of the presidents say “anti-intellectual sentiment” is growing in the U.S. while another 69 percent say President Trump’s “rhetoric” has made it more difficult for them to recruit international students.

Six-out-of-10 also say “the push to diversify American higher education” is likely to recede in public attention and public policy.

The survey of 618 U.S. college and university presidents was conducted by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup from Jan. 3-Feb. 1 and released on March 9.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/14/86-of-university-presidents-cite-negative-effects-/ (emphasis added)

As my article above and the comments beneath it confirm, we are in the midst of a civil war in this great country, and the teaching at universities is contributing to it.

Freedom of speech and thought are being sacrificed, as vicious elements of the Left seek to impose their will.

George Orwell wrote about this in his prescient Animal Farm, where all of the animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme and subjugated the other animals.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm”)

The despicable Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein are among the Pigs who must be crushed.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/illegal-immigration-the-solution-is-simple/#comment-10698 (“UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESIDENT NAPOLITANO IS A DISGRACE, AND MUST BE FIRED“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/boycott-the-gop-and-ignore-foreign-naysayers/#comment-9915 (“Berkeley Is A National Embarrassment, Again“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/are-colleges-dinosaurs (“Are Colleges Dinosaurs?“)

Ban Robert Mueller

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23 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Will America Continue To Be A Country?

Bald Eagle and American flag

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“It is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s authority in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon,” wrote David Broder on Oct. 8, 1969.

“The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.”

A columnist for The Washington Post, Broder was no fan of Nixon.

His prediction, however, proved wrong. Nixon, with his “Silent Majority” address rallied the nation and rocked the establishment. He went on to win a 49-state victory in 1972, after which his stumbles opened the door to the establishment’s revenge.

Yet, Broder’s analysis was spot on. And, today, another deep state conspiracy, to break another presidency, is underway.

Consider. To cut through the Russophobia rampant here, Trump decided to make a direct phone call to Vladimir Putin. And in that call, Trump, like Angela Merkel, congratulated Putin on his re-election victory.

Instantly, the briefing paper for the president’s call was leaked to the Post. In bold letters it read, “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”

Whereupon, the Beltway went ballistic.

How could Trump congratulate Putin, whose election was a sham? Why did he not charge Putin with the Salisbury poisoning? Why did Trump not denounce Putin for interfering with “our democracy”?

Amazing. A disloyal White House staffer betrays his trust and leaks a confidential paper to sabotage the foreign policy of a duly elected president, and he is celebrated in this capital city.

If you wish to see the deep state at work, this is it: anti-Trump journalists using First Amendment immunities to collude with and cover up the identities of bureaucratic snakes out to damage or destroy a president they despise. No wonder democracy is a declining stock worldwide.

And, yes, they give out Pulitzers for criminal collusion like this.

The New York Times got a Pulitzer and the Post got a Hollywood movie starring Meryl Streep, for publishing stolen secret papers from the Pentagon of JFK and LBJ — to sabotage the Vietnam War policy of Richard Nixon.

Why? Because the hated Nixon was succeeding in extricating us with honor from a war that the presidents for whom the Times and Post hauled water could not win or end.

Not only have journalists given up any pretense of neutrality in this campaign to bring down the president, ex-national security officers of the highest rank are starting to sound like resisters.

Ex-CIA Director John Brennan openly speculated Tuesday that the president may have been compromised by Moscow and become an asset of the Kremlin.

“I think he’s afraid of the president of Russia,” Brennan said of Trump and Putin. “The Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump and may have things they could expose.”

If Brennan has evidence Trump is compromised, he should relay it to Robert Mueller. If he does not, this is speculation of an especially ugly variety for someone once entrusted with America’s highest secrets.

What is going on in this city is an American version of the “color revolutions” we have employed to dump over governments in places like Georgia and Ukraine.

Goal: Break Trump’s presidency, remove him, discredit his election as contaminated by Kremlin collusion, upend the democratic verdict of 2016, and ash-can Trump’s agenda of populist conservatism. Then, return America to the open borders, free trade, democracy-crusading Bushite globalism beloved by our Beltway elites.

Trump, in a way, is the indispensable man of the populist right.

In the 2016 primaries, no other Republican candidate shared his determination to secure the border, bring back manufacturing or end the endless wars in the Middle East that have so bled and bankrupted our nation.

Whether the Assads rule in Damascus, the Chinese fortify Scarborough Shoal, or the Taliban return to Kabul are not existential threats.

But if the borders of our country are not secured, as Reagan warned, in a generation, America will not even be a country.

Trump seems now to recognize that the special counsel’s office of Robert Mueller, which this city sees as the instrument of its deliverance, is a mortal threat to his presidency.

Mueller’s team wishes to do to Trump what Archibald Cox’s team sought to do to Nixon: Drive him out of office or set him up for the kill by a Democratic Congress in 2019.

Trump appears to recognize that the struggle with Mueller is now a political struggle — to the death.

Hence Trump’s hiring of Joe diGenova and the departure of John Dowd from his legal team. In the elegant phrase of Michael Corleone, diGenova is a wartime consigliere.

He believes that Trump is the target of a conspiracy, where Jim Comey’s FBI put in the fix to prevent Hillary’s prosecution, and then fabricated a crime of collusion with Russia to take down the new president the American people had elected.

The Trump White House is behaving as if it were the prospective target of a coup d’etat. And it is not wrong to think so.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/will-the-deep-state-break-trump-128952 (“Will the Deep State Break Trump?“) (emphasis added)

Unless the Deep State traitors are destroyed completely, the United States may not be a country that is worth living in, much less fighting for. Indeed, the stakes today are just as great as those faced by Abraham Lincoln, as discussed in my article above.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12675 (“ANOTHER DESPICABLE: THE TRAITOR JAMES CLAPPER“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12657 (“ANOTHER TRAITOR JOHN BRENNAN SQUEALS“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12641 (“Wing Nut Congressman Suozzi Should Be Prosecuted For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12611 (“The Traitor Mueller Has Been Botching Investigations Since The Anthrax Attacks“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12597 (“ANOTHER FACE OF PURE EVIL FALLS“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-12518 (“NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BETWEEN TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“)

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23 03 2018
BuffaloBillie

I believe Mr. Naegele “hit the nail on the head”! This is a tragedy we’re watching unfold. Our once great nation is being taken over by a bunch of un-elected bureaucrats who hate our President simply because he’s all for the United States and her citizens!

Liked by 1 person

23 03 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you, Billie. I agree completely.

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12 04 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

BRING IT ON!

Ban Robert Mueller

Patriotic Americans who elected Donald Trump are incensed at attempts to weaken his presidency and/or to destroy it.

One commenter expressed the sentiments of millions of law-abiding U.S. citizens who have never taken to the streets over anything:

Let’s get the EFFING Civil War Started!!! I’m SOOOOO sick of these Deep Stater child molesters, Leftist Communist TRAITORS and RINO Leftists. They need to be KILLED. This is a COUP attempt of our FAIRLY ELECTED PRESIDENT!!!! These SCUM need to DIE.

PRESIDENT TRUMP….FIRE THAT SOB. If they try to impeach you…. WE LOCK N LOAD AND START KILLING TRAITORS.

MAGA 2020.

See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-republicans-trump-firing-mueller-20180410-story.html (“Senate GOP leaders warn Trump not to fire Mueller but reject calls for legislation to protect him“) (see the comments beneath the article); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“)

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1 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

TWO AMERICAN COUNTRIES: DEPLORABLES VERSUS DESPICABLES [UPDATED]

Shame On You

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, billed as a celebration of the First Amendment and a tribute to journalists who “speak truth to power,” has to be the worst advertisement in memory for our national press corps.

Comedian Michelle Wolf, the guest speaker, recited one filthy joke after another at the expense of President Trump and his people, using words that would have gotten her kicked out of school not so long ago.

Media critic Howard Kurtz said he had “never seen a performance like that,” adding that Wolf “was not only nasty but dropping F-bombs on live television.” Some of her stuff was grungier than that.

The anti-Trump media at the black-tie dinner laughed and whooped it up, and occasionally “oohed” as Wolf went too far even for them, lending confirmation to Trump’s depiction of who and what they are.

While the journalistic elite at the black-tie dinner was reveling in the raw sewage served up by Wolf, Trump had just wrapped up a rally in Michigan.

The contrast between the two assemblies could not have been more stark. We are truly two Americas now.

“Why would I want to be stuck in a room with a bunch of fake-news liberals who hate me?” said Trump in an email to supporters, adding that he would much rather “spend the evening with my favorite deplorables who love our movement and love America.”

Her objective in arranging this year’s dinner, said WHCA president Margaret Talev, was “in unifying the country,” but “we may have fallen a little bit short on that goal.” The lady has a gift for understatement.

With revulsion at Wolf’s performance coming in strong on Sunday, journalists began to call for a halt to inviting comedians, with some urging an end to the annual dinner that Trump has twice boycotted.

These dinners are becoming “close to suicidal for the press’s credibility,” writes Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post.

How did the White House Correspondents’ Association descend to this depth?

In 1962, along with friends at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, this writer hung out outside the dinner, as we talked to legendary Pulitzer Prize-wining investigative reporter Clark Mollenhoff.

A memorable evening and though most of the press there had probably been JFK voters in 1960, these journalists would never have sat still for Saturday night’s festival of contempt.

Nor has the older Gridiron dinner descended to this depth.

A white-tie affair at the Statler Hilton, it is put on by the Gridiron Club, one of whose rules is, “Women are always present.” Nothing is to be said from the podium that might affront a lady. And the jokes from the rival party speakers are to “singe, but not burn.”

What happened to the WHCA dinner? The evening has become less a celebration of the First Amendment than a celebration of the press themselves, how wonderful they are and how indispensable they are to our democracy.

Yet in the eyes of tens of millions of their countrymen, they are seen not as “speaking truth to power,” but as using their immense power over American communications to punish their enemies, advance their own agendas, and, today, bring down a president.

The press denounces Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the people.” But is there any doubt that the mainstream media are, by and large, enemies of Trump and looking to Robert Mueller to solve their problem?

Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ dinner recalls to mind T.S. Eliot’s insight that, “Things reveal themselves passing away.”

It was saturated with detestation of Trump, his people, and what they represent.

How did we get here?

Like our cultural elite in Hollywood and the arts, and our academic elite in the Ivy League, our media elite is a different breed than we knew in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era. Our institutions passed through the great cultural, social and moral revolution of the late 20th century, and they have emerged different on the other side.

Most of the Washington press corps at that dinner have next to nothing in common with the folks who voted for Trump and cheered him in Michigan. And Hillary Clinton surely spoke for many of the Beltway media laughing at Wolf’s jokes when she said:

“(Y)ou could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. … The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic … (Trump) tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

It’s good to know what folks really think of you.

Perhaps, rather than seeking to create a synthetic unity, those who so deeply and viscerally disagree — on politics, morality, culture and even good and evil — ought peacefully to go their separate ways.

We both live in the USA, but we inhabit different countries.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/smut-night-at-the-press-dinner-129213 (“Smut Night at the Press Dinner“) (emphasis added)

Michelle Wolf is not a comedian. She is the worst sort of trailer trash.


President Trump’s speech in Michigan

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4 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

MEMO TO OUR PRESIDENT: DEFY MUELLER AND DESTROY HIM [UPDATED]

Bald Eagle and American flag

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written an article that is consistent with my article above, and with what President Lincoln did:

If Donald Trump does not wish to collaborate in the destruction of his presidency, he will refuse to be questioned by the FBI, or by a grand jury, or by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his malevolent minions.

Should Mueller subpoena him, as he has threatened to do, Trump should ignore the subpoena, and frame it for viewing in Trump Tower.

If Mueller goes to the Supreme Court and wins an order for Trump to comply and testify to a grand jury, Trump should defy the court.

The only institution that is empowered to prosecute a president is Congress. If charges against Trump are to be brought, this is the arena, this is the forum, where the battle should be fought and the fate and future of the Trump presidency decided.

The goal of Mueller’s prosecutors is to take down Trump on the cheap. If they can get him behind closed doors and make him respond in detail to questions — to which they already know the answers — any misstep by Trump could be converted into a perjury charge.

Trump has to score 100 on a test to which Mueller’s team has all the answers in advance while Trump must rely upon memory.

Why take this risk?

By now, witnesses have testified in ways that contradict what Trump has said. This, plus Trump’s impulsiveness, propensity to exaggerate, and often rash responses to hostile questions, would make him easy prey for the perjury traps prosecutors set up when they cannot convict their targets on the evidence.

Mueller and his team are the ones who need this interrogation.

For, after almost two years, their Russiagate investigation has produced no conclusive proof of the foundational charge — that Trump’s team colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack and thieve the emails of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

Having failed, Mueller & Co. now seek to prove that, even if Trump did not collude with the Russians, he interfered with their investigation.

How did Trump obstruct justice?

Did he suggest that fired NSC Advisor Gen. Mike Flynn might get a pardon? What was his motive in firing FBI Director James Comey? Did Trump edit the Air Force One explanation of the meeting in June 2016 between his campaign officials and Russians? Did he pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Mueller?

Mueller’s problem: These questions and more have all been aired and argued endlessly in the public square. Yet no national consensus has formed that Trump committed an offense to justify his removal. Even Democrats are backing away from talk of impeachment.

Trump’s lawyers should tell Mueller to wrap up his work, as Trump will not be testifying, no matter what subpoena he draws up, or what the courts say he must do. And if Congress threatens impeachment for defying a court order, Trump should tell them: Impeach me and be damned.

Will a new Congress impeach and convict an elected president?

An impeachment battle would become a titanic struggle between a capital that detests Trump and a vast slice of Middle America that voted to repudiate that capital’s elite, trusts Trump, and will stand by him to the end.

And in any impeachment debate before Congress and the cameras of the world, not one but two narratives will be heard.

The first is that Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton and then sought to obstruct an investigation of his collusion.

The second is the story of how an FBI cabal went into the tank on an investigation of Clinton to save her campaign. Then it used the product of a Clinton-DNC dirt-diving operation, created by a British spy with Russian contacts, to attempt to destroy the Trump candidacy. Now, failing that, it’s looking to overthrow the elected president of the United States.

In short, the second narrative is that the “deep state” and its media auxiliaries are colluding to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

Unlike Watergate, with Russiagate, the investigators will be on trial as well.

Trump needs to shift the struggle out of the legal arena, where Mueller and his men have superior weapons, and into the political arena, where he can bring his populous forces to bear in the decision as to his fate.

This is the terrain on which Trump can win — an us-vs-them fight, before Congress and country, where not only the alleged crimes of Trump are aired but also the actual crimes committed to destroy him and to overturn his victory.

Trump is a nationalist who puts America first both in trade and securing her frontiers against an historic invasion from the South. If he is overthrown, and the agenda for which America voted is trashed as well, it may be Middle America in the streets this time.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/memo-to-trump-defy-mueller-129254 (“Memo to Trump: Defy Mueller“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) (see also the comments beneath this article)

It is worth repeating how Lincoln acted when others—like Barack Obama, the Clintons, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper today—were trying to destroy his presidency and our great nation:

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

Nothing less will suffice.

See also http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/may_2018/voters_say_trump_reelection_more_likely_reject_impeachment_as_strategy (“Voters Say Trump Reelection More Likely, Reject Impeachment As Strategy“) and http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_may04 (“51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance“) and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/black-hispanic-unemployment-rates-hit-record-lows-in-april (“Black, Hispanic unemployment rates hit record lows in April“)

Lastly, did Mueller commit atrocities in Vietnam?

Ban Robert Mueller

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22 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

CRUCIFY MUELLER AND ROSENSTEIN! [UPDATED]

Mueller and Rosenstein

In a Hill article entitled “Stopping Robert Mueller to protect us all,” Mark Penn—who served as pollster and adviser to President Clinton from 1995 to 2000 (including during his impeachment)—has written:

The “deep state” is in a deep state of desperation. With little time left before the Justice Department inspector general’s report becomes public, and with special counsel Robert Mueller having failed to bring down Donald Trump after a year of trying, they know a reckoning is coming.

At this point, there is little doubt that the highest echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department broke their own rules to end the Hillary Clinton “matter,” but we can expect the inspector general to document what was done or, more pointedly, not done. It is hard to see how a yearlong investigation of this won’t come down hard on former FBI Director James Comey and perhaps even former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who definitely wasn’t playing mahjong in a secret “no aides allowed” meeting with former President Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

With this report on the way and congressional investigators beginning to zero in on the lack of hard, verified evidence for starting the Trump probe, current and former intelligence and Justice Department officials are dumping everything they can think of to save their reputations.

But it is backfiring. They started by telling the story of Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat, as having remembered a bar conversation with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign. But how did the FBI know they should talk to him? That’s left out of their narrative. Downer’s signature appears on a $25 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation. You don’t need much imagination to figure that he was close with Clinton Foundation operatives who relayed information to the State Department, which then called the FBI to complete the loop. This wasn’t intelligence. It was likely opposition research from the start.

In no way would a fourth-hand report from a Maltese professor justify wholesale targeting of four or five members of the Trump campaign. It took Christopher Steele, with his funding concealed through false campaign filings, to be incredibly successful at creating a vast echo chamber around his unverified, fanciful dossier, bouncing it back and forth between the press and the FBI so it appeared that there were multiple sources all coming to the same conclusion.

Time and time again, investigators came up empty. Even several sting operations with an FBI spy we just learned about failed to produce a DeLorean-like video with cash on the table. But rather than close the probe, the deep state just expanded it. All they had were a few isolated contacts with Russians and absolutely nothing related to Trump himself, yet they pressed forward. Egged on by Steele, they simply believed Trump and his team must be dirty. They just needed to dig deep enough.

Perhaps the murkiest event in the timeline is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointment of a special counsel after he personally recommended Comey’s firing in blistering terms. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions shoved out of the way, Rosenstein and Mueller then ignored their own conflicts and took charge anyway. Rosenstein is a fact witness, and Mueller is a friend of Comey, disqualifying them both.

Flush with 16 prosecutors, including a former lawyer for the Clinton Foundation, and an undisclosed budget, the Mueller investigation has been a scorched-earth effort to investigate the entirety of the Trump campaign, Trump business dealings, the entire administration and now, if it was not Russia, maybe it’s some other country.

The president’s earlier legal team was naive in believing that, when Mueller found nothing, he would just end it. Instead, the less investigators found, the more determined and expansive they became. This president and his team now are on a better road to put appropriate limits on all this.

This process must now be stopped, preferably long before a vote in the Senate. Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again.

Its prosecutions have all been principally to pressure witnesses with unrelated charges and threats to family, or just for a public relations effect, like the indictment of Russian internet trolls. Unfortunately, just like the Doomsday Machine in “Dr. Strangelove” that was supposed to save the world but instead destroys it, the Mueller investigation comes with no “off” switch: You can’t fire Mueller. He needs to be defeated, like Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Clinton.

Finding the “off” switch will not be easy. Step one here is for the Justice Department inspector general report to knock Comey out of the witness box. Next, the full origins of the investigation and its lack of any real intelligence needs to come out in the open. The attorney general, himself the target of a secret investigation, needs to take back his Justice Department. Sessions needs to act quickly, along with U.S. Attorney John Huber, appointed to conduct an internal review of the FBI, on the Comey and McCabe matters following the inspector general report, and then announce an expanded probe into other abuses of power.

The president’s lawyers need to extend their new aggressiveness from words to action, filing complaints with the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility on the failure of Mueller and Rosenstein to recuse themselves and going into court to question the tactics of the special counsel, from selective prosecutions on unrelated matters, illegally seizing Government Services Administration emails, covering up the phone texts of FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and operating without a scope approved by the attorney general. (The regulations call for the attorney general to recuse himself from the investigation but appear to still leave him responsible for the scope.)

The final stopper may be the president himself, offering two hours of testimony, perhaps even televised live from the White House. The last time America became obsessed with Russian influence in America was the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. Those ended only when Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) attacked an associate of the U.S. Army counsel, Joseph Welch, and Welch famously responded: “Sir, have you no decency?” In this case, virtually every associate and family member of the president has been subject to smears conveniently leaked to the press.

Stopping Mueller isn’t about one president or one party. It’s about all presidents and all parties. It’s about cleaning out and reforming the deep state so that our intelligence operations are never used against opposing campaigns without the firmest of evidence. It’s about letting people work for campaigns and administrations without needing legal defense funds. It’s about relying on our elections to decide our differences.

See http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/388549-stopping-robert-mueller-to-protect-us-all (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/what-atrocities-did-robert-mueller-commit-in-vietnam/ (“What Atrocities Did Robert Mueller Commit In Vietnam?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/ (“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“)

At the very least, Mueller and Rosenstein must be destroyed.

. . .

And what about Barack Obama’s role in this treasonous conduct, and that of former FBI Director James Comey?

Like

29 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

RAGE: BOYCOTT ALL OF DISNEY!

Hollywood is sick, and Americans know it. Yet, Roseanne Barr’s TV show has been canceled by Disney and Hollywood’s despicable Left, which gave us the depraved Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and so many others like them.

The totally-biased Variety—which looked the other way while depravity reigned in Hollywood for so many decades—has reported:

ABC, in a stunning move, has decided to cancel its Roseanne revival following star Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet Tuesday.

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said Tuesday.

Early Tuesday, star, head writer and exec producer Barr attacked Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, in a since-deleted tweet in which she said “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr subsequently apologized: “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”

Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger also weighed in on the decision to cancel Roseanne: “There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing,” he tweeted.

Showrunner Bruce Helford added in a statement of his own: “On behalf of all the writers and producers, we worked incredibly hard to create an amazing show. I was personally horrified and saddened by the comments and in no way do they reflect the values of the people who worked so hard to make this the iconic show that it is.”

Barr’s tweet prompted a massive outcry across social media, with thousands condem[n]ing the actress-comedian’s comments and calling on ABC to cancel her series. The Disney-owned network’s decision to cancel the comedy marked the first time the network has taken action in response to one of Barr’s controversial tweets.

Axing the Roseanne revival was no small decision for ABC. The rebooted comedy debuted its nine-episode run midseason and finished as the TV season’s No. 1 scripted series on all of broadcast. Roseanne had been averaging a 5.5 rating among adults 18-49 and 19.3 million viewers with live-plus-3 lifts. With a full week of time-shifting, those numbers climbed to a 6.4 rating in the key demo and 22.1 million viewers. Either way, Roseanne was the highest-rated and most watched series of the broadcast season, eclipsing NBC’s This Is Us and CBS’ Big Bang Theory — which had been in a heated battle for top status.

In response to Barr’s tweet, co-star and exec producer Sara Gilbert — who was the driving force behind the revival — blasted her longtime friend and colleague. “Roseanne’s recent comments about Valerie Jarrett, and so much more, are abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show. I am disappointed in her actions to say the least,” she wrote on Twitter. “This is incredibly sad and difficult for all of us, as we’ve created a show that we believe in, are proud of, and that audiences love — one that is separate and apart from the opinions and words of one cast member.” Wanda Sykes, who served as a consultant on season one, also tweeted Tuesday that she would not be returning to the series following Barr’s racist tweet.

Roseanne was slated to return in the fall for an expanded 11th season of 13 episodes as ABC looked to build on the show’s momentum. In a victory lap of sorts, Barr was the centerpiece of ABC’s upfront presentation to Madison Avenue ad buyers earlier this month. The revival was part of a larger effort by Dungey — broadcast’s lone African-American network topper — to cater to the underserved community who turned out in force to elect Trump. The success of the Roseanne revival has prompted other broadcast networks to pick up a wave of multicamera comedies in a larger push to program for middle America. (To that end, Fox revived Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing a year after ABC’s cancellation.)

Roseanne has never shied away from taking on timely and controversial subjects. In the spirit of its original run, which had a history of addressing larger political and social issues, the revival famously opened its new season with an episode that explored the country’s divisive response to President Trump, whom Barr has publicly supported. The storyline between Roseanne and her sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), was designed to reflect the debate among Trump’s working-class base and spur a larger discussion. The May 22 season finale, likewise, set the stage to explore a larger debate about health care in America.

The reboot also found itself under the microscope earlier this season when a one-off joke taking aim at fellow ABC comedies Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat was blasted as being “reductive” and “belittling.”

For his part, Helford stressed ahead of and during the Roseanne revival that he hoped viewers would be able to separate the show from Barr’s politics. “We never set out to be a show about politics. We set out to be a show about the Conners and how the current political climate affects the family,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “We made a point of not mentioning names in the beginning, and I believe we will probably maintain that same thing. There is no agenda here, in any direction. The idea is to present all sides of the dialogue. Making it specific like that isn’t necessary. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re not talking about the personalities involved. We’re talking about the effects of all the politics on the lives of people like the Conners.” Helford served as showrunner on an early season of Roseanne before he was fired by the actress. He was poised to return as season 11’s lone showrunner after Whitney Cummings opted to not return.

ABC’s decision to cancel Roseanne leaves the network with a major hole on its schedule as the series was set to open its Tuesday lineup at 8 p.m. ABC now heads into the 2018-19 broadcast season without TV’s No. 1 series and without prolific showrunner Shonda Rhimes, who exited last year for a deal with Netflix.

See https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/roseanne-canceled-at-abc-racist-tweet-1115412 (“‘Roseanne’ Canceled at ABC Following Racist Tweet”)

Americans agree with Roseanne’s tweet, and believe she should not have apologized. Valerie Jarrett is part of the Obama Administrations’s criminal conspiracy; and she should be in prison like the rest of her treasonous co-conspirators.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“)

Also, as if Disney did not have enough problems already, with its latest Star Wars film withering at the box office and its ESPN beset with problems, and now this.

To cancel Roseanne Barr’s show is an act of idiocy and lunacy, and self-immolation. Heads should roll at Disney; and until Roseanne’s show is reinstated, all of Disney’s operations should be boycotted.

They include The Walt Disney Studios (e.g., Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Studios); the Disney Music Group; the Disney Theatrical Group; Walt Disney Parks and Consumer Products; ABC-TV and ESPN; the Disney Channel; and the Disney Cruise Line.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Disney

America’s despicable Left was just waiting for a chance to pounce on Roseanne Barr, and to terminate her show. Disney’s long-time CEO Iger’s career should end with this decision.

Nothing less will suffice.

If Walt Disney was alive, it is doubtful any of this would be happening.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/#comment-11692 (“Roseanne Barr Attacked For Being Pro-Trump“)

Like

29 05 2018
Susan

I don’t see how they can justify cancelling her program when their late night programs are equally biased and offensive. I’m not defending what she said. just pointing out how unfair it is and uneven handed. To be honest, I’m really tired of the harsh rhetoric that has taken over our country. It will lead to no good in the end. Imagine if it was a family. There’s no way a family like this could stay together and I’m fearful we are seeing the beginning of the unraveling of the America you and I grew up knowing. As long as we see each other and every single issue as “them” and “us” nothing will change. I wish I knew what the answer was. But until we get past needing to feel like winners so the other side are losers it wont end.

Like

30 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comments, Susan. I agree with them completely.

I began as a Democrat in a devoutly Republican family; and I did so because of John F. Kennedy, whom I watched give his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ 1960 convention in the Los Angeles Coliseum before I was old enough to vote.

Little did I realize at the time that JFK and his brother Bobby had “feet of clay,” of the worst sorts. Indeed, their brother Ted killed Mary Jo Kopechne.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/#comment-12868 (“The Kennedy Brothers Killed Mary Jo Kopechne”)

What was even worse, Ted got away with the murder; and when I worked in the U.S. Senate, our offices were right next to his. I used to see him fawned over by young groupies like a rock star, even though he was a killer.

When I left the Senate, I vowed that neither of my kids would ever work on Capitol Hill. I had seen too much sleaze, and it was sickening; and I had grown up in Hollywood/LA, and I was not naïve concerning the depravity that exists in this world.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It”)

I became an Independent because I did not believe in either political party. Today, according to recent Gallup polling, approximately 42 percent of Americans “identify” as Independents. For all intents and purposes, they have rejected both political parties, and rightly so. I doubt that I will ever vote for another Democrat.

Like you, I love our country, and only want the very best for it and all Americans. A civil war is afoot in our great nation now, and it is not likely to end soon. Indeed, Barack Obama and other key officials in his administration tried to defeat the candidacy of Donald Trump; and since he was elected, they have been trying to destroy his presidency.

I believe this is treason, and that each of the co-conspirators should pay dearly for their crimes. Lots of us did not vote for Barack Obama, but we certainly did not try to destroy his presidency.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”)

Like

30 05 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Harvard Professor Trashes America

Bald Eagle and American flag

Douglas Ernst has written in The Washington Times:

Harvard professor Khalil Muhammad said President Trump’s focus on law and order adds to “the longest story of America, which is a story that essentially said that this is a white European’s country, and everyone else has to play by our rules.”

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro of Weekend Edition Sunday invited the Cambridge academic on to discuss ways “white fear” is allegedly being “weaponized” in the Trump era and what can be done about it. The pair noted isolated incidents at a Philadelphia Starbucks and a golf course to buttress their points.

“Our current president ran as a law-and-order candidate, in a country with a long history where the notion of using the police as the foot soldiers of controlling African-Americans — limiting their freedom, deciding that they are indeed second-class citizens, and enforcing those laws when they were legal in this country — is a really big part of the problem,” Mr. Muhammad said, the media watchdog NewsBusters reported Tuesday. “And to evoke that mantra — to run on that mantra; to elicit the support of the entire community of professional police agencies — means that we’ve now got citizens who are playing out this policy choice — this set of politics. And that’s a big, big deal.”

The Harvard Kennedy School professor said it was difficult to quantitatively measure the veracity of his claims. Instead, he suggested viewers examine increased reporting on the issue.

“We really just can’t know for sure how much greater the problem is,” Mr. Muhammad said. “What has definitely increased is the amount of video evidence; the amount of copy — meaning what journalists are writing around these issues; and even the organizing around trying to do something about it.”

“What I’m trying to suggest here is that we’ve got to come up with some policies that raise the costs of bad behavior — of treating people differently than you would want to be treated,” he added. “And that is a problem of white fear being weaponized; and that is a problem of police officers being a little too prickly when people are upset about having been judged harshly or inappropriately.”

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/30/khalil-muhammad-harvard-professor-warns-white-fear/ (“Harvard professor warns: ‘White fear being weaponized’ in Trump era“) (emphasis added)

First, the very idea that this black racist is a so-called Harvard “professor” disqualifies him right from the Get-Go. His personal and institutional biases are on display. The fact that he is associated with the Kennedy School speaks volumes too. The Kennedys polluted American politics more than any other U.S. family.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the comments beneath the article)

Second, he is a racist by singling out “white Europeans.” He might have added Christians too. Whether he likes it or not, this is America’s heritage, which he and others of his ilk defame and seek to destroy each and every day.

Americans of all colors and religions are standing up and saying enough is enough. If necessary, we will fight to preserve our country, and not allow it to slide into chaos and ruin like Europe and the Middle East are doing.

Indeed, the Middle East continues to implode as we write these words. Is this what we want for our great nation? Europe may open wide its borders, and disintegrate in the process. But we have borders and laws that must and will be enforced.

See
https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/
(“America’s Newest Civil War: 2017 And Beyond“)

Third, this so-called “professor” has nothing to support his claims. Instead, he refers to “increased reporting on the issue” from America’s Leftist media, which is absurd on its face.

Fourth, the United States is a nation of immigrants. Each of us has ancestors who grew up in other countries. We are the world’s only true “melting pot.” Even the so-called “native Americans” are descended from those who crossed the Bering Land Bridge.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/america-a-rich-tapestry-of-life/ (“America: A Rich Tapestry Of Life“)

Fifth, all taxpayer support of NPR and its sister entities must cease immediately.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10529 (“Defund The Left’s PBS And NPR“)

Sixth, Muhammad’s paternal great-grandfather was the despicable black racist Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975 when Muhammad was 2 and a half years old—and clearly, the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran_Muhammad (“Khalil Gibran Muhammad“)

Lastly, this racist’s rants against our police and law enforcement are equally despicable, but certainly predictable—and echo Barack Obama’s racist beliefs.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

Like

3 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Yes, The President Can Pardon Himself

Lincoln and Trump

An editorial of the New York Sun states:

“Rudy Shock” is how the Drudge Report headlines Mayor Giuliani’s assertion that President Trump could pardon himself. To which we commend a reading of James Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. It turns out that when, in 1787, the Framers considered the pardon, they reckoned the president might, on occasion, be guilty. Yet they voted to leave the power to pardon offenses against the United States solely with him — and unrestricted.

This happened in the constitutional homestretch, on the morning of Saturday, September 15. When the pardon power came up, Madison recorded in his notes, Edmund Randolph of Virginia moved to except “cases of treason.” Wrote Madison, summarizing the objection that Randolph had raised: “The prerogative of pardon in these cases was too great a trust. The President may himself be guilty. The traitors may be his own instruments.”

Colonel George Mason of Virginia supported the motion, Madison noted. [Governor] Morris, though, objected. A delegate of Pennsylvania, Morris said he’d prefer that there should be no ability to pardon treason than to “let the power devolve to the legislature.” Then James Wilson, another Pennsylvania delegate, asserted that it was necessary that the pardon power be available for treason and “is best placed in the hands of the executive.”

And then the famous words: “If he be himself a party to the guilt, he can be impeached and prosecuted.” To which Rufus King of Massachusetts chimed in with the thought that, as Madison put it, “it would be inconsistent with the constitutional separation of the executive and legislative powers, to let the prerogative be exercised by the latter. A legislative body is utterly unfit for the purpose. They are governed too much by the passions of the moment.”

Smart fellows, these Founders. In respect of legislative passions, King went on to argue that in Massachusetts, “one assembly would have hung all the insurgents in that state: the next was equally disposed to pardon them all.” Even Rufus King, though, was not without a certain wishy-washiness. Madison notes that King turned around and “suggested the expedient of requiring the concurrence of the Senate in acts of pardon.”

. . . Madison then — he writes about himself in the third person — “admitted the force of objections to the legislature” but reckoned that “the pardon of treasons was so peculiarly improper for the President” that Madison would “acquiesce” in the transfer of the pardon power for treason to the legislature rather than leave it “altogether” in the hands of the president. He’d prefer advice from the Senate.

Then Randolph announced that he, as Madison paraphrased him, “could not admit the Senate into a share of the power. The great danger to liberty lay in a combination between the President and that body.” Colonel Mason barked that the Senate “has already too much power.” Then the matter was put to a vote. Virginia and Georgia wanted to divide the pardon power, but the rest said no, save for Connecticut, which was of two minds.

Feature that here was a gathering of geniuses. They knew they were writing one of the most important documents since God’s laws were brought down from Sinai. We mortals could tear our hair out the way they noodled over every word of the parchment. They got to a point in respect of the pardon where they were talking about how the president might himself be guilty. Yet even then, they did not move to prohibit a president from pardoning himself.

Does that mean the Supreme Court would countenance President Trump pardoning himself? Not even Nixon tested the question. And the report is that not even Mr. Giuliani suggested Mr. Trump was readying a pardon for himself. As to what he could do in a pinch, though, our reading of plain language of the Constitution is hard put to see where the Founding Fathers ruled out a president pardoning himself. If they’d wanted to, it seems to us, they would have said so.

See https://www.nysun.com/editorials/could-trump-pardon-himself/90280/ (“Could Trump Pardon Himself?“) (emphasis added)

As I wrote in my article above:

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

Clearly, and if necessary, President Trump can defy the treasonous Robert Mueller, and the Congress, and even the U.S. Supreme Court.

Like

16 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Prepared For War Like Lincoln Was?

Lincoln and Trump

Carol D. Leonnig and Robert Costa have written for the Washington Post, which has been republished in the Chicago Tribune:

President Donald Trump’s lawyers and special counsel Robert Mueller are hurtling toward a showdown over a yearlong investigation into the president’s conduct, with Mueller pushing to write up his findings by summer’s end and Trump’s lawyers strategizing how to rebut a report that could spur impeachment hearings.

The confrontation is coming to a head as Trump and his allies ratchet up their attacks on the special counsel probe, seizing on a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s inspector general that castigated FBI officials for their conduct during the 2016 Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said that he planned to use the inspector general’s conclusions to undermine Mueller, suggesting he may ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to examine the current probe.

“We want to see if we can have the investigation and special counsel declared illegal and unauthorized,” Giuliani said in an interview Friday.

In the meantime, Trump must decide whether to do a face-to-face interview with Mueller’s team – an answer the president’s legal team expects to have in the next two weeks.

If the president agreed to a sit-down, the special counsel has told Trump’s lawyers that he could finish within roughly 90 days a report on whether Trump sought to obstruct a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, according to two people familiar with the discussions. A separate report outlining Mueller’s broader findings on Russian attempts to bolster Trump’s candidacy is expected to take longer.

The confidential obstruction report, which would be delivered to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, is expected to contain the prosecutors’ conclusions about whether Trump engaged in any criminal wrongdoing by trying to derail the investigation into his campaign’s contact with Russians, according to the people.

The filing of the report could trigger a political firestorm over whether to make the special counsel’s findings public – just as this fall’s midterm campaign season kicks off.

“It’ll be a moment that polarizes the country, exposing just how divided the country is about this investigation and who’s on the other side, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who added that he and other Trump allies are “prepared for war.”

Among those suited up for battle: the president’s attorneys, who are readying to write a rebuttal disputing any conclusions that the president’s actions were improper or illegal.

At the center of that standoff would be Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller probe. Friends and foes predict he would face intense pushback over every aspect of the report – when to release the information to Congress, whether to refer the report to Congress to consider impeachment and whether to make any aspect of the report public.

“He’s the final decision-maker,” said Giuliani, adding: “There will be pressure from all ways.”

Rosenstein, who has repeatedly sought to defuse attacks on the Justice Department by the president and his congressional allies, has indicated he will only bend so far. Last month, after House Republicans threatened to impeach him for withholding investigative documents, he warned that “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

A spokesman for Rosenstein declined to comment.

That round of political and legal drama could be delayed until after the November elections if Mueller decides to hold back the report to avoid releasing it too close to Election Day, or if Trump refuses an interview and the special counsel tries to issue a subpoena, kicking off a lengthy court struggle.

In the meantime, anticipation for Mueller’s report has put Washington on a kind of emergency storm watch.

“What we’re going through now is a walk in the park compared to what’s coming when the report [on Trump’s conduct] comes out,” said Peter Wehner, a Trump critic who has advised several past Republican presidents. “Even if the report is a devastating indictment of Trump, the political tribalism in the country is so deep and won’t suddenly go away.”

For months, Trump has been setting the stage by repeatedly attacking the Justice Department and the FBI and accusing Mueller of waging a “witch hunt” against him – language echoed by White House officials and Giuliani.

After the Justice Department’s inspector general released his findings Thursday, Giuliani said he and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow conferred about legal options they could take to stymie Mueller – including possibly sending a letter to the Justice Department raising questions about the credibility of the special counsel investigation. They also discussed whether to ask Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate the Mueller probe, based on the inspector general’s report and some FBI agents’ conduct, Giuliani said.

“We’re going to take the weekend to talk it all through, with our team and with the president,” Giuliani said.

The Mueller investigation is already facing internal scrutiny. Last month, under pressure from Trump, the Justice Department asked its inspector general to assess whether political motivation tainted the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign after revelations that a longtime FBI source secretly assisted the probe.

The attacks by the president and his advisers on the special counsel appear to be having an impact: Public support for Mueller’s investigation has been gradually eroding. A Quinnipiac University poll taken in early June found that 50 percent of registered voters say Mueller is conducting a fair investigation, a drop of 10 points since November.

While Trump’s lawyers ponder ways to rupture the investigation, the president has dwindling time to decide whether to sit down for an interview with the special counsel. The idea is sharply opposed by many of his allies and advisers.

“Listen, I don’t trust these people as far as I can throw them,” his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., told Fox News on Thursday. “I wouldn’t do it. I think it’d be stupid.”

Giuliani said he expects Trump to make a final decision on an interview by the end of June.

“He wants to do it, but he doesn’t want to do it if he’s being taken advantage of,” he said.

If Trump refuses an interview, Mueller will have to decide his next move.

Doug Kmiec, a legal scholar on presidential power and a former Reagan administration Justice official who knew Mueller from his prior work at the department, said the special counsel wants – but does not need – to question the president to finish his report.

“He wants to give the president an opportunity to explain any ambiguity and any impression that he was favoring a foreign adversary,” Kmiec said. “Robert Mueller would say it would be irresponsible not to give the president a chance to explain himself.”

If Trump declines to do a sit-down and the special counsel decides not to pursue a subpoena of the president, Mueller could deliver an obstruction report to Rosenstein in the coming months.

However, former prosecutors and colleagues of Mueller predict he will probably avoid any public action six to eight weeks before the November midterm elections, following Justice Department guidance that prosecutors should avoid making moves that could reasonably be expected to affect a political campaign.

The regulations governing Mueller’s investigation, which were written in 1999, require that a special counsel submit a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” reached by the office. Some of Trump’s lawyers believe that limits Mueller solely to describing why he chose to prosecute or not prosecute.

And they argue the rules would frown on Rosenstein releasing to Congress or the public any findings of a grand jury investigation that ended without charges.

The goal of the regulations was to avoid requiring a sprawling public report like the one issued by independent counsel Kenneth Starr at the conclusion of his investigation into President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, said Neal Katyal, who helped write the rules as a Justice Department official.

But, Katyal said, the aim was also to provide flexibility to future Justice Department officials. The regulations would allow Rosenstein to refer the report to Congress, Katyal said, and release it to the public if he decides doing so could better serve the public.

“That is the standard I believe should be applied: what is in the public interest,” he said.

Rosenstein will have near-total control over how the probe concludes and what the public learns about the findings. It will fall to Rosenstein to decide whether Mueller’s report contains findings about Trump that warrant some remedy or punishment by Congress.

It remains to be seen how he will navigate the pressure.

At a speech in Philadelphia earlier this month, Rosenstein appeared to allude to the punches thrown so far and those perhaps coming his way, quoting the classic boxing movie “Rocky.”

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. . . . But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward,” Rosenstein said. “That advice applies in boxing, in law and in life.”

See http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-mueller-trump-russia-20180616-story.html (“As Mueller moves to finalize obstruction report, Trump’s allies ready for political battle“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!“)

It is worth repeating what I wrote in the article above:

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-13233 (“MEMO TO OUR PRESIDENT: DEFY MUELLER AND DESTROY HIM“)

Newt Gingrich is correct. War is coming, between the forces of good and evil; and the future of our great nation is at stake.

Robert Mueller is a traitor, who must be crushed and destroyed, in no uncertain terms. Nothing less will suffice.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Robert Mueller Should Be Executed For Treason“)

Ban Robert Mueller

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23 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

MORE FAKE NEWS! [UPDATED]

Jennifer Smith has written for the UK’s Daily Mail:

Time magazine has issued a correction to a controversial cover story about a Honduran migrant girl who they said was taken from her mother by US border patrol agents after it was revealed that the pair were never separated at all.

Three-year-old Yanela Denise became the unintentional face of the now defunct family separation crisis after photographer John Moore captured her agonized face screaming as her mother was questioned by agents on June 12.

After the picture was taken, the pair were taken together to a family detention center. Yanela’s father has since told DailyMail.com that they are ‘safe’.

As millions shared Yanela’s photograph on social media and attached to fundraisers for other children who have been separated from their families, Time used it on its cover. The magazine photoshopped an image to place her at the foot of a towering Donald Trump and the words ‘Welcome to America’ appeared next to it.

In the story, despite Moore having told the magazine that he did not know what became of the girl after he took the picture, the journalist wrote that she had been taken away like the thousands of other children who have been.

Time issued its correction on Friday after US and Honduran officials, along with the girl’s father, confirmed that this was not the case.

‘The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she (was) taken from the scene.

‘The girl was not carried away screaming by US Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together,’ the magazine said.

Editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal stood by using the picture, saying that while Yanela herself may not have been taken by agents, the photograph and her desperation in it encapsulates the mood of the issue.

‘The June 12 photograph of the 2-year-old Honduran girl became the most visible symbol of the ongoing immigration debate in America for a reason: Under the policy enforced by the administration, prior to its reversal this week, those who crossed the border illegally were criminally prosecuted, which in turn resulted in the separation of children and parents.

‘Our cover and our reporting capture the stakes of this moment.’

Readers are now asking for Time to pay her as if they would a professional model in the hopes that any compensation she is given can be used to set up a legal or college fund.

The magazine has not commented on whether or not it plans to do so.

Earlier this week, her father Denis told DailyMail.com that he had not heard from Sandra for 10 days, since she embarked on her journey with Yanela, when he saw the heartbreaking image of his daughter crying.

‘You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter. It broke my heart.

‘It’s difficult as a father to see that, but I know now that they are not in danger.

‘They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border,’ he said.

Denis revealed that he received a phone call from a US official on Wednesday to tell him the pair were safe.

Sandra has already been deported from the US once in 2013. She did not tell Denis that she was planning another attempt to cross the border and he did not know that she wanted to take Yanela with him.

‘I didn’t support it. I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day.’

They have three other children who she left at home who are now waiting anxiously for her be sent back.

‘The kids see what’s happening.

‘They’re a little worried but I don’t try to bring it up that much. They know their mother and sister are safe now.’

Among those who have Tweeted DailyMail.com’s story have been White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

She wrote: ‘It’s shameful that dems and the media exploited this photo of a little girl to push their agenda. She was not separated from her mom. The separation here is from the facts’.

On Saturday morning, the president retweeted it himself.

See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5877169/Time-issues-correction-cover-story-migrant-girl.html (“Time apologizes for cover story about migrant girl who they said was taken ‘screaming’ from her mother by US Border Patrol agents, after it emerged the pair were NEVER separated“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.dailywire.com/news/32172/time-magazines-shocking-cover-total-lie-no-wonder-ben-shapiro (“TIME Magazine’s Shocking Cover Is A Total Lie. No Wonder Americans Don’t Trust The Media“) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5877545/Sarah-Sanders-gets-kicked-Virginia-restaurant.html (“‘I always do my best to treat people respectfully, including those I disagree with’: Sarah Sanders slams owner of restaurant who kicked out her and seven members of her family because she ‘works for the president'”)

Time is disappearing. Its issues are paper thin; and it may be merely a function of time before it goes out of business completely.

Good riddance!

. . .

Tragically, Mexico must be boycotted because the cartels are killing Americans (and Mexicans), and harvesting their body parts.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/06/15/who-is-next-the-murder-of-a-young-american-and-the-harvesting-of-his-body-parts-in-mexico/ (“Who Is Next? The Murder Of A Young American And The Harvesting Of His Body Parts In Mexico“)

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24 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

OUTRAGEOUS: 25 States Move To Keep Trump Off 2020 Ballot [UPDATED]

Democrats are losers

Eric Mack has written for Newsmax:

The latest resistance plan against President Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign includes attempts in at least 25 states to pass a law that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns to appear on the ballot, Axios reported.

President Trump is the only modern-day president to refuse to release his personal tax returns, so conceivably a law passed to require that could block him from the ballot. The issue with that trolling plan is no state has been able to officially pass a law requiring it.

Even deep blue California and New Jersey have vetoed the laws after it had passed both state chambers, but both Rhode Island and Maryland are currently working such a law in their state Houses after passing it in their Senate chambers, according to Axios.

Former Gov. Chris Christie, D-N.J., had called the attempt in his state a “transparent political stunt” in vetoing the law, while Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif., said it “sets a ‘slippery slope’ precedent for what individuals states could require of candidates,” per Axios.

Such laws might wind up being battled in the Supreme Court, too, because they might not be constitutional. The top U.S. court has ruled in the past states nor the federal government can create new requirements for House or Senate candidates, AP reports, which likely would extend to the head of the executive branch, too.

Even if a deep blue state does pass the measure, it likely wouldn’t stop President Trump anyway, since he would be unlikely to win that state in 2020 and still could win the election.

See https://www.newsmax.com/politics/states-work-require-tax-returns/2018/06/24/id/867974/ (emphasis added)

Any state that acts accordingly should be cut off from all federal funding.

Lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

See also http://www.theamericanmirror.com/maxine-waters-orders-more-public-harassment-of-trump-aides-god-is-on-our-side/ (“Maxine Waters orders MORE public harassment of Trump aides: ‘God is on OUR side!'”) and https://www.newsmax.com/politics/house-minority-leader-nancy-pelosi-maxine-waters/2018/06/25/id/868161/ (“Pelosi Slams Maxine Waters for ‘Unacceptable’ Attack on Trump“)

Black Racist Waters

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27 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

AMERICANS FEAR CIVIL WAR AHEAD [UPDATED]

Lincoln and Trump

As stated in the article above, it warrants repeating:

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

Paul Bedard has written in the Washington Examiner:

The division in the United States that has escalated into the organized harassment of presidential aides has six in 10 worried about the violence from anti-Trump advocates and nearly a third fearing it will end in civil war.

The latest survey from Rasmussen Reports found that 59 percent of all voters “are concerned that those opposed to President Trump’s policies will resort to violence.”

And, added Rasmussen, 31 percent believe “it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.”

The new polling evidence of fear in the country over political division follows the harassment of three top Trump aides, including spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, ordered out of a southern Virginia restaurant, and senior adviser Stephen Miller whose condo drew protests from liberals.

It also follows a call by liberal California Rep. Maxine Waters to bring pressure to Trump officials when in public and urgings from legal experts for Trump aides to apply for concealed carry permits and buy guns.

In its analysis of the new survey, Rasmussen highlighted who is most concerned about violence:

Most voters across the partisan spectrum are concerned about political violence from those opposed to Trump’s policies, although Republicans are the most likely to be Very Concerned. The level of concern is about the same among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters when it comes to the threat of violence from those critical of the media’s coverage of Trump.

Women and those under 40 are more worried about a possible civil war than men and older voters are.

Forty-four percent (44%) of blacks think a second civil war is likely in the next five years, a view shared by 28% of whites and 36% of other minority voters. Whites are also less concerned about political violence than the others are.

See http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/poll-59-fear-violence-from-trump-haters-31-predict-civil-war (“Poll: 59% fear violence from Trump haters, 31% predict civil war”) (emphasis added); see also http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2018/31_think_u_s_civil_war_likely_soon (“31% Think U.S. Civil War Likely Soon“) and https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/27/anthony-kennedy-retiring-from-supreme-court.html (“Anthony Kennedy retiring from Supreme Court“) and https://www.thedailybeast.com/with-justice-kennedy-leaving-the-supreme-court-could-end-the-right-to-abortion-and-same-sex-marriage (“With Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Gone, Abortion and LGBT Rights Are Next“)

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29 06 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

LOTS OF US LEFT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY YEARS AGO AND WILL NEVER COME BACK

Democrats are losers

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

For Nancy Pelosi, 78, Steny Hoyer, 79, and Joe Biden, 75, the primary results from New York’s 14th congressional district are a fire bell in the night.

All may be swept away in the coming revolution. That is the message of the crushing defeat of 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley, who had aspired to succeed Pelosi and become speaker of the House.

The No. 4 House Democrat, Crowley, 56, had not faced primary opposition since 2004. He outspent his opponent, 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was tending bar a year ago, by 10 to one.

The son of an Irish immigrant, Crowley was leader of the Queens Democratic Club. He had the unions’ support. So confident was he that he skipped a debate and sent a Latina politician to stand in for him.

First comes Hubris, the god of arrogance. Then comes Nemesis, the goddess of retribution.

Tossing Crowley’s credentials back in his face, Ocasio-Cortez ran as a Latina, a person of color, a millennial and militant socialist who lived in her district, and painted Crowley as a white male with lots of PAC money who had moved to D.C. and sent his kids to school in Virginia.

“The Democratic Party takes working-class communities for granted; they take people of color for granted,” railed Ocasio-Cortez. The party assumes “that we’re going to turn out no matter how bland or half-stepping (their) proposals are.”

“Bland or half-stepping” are not words her agenda calls to mind.

A Democratic Socialist, endorsed by MoveOn, Black Lives Matter and People for Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez favors Medicare for all, a $15 minimum wage, 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, free tuition at public colleges, federal jobs for all who want them, and abolishing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency that runs “black sites” on the Mexican border where “human rights abuses are happening.”

When tear gas was used in Puerto Rico, whence her family came, Ocasio-Cortez laid it at Crowley’s feet: “You are responsible for this.”

Crowley tried gamely to keep up, declaring that ICE, for which thousands of Americans work to protect our borders, is a “fascist” organization, presumably something like Ernst Rohm’s Brown Shirts.

While the victory of Ocasio-Cortez is bad news for Pelosi and Hoyer, it may also be a harbinger of what is to come. For the Democratic Party appears about to unleash its radical left, its Maxine Waters wing, and give its ideology another run in the yard.

When the party has done this before, however, it did not end well.

After Hubert Humphrey lost narrowly in 1968, an enraged left seized the nomination for George McGovern, who went on to lose 49 states to Richard Nixon.

After Hillary Clinton’s defeat, the left, whose champion, Bernie Sanders, they believe, was robbed by the establishment, seems to be looking to settle scores and seize the nomination for one of its own.

But if an apertura a sinistra, an opening to the left, is what lies ahead for the Democratic Party, then that is better news for the party of Trump than for the party of Pelosi.

Just as Crowley’s congressional district had changed, so, too, has his party in Congress. Columnist Dana Milbank, who sees it as progress, writes, “A majority of House Democrats are … women, people of color or gay.”

These rising forces in the Democratic coalition are looking to bury the Democratic Party of yesterday, where white males and older ethnic groups — Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews — were dominant.

It seems certain now that the summer of 2020 will see a woman, a person of color, or both, on the Democratic ticket. Two whites would likely offend the rising base. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine may have been the last of the all-white Democratic tickets.

However, inside this emerging Democratic majority of peoples of color, fractures and fissures are already visible.

In New York City, the Asian community, which votes Democratic in presidential elections, is in an uproar over efforts by leftist Mayor Bill de Blasio to eliminate the entrance exams that have enabled Asian kids to capture most of the seats in the city’s elite public schools.

De Blasio and his allies want the Asian numbers in these select schools reduced, so the schools mirror the city’s demography, no matter how well the Asian kids are doing on the competitive admissions tests.

Also, the hard left in the Democratic Party, oriented more toward the Third World than the West, is increasingly anti-Israel. And while the Jewish vote is small and largely concentrated in blue states, among donors to the Democratic Party the Jewish contingent looms large.

The new demography of the Democratic Party brought about the defeat of Crowley. A majority white district when he first ran, the Bronx-Queens district he now represents is only one-sixth white.

The Irish and Italians have moved out or passed on. And Archie Bunker? He rests in peace in Calvary Cemetery. Like his party.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/no-party-for-old-white-men-129547 (“No Party for Old White Men“)

There is nothing “progressive” about the Democrats today. They are mirror images of Hitler’s thugs, which George Orwell observed as Pigs in his prescient “Animal Farm.”

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-7531 (“The Thought Police Are At It Again“)

Animal Farm in America

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3 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Socialist Dems Say Bernie Sanders Too Right-Wing [UPDATED]

Bernie Sanders praying

Kit Daniels has written for Infowars.com:

Sanders, it seems, was used as a transition to get left-leaning Americans to embrace socialism, and now his usefulness is declining among the far-left.

“While Sanders still draws a crowd, his endorsements don’t carry as much weight as left-leaning voters may hope,” wrote the New Republic’s Sarah Jones. “. . . Sanders and his supporters have helped push the Democrats to the left, but the party has yet to truly embrace its left flank.”

The self-described “democratic socialist” doesn’t fully embrace his ideology because he stops short of demanding the “nationalization of private industries,” Jones writes.

Other leftists share Jones’ sentiment, blasting Sanders over the past week for not demanding the end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Sanders’ aversion to abolishing ICE triggered similar rebuke from other journalists and outlets on the left, with some even denouncing the self-described Democratic socialist as a ‘neoliberal,’ a term generally reserved for those who favor free-market capitalism above all else, and as a ‘moderate,’” reported the Washington Free Beacon.

This emerging far-left wing of the Democratic Party, highlighted in part by the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is too much for even CNN apparently, which criticized the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement.

“With Democrats attacking ICE, the administration has been given an opening to paint its opponents as extreme, radical and a threat to national security,” CNN’s Julian Zelizer said. “Even though we are long overdue for a rigorous debate over our immigration system, a call to abolish anything makes it sound as if the proponents want the entire system to go away.”

For once, CNN isn’t entirely spinning the news.

Despite Sander’s popularity, he was never fully inside the Overton window. In fact, his entire presidential campaign was to try and shift the window towards American acceptance of socialism.

That partly explains why he gives nuanced answers when asked if he supports ending ICE.

This, of course, enrages far-leftists, but unlike Sanders, they’re outside the Overton window – for now.

See https://www.infowars.com/socialist-dems-say-bernie-too-right-wing/ (emphasis added); see also https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/03/dnc-chair-tom-perez-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-the-future-of-our-party/ (“DNC Chair Tom Perez: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘the Future of Our Party’”—”Ocasio-Cortez is a dues-paying member of Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, which recently called to ‘abolish prisons’ and ‘abolish profit'”)

It must never be forgotten that the Dems’ “savior,” standard-bearer, and “poster child” is Maxine Waters. She is way to the left of Sanders.

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-14015 (“The Consummate Un-American Black Racist And Race Hustler“)

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5 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The Next American Revolution: #WalkAway [UPDATED]

Davis Catron has written for The American Spectator:

My first inkling that Donald Trump might actually become President came about mid-evening on election night, 2016, when I switched to MSNBC to look at that infallible barometer of Republican success at the ballot box, the expressions of the “journalists” reporting the returns. The first face I saw was that of Chuck Todd, who was frowning at a map of Wisconsin and maundering about Milwaukee. He was worried about low turnout in precincts where the African-American vote was crucial to Hillary Clinton’s success in the Badger State. Having long been skeptical of Trump’s chances, I was surprised. Todd was trembling.

His fear was well-founded. Those Milwaukee precincts were emblematic of a nationwide phenomenon that contributed in no small part to Trump’s victory — African-American enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton was tepid at best. Both the Democrats and the “news” media have ignored this reality. Their willful ignorance allows them to claim, as the brainiacs at Vox put it, “Trump won because of racial resentment.” Never mind that Hillary Clinton is conspicuously caucasian and that white turnout has remained relatively stable since 2004. As the Pew Research Center reports, this cannot be said for African-American turnout:

The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks.

The obvious moral of this tale is that the Democratic Party has become so dependent on the African-American vote that it cannot hope to win a national election without generating a level of enthusiasm in that community comparable to that which former President Obama enjoyed. Consequently, any Democrat with an IQ exceeding single digits should be terrified by the #WalkAway movement. Candace Owens, one of its most influential voices (ask Kanye West), constantly reminds her huge social media following that the Democratic Party has used African-Americans to gain power and provided very little in return:

When over 90% of a community is voting for one political party, they become irrelevant. Our voting predictability made it so that neither side needed to make good on promises to our community. This is all about to shift, dramatically.

The Democrats and their media enablers, preferring to blame the Clinton defeat on Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, James Comey, Jill Stein, Donald Duck, et al., have of course tried to downplay the influence of Owens and the movement in general. A few days ago, the Washington Post ran a typically dismissive piece titled, “The #WalkAway meme is what happens when everything is viral and nothing matters.” Its author, Abby Ohlheiser, describes Owens as “a conservative commentator who believes that black people have been brainwashed by the media to vote for Democrats,” and relegates #WalkAway to the “pro-Trump Internet”:

#WalkAway went viral because anticipating a mass conversion of Democrats to its side is an idea that the pro-Trump Internet loves to share. Those who represent the possibility of this conversion become conservative celebrities. When Kanye West tweeted praise of Candace Owens . . . the right-wing Internet saw an opportunity for a mainstream prophet, whose huge platform would bring around the End Times for liberalism.

Ohlheiser, being a millennial, probably hasn’t been exposed to very much history. So, she doesn’t know that we have seen this movie before. Between 1870 and 1932, African Americans voted almost exclusively for Republicans because the GOP presided over their manumission, the first civil rights laws, and the very Amendment to the Constitution that granted them the right to vote. But the Republicans made the same mistake that the Democrats are making now — taking their vote for granted. FDR and the New Deal Democrats took advantage of that colossal strategic blunder during the 1930s and the rest is . . . well . . . history.

But the times, to coin a phrase, they are a changin’. Democrats who believe that they have a permanent hold on the African-American vote should take a look at how these voters view their position on immigration. A recent Harvard-Harris survey found that African-Americans are the racial group most opposed to unlimited immigration. Whereas 79 percent of whites want to prioritize legal immigrants based on what they can contribute to our society, fully 85 percent of African-Americans hold that view. A party that advocates open borders and the abolition of ICE is going to get fewer and fewer of their votes.

The Democrats are in denial on this as well. They obviously believe that constantly accusing President Trump and his supporters of racism will somehow keep African-Americans on the liberal plantation. These people evidently failed to notice that, after Kanye West signaled his affinity for the President, a Reuters survey found that Trump’s support among African-American men doubled. This isn’t a huge number. But it won’t take a very large number of electoral defections to assure the death of the Democratic Party. But the Democrats and their media enablers remain in denial. As the Post writer quoted above confidently assures us:

There’s little actual evidence to suggest that #WalkAway represents a mass conversion . . . the#WalkAway hashtag is going Conservative Internet viral on the same hope driving recent pro-Trump support of Kanye West: that the country is on the verge of a mass conversion to conservative thought, a Great Awakening of sorts.

What this young lady, and the political party for which she shills, won’t see is what the Pew survey all but shouts at them. A “Great Awakening” isn’t required. All that is needed is about 5 percent more African-Americans to vote Republican and another 5 to 10 percent to simply stay home. And once they kick the Democrat habit, they won’t backslide. As Candace Owens puts it, paraphrasing Harriet Tubman, “I’ve seen black liberals go conservative, but never seen a black conservative go liberal.” So, let’s hope the Democrats and the “news” media keep dismissing #WalkAway. That means, to quote Reagan, “We win, they lose.”

See https://spectator.org/the-next-american-revolution-walkaway/ (emphasis added); compare https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“) with https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/edward-w-brooke-is-dead/ (“Edward W. Brooke Is Dead“)

LOTS OF US BEGAN AS DEMOCRATS, BUT WILL NEVER VOTE FOR ONE AGAIN!

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7 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Democrats Blast Booming Jobs Report

Democrats are losers

Paul Bedard has written for the Washington Examiner:

Democrats saw nothing positive in the new June jobs report that highlighted 213,000 new jobs added.

Instead, the Democratic Party issued a statement criticizing President Trump’s jobs agenda as “reckless.”

. . .

After the U.S. Department of Labor released the latest jobs and unemployment numbers, DNC Chair and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez released the following statement:

With slow wage growth, rising health care premiums, and skyrocketing gas prices across the country, Donald Trump’s reckless policies are hurting millions of hardworking families. Trump and Republicans in Congress have been so determined to undermine workers that they held a Supreme Court seat hostage for nearly a year in order to nominate an aggressively anti-union justice, who became the deciding vote in last week’s disgraceful decision in the Janus case.

This is all part of the Republican playbook. For decades, Republicans and their wealthy corporate allies have been chipping away at workers’ rights, weakening unions, and depressing wages – all while giving massive tax cuts to the top 1%. And Janus is their most dangerous attack yet.

Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to build a winner-take-all economy that enriches their wealthy friends and saddles working families with the bill. Democrats want to create good-paying jobs and build an economy that works for everyone. And we will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers and with our brothers and sisters in the labor movement as they fight for the wages, benefits, and livelihood they deserve.

See https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/democrats-blast-booming-jobs-report-trump-worker-agenda-reckless (“Dems blast booming jobs report, Trump worker agenda, ‘reckless’“); but see https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-14054 (“The Next American Revolution: #WalkAway“) and https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/craig-bannister/hispanic-latino-unemployment-rate-hits-lowest-level-record-june (“Hispanic-Latino Unemployment Rate Hits Lowest Level on Record in June“)

AGAIN, LOTS OF US BEGAN AS DEMOCRATS, BUT WILL NEVER VOTE FOR ONE AGAIN!

Democrats are evil

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7 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The Despicable Left Blasts #WalkAway

Abby Ohlheiser has written in the Washington Post about the #WalkAway movement:

On the pro-Trump Internet last weekend, the #WalkAway hashtag was the nexus of an exciting idea: that “millions of Americans are walking away from the Democrat party,” as one pro-Trump account put it. Breitbart said that the hashtag had gone viral; the Epoch Times said it represented a “growing movement” of Democrats — particularly minority Democrats — abandoning their party, and liberalism.

#WalkAway, the hashtag, went viral this weekend, as something of a delayed reaction to a popular video renouncing liberalism by Brandon Straka, who described himself to the Epoch Times as a New York hairdresser and aspiring actor. The video, posted in late May, now has more than 1 million views on Facebook. In it, Straka says he was once a liberal, but now he is not.


[#WalkAway – Brandon Straka, “Why I left the Democratic Party”]

“If you are a person of color, an LGBT person, a woman or an American immigrant, the Democratic Party wants you to know you are a victim,” Straka says in the video. “This is perhaps the Democratic Party’s greatest, and most insidious, lie.”

“I am walking away. And I encourage all of you to do the same. Walk away,” Straka concludes. The video was meant to spark a movement; this weekend’s going viral of the hashtag has been cited as proof that Straka has succeeded.

As the Internet fragments, our understanding of what it means to go “viral” has become complicated, and increasingly meaningless. A hashtag claiming to capture a movement among liberals has gone viral, in this case, almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet, as a reinforcement of one of its binding ideas.

There’s little actual evidence to suggest that #WalkAway represents a mass conversion of millions — or even thousands — of Democrats to the Trump Train since Straka’s video. Instead, the #WalkAway hashtag is going Conservative Internet viral on the same hope driving recent pro-Trump support of Kanye West: that the country is on the verge of a mass conversion to conservative thought, a Great Awakening of sorts. And the thing about anticipating an awakening is that it never actually has to happen for the idea of it to go viral.

One of the most viral #WalkAway tweets, for example, read as the generational reverse of the “woke toddler” meme:

Sofia Vargoros @sofialimited – Jun 28
Both my parents are Hispanic LEGAL immigrants, both were registered Democrats, and both this week told me they have decided to #WalkAway

The tweet had more than 16,000 retweets by Sunday. However, as my colleague Dave Weigel noted, the account appears to be a bot, an impersonation or both: @sofialimited’s profile picture was stolen from a book cover by someone with a different name. The account has since been suspended from Twitter.

Other viral tweets on the hashtag came from real people who aren’t exactly recent converts. Another popular #WalkAway tweet comes from CJ Pearson, a teen who describes himself as “the left’s youngest nightmare” on his website. His #WalkAway tweet has more than 10,000 retweets.

CJ Pearson
@thecjpearson

The Democratic Party is the party of slavery. The party of Jim Crow. The party of segregation. The party of the KKK.

Democrats walked away from black folks long ago. Now, it’s our time to #WalkAway.
1:28 PM – Jun 30, 2018

Pearson has been right-wing Internet famous for a while now: The teen helped to campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in 2015, and has gone serially viral for his videos and Twitter stunts targeting former president Barack Obama.

By Monday, the conversation about #WalkAway followed two familiar, diverging lines of thought: Conservatives were praising the hashtag as proof of a mass conversion in the works, one that they accused Twitter of artificially suppressing from its “trending” tab. Meanwhile, others were pointing to evidence that the hashtag itself was being amplified artificially by bots to seem bigger than it was.

#WalkAway went viral because anticipating a mass conversion of Democrats to its side is an idea that the pro-Trump Internet loves to share. Those who represent the possibility of this conversion become conservative celebrities.

When Kanye West tweeted praise of Candace Owens — a conservative commentator who believes that black people have been brainwashed by the media to vote for Democrats — the right-wing Internet saw an opportunity for a mainstream prophet, whose huge platform would bring around the End Times for liberalism.

When PewDiePie, a YouTuber with more than 50 million subscribers, followed Alex Jones’s Twitter account, the Infowars personality aggressively courted him for an interview on his show. If Jones could reach PewDiePie’s young audience, the movement could grow.

The pro-Trump Internet is really good at convincing its audience that going viral signals popular opinion, that its movement is and always will be #winning. In this case, #WalkAway is the answer to the possibility of a Blue Wave in the 2018 midterms. It doesn’t need to be true to be effective. After all, the hashtag has now become an article in The Washington Post.

See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/07/02/the-walkaway-meme-is-what-happens-when-everything-is-viral-and-nothing-matters/ (“The #WalkAway meme is what happens when everything is viral and nothing matters“) (emphasis added; CJ Pearson video omitted because it could not be rendered properly at this blog); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-14087 (“Democrats Blast Booming Jobs Report“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-14054 (“The Next American Revolution: #WalkAway“)

This article is a classic case of mental masturbation; and a shining example of why the Washington Post is dead today.

Sadly it died years ago, and is no longer relevant.

Many of us used to read it every morning, and have it delivered. Later, we read it online every day. But not anymore.

Like CNN, which also used to be a favorite, we have stopped reading and/or watching, with very few exceptions (e.g., before he died, the Post‘s Charles Krauthammer; in the case of CNN, Anthony Bourdain’s show, before he died).

Some day when it is too late, the Left will realize that it lost all of us. And yes, many of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

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8 07 2018
Rock Stone

It’s obvious that Americans are Not what Democrats want them to become.
Radically political on Ether side isn’t healthy. Beating people up because you don’t like who got elected is criminal. Who started That..?

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8 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Thank you for your comments.

I agree completely with your first sentence.

I agree too with your second sentence, which is why I have been an Independent since seeing both political parties up-close and “in action.”

As I have written:

Politically, I am an Independent, and have been for several decades, since leaving the U.S. Senate where I witnessed firsthand the shortcomings of both major political parties. I was a member of the National Democratic Club and the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill, simultaneously. I felt it was good business to entertain our clients and others at whichever club they preferred, and I felt comfortable at both of them. In fact, when I worked in the Senate, there was a spirit of bipartisanship and congeniality in both the Senate and House, which I believed was healthy and beneficial for the country.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/about/#comment-861 (“What Is This Blog All About?”)

That spirit of bipartisanship and congeniality, in both the Senate and House, is essentially gone now.

With respect to your last two sentences, again you are correct. It smacks of Hitler, Stalin, Putin and others.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/29/the-death-of-putin-and-russia-the-final-chapter-of-the-cold-war/ (“The Death Of Putin And Russia: The Final Chapter Of The Cold War”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/the-silent-voices-of-stalin%E2%80%99s-soviet-holocaust-and-mao%E2%80%99s-chinese-holocaust/ (“The Silent Voices Of Stalin’s Soviet Holocaust And Mao’s Chinese Holocaust”)

Yet, this is exactly what has happened as a result of the combined efforts of Barack Obama and others to destroy the candidacy and the presidency of Donald Trump.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/15/the-department-of-injustices-inspector-general-is-complicit-in-the-deep-state-cover-up/ (“The Department Of Injustice’s Inspector General Is Complicit In The Deep-State Cover-Up!”)

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28 07 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

This Is War!

Civil War II

Donald Trump’s domestic attackers will keep up their efforts until they are vanquished—which must happen.

This is truly America’s second Civil War; and the stakes are the future of our great nation.

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19 08 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Newspapers Are Dead, Not Dying

Newspapers are dead

Richard Benedetto has written for TheHill:

For those of us who still love getting our news from newspapers, those inky, crinkly, thin sheets of wood pulp you hold in your hands and read, these indeed are sad times. Print newspapers, thanks in large part to the meteoric rise of smartphones and online and social media, are in serious decline.

That decline is even more dramatic in places where they are are needed most – the villages, towns and smaller cities across America where print newspapers have long been a key link to the community.

In the short four-year period between 2012 and 2016, the number of daily newspapers in the United States fell from 1,425 in 2012 to 1,286 in 2016.

And the print decimation continues. In late June, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a long explanation of why it is cutting the weekly number of days it prints from seven to five. The stated reason in a letter to union employees, those most-hurt by the cutback: “We have decided that becoming a digital newspaper is our future.”

This week Post-Gazette Editor David Shribman explained to readers that the cutback is a “. . . dramatic step into the digital future of news, transforming itself from a medium steeped in print into a fresh new profile committed to all the potential of the new communications world.”

Translation: Print newspapers are not our top priority anymore. It is much cheaper to place news stories onto a website with the click of a button than to print them on paper. Newspapers require buying newsprint by the ton, ink by the barrel, hugely expensive printing presses and trucks to distribute them, not to mention paying the many carriers needed to deliver them to your home.

Newspapers feeling the financial strain have already made deep cuts where it is easiest: in newsroom reporters and editors. The Pew Research Center recently reported that due to declining readership and advertising sales, employment of news personnel since 2007 – a time when smartphones and social media burst onto the scene – dropped by nearly half: 74,000 to 39,000.

Many media analysts believe it won’t be long before print newspapers disappear. If it happens, they in large part will be devoured by a voracious horde of online and social media, many of which have little respect for the notion that the first function of news reporting is to present good, honest, factual and relevant information about the community it serves.

That means holding up a mirror to the community and reflecting it back – an honest mirror, not a distorted fun house mirror, as is often the case these days.

All of that is too bad, not only for reporters and editors who are losing jobs, but more so for newspaper readers themselves. They are missing out on a daily chance come together as a community and celebrate the things that unite us, not the things that divide us. Much of today’s news reporting, in all media. doesn’t make us feel better. It makes us feel worse.

Back in the days when most households read a daily paper, we were a kinder and gentler people. While newspapers reported on the mayhem of day-to-day living – crime, war, disease, crooked politics and human tragedies — they also balanced it with plenty of human-interest news about the good in people:

The burly construction workers who raised dimes and quarters for a little boy with cerebral palsy to buy a computer, so he could “talk.”

The first-grade teacher who taught her students to read, took them on their first trip to a library and opened their eyes to a whole new world.

The fireman who had his hands burned into two lumps of charcoal, but expressed no bitterness about his fate. “Part of the job,” he said.

The Confirmation class of a Catholic school that attended the funeral of a homeless man who had no one to mourn him.
The politician who went out and spent time working at everyday jobs, so he could feel and understand what his constituents go through every day.

These examples are all real. I know. I wrote all of them, and more. And I got more positive reader reaction from those kinds of stories than all the hundreds of political stories I wrote in a nearly 50-year career.

Where are such stories now? There might be some, but they are few and far between. Reporters are reluctant to suggest such stories for fear that their editors might accuse them of “going soft” and relegate them to the back bench. So, they give them what they want: more nasty, negative stories about politics and politicians.

Moreover, newspapers I worked for took their roles as community citizens seriously. The Buffalo (N.Y) Evening News sponsored a crippled children’s summer camp, the annual Western New York Science Fair, a Newspaper in the Classroom program, a summer snapshot contest and (talk about a day gone by) a teen Back-to-School Fashion Show.

The News even sent reporters out in summer to cover “neighborhood days” at Crystal Beach, an amusement park, across the Niagara River in Canada. Their task was to gather the results of the kids’ (the word “kids” was banned from The News; it was always “children”) three-legged races, beanbag-throwing and horseshoe-pitching contests, all of which were reported in the afternoon paper by the time they got home. And as grizzled editors warned us under penalty of death: “Don’t spell anyone’s name wrong.”

The Utica (N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch sponsored Operation Sunshine which raised money for needy children and families at Thanksgiving, Christmas and in the summer for camp. Stories of children, whether it be for sports or for school or for just good deeds, were always a big feature in the O-D.

Many other newspapers had similar programs. And some still do. But will that kinder and gentler reporting and community involvement continue when print newspapers are gone?

If the steady stream of negative reporting and snarky comment that dominate online and social media today become the norm, and our political polarization as a people escalates, I doubt it.

But I prefer to be an optimist. As a founding member of USA Today, I took seriously the words of the late Al Neuharth, chairman of the Gannett Co. printed in 1982 on the paper’s first front page:

“USA Today hopes to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to make the USA truly one nation.”

Without print newspapers, that hope is likely to dwindle and fade away.

See http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/402382-demise-of-print-newspapers-may-have-far-reaching-consequences-for (“Demise of print newspapers may have far-reaching consequences for communities and the nation“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/the-economic-tsunami-continues-its-relentless-and-unforgiving-advance-globally/#comment-7377 (“More Than 100 Newspapers Dumped in Year“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/the-president-and-first-lady/#comment-9703 (“Boycott FAKE News!“)

With due respect to the author of this article: H-O-G-W-A-S-H!

His words are nothing more than mental masturbation. USA Today, which I used to love, published a series of articles that distorted the truth about John F. Kennedy and his family; and I have never bought a copy of the newspaper since then.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

I have been on the Web more than 25 years, since I bought my first Apple laptop. I have not purchased a newspaper in probably 15-20 years. Why should I? The Web is essentially free; and over the years, I developed a “Links” page of Web sites that one can access each and every day, which you can visit just as easily as I can.

See http://www.naegele.com/links.html (“Links“)

The bottom line is: Why should you or I buy another newspaper as long as we live? Among other things, just think about how many trees we save by never buying one.

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7 09 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

Vicious Un-American Efforts To Bring About Regime Change In The United States, And A Civil War [UPDATED]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

The campaign to overturn the 2016 election and bring down President Trump shifted into high gear this week.

Inspiration came Saturday morning from the altar of the National Cathedral where our establishment came to pay homage to John McCain.

Gathered there were all the presidents from 1993 to 2017, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Henry Kissinger, the leaders of both houses of Congress, and too many generals and admirals to list.

Striding into the pulpit, Obama delivered a searing indictment of the man undoing his legacy:

“So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean and petty, trafficking in bombast and insult and phony controversies and manufactured outrage. … It’s a politics that pretends to be brave and tough but in fact is born of fear.”

Speakers praised McCain’s willingness to cross party lines, but Democrats took away a new determination: From here on out, confrontation!

Tuesday morning, as Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court began, Democrats disrupted the proceedings and demanded immediate adjournment, as scores of protesters shouted and screamed to halt the hearings.

Taking credit for orchestrating the disruption, Sen. Dick Durbin boasted, “What we’ve heard is the noise of democracy.”

But if mob action to shut down a Senate hearing is the noise of democracy, this may explain why many countries are taking a new look at the authoritarian rulers who can at least deliver a semblance of order.

Wednesday came leaks in The Washington Post from Bob Woodward’s new book, attributing to Chief of Staff John Kelly and Gen. James Mattis crude remarks on the president’s intelligence, character and maturity, and describing the Trump White House as a “crazytown” led by a fifth- or sixth-grader.

Kelly and Mattis both denied making the comments.

Thursday came an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior official” claiming to be a member of the “resistance … working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his (Trump’s) agenda.”

A pedestrian piece of prose containing nothing about Trump one cannot read or hear daily in the media, the op-ed caused a sensation, but only because Times editors decided to give the disloyal and seditious Trump aide who wrote it immunity and cover to betray his or her president.

The transaction served the political objectives of both parties.

While the Woodward book may debut at the top of The New York Times best-seller list, and “Anonymous,” once ferreted out and fired, will have his or her 15 minutes of fame, what this portends is not good.

For what is afoot here is something America specializes in — regime change. Only the regime our establishment and media mean to change is the government of the United States. What is afoot is the overthrow of America’s democratically elected head of state.

The methodology is familiar. After a years-long assault on the White House and president by a special prosecutor’s office, the House takes up impeachment, while a collaborationist press plays its traditional supporting role.

Presidents are wounded, disabled or overthrown, and Pulitzers all around.

No one suggests Richard Nixon was without sin in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in. But no one should delude himself into believing that the overthrow of that president, not two years after he won the greatest landslide in U.S. history, was not an act of vengeance by a hate-filled city that ran a sword through Nixon for offenses it had covered up or brushed under the rug in the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson years.

So, where are we headed?

If November’s elections produce, as many predict, a Democratic House, there will be more investigations of President Trump than any man charged with running the U.S. government may be able to manage.

There is the Mueller investigation into “Russiagate” that began before Trump was inaugurated. There is the investigation of his business and private life before he became president in the Southern District of New York. There is the investigation into the Trump Foundation by New York State.

There will be investigations by House committees into alleged violations of the Emoluments Clause. And ever present will be platoons of journalists ready to report the leaks from all of these investigations.

Then, if media coverage can drive Trump’s polls low enough, will come the impeachment investigation and the regurgitation of all that went before.

If Trump has the stamina to hold on, and the Senate remains Republican, he may survive, even as Democrats divide between a rising militant socialist left and the Democrats’ septuagenarian caucus led by Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi.

2019 looks to be the year of bellum omnium contra omnes, the war of all against all. Entertaining, for sure, but how many more of these coups d’etat can the Republic sustain before a new generation says enough of all this?

See http://buchanan.org/blog/regime-change-american-style-130043 (“Regime Change — American Style“) (emphasis added)

Buchanan is correct: “What is afoot is the overthrow of America’s democratically elected head of state.”

First, as I have written before:

[T]here are reasons to believe that [John McCain] might have been court-martialed for aiding the enemy in Vietnam, but for the fact that his father and grandfather were admirals. His divisiveness in politics mirrored his abandonment of his first wife who had nursed him back to health. He is not a hero or role model, even though many of us voted for him—because of Sarah Palin’s presence on the GOP ticket, and because Barack Obama was the other choice.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/#comment-14709 (“Naïveté And Treason In The Trump White House“)

Second, Barack Obama is pure filth. He is a despicable black racist who has torn apart our great nation and continues to do so.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“)

Third, Obama is responsible for the entire “get Trump” treasonous scheme and movement, and must pay with his freedom, at the very least.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“)

Fourth, Barack Obama and Moochie have been living off the “fatted cow” while doing nothing to help Chicago—where he was a “community organizer,” and where his presidential library is to be built—and other America cities with massive minority communities.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/01/the-death-of-new-york-city/#comment-14449 (“THE DEATH OF CHICAGO?“) and https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/city-hall-deal-obama-center-jackson-park-99-years-10/ (“City Hall deal for Obama Center in Jackson Park: 99 years for $10″)

Donald Trump has actually helped them, with minority unemployment falling to record lows.

Fifth, if the Democrats and Left want mobs that are armed to the teeth—and willing and able to kill—they have seen nothing yet.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/#comment-14709 (“Naïveté And Treason In The Trump White House“)

No, this will not be a “Richard Nixon redo”!

Sixth, there should be “bounties” offered for Leftists . . . like so many “scalps” or trophies mounted on a wall.

Seventh, Buchanan states correctly:

[T]he overthrow of [Richard Nixon], not two years after he won the greatest landslide in U.S. history, was [] an act of vengeance by a hate-filled city that ran a sword through Nixon for offenses it had covered up or brushed under the rug in the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson years.

. . .

[H]ow many more of these coups d’etat can the Republic sustain before a new generation says enough of all this?

See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/#comment-14660 (“Woodward And Bernstein: Despicable Leftists Bent On Destroying Nixon, Like They Are Doing Now With Respect To President Trump“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/#comment-14709 (“Naïveté And Treason In The Trump White House“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History”) (see also the extensive comments beneath this article)

Eighth, what must our friends and adversaries around the world think about this? Will they view it as a fatal weakening of America, and its decline, presenting opportunities galore to pierce us repeatedly like Julius Caesar?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar#Assassination

Trump supporters must rise up and slay our enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Lincoln stood at a similar place in our illustrious history, and triumphed.

Nothing less will suffice.

Lastly, imagine one man—Donald Trump—fighting hard for the American people. Yet, Democrats and the radical Left, and those in his own party—and even some in his White House—are trying to destroy his presidency and him at every turn.

The ONLY things standing in the way of this happening are the American people, like Lincoln before him. And yes again, many of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

Bald Eagle and American flag

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18 09 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

A Hail Mary Pass With 00:07 On The Clock In The Fourth Quarter [UPDATED]

President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and family

Wesley Pruden has written in The Washington Times:

Everyone knew a September Surprise was coming. Supreme Court appointments are a big deal. The Republicans are determined to get an “originalist” justice, one who honors the Constitution as written by the Founding Fathers, subject to amendments duly adopted.

The Democrats are determined to preserve “a living document,” subject to the wishes and dreams of certain judges guided only by the moment. Amending not necessary. Therein lies an unbridgeable divide, where the bang and clatter of angry debate is the music of the times, to which all must dance.

Desperate times require desperate measures, and the Democrats in the Senate, with their media constituents usually standing by to enforce prevailing whims and fancies, are in desperate straits. The president submitted the name of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill a vacancy on the Court, and nobody could lay a glove on him. Something desperate, a Hail Mary pass for 90 yards with 00:07 on the clock in the fourth quarter, was all that was left to try.

The Democrats and other liberals had controlled the U.S. Supreme Court as a second legislative branch of government for many decades, and now control is slipping away. Hence the September Surprise just as the Senate Judiciary Committee was about to approve Mr. Kavanaugh and send the nomination to the full Senate.

But as September Surprises go, this one is pretty thin soup. A woman of a certain age, as the French put it, suddenly remembers that 35 years ago, when she was a 15-year-old high-school sophomore, she went to a party she’s not sure where, but it might have been in Montgomery County just outside Washington, and there were kids drinking beer and making whoopee, but she can’t remember for sure because everything was enveloped in clouds of estrogen and fogbanks of testosterone. Something happened, she isn’t sure what, as sometimes happens when teenagers gather for a salon to sip lemonade and discuss Plato, Socrates and the seven wise guys of Athens. She remembers that whatever it was it turned out to be not very nice. One of the boys pawed at her outer garments and squeezed against her and made her squeal. She thinks there were four guys in the bedroom with her, but on second thought it might have been only two, and one of them might have been Brett Kavanaugh, 17 years old. He says emphatically that it was not him, and a third person in the room backs him up.

The girl, who grew up to be Christine Blasey Ford and a professor at Palo Alto University, wrote a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California in July, telling her of her conveniently “recovered memory.” She wasn’t sure what even a U.S. senator could do about such a letter, but she asked Mrs. Feinstein to keep her name out of it.

The senator, aware of her reputation as a woman of refinement, sober judgment and fair dealing, kept the letter and said nothing. The Kavanaugh hearings proceeded apace, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, decided the sell-by date approached, and called in The Washington Post to drop Mrs. Feinstein’s bomb. This was not the bombshell the Democrats coveted, but it was time to do or die. Mrs. Ford then identified herself.

The biggest mystery is why Mrs. Feinstein didn’t drop her bomb earlier. Was she saving it to drop when it might give the Democrats an excuse to demand a delay of game? Why didn’t Mrs. Ford say something to family, friends or even her doctor at the time she said it happened? Why did her therapist’s notes say she told him there were four evil-doers in the bedroom and she now says there were only two? She doesn’t remember the exact year it happened, exactly where it happened, who invited her to the party, whose house it was, how she got there or how she got home. Yet it was so traumatic that she required psychiatric help three decades later.

The most generous explanation is that she just doesn’t remember clearly after all these years. Or she made it up. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is doing the right thing, arranging for the committee to hear out Mrs. Ford and to hear Judge Kavanaugh’s rebuttal. If the Democrats plead for more time, they’ll reveal their true game. How much time would hardworking senators need?

Mrs. Ford’s lawyer is already complaining that the Republicans on the committee intend to play “hard ball,” intending to “grill her.” She may have been led to believe, by Mrs. Feinstein or Mr. Schumer, that she could merely accuse and the Democrats would take care of the rest. But that’s not how it works. She may have a September Surprise coming herself.

See https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/17/the-march-of-the-september-surprises/ (“The march of the September Surprises“) (emphasis added); see also https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-metoo-kavanaugh-ambush-1537197395 (“The #MeToo Kavanaugh Ambush”—”[Ford] retained a lawyer, Debra Katz, who has a history of Democratic activism and spoke in public defense of Bill Clinton against the accusations by Paula Jones”—”The role of Senator Dianne Feinstein is also highly irregular and transparently political. . . . [She] waited until the day before a committee markup on the nomination to release a statement that she had ‘information’ about the accusation and had sent it to the FBI. Her statement was a political stunt. She was seeking to insulate herself from liberal charges that she sat on the letter. Or—and this seems increasingly likely given the course of events—Senator Feinstein was holding the story to spring at the last minute in the hope that events would play out as they have”—”[I]f Republicans panic now their own voters will rightly be furious. They would be letting Democrats get away with the same dirty trick they tried and failed to pull off against Clarence Thomas“) and http://buchanan.org/blog/the-late-hit-on-judge-kavanaugh-130100 (Pat Buchanan: “The Late Hit on Judge Kavanaugh”—”Palpable here is the desperation of the left to derail Kavanaugh, lest his elevation to the high court imperil their agenda and the social revolution that the Warren Court and its progeny have been able to impose upon the nation. If Kavanaugh is elevated, the judicial dictatorship of decades past, going back to the salad days of Earl Warren, William Brennan, Hugo Black and ‘Wild Bill’ Douglas, will have reached its end. A new era will have begun. That is what is at stake”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6176221/Professor-claims-Kavanaugh-sexually-assaulted-testify-Congress-says-attorney.html (“Professor who claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her WILL testify to Congress says her attorney“) and https://www.mediaite.com/online/brett-kavanaughs-mother-presided-over-foreclosure-hearing-involving-accusers-parents/ (“Brett Kavanaugh’s Mother Presided Over Foreclosure Hearing Involving Accuser’s Parents“) and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/poll-majority-cant-name-a-single-supreme-court-justice (“Poll: Majority can’t name a single Supreme Court justice“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6184923/Former-Kavanaugh-classmate-denies-knowledge-sexual-assault-CNN.html (“ANOTHER Kavanaugh high school classmate denies being at ‘sex attack’ party“) and http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/09/20/bookers-push-for-kavanaugh-vote-delay-called-out-over-his-1992-column-detailing-teenage-groping.html (“Booker’s push for Kavanaugh vote delay called out over his 1992 column detailing teenage groping“) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/20/cory-bookers-1992-column-detailing-groping-high-sc/ (“Cory Booker’s 1992 column detailing ‘groping’ of high school friend resurfaces“) and http://humanevents.com/2018/09/19/haven-monahan-to-testify-in-kavanaugh-hearings/ (Ann Coulter: “Haven Monahan To Testify In Kavanaugh Hearings”—”If this is what the left pulls against a sweet nerd like Brett Kavanaugh, I can’t wait for the hearings to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg!”—”His accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, remembered this in a therapy session 30-plus years after the alleged incident — coincidentally, at the exact moment Kavanaugh was all over the news as Mitt Romney’s likely Supreme Court nominee”—”Until recently, it was OK to rape and even murder girls — but only if your name was ‘Clinton,’ ‘Kennedy’ or ‘Weinstein,’ et al. Then Hillary lost, and Teddy was dead, so there was no point in ferociously protecting the Democrats’ rapists any longer”—”The only reason for the professor to insist upon an ‘investigation’ is to delay having to give her story under oath until she knows what can be proved — and what can be disproved”) and https://www.newsmax.com/politics/dershowitz-kavanaugh-supreme-court-accuser/2018/09/20/id/882659/ (Alan Dershowitz: “Kavanaugh Must Be Given Right to Confront Accuser”—”People should not refer to Christine Blasey Ford as a victim concerning her allegations of sexual assault concerning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and him as a perpetrator without hearing from both of them under oath”—”‘There is nothing more essential to American justice than the opportunity to cross-examine your accuser, to confront your accuser. . . . Essentially, it goes back to the Magna Carta. The idea that we are calling somebody a perpetrator and someone else a victim, based on what ‘he said, she said’ is wrong. It is un-American'”) and https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/christine-blasey-ford-made-choice-now-story-senate/story?id=57932425 (Cokie Roberts, the daughter of ambassador and long-time Democratic Congresswoman from Louisiana Lindy Boggs and of Hale Boggs, also a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana and Majority Leader of the House of Representatives and a member of the Warren Commission: “Christine Blasey Ford made her choice. Now she needs to tell her story to the Senate”—”Christine Blasey Ford has either developed a case of cold feet or she’s playing footsie with the Democrats. Neither one of those options is useful if she wants to stop Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. . . . [S]he made the choice to reveal her identity, knowing that it would upend her life. Now, she needs to tell her story to the people who will decide whether Brett Kavanaugh ascends to the Supreme Court — the members of the United States Senate. Absent that, she has put herself and her family in harm’s way to no end. The confirmation will proceed. . . . If Ford took this life-altering step because she believes that Brett Kavanaugh should not serve on the Supreme Court, then she must come forward to tell that to the Senate. And then it will be up to the members to decide what to do. As it is now, without her testimony, it is almost certain that Judge Kavanaugh will soon become Justice Kavanaugh”) and https://www.nysun.com/national/kavanaugh-tests-benefit-of-the-doubt/90396/ (“Kavanaugh Will Test the Benefit Of the Doubt”—”[E]vidence ‘upon which a jury is justified in returning a verdict of guilty must be sufficient to produce a conviction of guilt, to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt'”) and https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-presumption-of-guilt-1537570627 (“The Presumption of Guilt”—”The core tenet of Anglo-American law is that the burden of proof always rests with the person making the accusation. An accuser can’t doom someone’s freedom or career merely by making a charge. The accuser has to prove the allegation in a court of law or in some other venue where the accused can challenge the facts”) and https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/22/tucker-carlson-dems-pushing-back-kavanaugh-vote/ (“TUCKER CARLSON: IF DEMS SUCCEED IN PUSHING BACK KAVANAUGH VOTE, ‘HIS NOMINATION WILL BE OVER’”) and https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/408302-judge-kavanaugh-and-the-weaponization-of-metoo (“Judge Kavanaugh and the weaponization of #MeToo“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6213037/Two-men-claim-sexually-assaulted-Christine-Ford-not-Kavanaugh.html (“Two men claim THEY had the sexual ‘encounter’ with Christine Ford NOT Kavanaugh“) and https://nypost.com/2018/09/27/two-men-tell-senate-that-they-not-kavanaugh-assaulted-ford/ (“Two men tell Senate that they, not Kavanaugh, assaulted Christine Blasey Ford“) and https://www.studyfinds.org/boys-more-victimized-by-teen-dating-violence-than-girls-study-finds/ (“Boys More Likely To Be Victims Of Teen Dating Violence Than Girls, Study Shows“)

This is a total hatchet job by America’s despicable Left, and another “high-tech lynching.” And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

What about Bill Clinton who raped women? And Ted Kennedy who killed Mary Jo Kopechne? And JFK, RFK and Tiger Woods who exploited women?

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/#comment-12868 (“The Kennedy Brothers Killed Mary Jo Kopechne“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article) and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1269682/Tiger-Woods-fling-young-neighbour-final-straw-Elin-Nordegren-golfer-confesses-120-affairs.html (“Tiger Woods’ ‘fling’ with young neighbour is final straw for Elin Nordegren after golfer ‘confesses to 120 affairs'”)

The last sentence of Pruden’s article may be truly prophetic:

[Ford] may have a September Surprise coming herself.

See, e.g., https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/407336-lawyer-kavanaugh-accuser-has-received-death-threats-and (“Kavanaugh accuser forced out of her home over threats, lawyers say“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6183365/Kavanaugh-accuser-family-forced-hiding-getting-death-threats.html (“Kavanaugh accuser’s family is forced into hiding by death threats“)

What goes around comes around. Ford’s lawyers should have told her that.

Also, there are reasons to believe that she is a “drama queen,” and mentally unstable.

See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/christine-blasey-ford-wanted-to-flee-the-us-to-avoid-brett-kavanaugh-now-she-may-testify-against-him/2018/09/22/db942340-bdb1-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html (“Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford moved 3,000 miles to reinvent her life. It wasn’t far enough“)

. . .

In the final analysis, this may be more about abortions on demand, and trying to save Roe v. Wade.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/abortions-and-autos-kill-more-in-america-than-guns/#comment-14156 (“Bogus Catholic Web Site Attacks Trump“)

Baby at 12 weeks
[Baby at 12 weeks]

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29 09 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

KAVANAUGH: A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR IMPEACHMENT? [UPDATED]

Capitol and flag

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured.

Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a week-long delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed to Democratic demands for a new FBI investigation of all credible charges of sexual abuse against the judge.

Astonishing. With a quarter century in public service, Kavanaugh has undergone six FBI field investigations. They turned up nothing like the charges of sexual misconduct leveled against him these last two weeks.

In his 30 hours of public testimony before the judiciary committee prior to Thursday, no senator had raised an issue of a sexual misconduct.

But if Brett Kavanaugh is elevated to the Supreme Court, it will be because, in his final appearance, he tore up the script assigned to him. He set aside his judicial demeanor to fight for his good name with the passion and righteous rage of the innocent and good man he believes himself to be.

He turned an inquisition into his character and conduct as a teenager into a blazing indictment of the Democratic minority for what they were doing to his reputation and his family.

Rather than play the role of penitent, Kavanaugh did what Clarence Thomas did 30 years before. He attacked the character, conduct and motives of his Democratic accusers.

And did the judge not speak the truth? With few exceptions, all four dozen Senate Democrats are determined to defeat him, even if that requires them to destroy him.

They rejected Brett Kavanaugh the day he was nominated.

Why? Because the judge is a conservative and a Catholic, hence an unreliable vote to sustain Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that discovered hidden in the Constitution a woman’s right to abort her unborn child.

The verdict on the judge came down in the hearts and minds of his enemies the moment he was named. They had him convicted, before they met him. And once his fate was decided, the only remaining issues were where to find the dirt to bury him with, and how to make it look like they had given Kavanaugh a fair hearing.

Contrast how Kavanaugh, who has served his country with distinction for decades, was treated Thursday, and how Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was treated.

Ford was greeted with courtly courtesy by Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley. No Republican senator asked her a question. Rachel Mitchell, a prosecutor of sex crimes brought in from Arizona, quizzed her as though she were a 15-year-old girl who had just been attacked, not a 51-year-old woman whose uncorroborated accusations were designed not only to defeat a Supreme Court nomination but to destroy the career, family and future of a federal judge.

After each five-minutes of polite questioning by Mitchell, Democratic senators took turns lauding Ford’s courage, bravery and heroism in agreeing to appear.

Ford’s testimony as to what she says happened in 1982 did seem credible and compelling. Yet, to allow her accusation of attempted rape to stand without tough and thorough cross-examination, given the stakes involved, was a dereliction of Senate duty.

Consider. Ford does not recall how she got to the party where the alleged assault took place. She does not know where the party was held. She does not recall how she got home.

None of the other four she said were at the party recall being there. Her best friend, whom she apparently left behind as the lone woman in a house with a pair of drunken rapists, does not recall any such party. Nor does she recall ever having met Kavanaugh.

Consider the other charges leveled against Kavanaugh in the last two weeks: Exposing himself in the face of a freshman girl in a dorm at Yale. Participating in a series of at least 10 parties in high school where planned gang rapes of drunken and drugged women were a regular feature, with the boys lining up outside bedrooms.

In six FBI background investigations of Kavanaugh, interviewing countless friends and contemporaries from high school days, none of this wild and criminal misconduct of the early ’80s was mentioned.

“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, “I hope that the American people will see through this charade.”

They had best do so. For what is being done to Kavanaugh is, if Democrats take control of Congress in November, a harbinger of what is to come. The assault on Kavanaugh, converting a man known for his integrity into a youthful Jack the Ripper in 10 days, is the playbook for what is planned for Trump.

The Kavanaugh lynching is a dress rehearsal for the impeachment of Donald Trump. And the best way to fight impeachment is the way the judge fought Thursday.

In defending yourself, go after your malevolent accusers as well.

See https://www.wnd.com/2018/09/a-dress-rehearsal-for-impeachment/ (“A DRESS REHEARSAL FOR IMPEACHMENT“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-14821 (“A Hail Mary Pass With 00:07 On The Clock In The Fourth Quarter“)

I witnessed the ugliness and depravity of Washington firsthand, working in the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill.

As I have written:

When I left Capitol Hill after working there for three and a half years, there was one four-letter word that stood out in my mind, and it still does today: “S-I-C-K.” I vowed that neither of my kids would ever work there. I had seen raving narcissists and demagogues who were not nice people—and equaled or surpassed those in Hollywood where I had grown up.

I saw senators and congressmen chasing and bedding female staffers between the ages of about 22-26, and wrecking their lives in the process. When the women reached about 28, they were considered “over the hill,” and a new batch of fresh young faces would replace them. I saw attractive young female staffers flock to the politicians like groupies are attracted to rock stars and other celebrities. I saw lobbyists providing women for sex to important committee chairmen.

I saw power trips that were way out of proportion to the actual power wielded. I saw senators and members of Congress pontificate on empty chamber floors, and pass legislation that often did not help anyone, but merely “congested” and “polluted” government for both the regulators and public alike. Laws were put on the books almost ceremoniously to display motion and activity, even if they were truly bad laws that made little or no good sense—and none were ever taken off the books. Programs were still being funded even though they had outlived their usefulness years if not decades before.

I saw lobbyists literally run Washington, because they had the skills and knowledge that the politicians did not have. House staffs were small unless the member had seniority. Hence, the input of lobbyists was essential to the passage of legislation. They wrote it; and they got it passed and their clients benefited; and somehow—by hook or by crook—the politicians benefited financially or in other ways. It was dirty, but those participating simply looked the other way.

In short, the American people, God love them, are waking up bigtime to the mess that is Washington, D.C.—a corrupt, politically-polarized toxic city.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/ (“John F. Kennedy: The Most Despicable President In American History“) (see also the comments beneath the article) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/#comment-2830 (“The Truth About Martin Luther King, Jr. Emerges . . . Finally“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-7185 (“Clinton Fatigue”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-real-russian-conspiracy-barack-obama-the-clintons-and-the-sale-of-americas-uranium-to-russias-killer-putin/ (“The Real Russian Conspiracy: Barack Obama, The Clintons, And The Sale Of America’s Uranium To Russia’s Killer Putin“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“)

Washington’s depravity and lawlessness are the flip side of Hollywood’s depravity, which is exemplified by the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski and others of their ilk.

For example, focusing briefly on the senators who serve on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut lied about serving in Vietnam. How a scumbag like this could ever be elected to the Senate boggles the mind. Vietnam vets and all who served in our military (including yours truly) should drive this scumbag from politics.

See, e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/nyregion/18blumenthal.html (“Richard Blumenthal’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History“) and https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-says-blumenthal-lied-he-did-bragged-he-n915096 (“Fact check: Trump says Blumenthal lied (he did) and bragged (he didn’t)”—”Senator Richard Blumenthal must talk about his fraudulent service in Vietnam, where for 12 years he told the people of Connecticut, as their Attorney General, that he was a great Marine War Hero. Talked about his many battles of near death, but was never in Vietnam. Total Phony!”—”Blumenthal did lead voters to believe he was a Vietnam veteran when, in fact, he was never deployed to Vietnam”)

Kamala Harris was former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown’s punch. How she made it into the U.S. Senate is also beyond all reason.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Brown_(politician)#California_State_Assembly

Cory Booker is another pathetic Left-wing racist. Dianne Feinstein harbored a Chinese agent, who worked on her staff for an estimated 20 years, and who was just outed. And the list goes on and on.

See, e.g., https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/01/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/ (“Details Surface About Sen. Feinstein And The Chinese Spy Who Worked For Her“)

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

. . .

Personal destruction, depravity, lawlessness, treason and their likes have no place in our democracy.

. . .

Lastly, a personal observation.

I watched the Senate testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh on Friday, September 28, 2018. Both were believable. Can either or both be mistaken . . . or lying?

See, e.g., https://www.yahoo.com/news/kavanaugh-hearing-very-very-certain-wrong-202229531.html (“Kavanaugh hearing: Can you be ‘very, very certain’ — and wrong?“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6235637/Ex-boyfriend-Christine-Ford-says-WASNT-afraid-flying-closed-spaces.html (“Ex-boyfriend of Christine Ford says she WASN’T afraid of flying or closed spaces“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6235463/Christine-Fords-high-school-friend-blindsided-named-corroborating-witness.html (“Christine Ford’s friend was ‘blindsided’ when named as a witness“) and https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/02/ex-boyfriend-says-dr-ford-coached-friend-for-polygraph-had-no-fear-of-flying/ (“Ex-Boyfriend Says Dr. Ford Coached Friend for Polygraph, Had No Fear of Flying“) and https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-fear-the-partys-kavanaugh-obsession-could-backfire (“Democrats Fear the Party’s Kavanaugh Obsession Could Backfire“) and https://www.westernjournal.com/democrats-overreached-kavanaugh-will-pay-price-november/ (“Dick Morris: Dems Went Too Far with Kavanaugh, Will Pay the Price in November“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6244715/Leland-Keyser-told-FBI-felt-pressured-friends-Christine-Ford-revise-statement.html (“Leland Keyser told the FBI she felt pressured by friends of Christine Ford to revise her statement“)

Fewer and fewer Americans trust the DOJ or FBI—or our Supreme Court or the Congress—which is not surprising.

See, e.g., https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/409592-fbi-in-the-eye-of-senate-storm (“FBI in the eye of Senate storm“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/the-united-states-department-of-injustice/ (“The United States Department of Injustice“)

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8 11 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE PIGS! [UPDATED]

Todd Beamon has written for Newsmax.com:

It appears Florida’s senate contest as well as the gubernatorial race between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum may be headed to a recount with DeSantis’s victory margin slipping below half a percent as votes from Democratic-leaning Broward and Palm Beach counties continue to flow in.

DeSantis led Gillum by 0.52 percent as of Thursday morning, above the half-percent margin that triggers an automatic machine recount. But by 2:45 p.m., his margin according to FloridaElectionWatch.gov had dropped below the .50 level as well, to .47 of 1 percent.

Republican senate candidate Rick Scott and Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson already are locked in a recount battle. Both are lawyering up and demanding voter information from county election officials as a major recount battle gets underway in Florida.

Scott’s margin of victory also narrowed precipitously Thursday. The two-term governor’s victory margin dropped from .27 percent on Wednesday to just 0.22 of 1 percent by Thursday afternoon, according to unofficial returns.

Election margins below half a percent trigger machine recounts in Florida. When those machine recounts indicate the margin is less than a quarter of 1 percent, it automatically triggers a manual recount. Nelson’s attorneys have predicted the recount will result in Nelson returning to the Senate.

The Tampa Times reported Thursday afternoon that the gubernatorial race in Florida is now within “recount range.”

Gillum’s campaign is now hedging on their candidate’s Tuesday night concession of the race to DeSantis.

“It has become clear there are many more uncounted ballots than was originally reported,” Gillum’s campaign said in a statement. “Our campaign, along with our attorney, Barry Richard, is monitoring the situation closely and is ready for any outcome, including a state-mandated recount. We are committed to ensuring every single vote in Florida is counted.”

More than 8.2 million ballots were cast in Florida’s election, according to the state Division of Elections web site.

The recount decision would come this weekend after canvassing boards in Florida’s 67 counties certify returns. Any recount would probably begin Monday.

Nelson pointed to an analysis in The New York Times which claims an estimated 113,000 ballots in Florida remain uncounted, mostly in Democratic strongholds of Broward and Miami-Dade counties in South Florida.

But that analysis relied on models that estimated voter turnout, and not on outstanding ballot data from local county election offices, the Miami Herald reports.

Blaise Ingoglia, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, slammed Nelson’s assertions Thursday.

“What Bill Nelson is saying is just a desperate attempt by a career politician trying to hold on to power,” Ingoglia, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, told Kate Bouldan on CNN.

Officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties still were counting ballots Thursday morning, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, the Broward elections office counted 22,000 ballots on Wednesday. They had counted more than 695,700 ballots counted by early Thursday morning.

Palm Beach County officials, however, had yet to counted mail-in or provisional ballots, according to the Florida Division of Elections website.

Overseas ballots must be received by Nov. 16 and have an Election Day postmark, based on Florida election rules.

Voters who cast provisional ballots have until Thursday at 5 p.m. to verify their ID or provide other data to county officials to make their ballots count.

In Miami-Dade, only provisional and overseas ballots remained uncounted.

Broward officials, however, had not counted mail-ins, early-voting ballots, provisionals nor overseas ballots, according to the state elections site.

Ingoglia was particularly harsh about the lack of information coming from Broward and Palm Beach counties.

“We have no idea right now how many votes still have to be counted,” he told CNN. “We know it’s not many.

“The supervisor of elections always seem to be the two that we have problems with. They have to be transparent and tell us what they are counting and how many they are counting,” he said. “Right now, nobody knows.”

Scott and Nelson, meanwhile, have hired lawyers and have demanded information on those who cast provisional ballots on Tuesday.

“We are requesting the total number of provisional ballots in Pasco County, and the voter information for these ballots,” Grace Albergo, regional political director for Scott’s campaign, wrote in an email published by The Tampa Bay Times.

Pasco Supervisor Brian Corley rebuffed the request, citing state privacy laws.

“I’m unable to provide any identifying information on those persons who have voted a provisional ballot,” Corley said, according to the Times.

“By releasing information for those who completed a provisional ballot, it may be possible to determine how that individual cast their ballot in specific contests, thereby violating both Florida Statutes and the Florida Constitution with their right to cast a secret ballot,” he said.

Election officials in other Florida counties may have disclosed the identities of which voters cast provisional ballots, however. The Sun-Sentinel reported that Broward Democratic Party chairwoman Cynthia Busch stated the Florida Democratic Party obtained on Wednesday the names of those who cast provisional ballots. She said Democrats set up phone banks and began calling those voters, urging them to go to county offices to present their identification information so that their ballots will count.

Marc Elias, a Washington lawyer on Nelson’s team, said the candidate was demanding a recount.

“We’re doing this not just because it’s automatic, but we’re doing it to win,” Elias said in a statement to the Times.

Ingoglia, the Florida GOP party chairman, welcomed the new tally, predicting that the outcome would remain the same.

“There are simply not enough ballots out there to change the election,” he told Bouldan on CNN. “The margin may change by a couple thousand, but it’s not going to change the outcome of the election.

“Rick Scott will be the next U.S. Senator from the state of Florida.”

See https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/florida-senate-race-gubernatorial-race-desantis/2018/11/08/id/889998/ (“Recount Likely in Florida Governor Race“) (emphasis added)

George Orwell was correct in his prescient “Animal Farm”—which was taken over by the Pigs that subjugated all of the other animals.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (“Animal Farm“)

The Democrats, today’s despicable, far-Left Pigs—and yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again—are trying to change the election results, and literally “steal” one or more elections. If they were honest, they might begin by getting rid of all the illegal voters, whom they “sponsor.”

See, e.g., http://www.fox13news.com/news/florida-news/governor-rick-scott-warns-of-rampant-fraud-possible-in-broward-palm-beach-counties (“Governor Rick Scott warns of ‘rampant fraud’ possible in Broward, Palm Beach counties“) and http://news/national/florida-governor-claims-election-fraud-orders-law-enforcement-investigation (“Florida governor claims election fraud, orders law enforcement investigation“) and https://nypost.com/2018/11/08/florida-teacher-finds-provisional-ballot-box-in-storage-area/ (“Florida teacher finds ‘provisional ballot box’ in storage area“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6370401/GOP-Senate-candidate-Rick-Scott-files-lawsuit-Florida-election-officials-Democrats-steal-election.html (“GOP Senate candidate Rick Scott files lawsuit Florida election officials Democrats steal election“) and https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/kyrsten-sinema-takes-slight-lead-in-senate-race-over-martha-mcsally (“Kyrsten Sinema [suddenly] takes slight lead in Senate race over Martha McSally“)

The good news is that they have lost the U.S. Senate; another U.S. Supreme Court Justice will be named by President Trump soon, to replace the ailing Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and the despicable Rhino Paul Ryan and his ilk will be gone too, consigned to political oblivion and irrelevance.

See also https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/dershowitz-whitaker-rosenstein-mueller/2018/11/09/id/890116/ (“Dershowitz: ‘Hypocritical’ to Seek Whitaker’s Recusal From Mueller Case”)

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10 11 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

The War For The Soul Of America

Bald Eagle and American flag

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

The war in Washington will not end until the presidency of Donald Trump ends. Everyone seems to sense that now.

This is a fight to the finish.

A postelection truce that began with Trump congratulating House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — “I give her a great deal of credit for what she’s done and what she’s accomplished” — was ancient history by nightfall.

With the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his replacement by his chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, the long-anticipated confrontation with Robert Mueller appears at hand.

Sessions had recused himself from the oversight role of the special counsel’s investigation into Russiagate. Whitaker has definitely not.

Before joining Justice, he said that the Mueller probe was overreaching, going places it had no authority to go, and that it could be leashed by a new attorney general and starved of funds until it passes away.

Whitaker was not chosen to be merely a place holder until a new AG is confirmed. He was picked so he can get the job done.

And about time.

For two years, Trump has been under a cloud of unproven allegations and suspicion that he and top campaign officials colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to thieve and publish the emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

It is past time for Mueller to prove these charges or concede he has a busted flush, wrap up his investigation and go home.

And now, in T.S. Eliot’s words, Trump appears to have found “the strength to force the moment to its crisis.”

His attitude toward Mueller’s probe is taking on the aspect of Andrew Jackson’s attitude toward Nicholas Biddle’s Second Bank of the United States: It’s “trying to kill me, but I will kill it.”

Trump has been warned by congressional Democrats that if he in any way impedes the work of Mueller’s office, he risks impeachment.

Well, let’s find out.

If the House Judiciary Committee of incoming chairman Jerrold Nadler wishes to impeach Trump for forcing Mueller to fish or cut bait, Trump’s allies should broaden the debate to the real motivation here of the defeated establishment: It detests the man the American people chose to lead their country and thus wants to use its political and cultural power to effect his removal.

Even before news of Sessions’ departure hit Wednesday, Trump was subjected to an antifa-style hassling by the White House press corps.

One reporter [CNN’s Jim Acosta] berated the president and refused to surrender the microphone. Others shouted support for his antics. A third demanded to know whether Trump’s admission that he’s a “nationalist” would give aid and comfort to “white nationalists.”

By picking up the credentials of . . . Acosta and booting him out of the White House, Trump has set a good precedent.

Freedom of the press does not mean guaranteed immunity of the press from the same kind of abuse the press directs at the president.

John F. Kennedy was beloved by the media elite. Yet JFK canceled all White House subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune and called the publisher of The New York Times to get him to pull reporter David Halberstam out of Vietnam for undermining U.S. morale in a war in which Green Berets were dying.

Some journalists have become Trump haters with press passes. And Trump is right to speak truth to mainstream media power and to accord to the chronically hostile press the same access to the White House to which Robert De Niro is entitled. Since the days of John Adams, the White House has been the president’s house, not the press’s house.

Pelosi appears the favorite to return as speaker of the House. But she may find her coming days in the post she loves to be less-than-happy times.

Some of her incoming committee chairs — namely, Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings — seem less interested in legislative compromises than in rummaging through White House files for documents to damage the president, starting with his tax returns.

To a world watching with fascination this death struggle convulsing our capital, one wonders how attractive American democracy appears.

And just how much division can this democracy stand?

We know what the left thinks of Trump’s “base.”

Hillary Clinton told us. Half his supporters, she said, are a “basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” Lately, America’s populist right has been called fascist and neo-Nazi.

How can the left “unite” with people like that? Why should the left not try to drive such “racists” out of power by any means necessary?

This is the thinking that bred antifa.

As for those on the right — as they watch the left disparage the old heroes, tear down their monuments, purge Christianity from their public schools — they have come to conclude that their enemies are at root anti-Christian and anti-American.

How do we unify a nation where the opposing camps believe this?

What the Trump-establishment war is about is the soul of America, a war in which a compromise on principle can be seen as a betrayal.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/the-war-for-the-soul-of-america-130476 (emphasis added)

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16 11 2018
Timothy D. Naegele

CNN And Jim Acosta’s Temporary Reprieve Is Shameful

Justice And The Law Do Not Mix

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

Last week, the White House revoked the press pass of CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, and denied him access to the building.

CNN responded by filing suit in federal court against the president.

Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights had been violated, said CNN. The demand: Acosta’s press pass must be returned immediately and his White House press privileges restored.

“If left unchallenged,” CNN warned, “the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials.” A dozen news organizations, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, are filing amicus briefs on CNN’s behalf.

On Thursday, the Trump administration raised the stakes.

Justice Department lawyer James Burnham declared in court: “If the president wants to exclude all reporters from the White House grounds, he clearly has the authority to do that.”

After all, whose house is it if not the “President’s House,” the home of Donald Trump as long as he serves in the office to which he was elected by the American people?

The West Wing contains the Oval Office and the offices of senior staff. As for the West Wing briefing room, it was built by President Richard Nixon in 1969, when White House passes were regarded as privileges.

When did they become press rights or press entitlements?

Is Trump obligated to provide access to whomever CNN chooses to represent the network in the West Wing, even if the individual assigned routinely baits the press secretary and bashes the president?

Whence comes this obligation on the president?

White House aides can be fired, forced to surrender their passes and be escorted out of the building.

Whence comes the immunity of White House correspondents?

The First Amendment guarantees CNN reporters and anchors the right to say what they wish about Trump. It does not entitle Acosta to a front-row seat in the White House briefing room or the right to grill the president at East Room press conferences.

Why was he expelled from the White House?

Says press secretary Sarah Sanders, “The First Amendment is not served when a single reporter, of more than 150 present, attempts to monopolize the floor.”

Acosta baits the president, argues, refuses to yield the floor, manifests a hostility to Trump and trashes him regularly on-air.

Such conduct has made him a champion to Trump haters. But to others, it makes him a biased witness to the Trump presidency who has no legal or constitutional claim to a chair in the West Wing briefing room.

When this writer entered the White House in January 1969, a reporter who had traveled in the 1968 campaign came by to explain that I had to understand that he was now part of “the adversary press.”

What we had done to be declared an adversary, I do not know. I had assumed that the opposition party would become the adversaries of a Nixon White House.

But if the press declares itself an adversary of the White House and if it acts as an adversary — as it has a First Amendment right to do — such members of the media are no more entitled to the run of the West Wing than would be a member of Congress who regularly attacks the president.

Theodore White wrote in “The Making of the President 1972” that the real enemies of Nixon’s White House were not Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and House Speaker John McCormack but CBS News, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

This holds true for Trump. If the media are not “the enemy of the people,” the major media are certainly — and proudly — the enemy of Trump.

Trump’s most visible and persistent adversaries are not Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. And it is Trump’s attacks on CNN and “fake news” that bring his loyalists to their feet. With his use of Twitter, Trump has found a way around an overwhelmingly hostile media.

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller gets a favorable press, as he is seen by the media as the instrument of their deliverance from Trump.

But should the special counsel bring in a report that says, “Donald Trump did not collude with Russia in the 2016 election, and we could find no obstruction of justice in how he dealt with our investigation,” Mueller’s indulgent press would turn on him overnight.

CNN says that if Trump succeeds in pulling Acosta’s press pass, it could have a “chilling” effect on other White House correspondents.

But if it has a chilling effect on journalists who relish confronting the president and reaping the cheers, publicity and benefits that go with being a leader of the adversary press, why is that a problem?

The White House should set down rules of conduct for reporters in the briefing room, and if reporters repeatedly violate them, that should cost them their chairs and, in cases like Acosta’s, their credentials.

This confrontation is healthy, and the republic will survive if the press loses this fight, which the press itself picked.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/trump-raises-the-stakes-with-cnn-130537 (“Trump Raises the Stakes With CNN“) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-15147 (“The War For The Soul Of America“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/#comment-14401 (“CNN’s Jim Acosta Cowers In A Padded Cell“)

However, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly has granted CNN’s request for a court order that would temporarily reinstate Acosta’s White House press pass, which is outrageous.

See, e.g., https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-restore-cnn-reporter-jim-acostas-white-house-press-pass.html (“Judge orders Trump administration to restore CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s White House press pass“)

When John F. Kennedy was president, he held press briefings in a State Department auditorium, some distance from the White House premises. President Trump might wish to do the same . . . and only send his press officers.

Indeed, the press’ present briefing room at the White House might be converted into the swimming pool again where JFK frolicked with his female staff members, “Fiddle” and “Faddle.”

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/john-f-kennedy-the-most-despicable-president-in-american-history/#comment-3108 (“More About The Despicable John F. Kennedy“)

In the process, Acosta needs to return to a “padded cell,” far from the White House.

Jim Acosta the Devil Incarnate

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1 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Are We Moving Ever Closer To America’s Second Civil War? [UPDATED]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

“Politics stops at the water’s edge” was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation.

The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress moved to back Truman’s leadership in the Cold War against Stalin’s empire.

The tradition lasted until the mid-1960s, when the left wing of the Democratic Party turned viscerally, and even violently, against the war in Vietnam and President Lyndon Johnson.

Republican Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush I, with the support of conservative Democrats, led America to final victory in the Cold War

Yet except for brief intervals, like the rallying around George H. W. Bush after the triumphant Gulf War of 1991 and George W. Bush after 9/11, true national unity has never been restored.

Were proof needed, this week provided it.

President Trump flew to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet North Korea’s dictator. Subject of negotiations: Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons, including his missiles that may be able to reach our homeland.

How did the Democratic Party wish the commander in chief well on his mission for America?

During Trump’s first full day in Hanoi, a committee of Nancy Pelosi’s House held a public hearing featuring ex-Trump lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer and felon who cut a deal with the prosecution for a reduced sentence.

The city loved it. Cable and network TV coverage went gavel to gavel. Cohen’s testimony crowded out the Trump-Kim summit and even news of aerial clashes between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers that have fought three wars since independence, 70 years ago.

What were the headlines Trump came home to after refusing to lift sanctions on North Korea, in return for meager concessions Kim offered?

“Cohen Paints Trump as Crooked” was the banner atop page one of The Washington Post. Cohen’s depiction of his old boss was boldly quoted above: “He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a cheat.”

“Cohen Accuses Trump of Lies and Cover-ups” ran the page-one headline in The New York Times.

“Cohen Declares Trump a Racist, Cheat and Conman” read the huge headline in the Financial Times.

“Cohen Says Trump Guided Coverup” was at the top of page one in The Wall Street Journal.

Trump is denounced for calling media the “enemy of the people.” Yet that media, in news columns as well as editorials, routinely describes him as a racist, sexist, xenophobe, homophobe, Islamophobe and bigot.

Indulging its hatred of Trump is a preoccupation, an obsession of this capital city. Those headlines reveal not only the news judgment of the editors but the agenda of the elite who turn to them first every morning.

That agenda is the breaking of this president; his disgrace and fall; and, if impeachment proves not possible, his crushing defeat in 2020 and subsequent indictment. Our so-called Dreamers in Washington, D.C., look to the triumphal return to power of the establishment the American people threw out in 2016.

Yet the alliance that seeks to bring down Trump is formidable: deep-state leakers and media collaborators; the Democratic Party and House; most of America’s commentariat; and the cultural elites in the arts, academia and Hollywood.

How far beyond normal politics have the divisions in our society gone? As the Covington Catholic kids found out, wearing a MAGA hat is now seen as a racist provocation.

In the play unfolding, Cohen’s testimony to the House committee was scene one of act one.

Next comes the Mueller report, though it appears Robert Mueller and his team, after investigating for two years, have found no collusion between Trump and Vladimir Putin in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or the Clinton campaign.

Hence, the hopes of Trump haters are being redirected to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Subjects of investigation: the Trump Organization, the Trump Inaugural Committee, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family and any entity with which Donald Trump has been associated in 40 years.

Again, as the president is chief of state and head of government, he cannot be indicted. He must first be removed from the presidency. But to remove him, Democrats have to impeach him in the House and convict him in a Republican Senate.

If they cannot, they will have to defeat him at the polls.

In 1968, George Wallace of Alabama tore the Southern populist right out of the Democratic Party. Liberals Gene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern then savaged Vice President Hubert Humphrey from the left. The Grant Park rioters did the rest.

Nixon, leading a minority Republican Party, had a compelling argument: “If the Democrats cannot unite their own party, how can they unite the nation?”

Today, a watching world is asking: If you Americans are at war with yourselves over race, religion, morality, culture and politics, if you cannot unite yourselves, how can you unite the world? And around what?

Maybe the American Century is really over.

See http://buchanan.org/blog/is-the-american-century-over-for-good-136596 (“Is the American Century Over For Good?“) (emphasis added); see also https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/chairman-jerrold-nadler-60-entities-individuals-close-white/story?id=61431025 (“Chairman Jerrold Nadler says over 60 entities and individuals close to White House are getting document requests from House Judiciary Committee Monday“)

The Democrats are truly sick; and yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

Buchanan is as fine a conservative writer and thinker as exists in the United States today. He lived with and through the Nixon presidency, which I observed and predicted would not survive when Watergate was breaking, shortly before and after I left the U.S. Senate.

The path that Buchanan is describing would be ruinous for our great nation and the American people, but he stops short of describing America’s second Civil War. Its treasonous advocates and promoters must be crushed; however, like a snake, it will tough to stomp them out.

Unlike Richard Nixon, however, President Trump has true believers in his corner, who are prepared to fight quite literally. And as discussed in my article above, he is likely to follow a path similar to that of Abraham Lincoln.

They are armed with 300 million weapons, if the gun control figures are correct: and they include our police and military. And yes, we have been moving incrementally closer to America’s second Civil War, which—like the last one—may not end peacefully.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership (“Gun ownership”—”In 2018, Small Arms Survey reported that there are over one billion small arms distributed globally, of which 857 million (about 85 percent) are in civilian hands. U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms”) and https://www.nysun.com/editorials/trump-netanyahu-and-democracy/90592/ (“In 1992, but days before our own general election, Independent Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh suggested that President George H.W. Bush, who was standing for re-election, might himself be implicated in the probe. Bush turned around and pardoned most of Walsh’s highest profile targets“)

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9 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

The King Of Pop No More [UPDATED]

Michael Jackson

Chris Spargo has written for the UK’s Daily Mail:

The bombshell documentary Leaving Neverland premiered on HBO on Sunday, detailing the allegations of two men who say Michael Jackson sexually abused them when they were minors.

James Safechuck and Wade Robson have little in common, but for a time in the late 1980s they both caught the eye of the King of Pop.

He was the most famous man in the world at the time, and they were two unknown boys who claim that night after night they were subject to a list of sexual assaults and abuses.

Safechuck was 10 when the alleged abuse started, while Robson was just 7.

Robson met Jackson at the age of 5 after winning a dance competition, spending a few days with the singer in Melbourne during his Bad Tour.

He had won a local dance competition, and as a prize won tickets to Jackson’s show.

Jackson met Robson on the first night and asked him to return the following evening, at which point he put him on stage.

The morning after that, Robson and his mother spent two hours with Jackson in his hotel before he flew off for the next stop on his tour.

Two years later, the Robsons contacted Jackson when they were in Los Angeles, and he invited the family to his Neverland Ranch.

The family fell under his spell, and after just a few days at Neverland, agreed to leave Robson alone with Jackson.

That, claims Robson, is when the abuse began.

Safechuck was 9 when he and Jackson worked together on a Pepsi commercial, and just one year later found himself marrying Jackson in a hotel room, he claims.

He would soon travel around the world with the King of Pop, and in a hotel room in Paris, Jackson allegedly taught him how to pleasure himself.

As [S]afechuck’s mother explains, she thought everything was fine since she was with her son on these trips, but did realize that her hotel rooms started to get further and further away from where Jackson and her son were each night.

‘I think when I was with him he was happy,’ said Safechuck.

‘He was at the peak of his creativity and he was at the peak of his success and everyone wanted to meet Michael or to be with Michael. He was already larger than life and then he likes you.’

Robson also had some fond memories of the man.

‘He was one of the kindest most gentle loving caring people I knew. He helped me tremondously,’ said Robson.

‘He helped me with my career, he helped me with my creativity, with all of those sorts of things.’

He then added: ‘And he also sexually abused me for seven years.’

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6767535/Michael-Jackson-accusers-reveal-raped-Neverland-hideaway.html (“Michael Jackson accusers reveal how he ‘raped them at Neverland'”) (emphasis added; videos omitted); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6774281/The-cancer-patient-accused-Michael-Jackson-criminal-sexual-assault-speaks-police.html (“‘He started masturbating me. I said no’: Devastating footage of terrified cancer patient, 13, accusing Michael Jackson of sexual abuse which led to singer’s 2005 criminal trial”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6766667/Michael-Jackson-accuser-reveals-married-singer-10-mock-ceremony.html (“Michael Jackson accuser ‘married the singer when he was 10′”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6782427/Michael-Jackson-accuser-Wade-Robson-claims-singer-raped-just-days-settling-23M-suit.html (“Michael Jackson accuser Wade Robson claims the singer raped him just days after settling $23M suit“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6767701/Michael-Jackson-accuser-James-Safechuck-says-singer-bought-Neverland-Ranch-him.html (“Michael Jackson accuser ‘says singer bought the Neverland for him“) and https://www.thedailybeast.com/leaving-neverland-wade-robson-and-james-safechucks-stories-will-stain-michael-jackson-forever (“‘Leaving Neverland’ Will Stain Michael Jackson Forever”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6761577/Oprah-Winfrey-DENOUNCES-Michael-Jackson-praising-Leaving-Neverland-brave-rape-victims.html (“Oprah Winfrey denounces Michael Jackson while praising Leaving Neverland“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6771813/Michael-Jackson-told-rape-accuser-marriage-Lisa-Marie-Presley-show.html (“Michael Jackson ‘told rape accuser that his marriage to Lisa Marie Presley was for show“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6776961/Michael-Jackson-accusers-not-payout-says-film-director.html (“Michael Jackson accusers are not after a payout says film director“) and https://www.nme.com/news/music/michael-jackson-songs-banned-from-radio-stations-around-the-world-2457781 (“Michael Jackson songs banned from radio stations around the world“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6783833/The-iron-clad-NDA-contracts-Micheal-Jackson-used-silence-employees.html (“The iron-clad NDA contracts [Michael] Jackson used to silence employees“) and https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/michael-jackson-estate-sues-hbo-violating-disparagement-deal-1188759 (“Michael Jackson Estate Sues HBO Over ‘Leaving Neverland’ Documentary“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-12196 (“THE VERY ESSENCE OF HOLLYWOOD’S DEPRAVITY“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-13133 (“Finally, The Beginning Of Justice For Hollywood’s Serial Rapist, Bill Cosby“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/#comment-11474 (“SICKO SEXUAL PREDATOR ROMAN POLANSKI IS TARGETED FINALLY!“) and https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8588699/michael-jackson-probed-over-sexual-abuse-of-two-mexican-boys-and-child-porn-tape-secret-fbi-files-reveal/ (“Michael Jackson probed over ‘sexual abuse of two Mexican boys’ and ‘child sex’ tape, secret FBI files reveal“)

Shame and perversion and disgust are the words that come to mind quickly, when describing Jackson and his personal life.

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16 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Abraham Lincoln Didn’t Quit

Donald Trump and Lincoln share many things in common. One is the will to win, and never quit:

Probably the greatest example of persistence is Abraham Lincoln. If you want to learn about somebody who didn’t quit, look no further.

Born into poverty, Lincoln was faced with defeat throughout his life. He lost eight elections, twice failed in business and suffered a nervous breakdown.

He could have quit many times – but he didn’t and because he didn’t quit, he became one of the greatest presidents in the history of our country.

Lincoln was a champion and he never gave up. Here is a sketch of Lincoln’s road to the White House:

• 1816: His family was forced out of their home. He had to work to support them.
• 1818: His mother died.
• 1831: Failed in business.
• 1832: Ran for state legislature – lost.
• 1832: Also lost his job – wanted to go to law school but couldn’t get in.
• 1833: Borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business and by the end of the year he was bankrupt. He spent the next 17 years of his life paying off this debt.
• 1834: Ran for state legislature again – won.
• 1835: Was engaged to be married, sweetheart died and his heart was broken.
• 1836: Had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months.
• 1838: Sought to become speaker of the state legislature – defeated.
• 1840: Sought to become elector – defeated.
• 1843: Ran for Congress – lost.
• 1846: Ran for Congress again – this time he won – went to Washington and did a good job.
• 1848: Ran for re-election to Congress – lost.
• 1849 Sought the job of land officer in his home state – rejected.
• 1854: Ran for Senate of the United States – lost.
• 1856: Sought the Vice-Presidential nomination at his party’s national convention – got less than 100 votes.
• 1858: Ran for U.S. Senate again – again he lost.
• 1860: Elected president of the United States.

But see https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/abraham-lincoln-failure/ (“Abraham Lincoln and Failure“); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln (“Abraham Lincoln“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero“)

Will Trump go down in history as one of America’s greatest presidents, like Lincoln before him? Only time will tell.

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23 03 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Is Barbra Streisand Hollywood’s Female Harvey Weinstein? [UPDATED]

Barbra Streisand

Hollywood has been America’s epicenter of depravity for a century, where young female “groupies” have been defrocked within hours of arriving, with many sent packing back to their hometowns, shorn of any semblance of dignity, self respect, virtue and certainly virginity.

Some stayed on to become the equivalent of “sexual slaves” to the rich and powerful of Tinseltown. Having been born and raised in Hollywood/LA, my parents warned me not to “get involved,” and a movie mogul friend told me essentially the same thing. Later, I found that Washington, D.C. was “Hollywood East.”

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/jerry-perenchio-kind-and-caring/ (“Jerry Perenchio: Kind And Caring“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/washington-is-sick-and-the-american-people-know-it/ (“Washington Is Sick And The American People Know It“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6969285/Joan-Collins-says-studio-head-offered-Liz-Taylors-Cleopatra-role-slept-him.html (“Joan Collins says studio head offered her Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra role if she slept with him“)

Harvey Weinstein got caught, as did Bill Cosby and Roman Polaski, all three of whom should spend the rest of their lives in prison—where their fellow inmates might dispense the “Whitey Bulger Treatment” to each of them.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-12196 (“THE VERY ESSENCE OF HOLLYWOOD’S DEPRAVITY“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/robert-mueller-should-be-executed-for-treason/#comment-15092 (“What Role Did Robert Mueller Play In The Savage Killing Of Whitey Bulger?“) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6752221/Gambino-mob-heir-predicts-Michael-Cohen-WHACKED-prison.html (“Gambino mob heir predicts Michael Cohen will get WHACKED in prison“)

The latest to fall is Barbra Streisand, who is certainly worthy and deserving of the honors.

As Stephanie Haney has written in the UK’s Daily Mail:

Barbra Streisand has made bizarre statements about the harm suffered by alleged sexual assault victims of Michael Jackson, in an interview published on Friday.

The 76-year-old singer and actor told British newspaper The Times of London that the two main subjects of documentary ‘Leaving Neverland,’ now-adults Wade Robson and James Safechuck, ‘were thrilled to be there’ as children and whatever happened to them ‘didn’t kill them’.

The recently released ‘Leaving Neverland’ documentary is about how Robson and Safechuck, now in their 30s, say Jackson, who died at age 50 in 2009, sexually abused them from the ages of seven and 10, respectively.

Streisand said she believes the victims’ claims, but felt bad for both them and Jackson, adding that Jackson’s ‘sexual needs were his sexual needs’ and the blame should lie with the boys’ parents.

The director and producer of that film, British filmmaker Dan Reed, joined many in being appalled at Streisand’s remarks.

‘”It didn’t kill them” @BarbraStreisand did you really say that?!’ Reed tweeted on Friday.

Streisand apparently did say ‘it didn’t kill them’, and much more about Jackson, who she crossed paths with throughout their careers, and his accusers.

‘You can say “molested,” but those children, as you heard [grown-up Robson and Safechuck] say, they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them,’ she said.

‘His sexual needs were his sexual needs, coming from whatever childhood he has or whatever DNA he has.’

In an interview that covered a wide range of topics including cloning her dogs, her tendency to stay up until 4am and upcoming concerts in the United Kingdom, she also expressed how she felt sorry for both the boys and Jackson, who died after going into cardiac arrest from ingesting a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs.

‘I feel bad for the children,’ she said, of Robson and Safechuck. ‘I feel bad for him. I blame, I guess, the parents, who would allow their children to sleep with him. Why would Michael need these little children dressed like him and in the shoes and the dancing and the hats?’

Reed was shocked at the comments, as were many other people, some of whom felt ill over the news, said they would burn her albums and called for Streisand to be ‘canceled.’

‘I am sick to my stomach,’ tweeted New York Magazine and HuffPost writer Yashar Ali.

Another Twitter user with the handle ‘@tialyn636’ didn’t mince words, writing, ‘Well, Barbra Streisand can f**k all the way off.’

Attorney and founder of the Gaia Project for Women’s Leadership Elizabeth C McLaughlin tweeted on Friday, ‘Barbra Streisand is cancelled. Forever. Dunzo.’

Even people who had previously been exhausted by the internet’s tendency to ‘cancel’ individuals at the drop of a hat agreed, like one user identified as ‘Emma’ on the platform.

‘I’ve changed my mind about cancel culture just so Barbra Streisand the pedo apologist can be cancelled. Jfc,’ Emma wrote.

A reply to that post included a gif of red, flashing ‘canceled’ stamp over Streisand’s face, in a photo from the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

The Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross wrote, ‘brb burning all my Barbra Streisand vinyls.’

Streisand has not commented publicly about her statements in the interview since the article was published on Friday.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6841461/Barbra-Streisand-says-Michael-Jacksons-accusers-thrilled-there.html (“‘It didn’t kill them’: Barbra Streisand sparks outrage for saying Michael Jackson’s accusers were ‘THRILLED to be there’, his ‘sexual needs were his sexual needs’ and for suggesting their parents are to blame”) (emphasis added); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/boycott-the-gop-and-ignore-foreign-naysayers/#comment-9142 (“AGED STREISAND CELEBRATES HILLARY DESPITE AFFAIR WITH BILL“) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-16336 (“The King Of Pop No More“)

Streisand’s latests are possibly the most grotesque and depraved utterances from the bowls of Hollywood so far, and certainly by an aged “witch” of that genre. In effect, because she knew him, Streisand has blessed Jacko’s Pedophilia and blamed his victims. How very sick is that. She should be boycotted by America and the world, just as Jackson’s music is today.

Pure and simple, she is Hollywood trash, not worthy of any respect whatsoever. Indeed, in her own way, she may be just as loathsome as Jacko himself.

. . .

By way of full disclosure, Streisand’s husband, actor Jim Brolin, was a high school classmate of mine and a good guy. He was known as Craig Bruderlin then.

See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brolin (“James Brolin“)

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26 04 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

The Second American Civil War [UPDATED]

In an article entitled “A Nation at War With Itself,” Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has written:

President Donald Trump has decided to cease cooperating with what he sees, not incorrectly, as a Beltway conspiracy that is out to destroy him.

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” Trump said Wednesday. “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020.”

Thus the Treasury Department just breezed by a deadline from the House Ways and Means Committee to deliver Trump’s tax returns.

Thus the White House will invoke executive privilege to deny the House Judiciary Committee access to ex-White House counsel Don McGahn, who spent 30 hours being interrogated by Robert Mueller’s team.

Thus the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status.

Across the capital, the barricades are going up figuratively as they did physically in the 1960s and ’70s. Once more, it’s us against them.

Cognizant of the new reality, Trump seems to be saying:

These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency.

We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency — and that of Nancy Pelosi’s House.

In response to Trump’s resort to massive resistance, Rep. Gerald Connolly said: “A respect for the limits of your branch of government, a respect for the role of other branches of government, is sort of the oil that makes the machinery work. … Absent that this breaks down. And I think we’re definitely seeing that.”

Connolly is not wrong. But the requisite mutual respect between the Democratic House and the Republican White House simply does not exist. It broke down a long time ago.

The campaign of 2020 is on. And the stakes are huge. Not only are the first and second branches of government in play, so, too, is the third, the Supreme Court. Many Democrats, refusing to accept the success of the 50-year conservative long march to capture the court, are determined to pack an expanded court with liberal justices to overturn the conservatives’ victory.

With Republicans having won two presidential elections in 20 years, with fewer popular votes, Democrats are also resolved to rewrite the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College.

Not only ex-convicts but felons in prison must now be allowed to vote, says Bernie Sanders, even if that means the Boston Marathon bomber.

Under the Sanders reform, if someone murders you, he is still entitled to an absentee ballot. The right to vote is apparently more sacred than the right to life. Truly, this is the divination of democracy.

Trump’s defiance of House subpoenas will fire up his base, which sees the world as he does and has never cottoned to what President Gerald Ford cherished as “the politics of compromise and consensus.”

Whatever may be said about the “deplorables,” they are not obtuse. They do not believe that people who call them racists, sexists, nativists and bigots are friends and merely colleagues of another party or persuasion.

Trump’s defiance of subpoenas, however, will force the more moderate Democrats to join the militants in calling for hearings on impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee, which is where we are headed.

The media are already salivating over the possible removal of a president they have come to loathe more than their great nemeses of the 20th century — Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

And the media will reward those who echo the call for impeachment.

This week, two more Democrats running for president, including Sen. Kamala Harris, came aboard. Soon, the House will capitulate to the clamor and the stampede will be on.

The problem for Democrats?

Attempting to overturn the election of 2016 and remove a president who has the passionate support of a third of the nation will sunder the Democratic Party base as surely as it will unite the Republicans.

Should impeachment succeed, a wound would be inflicted on the American body politic that would take years to heal.

In the longer run, however, the question being raised today goes to the long-term health of the republic itself.

America surely does not lack for diversity. Its diversity — racial, religious, cultural, ethnic, ideological, political — is visible and ever-growing. What is missing is the concomitant of unity.

Moreover, it is the more racially, culturally, religiously, ethnically, and ideologically diverse of the parties, the Democrats, that seems the more splintered than a Republican Party that is supposed to be afflicted with the incurable and fatal disease of Trumpism.

The questions raised by the present state of our politics, which might fairly be described as an American civil war without arms, are these: How does a nation so divided stand united in the world?

And if it cannot stand united in the world, how long does it remain a great nation?

See http://buchanan.org/blog/a-nation-at-war-with-itself-136921 (emphasis added); see also https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/21/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-electoral-college-a-racis/ (“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Electoral College a racist ‘scam’ that ‘has to go’”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/ariel-sharon-is-missed/#comment-16306 (“Anti-Semitism Is Rife In America And Worldwide“)

Bring it on. The Trump faithful are ready for it, and armed to the teeth.

Our enemies are salivating. However, as Newt Gingrich has said wisely:

[The Left’s] media madness . . . cripples America in trying to come to grips with dangers that could destroy us.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/#comment-16961 (“Media Madness Is Crippling America“)

Our last Civil War was fought by Abraham Lincoln on multiple fronts, foreign and domestic; and this one must be fought by Donald Trump and his faithful that way too, all the way to the bitter end.

And yes—as was true of our last Civil War—we are in a battle for the soul and future of America, and we must not lose it.

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12 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

Trump Can Ignore America’s Courts

As stated in my article above:

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, was arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington, and he was held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials:

Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court . . . issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn’t respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

We may be approaching a series of crises in which President Donald Trump will have to act boldly and defiantly, and adopt harsh measures similar to those of Lincoln.

An editorial of The New York Sun states:

Is — or is not — the President above the law? It looks like we are going to be quarreling over that question as the Congress moves to confront President Trump for the Mueller report. We are going to be popped this poser, too, in respect of Mr. Trump’s aides, Attorney General Barr and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who are, among others, rebuffing subpoenas from the Representatives House.

Our sense of it — after reading up — is that both sides will want to avoid assumptions. That’s the gist, too, of an opinion just issued from the chambers of the New Yorker magazine’s constitutional maven, Jeffrey Toobin. He reckons that Mr. Trump is creating a “new constitutional norm” in which the only likely remedy for an executive defying the legislature would be the next election.

Would that, or would that not, mean the president is above the law? That phrase appears in, among other places, the Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Nixon. That’s the case in which in 1974 the Nine (but eight of whom heard the case, Justice Rehnquist having recused himself) unanimously required President Nixon to deliver his tapes to a District Court. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned.

In Nixon, Chief Justice Burger quoted Chief Justice Marshall’s thinking in the 1807 treason case against a former vice president, Aaron Burr. Certain presidential correspondence was sought. Burger wrote that Marshall, the trial judge, “was extraordinarily careful to point out that ‘[i]n no case of this kind would a court be required to proceed against the president as against an ordinary individual.’”

Then this sentence oozed out of Chief Justice Burger’s pen: “Marshall’s statement cannot be read to mean in any sense that a President is above the law . . .” Please pause for a moment to savor that sentiment. Rather, Burger went on to write that, Marshall’s statement “relates to the singularly unique role under Art. II of a President’s communications and activities.”

So the Supreme Court warned that it was necessary “in the public interest” to “afford Presidential confidentiality the greatest protection consistent with the fair administration of justice.” That extended “even as to idle conversations with associates in which casual reference might be made concerning political leaders within the country or foreign statesmen.”

Added Chief Justice Burger: “We have no doubt that the District Judge will at all times accord to Presidential records that high degree of deference suggested in United States v. Burr, and will discharge his responsibility to see to it that, until released to the Special Prosecutor, no in camera material is revealed to anyone.”

Which brings us to a distinction. The Supreme Court ruling against Nixon came in decidedly different circumstances than those that obtain in the current contest. In Nixon, it was the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, who was seeking the tapes. In the standoff between Congress and President Trump, it’s not the special prosecutor who is seeking the production of papers.

On the contrary, the special prosecutor already has the material being sought (and already decided not to act on it). Here, the subpoena is being opposed by the special prosecutor’s superior, who has also already seen the material. The subpoena is not seeking delivery of the material to a federal judge, who, in Nixon, was the Honorable John J. “Maximum John” Sirica.

Which is important. Maximum John, sitting in a criminal case, could be relied upon by any court to guard presidential secrecy. What court, though, would trust Congress with that kind of responsibility? Papers handed over to Jerrold Nadler will be scattered in the Democratic dust-storm within a matter of hours. Congress’s oversight, after all, is precisely political.

So who is seeking to be positioned above the law? It’s hard to read the precedent as suggesting Mr. Trump is doing that. Nor is the Justice Department, which is on the side of the president; nor has the Justice Department’s special prosecutor moved against the president. No, it’s starting to look like the party seeking to maneuver itself above the law is — wait for it — the United States Congress.

See https://www.nysun.com/editorials/just-who-is-or-isnt-above-the-law/90680/ (“A Trump Poser: Just Who Lurks Above the Law?“)

If our President wants to ignore the courts—and Chief Justice Roger Taney’s successor John Roberts—as Lincoln did, he is free to do so. Our courts have no armies to enforce anything.

However, it is an entirely different matter with respect to Barack Obama and his treasonous co-conspirators, who must be pursued to the fullest extent of the law if our American system of justice is to survive.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/should-barack-obama-be-executed-for-treason/ (“Should Barack Obama Be Executed For Treason?“)

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19 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

One Down And One To Go!

Curbelo and Amash
[Carlos Curbelo and Justin Amash]

Carlos Curbelo is gone, defeated in the last election; and Justin Amash must be next.

As I wrote previously:

A RINO is a “Republican In Name Only.” Lots of us voted for John McCain when he ran for the presidency; and as each day passes, we regret having done so.

The same thing is true of the carpetbagger and RINO Mitt Romney.

See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/americas-newest-civil-war-2017-and-beyond/#comment-10035 (“End The Careers Of RINOS Curbelo And Amash Now!“)

Super-Leftist Andrew Desiderio has written in Politico:

Michigan Rep. Justin Amash became the first Republican lawmaker to declare that President Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses and that Attorney General William Barr “deliberately misrepresented” special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Amash, whose libertarian views often put him at odds with Trump and his fellow Republicans, posted a series of tweets Saturday afternoon outlining positions that even some Democrats have been unwilling to embrace — an extraordinary development that comes as Democratic leaders face increasing pressure from progressives to launch impeachment proceedings.

“Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash wrote, arguing that lawmakers have become too afraid of using impeachment to deter presidential misconduct.

“Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g., obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires a finding that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct,” Amash wrote.

In recent days, more rank-and-file Democrats have said they support initiating impeachment proceedings against the president; but Speaker Nancy Pelosi and most Democratic leaders and committee chairs have resisted those calls, citing their ongoing investigations into the president’s alleged conduct. The House Judiciary Committee, for example, is investigating Trump for allegations of obstruction of justice and abuses of power.

Around half of Mueller’s 448-page report is devoted to allegations that the president sought to undermine or shut down the special counsel’s investigation altogether. The report outlined several episodes that meet all the element of an obstruction of justice offense, most notably former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s testimony about Trump’s persistent efforts to have McGahn fire the special counsel.

Amash argued that Congress is failing to live up to its constitutional duties in part because of “extreme partisanship” that has worsened under Trump.

“While impeachment should be undertaken only in extraordinary circumstances, the risk we face in an environment of extreme partisanship is not that Congress will employ it as a remedy too often but rather that Congress will employ it so rarely that it cannot deter misconduct,” Amash said. “Our system of checks and balances relies on each branch’s [sic] jealously guarding its powers and upholding its duties under our Constitution. When loyalty to a political party or to an individual trumps loyalty to the Constitution, the Rule of Law — the foundation of liberty — crumbles.”

The Michigan Republican also echoed Democrats and hundreds of former federal prosecutors who have argued that Trump would have been charged with obstruction of justice if he were not president — a reference to the Justice Department’s long-standing policy stating that a sitting president cannot be indicted. In his report, Mueller cited that policy when explaining his decision not to charge Trump with a crime.

Amash took aim specifically at Barr, putting the GOP lawmaker in line with Democrats who have accused the attorney general of trying to portray Mueller’s report in a favorable light for the president.

“In comparing Barr’s principal conclusions, congressional testimony, and other statements to Mueller’s report, it is clear that Barr intended to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings,” Amash said, adding that “Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.”

In a statement late Saturday, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel slammed Amash for “parroting the Democrats’ talking points on Russia.” McDaniel did not explicitly endorse a GOP primary challenge to Amash in 2020, but noted that “voters in Amash’s district strongly support this president.”

Despite Amash’s frequent opposition to Trump, he is one of the most conservative members of Congress and sits on the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating Trump for alleged financial crimes. His fellow Republicans have maintained that Democrats’ various investigation of Trump are politically motivated and illegitimate, and they’ve largely declared Mueller’s Russia probe to be a settled issue that warrants no further action or investigation.

Amash claimed that most members of Congress haven’t even read Mueller’s report, and he slammed those lawmakers whose minds were made up “within hours” of the release of the redacted version of Mueller’s report.

“America’s institutions depend on officials to uphold both the rules and spirit of our constitutional system even when to do so is personally inconvenient or yields a politically unfavorable outcome. Our Constitution is brilliant and awesome; it deserves a government to match it,” he concluded.

See https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/18/justin-amash-trump-impeachable-mueller-1332780 (“Michigan GOP congressman says Trump’s conduct impeachable”) (emphasis added); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7045799/GOP-congressman-Republican-call-Trumps-removal-office.html (“GOP congressman is the first Republican to call for Trump’s removal from office“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Amash (“Justin Amash“) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/10/justin-amash-resigns-house-freedom-caucus-after-tr/ (“Justin Amash resigns from House Freedom Caucus after Trump impeachment call”)

It is time to purge the Republican Party of RINOS, once and for all.

RINO Watch

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25 05 2019
Timothy D. Naegele

I haven’t seen Democrats this mad since the Republicans took their slaves away [UPDATED]

This is not an original quote of mine, nor can I take any credit for it, albeit I would like to. Instead, someone who goes by the handle, “Swedish House Mafia Blairsville United States,” wrote it at the UK Daily Mail‘s Web site beneath the following article about President Trump and Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight—the father of actress Angelina Jolie.

Indeed, Blairsville is located in Union County, Georgia, a “city” that had a population of 652 in the 2010 census, Where I was born and raised, Los Angeles, that barely constitutes enough people to inhabit a “bend in the road” . . . but it is America.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blairsville,_Georgia (“Blairsville, Georgia“); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_House_Mafia (“Swedish House Mafia“) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Voight (“Jon Voight“)

The Daily Mail article states:

Actor Jon Voight has paid glowing tribute to Donald Trump calling him the ‘greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.’

Voight, 80, an outspoken conservative and Academy Award winner, posted a series of videos directly to Twitter hoping to galvanize and unite Republican Party members ahead of the 2020 presidential reelection campaign.

In the video he heaped praise on the president, who was recently attacked by some quarters of his party, stating: ‘I know that you’ll agree with me when I say that our president has our utmost respect and our love.

‘This job is not easy for he’s battling the left and their absurd words of destruction… Our nation has been built on the solid ground from our forefathers and there is a moral code of duty that has been passed on from President Lincoln,’ he added.

The Oscar-winner told his followers that he wanted to ‘acknowledge the truth’ that ‘our country is stronger, safer, and with more jobs’ because President Trump ‘has made every move correct.’

‘Don’t be fooled by the political left because we are the people of this nation that is witnessing triumph,’ Voight added.

‘So let us stand with our president, let us stand for this truth that President Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. God bless America.’

Voight rose to fame in the lead role of Joe Buck in the 1969 flick ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and has enjoyed a six-decade career on the big screen.

He also appeared in Mission Impossible, Zoolander and Transformers, as well as television roles in 24 and Ray Donovan.

This was not the first time the actor linked Trump and Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation and ended the Civil War.

Speaking at an inauguration rally in January 2017 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Voight said, ‘God answered all our prayers’ by granting Trump the White House, The Hill reported at the time.

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7070185/Actor-Jon-Voight-80-posts-glowing-tribute-videos-Trump.html (“Oscar-winning actor and staunch conservative Jon Voight, 80, calls Trump ‘the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln’ and urges Americans to ‘stand with him’ in a glowing social media tribute“) (emphasis added; video omitted but it can be seen here: https://twitter.com/i/events/1132272997031501825?s=13)

Jon Voight is correct.

Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski are emblematic of Hollywood’s and the Left’s deep sickness and depravity.

See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/28/human-trafficking/#comment-17162 (“Sex Sells: Hollywood Is Sick“)

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

Jon Voight
[Jon Voight]

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2 10 2021
Timothy D. Naegele

See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10050039/More-HALF-Trump-voters-want-red-states-secede-union.html (“America thinks the unthinkable: More than half of Trump voters and 41% of Biden supporters want red and blue states to SECEDE from one another and form two new countries, shock new poll finds”)

The poll results are shocking but not surprising. Our great nation is polarized, almost beyond belief and reconciliation.

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