Washington Is One Of The Sickest Cities On Earth

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

It is Sodom and Gomorrah, combined.[2]

As I wrote nine years ago:

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.[3]

This is the “Deep State” at its worst, except for treachery that aids our enemies.  Today, Washington is plunging into impeachment investigations[4], and the circus is continuing.  The Democrats lost the last presidential election to Donald Trump; and ever since then, they have been trying to destroy his presidency.  Their efforts began well before the 2016 elections, when Barack Obama and his co-conspirators launched their efforts to destroy the Trump candidacy, and then his presidency—which is treasonous and seditious, and continues to this day.  Each of them should be prison, at the very least, but so far they are not.  No American should believe in or respect the rule of law until this happens.[5]

The Republicans in Washington are weak and spineless; and the Democrats routinely roll over them and outsmart them.  Former presidential contender, Massachusetts governor and now senator from Utah, the carpetbagging RINO Mitt Romney, is a perfect example of this.[6]  And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.  As the party veered farther and farther to the Left, they lost us.  And the Republican Party has not earned our respect or votes either, which is why more and more Americans may be Independents today, or vote as if they were.  Donald Trump may be America’s first Independent president, beholden to neither party and attacked by elements in both—as well as by far-Left vestiges of the United States’ once-respected media.  As I have written: “His very presence has been and continues to be a threat to Washington’s ‘establishment’ and power structure, and to the goals of globalists in the United States and abroad.”[7]

Ukraine-gate, as Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has dubbed it, may end the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden.  He is knee deep with his son Hunter in corruption.[8]  And it is simply the latest attempt by America’s Left to divert attention from their presidential candidates, who consist of misfits, freaks, racists and anti-Semites.  Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has described the situation as follows in The New York Sun:

In the United States as in Great Britain, the political system has been so strained by issues of such immense controversy that they cross party lines, immobilize the system, and can only be settled by the voters as a whole. There will be no other determination of whether President Trump gets to finish his task of grinding to powder and replacing the ruling bipartisan elite that he believes grievously mis-governed the country in the post-Reagan years.

In 2016, Mr. Trump neither won a mandate for revolution nor incurred a cause to be denied or removed from office. Almost half the voters substantially agreed with the president in 2016, and this remains the principal issue: that the previous four presidents and their Congresses mis-governed the country.

This view holds that the elder President Bush allowed the Republican Party to be split by a charlatan (Ross Perot), bringing in the Clintons, who brought on, with George W. Bush, the subprime mortgage debacle and the world’s greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression; and that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama produced a series of Middle East-related foreign policy disasters.

There was a faulty intelligence response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a completely misconceived war in Iraq, an immense humanitarian disaster generating as many as 10 million refugees, the premature departure from Iraq which helped produce ISIS, and the abandonment of nuclear non-proliferation with respect to Iran and North Korea (where all four presidents were swindled).

According to this view, the Bushes allowed the Republican Party to be shamed and jostled into insane notions of self-impoverishment over completely speculative notions of climate management, and President Obama was allowed to get away with a defeatist and corrupt economic policy that provided slightly more survivable welfare arrangements and a flat-lined “new normal” of 2% economic growth despite immense deficits and a shrinking workforce, though the Obamas’ rich chums on Wall Street, in Hollywood, and in the Silicon Valley were well taken care of fiscally.

And all four previous presidents are accused of pursuing trade policies that imported unemployment into the United States and doing nothing while up to 20 million illiterate peasants poured into the country illegally or while oil imports increased and the manufacturing sector was farmed out to other countries by companies that repatriated unemployment but not profits.

It is a powerful indictment of bipartisan policy and while sometimes overstated, as often happens in politics, it cannot easily be refuted. Instead, the president’s opponents in both parties have described him as a boorish mythmaker, a crook, and a pathologically dishonest egomaniac who is tarnishing the whole constitutional process by abuses of office.

The thunderbolt of the Trump assault on the whole system is an unprecedented victory by a disruptive political outsider. Some have tried to invoke Andrew Jackson as a precedent, but he had been a drummer-boy in the Revolutionary War, a famous citizen-general, briefly a United States senator, and was deprived of apparent victory in his first charge for the presidency in 1824 by the House of Representatives, though he led the popular and electoral vote in the election (but lacked an Electoral College majority).

No one has seriously tried to defend the presidents and Congresses in the seven preceding terms since Ronald Reagan. No one defends the endless Mideast wars or the bad trade deals or the legislative and executive imposition of commercially unsound mortgages (the political free lunch of expanding family home ownership at no cost to the taxpayers, that reduced almost the entire world banking system, except Canada’s, to insolvency).

The climate terror is now supported by confected waves of child-demonstrators and the same tired academics who are the leaders or the chief useful idiots of the international climate-activist Left. They were defeated in the Cold War, beat their swords into thermometers, and assaulted capitalism from a new angle, militarizing the Sierra Club and Greenpeace and the birdwatchers and butterfly collectors, all in the name of saving the planet. It has been a formidable improvisation, but is a long way from Al Gore’s “settled science,” much less the Prince of Wales’ somewhat tedious assertions that the end is nigh.

The Democrats, apart from a ritual defense of the Obama era in general, have just moved farther leftward, recommitting themselves to sharply higher taxes on middle- and upper-incomes, more open borders, the green terror, socialized medicine, and an ardent flirtation with vast reparations for African and native Americans.

And they have united with their press echo chamber to greet each new unfledged anti-Trump allegation as an impeachable presidential offense, chanting as if in hypnosis the confected group-faith that the president is an evil man awaiting from one week to the next the proof of his criminality.

The New York Times spurred most of the Democratic presidential candidates with any measurable support to demand the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Yet the Times knew there was no truth to the allegation of sexual abuse 35 years before.

The Washington Post took its turn last week with hearsay from a “whistleblower” about a conversation the president had, overheard by dozens of listeners, with the president of Ukraine. The spavined fire-horses charged out of the station again: Maureen Dowd hoping this would be the “Big One,” and Nicholas Kristof saying “It stinks,” (both in the Times).

It is almost inconceivable that any such conversation could produce a serious legal problem for President Trump. It cannot be ruled out that the Trump entourage has generated this round to discredit the Democratic press mobs again, and to get the murky business of the Biden family’s collateral profits from the vice presidency into the public square.

The president has substantially succeeded with respect to the economy, the southern border, trade, and energy production, and he will strive on to “drain the swamp.” His enemies are so envenomed, only the election next year can resolve the question whether the political establishment Mr. Trump attacked survives in recognizable form or he creates a new policy orthodoxy, as FDR did in the 1930s, when he entered office at the bottom of the Great Depression with a mandate to rebuild the country.

The system is substantially gridlocked between two alternatives that cannot be bridged; the people must choose the way forward. But they will, and that is why democracy works; the people ultimately decide and that is the one incontestable political legitimacy.

The United Kingdom has suffered a comparable drought of good government since the departure of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1990. Debt has increased, taxes have risen, and the country has wobbled between the attractions of plunging headlong into the supranational European Union or revitalizing itself as an important sovereign nation, close, as always, with kindred European spirits, but also close to its Commonwealth relatives in Canada and Australasia, and the United States.

The Euro-integration option would mean largely emasculating institutions that the British have worked out gradually over 800 years with relatively little civil strife, and practically none (apart from the former province of Ireland) since 1685, a third of a millennium, in favor of government from Brussels by commissioners very tenuously responsive to the constituent governments and to the talking shop of the European Parliament.

The impasse has become so sharp that parties are divided and a bare parliamentary majority of Remainers, drawn from seven parties, is trying to dictate to a government that no longer has the confidence of the House of Commons and wishes a general election. The Remainers are trying to direct government by legislation, in defiance of the public’s vote three years ago to leave the European Union, and to deny the government an election.

It is the worst shambles of British government since Oliver Cromwell dismissed the legislators, had the king decapitated, and made himself Lord Protector, an arrangement that only survived him by a few months and was followed by the return of the son of the late king.

Instead of any such extremities, in the U.K. as in the United States, the people will decide. Prime Minister Boris Johnson presumably will concede a request for an extension of Britain’s departure from the European Union from Halloween to New Year’s Eve in exchange for an immediate election. Only the people can decide, and they will, in the one country as in the other, almost certainly in favor of the incumbent. Any alternative now visible is completely implausible.[9]

Time will tell.  But surely our enemies around the globe are salivating over the latest machinations in America’s “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

 

 

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[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 Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah (“Sodom and Gomorrah”)

[3]  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”)

[4]  See, e.g., https://apnews.com/9a57d80e32904356874bbe090e159694 (“Washington plunges into Trump impeachment investigation”) and https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/09/26/the-move-towards-impeachment-marks-a-dangerous-shift (“The move towards impeachment marks a dangerous shift”)

[5]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/24/when-will-the-actual-shooting-begin-in-americas-second-civil-war/ (“When Will The Actual Shooting Begin In America’s Second Civil War?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/24/americas-left-is-vile-and-evil/ (“America’s Left Is Vile And Evil”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/will-the-trump-presidency-conclude-in-2025/ (“Will The Trump Presidency Conclude In 2025?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/is-putin-right/ (“Is Putin Right?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/the-democrats-are-evil-but-smart-while-the-republicans-are-neanderthals-and-dumb/ (“The Democrats Are Evil But Smart, While The Republicans Are Neanderthals And Dumb”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/ (“The State Of Our Union, 2019”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/ (“It Is Time For Trump Supporters To Fight Back”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-american-lefts-feeding-frenzy/ (“The American Left’s Feeding Frenzy”) and 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!”) and 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/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”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix”) (see also the extensive comments beneath each of these articles) and http://www.dickmorris.com/no-cause-for-impeachment-lunch-alert/ (“No Cause For Impeachment”)

[6]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/24/when-will-the-actual-shooting-begin-in-americas-second-civil-war/#comment-19961 (“The Totally-Despicable Mitt Romney: Shame”)

[7]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/09/24/when-will-the-actual-shooting-begin-in-americas-second-civil-war/ (“When Will The Actual Shooting Begin In America’s Second Civil War?”)

[8]  See id.; see also https://buchanan.org/blog/joe-biden-impeachments-first-casualty-137542 (“Joe Biden: Impeachment’s First Casualty”-“[Nancy Pelosi] has just put her own and her party’s fate and future on the line.  . . .  By making Ukraine the focus of the impeachment drive in the House, Pelosi has also assured that the questionable conduct of Biden and son Hunter Biden will be front and center for the next four months before Iowa votes.  . . .  This is bad news for the Biden campaign.  And the principal beneficiary of Pelosi’s decision that put Joe and Hunter Biden at the center of an impeachment inquiry is [Elizabeth] Warren [who] . . . steadily emerges as the probable nominee”)

[9]  See https://www.nysun.com/national/only-the-voters-can-end-the-crisis-in-us-britain/90848/ (“Only the Voters Can End Crises In U.S., Britain”)

When Will The Actual Shooting Begin In America’s Second Civil War?

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

The title of this article is a “loaded question,” which we hope and pray never happens.  However, the Democrats have launched impeachment against our President, which moves us one step closer to a bloody internal war.[2]  And yes, Trump supporters—including law enforcement and our military—are armed to the teeth, like they were when Abraham Lincoln was the president and our last Civil War began.

Acts of sedition have been underway since before our national elections in 2016.  Barack Obama and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators embarked on a concerted effort to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, which continues to this day.  When will they be held accountable, and imprisoned at the very least?  Until this happens, no American should believe in our system of justice, because it does not exist.  It is a fable and a fantasy, and a tragedy of epic proportions.[3]

On two other occasions in my lifetime, similar events have happened, when our great nation was torn asunder.  One involved the Vietnam War and the hatred leveled at former President Lyndon Johnson.  There were bumper stickers on cars in the District of Columbia that asked: “Where is Lee Harvey Oswald now that we really need him?—referring to John F. Kennedy’s assassin, and suggesting that Johnson should be killed too.  The second event involved Richard Nixon and Watergate, where the hatred of him reached a fever pitch.

Today, the country is polarized in a manner approaching that of our last Civil War, when America was torn apart and barely survived.  If Abraham Lincoln had not been our president, it likely that the United States would not exist as a nation today, but might be two or more countries, occupying North America.  Lincoln and his generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman[4], turned the tide and won the war, at an enormous cost in human lives.  For decades after that. America’s South functioned as a defeated nation within the United States, much like East Germany—or the DDR—existed in a united Germany after the fall of the Soviet Union.

From the moment that Donald Trump began his presidential campaign, he has been attacked by the Left and despicable RINOs like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the right[5], and by the Left-leaning American media.  The attacks have been relentless, without ceasing.  In a very real sense, Trump is America’s first truly Independent president, who is beholden to neither political party, and attacked by elements in both.  His very presence has been and continues to be a threat to Washington’s “establishment” and power structure, and to the goals of globalists in the United States and abroad.  As I have written, the Democrats are “evil” but smart, while the Republicans are “Neanderthals” and dumb.  This was my conclusion when I left the U.S. Senate, and it has never changed and continues to this day.

I began as a Democrat in a devoutly-Republican household, where my parents “idolized” Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.  However, working on and with Capitol Hill for most of my adult life led me to the conclusion that I did not want to be a member of either political party.  I have been an Independent ever since.  Lots of Americans in our great nation’s “Flyover States” have felt disenfranchised; and Donald Trump has captured their beliefs and been their leader since his presidential campaign began.  Is the man perfect?  No one is, but he embodies the hopes and dreams of vast numbers of Americans who elected him in 2016 and may reelect him in 2020.  Will his enemies, domestic and foreign, accept that result; or will his presidency be besieged until it runs its course?

The latest attacks on the President have been discussed by Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—in an article entitled “Will ‘Ukraine-Gate’ Imperil Biden’s Bid?”:

With the revelation by an intel community “whistleblower” that President Donald Trump, in a congratulatory call to the new president of Ukraine, pushed him repeatedly to investigate the Joe Biden family connection to Ukrainian corruption, the cry “Impeach!” is being heard anew in the land.

But revisiting how this latest scandal came about, and how it has begun to unfold, it is a good bet that the principal casualty could be the former vice president. Consider:

In May 2016, Joe Biden, as Barack Obama’s designated point man on Ukraine, flew to Kiev to inform President Petro Poroshenko that a billion-dollar U.S. loan guarantee had been approved to enable Kiev to continue to service its mammoth debt.

But, said Biden, the aid was conditional. There was a quid pro quo.

If Poroshenko’s regime did not fire its chief prosecutor in six hours, Biden would fly home and Ukraine would get no loan guarantee. Ukraine capitulated instantly, said Joe, reveling in his pro-consul role.

Yet, left out of Biden’s drama about how he dropped the hammer on a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor was this detail.

The prosecutor had been investigating Burisma Holdings, the biggest gas company in Ukraine. And right after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the pro-Russian government in Kiev, and after Joe Biden had been given the lead on foreign aid for Ukraine, Burisma had installed on its board, at $50,000 a month, Hunter Biden, the son of the vice president.

Joe Biden claims that, though he was point man in the battle on corruption in Ukraine, he was unaware his son was raking in hundreds of thousands from one of the companies being investigated.

Said Joe on Saturday, “I have never spoken to my son about his various business dealings.”

Trump and Rudy Giuliani suspect not, and in that July 25 phone call, Trump urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to reopen the investigation of Hunter Biden and Burisma.

The media insist there is no story here and the real scandal is that Trump pressed Zelensky to reopen the investigation to target his strongest 2020 rival. Worse, say Trump’s accusers, would be if the president conditioned the transfer of $250 million in approved military aid to Kiev on the new regime’s acceding to his demands.

The questions raised are several:

Is it wrong to make military aid to a friendly nation conditional on that nation’s compliance with legitimate requests or demands of the United States? Is it illegitimate to ask a friendly government to look into what may be corrupt conduct by the son of a U.S. vice president?

Joe Biden has an even bigger problem: This issue has begun to dominate the news at an especially vulnerable moment for his campaign.

Biden’s stumbles and gaffes have already raised alarms among his followers and been seized upon by rivals such as Cory Booker, who has publicly suggested that the 76-year-old former vice president is losing it.

Biden’s lead in the polls also appears shakier with each month. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has just taken a narrow lead in a Des Moines Register poll and crusading against Beltway corruption is central to her campaign.

“Too many politicians in both parties have convinced themselves that playing the money-for-influence game is the only way to get things done,” Warren told her massive rally in New York City: “No more business as usual. Let’s attack the corruption head on.”

Soon, it will not only be Trump and Giuliani asking Biden questions ab[o]ut Ukraine, Burisma and Hunter, but Democrats, too. Calls are rising for Biden’s son to be called to testify before congressional committees.

With Trump airing new charges daily, Biden will be asked to respond by his traveling press. The charges and the countercharges will become what the presidential campaign is all about. Bad news for Joe Biden.

Can he afford to spend weeks, perhaps months, answering for his son’s past schemes to enrich himself through connections to foreign regimes that seem less related to Hunter’s talents than his being the son of a former vice president and possible future president?

“Ukraine-gate” is the latest battle in the death struggle between the “deep state” and a president empowered by Middle America to go to Washington and break that deep state’s grip on the national destiny.

Another issue is raised here — the matter of whistleblowers listening in to or receiving readouts of presidential conversations with foreign leaders and having the power to decide for themselves whether the president is violating his oath and needs to be reported to Congress.

Eisenhower discussed coups in Iran and Guatemala and the use of nuclear weapons in Korea and the Taiwan Strait. JFK, through brother Bobby, cut a secret deal with Khrushchev to move U.S. missiles out of Turkey six months after the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba.

Who deputized bureaucratic whistleblowers to pass judgment on such conversations and tattle to Congress if they were offended?[6]

Next, award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon has written an article for The Hill, which is entitled “Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections”:

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.

Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.

“I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President’s campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them,” Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine’s leader.

The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats’ support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.

The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.

And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.

As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.

The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.

U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That’s when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.

The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.

Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.

Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.

The DNC contractor also asked Chaly’s team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.

Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.

The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

At the time, Biden was aware that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma, the firm employing Hunter Biden, after a December 2015 New York Times article.

What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.

Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.

Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.

Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.

The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.

Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe?

It’s a question worth asking.[7]

“Ukraine-gate” and impeachment are simply the latest attempts by America’s Left to divert attention from their presidential candidates, who consist of misfits, freaks, racists and anti-Semites.

As these attacks on President Trump continue unabated and get even worse before next year’s elections, the country may be ripped apart and become more polarized than ever.  When will the actual shooting begin, and open warfare commence like our last Civl War?  Is it merely a matter of time?  Can our great nation heal and survive from such trauma?  If the past is any indicator of the future, the answer is “yes,” a resounding “yes,” but it will take time, perhaps lots of it—and there may be bloodshed aplenty.

And what are America’s enemies abroad thinking and doing?  Like our last Civil War, they would be wise not to get involved, or to take any actions that would be adverse to those of the United States.  This is true of China and North Korea; and it is especially true of Russia’s brutal dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin’s designs for all of Ukraine: “a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia,” to quote John Solomon.[8]

 

 

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[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 Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). 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 https://apnews.com/a9a0bed9f81343b7a725a9adcd84e01b (“Pelosi orders impeachment probe: ‘No one is above the law'”)

[3]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/24/americas-left-is-vile-and-evil/ (“America’s Left Is Vile And Evil”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/10/will-the-trump-presidency-conclude-in-2025/ (“Will The Trump Presidency Conclude In 2025?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/02/is-putin-right/ (“Is Putin Right?”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/the-democrats-are-evil-but-smart-while-the-republicans-are-neanderthals-and-dumb/ (“The Democrats Are Evil But Smart, While The Republicans Are Neanderthals And Dumb”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/ (“The State Of Our Union, 2019”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/29/it-is-time-for-trump-supporters-to-fight-back/ (“It Is Time For Trump Supporters To Fight Back”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/the-american-lefts-feeding-frenzy/ (“The American Left’s Feeding Frenzy”) and 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!”) and 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/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”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/justice-and-the-law-do-not-mix/ (“Justice And The Law Do Not Mix”) (see also the extensive comments beneath each of these articles)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/ulysses-s-grant-an-american-hero/ (“Ulysses S. Grant: An American Hero”)

[5]  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_In_Name_Only (“Republican In Name Only”).  Lots of us are ashamed of the fact that we voted for Romney and Ryan in the past.

[6]  See https://buchanan.org/blog/will-ukraine-gate-imperil-bidens-bid-137533 (“Will ‘Ukraine-Gate’ Imperil Biden’s Bid?”); see also https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7492969/The-story-Bidens-son-Ukraine-Trumps-claims.html (“Hunter Biden got millions from overseas biz while his father was VP. Did Joe intervene to save him?”) and https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/23/donald-trump-flips-ukraine-furor-joe-biden-son-hun/ (“Trump flips Ukraine furor on Biden, son”) and https://pagesix.com/2019/07/01/hunter-biden-started-dating-brothers-widow-right-after-crack-binge/ (“Hunter Biden started dating brother’s widow right after crack binge”) and https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/06/12/hunter-biden-married-los-angeles-woman-after-split-with-his-brothers-widow/ (“Hunter Biden’s messy personal life is back in the news. Will it cause political headaches for his dad?”)

[7]  See https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/462658-lets-get-real-democrats-were-first-to-enlist-ukraine-in-us-elections (“Let’s get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections”)

[8]  See 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”) (see also the extensive comments beneath the article)

The Middle East Is Not America’s Fight

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

In an article entitled “The Iran War: Danger Lurks In Inaction,” Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in The New York Sun:

Last weekend’s drone raid on the Saudi oil fields, along with the Israeli elections, opens a new chapter in Middle Eastern relations. Whether the attack on Saudi oil production, which has temporarily stopped more than half of it, was launched by Iranian-sponsored Yemeni Houthis or by the Iranians themselves is beside the point, as the Houthis had no independent ability whatever to acquire and use such weapons.

The Iranians are behind the incident. There is room for legitimate debate about the merits of the conflicting sides in the Yemen war, but there can be no doubt that by any standards, the direct attack on Saudi Arabia was an act of war, and as it was entirely dependent on Iranian weapons procurement and instruction, it is an escalation of the war-by-proxy between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen with an outright act of war by Iran against Saudi Arabia.

There is no reason to believe, or even to recommend, that Saudi Arabia should turn the other cheek and engage in reactive pacifism. Because the Trump administration has ignored the efforts of American political factions, including recalcitrant Republicans, to ditch the Saudis, Washington retains great influence on the Saudi response to what is a severe provocation. This can be seen as a great opportunity, as it furnishes a justification for administering a heavy blow against the most troublesome regime in the world.

The United States would do well to take the trouble to line up allies. The Western alliance will be even more skittish than usual, given that the aggrieved party is the not entirely presentable Saudi regime. Saudi Arabia has been a joint venture between the House of Saud, an old nomadic desert family favored by Britain and France on the collapse of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire at the end of World War I, and the Wahhabi Islamic leadership. The feudal and absolute monarchy paid extensive Danegeld to the Wahhabis as they spread militant Islam throughout the Eurasian landmass and in Australasia and North Africa, in exchange for a free pass for the Saudi royal family.

The Saudi regime has gradually, under steady American influence, modernized the structure of the state, spread the petro-money around the population, and withdrawn from the Faustian bargain with fundamentalist Islam. It has followed the Arab version of the Chinese model: economic and (to some extent) social reform and general distribution of prosperity, without relaxing the authority or capacity of self-assertion of the state. The Saudis avoided the catastrophe of Russia and, briefly, Egypt, of trying to introduce democracy without elevating public standards of prosperity and education.

Saudi Arabia is, in any case, a much more reputable regime than the terrorism-promoting, bigoted theocracy of Iran — an almost friendless nation apart from a few other militant Islamic entities and as a nuisance of convenience that China and Russia and even Turkey encourage to irritate the United States and its Middle Eastern allies and protégés, especially Egypt, the Emirates, the Saudis, and Israel.

The struggle that is now escalating is among theocratic and secular Muslim countries, militant Islam, and Middle Eastern minorities — the Jewish state and Arab Christians — and the fairly arcane but often fiercely contested distinction between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, as well as a contest between petroleum-exporting countries, a field where Saudi Arabia has generally been preeminent. These waters have been muddied considerably by the effective elimination by the United States of overseas energy imports as its own production has been sharply boosted from shale-fracking and increased offshore exploration.

An incidental but useful clarification from this event has been the revelation of the absurdity and irrelevance of the extreme Green nonsense. The President was correct in announcing that he would release oil as necessary from the United States national petroleum reserves to stabilize world supply. Even 50 years from now, no part of the solution to such a problem as this will have anything to do with nostrums about windmills and solar panels.

Apart from the removal of the United States as the world’s chief petroleum importer, the Middle Eastern correlation of forces has also been altered by the disintegration of two prominent Arab countries, Iraq and Syria (formerly two of Israel’s most militant enemies), and the encroachment upon Arab affairs of the ancient foes of the Arabs, the Turks and the Persians (Iran).

The European rejection of Turkey has helped persuade that country’s strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to imagine that Turkey has a role to play in Arab affairs, and the general clerical and nationalist belligerency of the Islamic Republic in Iran has assisted the Arabs in focusing on self-protection and shelving their diversionary preoccupation with Israel.

The fixation on Israel was always just an invented distraction of the Arab masses from the misgovernment their leaders inflicted on them, but now, and with Turkey and Iran meddling in Syria and Iraq, the Palestinians, who were generally regarded in the Arab world as sharpers like the Jews and Lebanese, are redundant to the pan-Arab interest, and Israel is a vital ally.

Now is the time for the imposition of a solution: The Palestinians can have a modest state, but that’s all they get, and it must be conditioned on formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with internationally agreed frontiers. The Israeli election will almost certainly produce a grand coalition between the two main parties that could facilitate an agreement by producing a slightly more flexible government in Jerusalem, i.e. a somewhat more flexible Benjamin Netanyahu (though not one seriously contemplating retirement; the charges against him are nonsense and just part of hardball Israeli politics). Israel would benefit from a government independent of the Arabs, the religious parties, or the far left.

The United States must lead an effective coalition response to the Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia. The NATO states that import oil, especially from Saudi Arabia, should be forcefully invited to join in augmented sanctions, and the United States should require those countries that trade profitably with the U.S. to join an embargo of Iran until it genuinely renounces its sponsorship of terrorist enterprises, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and, as long as the Yemeni civil war is bilaterally deescalated, the Houthi.

A serious coalition, including all the countries whose ships ply the Persian Gulf, should, under American leadership, accomplish the internationalization of the Strait of Hormuz, and discourage by force any Iranian attempt to restrict those waters. And the U.S. must (at the expense of the beneficiary countries) install serious air security over Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and northern Iraq. Foreign drones should never have got anywhere near the Saudi oil refineries and collection points and would not be especially hard to intercept.

This attack was planned as meticulously as the 9/11 attacks and, like them, attempted to evade any particular national responsibility. The fact that there was no suicide element may be taken as slight progress for the world’s counterterrorists.

An air assault on Iranian oil facilities and nuclear military sites would be entirely justified, and this measure should be prepared as the next step, with the prior approval of a reasonable range of supportive countries, as the instant response to any further provocations. It would not be a great risk for the United States to lead a punitive air mission that would flatten Iran’s nuclear military program and crush it economically, and such a step would arouse no objections from any civilized country.

If the Saudis want to move to this more ambitious phase of retribution now, as long as the administration takes the time necessary to stiffen the backbone of the vocal but often almost invertebrate allies, and as long as it is planned carefully, there is no moral or practical reason to hesitate. Iran is an outlaw regime in chronic need of punishment, and the danger lies not in overreaction but in insufficient retaliation.[2]

Black is correct: “[T]he direct attack on Saudi Arabia was an act of war,” but it was not an act of war against the United States or the American people.  We were pushed into the Iraq War by Israel and its neocon shills; and that war alone cost more than 5,000 American lives with many more maimed, and trillions of dollars wasted, for nothing. Never again, even if Israel’s existence is at stake.

The United States is the largest energy producer in the world once again, and as I have written previously:

[W]e do not need the Middle East—or Israel—for anything anymore. Also, an overwhelming number of Americans elected Donald Trump to keep us out of foreign wars, not to embark on new ones.[3]

Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—was correct when he stated:

To [former White House aide and Israeli shill, John] Bolton, Trump’s trashing of Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal was the first step toward a confrontation and clash to smash the Tehran regime. To Trump, it was a first step to a Trump-negotiated better bargain with Iran.[4]

Black is mistaken when he writes:

The Palestinians can have a modest state, but that’s all they get, and it must be conditioned on formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with internationally agreed frontiers.

Giving “crumbs” to the Palestinians, and abandoning any notions of a viable two-state solution, smacks of colonialism and apartheid, which are abhorrent in America and the West today.

Black is mistaken too when he writes:

The United States must lead an effective coalition response to the Iranian aggression against Saudi Arabia. The NATO states that import oil, especially from Saudi Arabia, should be forcefully invited to join in augmented sanctions. . . .

It is in America’s best interests to open our energy “spigots” wide, and supply Europe with its energy needs, and do the same with respect to China.  Among other things, this would boost the U.S. economy immeasurably; it would undermine the Russian dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime; and it would enhance American jobs and our trading relationship with China, which desperately needs energy products to keep its flagging economy afloat and on an even keel.

Next, Black has written:

An air assault on Iranian oil facilities and nuclear military sites would be entirely justified, and this measure should be prepared as the next step, with the prior approval of a reasonable range of supportive countries, as the instant response to any further provocations. It would not be a great risk for the United States to lead a punitive air mission that would flatten Iran’s nuclear military program and crush it economically, and such a step would arouse no objections from any civilized country.

If the Saudis want to move to this more ambitious phase of retribution now, as long as the administration takes the time necessary to stiffen the backbone of the vocal but often almost invertebrate allies, and as long as it is planned carefully, there is no moral or practical reason to hesitate. Iran is an outlaw regime in chronic need of punishment, and the danger lies not in overreaction but in insufficient retaliation.

Wow!  This smacks of the warmongering by those who brought us the Vietnam War and the Iraq War; and it must be rejected categorically by the American people.  They do not want war; and thankfully Black does not occupy any policy role in the West vis-à-vis the Middle East.

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[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 Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). 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 https://www.nysun.com/national/latest-ploy-against-trump-is-to-conjure/90804/

[3]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-17209 (“Warmonger: Enemy Of The American People”)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-19656 (“Echoes Of The Despicable John Bolton”)

America’s Left Is Vile And Evil

 By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.

In an article entitled “New Anti-Trump Ploy Is Conjuring A Recession,” Conrad Black—the Canadian-born, British former newspaper publisher, author and life peer—has written in The New York Sun:

The latest ploy of the anti-Trump press phalanx, and their weekly echo chamber of assorted Democratic candidates and legislators, is to try to move the voter-approval needle by insisting an economic recession is about to occur. The problem is, it isn’t.

As weeks pass without a recession or even increasing objective statistical hints of a recession, the continued trumpeting of a recession becomes self-stifling. Not even the economically illiterate mouthpieces of CNN and MSNBC can keep a straight face for long predicting recession when there are no signs it is happening.

It is possible to convince those who want to be convinced that something happening completely in the dark, such as trade negotiations with China, is going badly. (They aren’t.) But it is impossible to maintain a levitation of economic alarm when confidence remains high, employers are hiring rather than laying off workers, and economic growth, unemployment, and inflation numbers remain positive.

Understandably, it has been difficult for both sides on the political see-saw as we approach the 2020 election year. President Trump’s enemies, clinging as they have been since the beginning to buoyant flotsam, are like people who have been cast into the sea and can’t swim.

The idea of a Trump presidency was so unthinkable there could not be a honeymoon because it could not be real; it could not have been a legitimate election. For more than two years we were waiting for the confirmation that Mr. Trump had worked with the Russian government to rig the election.

We now know that from the start the investigators knew that there had been no such collusion and almost two whole years were spent trying to provoke Mr. Trump into counter-attacking Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s operation so he could be accused of obstructing justice. Since the president cooperated with the inquiry even as he rightly denounced it as a hoax and a fraud, the best that could be done was an invitation to the House of Representatives to continue investigations so Democrats might keep the impeachment cloud over the president’s head.

Doubtless when legislators return from their summer recess, like two spavined old fire-horses, judiciary and intelligence committee chairmen Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff will storm out of the gate again, issuing subpoenas which will be ignored by the administration, and relying on the same desperately inadequate choir of nasty press sorcerers (down to and including Watergate catacomb mythmakers Carl Bernstein and John Dean), to stoke it up one more time.

It won’t fly. No one believes any of it. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will soon produce his report on many aspects of the spurious Trump-Russia investigation, and Senator [Lindsey] Graham and his judiciary committee will take it from there, shouldering Messrs. Nadler and Schiff out of the frame.

Inexorably, as special prosecutor John Durham’s indictments come down, the Democrats’ “insurance policy” against Mr. Trump (the Russian collusion canard as described by former FBI senior agent Peter Strzok) will become the Democrats’ suicide weapon.

Russia was hastily followed by racism, topped out with attempts to hold Mr. Trump in some way responsible for the tragic shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Since Mr. Trump isn’t a racist, and neither of the two shooters professed any Trump role in forming their psychopathic opinions, that wheeze has died in the summer heat. It is to be hoped that it doesn’t take down prudent bipartisan reforms of the gun regime with it.

The sudden and mysterious silence that has enshrouded the southern border, including the wailings of Representative Elijah Cummings, is the surest indicator that the fence is being built, Mexico is cooperating (as it receives more manufacturing investment from companies fleeing China over tariffs), and the detention and adjudication system with hundreds of new judges, is working.

The number of apprehensions of those attempting to enter illegally is declining and it is becoming difficult to represent crowded but adequately sanitary and well-stocked detention centers as the replications of Nazi death camps that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others were conjuring.

Now we are on to a recession. This claim contains no more substance than the chimeras that preceded it.

The straws in the wind that have been cited as the green shoots of economic calamity are far from dispositive, and carry much less weight than continuing solid performances in economic growth, inflation, absolute and per capita GDP growth, manufacturing jobs growth, shrinkage of minority unemployment, and purchasing power for working and lower middle class families. All of these numbers are coming in supportively for the administration.

The fact that the election approaches and the importance of the economy in electoral results is proverbial, and the serial evaporation of the false issues that have been pinned on Trump in his inexorable elephantine march through his first term, now combine to attempt the incitement of hysteria on this subject.

It is true that the deficit tops $1 trillion and that is not sustainable indefinitely, but that is 35% less than the Obama average (admittedly coming after a debacle bequeathed by George W. Bush); and the GDP is about 25% above the latter Obama years. So despite a large tax reduction and a strong defense build-up, the deficit as a percentage of GDP has shrunk in about five years from 8.5% to less than 5%, unacceptable, but progress.

The most important single measurement, especially for insertion into political predictions, is GDP per capita growth, which declined dangerously from 4.5% in the Reagan years to 3.9% in the Clinton terms, to 2% under George W. Bush to 1% with Obama. This trend had to be reversed to prevent extreme economic and political stress.

Economics, essentially, is half psychology and half third-grade arithmetic. President Trump has won the arithmetic and there are no serious signs of incipient recession: neither rising interest rates presaging inflation, which could require recessive measures to cool, nor serious slackening of demand.

Under the circumstances, it will be hard for Democratic officials and press fear-mongering to win the psychological battle over the direct personal experience and observations of the voters.

The only signs of economic weakness are from other important countries. The European Union appears to be about to suffer the grievous self-inflicted wound of failing to reach a reasonable compromise with the UK, and the loss of its second-largest national economy and most prestigious member. This would be a benefit to the United States as a free trade agreement with the world’s fifth-largest economy would be eminently negotiable.

China, despite its huffing and puffing and the solicitude for its “face” [that] it has stirred up in the weak-kneed precincts of the over-populated anti-Trump world, is sputtering and losing jobs to Vietnam, India, and Mexico. Those who have been so prostrated in their hostility to the president that they have subscribed to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” hegemonic plan will suffer the disconcertion of seeing China adopt a sharp course correction.

The comparative weakness of China’s rivals will assist the prolongation of the American boom, which only seems so protracted because there never really was a full recovery under President Obama, little more than stabilization with a 125% increase in accumulated national debt in eight years. The workforce shrank, welfare dependency rose, and a flat-lined “new normal” that the country could not live with was proclaimed.

The Democrats and their press are trying to delay the sober and balanced assessment of the merits of the candidates coming up to the 2020 election. To repurpose a beloved Democratic expression, the inconvenient truth is that Mr. Trump has been a good president who has kept his promises.[2]

As I have written:

Our adversaries have only seen a small portion of America’s vast economic might. For example, by denying use of the SWIFT payments system to Russia, we can bring the pygmy economy (smaller than Italy or Brazil) to its knees. Also, as the United States regains its dominant position in the world’s energy markets, Russia loses. And China’s economy is not in great shape today either.

Like Abraham Lincoln before him, Donald Trump is asserting America’s preeminence and dominance, unapologetically. And yes, the United States is at war, albeit it is not a shooting war at this time.[3]

Economic cycles are a way of life, which have occurred with consistency over hundreds if not thousands of years.  And I added:

One can look at Life negatively (e.g., ALL of us are going to die), optimistically, or “realistically.”

I have believed that the “Great Recession [of 2008]” was papered over, and the proverbial “can” was simply kicked down the road.

. . .

However, the USSR is gone; Russia is a pygmy state; and China has lots of problems. We have survived because of optimism and realism, not pessimism.[4]

America’s Left and its captive so-called “Mainstream Media” are hoping for a recession (or worse), which they can blame on President Trump.  In essence, they are hoping that America fails, instead of succeeds and prospers.  This is not the Democratic Party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who did his best to get us out of the Great Depression and rebuild America’s spirit and industrial might.

Instead, this is the party of un-American mental midgets like Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff; outright racists like Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings; and anti-Semites such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and the other members of their so-called “Squad.”  It is also the party of Barack Obama and his fellow traitors who sought to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, and who should be in prison for the rest of their lives—at the very least.[5]

© 2019, Timothy D. Naegele

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[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 Timothy D. Naegele Resume-19-4-29). 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 https://www.nysun.com/national/latest-ploy-against-trump-is-to-conjure/90804/; see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/china-is-americas-enemy-and-the-enemy-of-free-people-everywhere/ (“China Is America’s Enemy, And The Enemy Of Free People Everywhere”)

[3]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/the-state-of-our-union-2019/#comment-17585 (“America’s Global Might”)

[4]  See https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/u-s-attorney-general-barr-is-appalled-give-americans-a-break/#comment-18748

[5]  See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/u-s-attorney-general-barr-is-appalled-give-americans-a-break/ (“U.S. Attorney General Barr Is Appalled: Give Americans A Break!”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/the-mueller-report-a-monumental-travesty/ (“The Mueller Report: A Monumental Travesty”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/the-mueller-witch-hunt-is-over/ (“The Mueller Witch Hunt Is Over”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/the-democrats-are-evil-but-smart-while-the-republicans-are-neanderthals-and-dumb/ (“The Democrats Are Evil But Smart, While The Republicans Are Neanderthals And Dumb”) and 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/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/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”); see also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/barack-obama-is-responsible-for-americas-tragic-racial-divide/ (“Barack Obama Is Responsible For America’s Tragic Racial Divide”) and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/ (“Is Barack Obama A Racist?”) and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7340581/Jerry-Nadler-says-formal-impeachment-proceedings-against-Donald-Trump-launched.html (“[Totally-despicable] Jerry Nadler says ‘formal impeachment proceedings’ against Donald Trump have been launched’)

The Rise Of Independents

By Timothy D. Naegele[1]

The job for Republicans between now and November of 2010 will be to elect opponents of ObamaCare—which means opponents of Barack Obama—and undo the election results of 2008 and what they wrought.  A growing number of Americans believe they were sold a far-Leftist in “sheep’s clothing,” instead of a relatively-moderate centrist[2], so the task should not be a daunting one at all.

Independents comprise about 35 percent of the American electorate[3], and their ranks may grow even larger in the years to come. They do not care much about either the Republican or Democrat parties. Enough of them hated George W. Bush, and were not enamored with John McCain, that they gave the White House to Obama. Now, enough may turn against the Democrats and Obama to hand victories of a similar magnitude to the GOP.

Obama and the Democrats misread the election results of 2008.  The price they pay in the future may be staggering—and reminiscent of the sea changes that took place in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson was effectively run out of the White House and prevented from seeking reelection, and in 1980 when the Reagan “Revolution” swept into Washington and threw out Jimmy Carter and his ilk.

For many Americans, Ross Perot’s candidacy in 1992 was a breath of fresh air; however, he turned out to be nothing more than a flash in the pan, and he failed to produce anything lasting.  He seemed more enamored with himself than in building a viable and sustainable Independent movement.  In the final analysis, all he accomplished was to deny George H.W. Bush a second term—for deep-seated reasons that are best known to Perot and Bush—and hand the presidency to Bill Clinton.

As the ranks of Independents continue to grow if not swell, it is unlikely that they will be driven by another “savior” like Perot. Most Independents do not have lasting allegiances to either party, albeit most have come from one party or the other—or perhaps both, as I did. They will be seeking like-minded candidates from the “Tea Party” movement or wherever they can be found; and ultimately politicians will not be afraid of running as Independents and defying both established parties.

Some day in the not too distant future, we will see an Independent president; and both houses of Congress will have more and more Independents who are proud to identify themselves as such.  In turn, this may draw both the Republican and Democrat parties toward the center, as they vie for the support of voters, and jettison the extremist elements in their ranks.

First, we witnessed a turning away from the GOP because of Bush, the war in Iraq and the economy. Next, we may witness the abandonment of Obama and the Dems.[4] At some point, there will be a breakdown of our two-party political system; and ObamaCare may have served as an important stepping stone toward achieving that result, and thrusting Independents into the forefront of American politics.

© 2010, Timothy D. Naegele

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[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass), the first black senator since Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War.  He practices law in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles with his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates (www.naegele.com).  He has an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA, as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University.  He is a member of the District of Columbia and California bars.  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.  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

[2] See, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/is-barack-obama-a-racist/

[3] See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_(voter)

[4] See also https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/obama-in-afghanistan-doomed-from-the-start and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/barack-obama-america’s-second-emperor and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/emp-attack-only-30-million-americans-survive and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/the-end-of-barack-obama/