The White House on Thursday fired back at allegations from Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman and former associate of the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
In charges widely covered by mainstream media, Parnas claimed President Trump was fully aware of a plan to push Ukraine into investigating a corrupt gas company there that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
Parnas was indicted in October on charges of violating campaign finance laws. On Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show late Wednesday, Parnas alleged that Trump “knew exactly what was going on” in Ukraine. He also claimed Vice President Pence and Attorney General William Barr probably knew, too.
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham blasted Parnas’s credibility, saying he is simply looking for attention and trying to avoid going to jail.
“This is a man who’s under indictment and who’s actually out on bail,” Grisham said Thursday morning on Fox News. “This is a man who owns a company called Fraud Inc., so I think that’s something that people should be thinking about. We’re not too concerned about it.”
“It’s unfortunate that he’s now making a media tour with a lot of the outlets that are, you know, against the president,” she said. “I think that shows exactly what he’s doing.”
Grisham shot down the reliability of Parnas’s notes and text message exchanges with Giuliani. “I’ve got to say, just to say Rudy told me these things doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with the president, and it certainly doesn’t mean the president was directing him to do anything,” Grisham said.
“We stand by exactly what we’ve been saying,” she added. “The president did nothing wrong.”
The Justice Department on Thursday also denied Parnas‘ claims that Attorney Barr knew about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine. “100 percent false,” Justice Department Kerri Kupec said in a statement.
“The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former Vice President Biden or his son,” the statement said. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine – on this or any other matter.”
“The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine – on this or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani,” the statement continued.
It was 2018, just before the California primary election. The #MeToo movement was in full swing, and Democrats decided that leveling dubious sexual assault and sexual harassment claims could be an easy path to victory.
National Democrats were still months away from elevating shaky sexual assault claims against then-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The allegations against Kavanaugh were denied (or not remembered) by everyone named by accuser Christine Blasey Ford as a witness, but Democrats opened up the floodgates for even more unbelievable and thin allegations to come forward – as was their goal.
Local Democrats in California, however, jumped on the allegation bandwagon in May and June of 2018. A series of 47,000 robocalls went out days before the primary election alleging that Republican candidate Phil Graham – the favorite to win the safely Republican Assembly seat in San Diego – had inappropriately grabbed and kissed a woman against her will.
The woman who made the allegation, Nichole Burgan, was criminally charged with making a false accusation, but as with all false accusers, she received little punishment – just two days in jail, Graham told the California Globe in December.
Graham told the outlet that whoever put Burgan up to the false allegations also needed to be punished. He filed a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, and also filed complaints with the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the Public Integrity Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Graham told the outlet he thought he was falsely accused because Democrats wanted to win the Assembly seat, which they ended up winning.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in December that the Federal Communications Commission announced it would fine the San Diego telemarketing company behind the false robocalls $10 million for “spoofing” a competing company’s phone number.
“Telemarketing company Marketing Support Systems and its owner, Kenneth Moser, made more than 47,000 unlawful robocalls over a two-day period in May 2018, according to the FCC,” the Tribune reported.
Moser allegedly “spoofed” the calls to hide his tracks, making the calls appear to come from a rival company when someone checked the caller ID. The Voice of San Diego reported what the calls said:
“Creepy alert,” said a woman on the other end of a robocall that hit phones on May 30. She cited press coverage of Burgan’s allegation, and asked why Graham was out harassing a woman when he should have been at home sleeping.
“Vote carefully on June 5,” the caller said. “We don’t need any more creeps in Sacramento. Don’t vote for Phil Graham. #JustSayNo.”
Then came the disclaimer: “Paid for by Jennifer Jones.”
But Jennifer Jones, it turns out, isn’t real.
Graham’s attorney, Brian T. Hildreth, released a statement regarding the FCC’s fine:
After a six month investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC is proposing a nearly $10 million fine against California telemarketer Ken Moser in connection with Moser’s efforts to mislead voters with approximately 50,000 robocalls containing fraudulent and false accusations relating to the 2018 Primary Election for the California State Assembly and Assembly candidate Phil Graham.
The proposed Commission action, formally called a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (“NAL”), contains allegations that advise a party on how it has apparently violated the law and may set forth a proposed monetary penalty. After these substantial developments, it is now imperative that the USDOJ undertake a criminal investigation and prosecution.
We are calling for the Public Integrity Unit at the U.S. Department of Justice to launch their own investigation to determine if other individuals and/or groups were involved in this fraud and election tampering. We stand ready to assist the USDOJ in any way necessary.
As the FCC noted, the calls took place about one week prior to the primary election for the California State Assembly, 76th District. The calls made false and deceptive allegations about Mr. Graham. The allegations had already been investigated and disproven by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. The California Secretary of State referred a complaint about the matter to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, which investigated, resulting in today’s proposed fine. The calls unquestionably had a devastating impact on Mr. Graham and his candidacy for elective office.
The Truth in Caller ID Act prohibits manipulating caller ID information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value. In addition, to finding that Moser apparently violated the Truth in Caller ID Act, the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau found separately that Moser sent more than 11,000 prerecorded voice messages to wireless phones, without consent, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA).
While there has rightly been a significant focus on election interference at the national level, we respectfully ask that the USDOJ apply the same level of scrutiny at the state and local level to prevent any new illegal acts.
Bernie Sanders has spent years convincing voters that his Soviet honeymoon, his support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, his admiration for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez were all a misunderstanding. See, it was Denmark, Danish-style socialism he wants for America, not a second Venezuela. He was really quite reasonable in intentions all along.
It was exposed as garbage the other day, when James O’Keefe released an undercover video of a top-line paid Iowa staffer, Kyle Jurek, praising gulags, re-education camps, burning cities, beaten cops, and killing anyone who resists the “revolution” as the plan all along. Worse still, he said the Bernie campaign was loaded with such people and Bernie’s moderate claims was a mask. So much for Bernie’s rebranding bid.
Ordinarily, that would be a firing offense. The guy just undercut Sanders’ carefully cultivated public relations persona to win voters and made Sanders look like Mao recrudescent, Stalin reborn, and Pol Pot’s ghost, something worse actually, than even most suspicious Republicans have ever came up with.
Sanders’ response?
Nothing. No firing. No denunciation of all the sick plans and praise for the world’s most odious dictators. A quick dismissal of the whole thing as “political gossip” and not by Bernie himself but by another Iowa staffer.
“The hundreds of thousands of Iowans we’ve talked to this caucus season don’t care about political gossip; they care about making healthcare a human right, taking on climate change, making college affordable, and ending endless wars. That’s our focus,” said Ms. [Misty] Rebik in the tweet.
That’s a rather astonishing thing to dismiss, given the extremism of Jurek’s statement.
A normal candidate would want to get away as far as possible from a guy like this. A sane person would denounce all the sick and violent sentiments at a minimum. Yet O’Keefe’s outfit noted the curious unwillingness of Sanders to get rid of Jurek or at least condemn the sentiment here:
“Gossip” is when someone says something about you. Self-incrimination is when you say it yourself. https://t.co/cuM8bXszrL
The only action, in fact, is Sanders staffers locking their twitter accounts, including even those on the public relations team.
If this were President Trump, the first thing out of his mouth would be “You’re fired!”
But Bernie, who commands unusual loyalty among his staff and voters, is choosing to stay loyal to the staffer with these Pol Pot fantasies. The kindest explanation might be that he cynically imagines that no one is going to care and he could use the man’s talents or else maybe needs the antifa vote. The less kind explanation comes from Jurek himself:
A subsequent O’Keefe video had Jurek declaring that the Sanders campaign was actually full of people like himself and in one O’Keefe tape, he rolled off a string of first names.
That suggests that maybe Sanders can’t fire Jurek because they’re all like that and he’d actually have to fire his entire Iowa operation.
There’s also a third detail:
Jurek himself said that Sanders was faking it about the ‘democratic’ socialism, because he too was the real thing. So much for deniability, it sounds like he has the same views.
It raises questions about the whole picture Sanders stands for. Violence has been a part of the Sanders operation for years. Recall that it was a Sanders staffer, James Hodgkinson, who attempted to assassinate GOP congressional leader Steve Scalise and wounded him badly with gunfire. John Hinderaker at Power Line has some excellent observations about that here.
Sanders escaped blame for it on the grounds that any campaign could have a crazy staffer. But the Iowa stuff tells a story of apparently all crazy staffers, hellbent on gulags, reeducation camps, Kulak targeting, burning cities, murdered resistors and all the things that really happened in every country that ever became a socialist hellhole.
This is scary stuff, calling for your vote based on a cute grumpy grandpa personality fronting for the sick horrors of socialism. Once in, there are no outs, just ask a Venezuelan. The Democrats are apparently looking for a means of rigging Sanders out, but given that socialist Sanders becomes a “Democrat” only at election time, they never should let him in to start with. Now he’s the frontrunner and he’s showing what he’s made of. O’Keefe says that Jurek still has his job and Iowa moves apace. The only thing left is to expose him, and for that O’Keefe has done a tremendous public service.
Bernie Sanders has spent years convincing voters that his Soviet honeymoon, his support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, his admiration for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez were all a misunderstanding. See, it was Denmark, Danish-style socialism he wants for America, not a second Venezuela. He was really quite reasonable in intentions all along.
It was exposed as garbage the other day, when James O’Keefe released an undercover video of a top-line paid Iowa staffer, Kyle Jurek, praising gulags, re-education camps, burning cities, beaten cops, and killing anyone who resists the “revolution” as the plan all along. Worse still, he said the Bernie campaign was loaded with such people and Bernie’s moderate claims was a mask. So much for Bernie’s rebranding bid.
Ordinarily, that would be a firing offense. The guy just undercut Sanders’ carefully cultivated public relations persona to win voters and made Sanders look like Mao recrudescent, Stalin reborn, and Pol Pot’s ghost, something worse actually, than even most suspicious Republicans have ever came up with.
Sanders’ response?
Nothing. No firing. No denunciation of all the sick plans and praise for the world’s most odious dictators. A quick dismissal of the whole thing as “political gossip” and not by Bernie himself but by another Iowa staffer.
“The hundreds of thousands of Iowans we’ve talked to this caucus season don’t care about political gossip; they care about making healthcare a human right, taking on climate change, making college affordable, and ending endless wars. That’s our focus,” said Ms. [Misty] Rebik in the tweet.
That’s a rather astonishing thing to dismiss, given the extremism of Jurek’s statement.
A normal candidate would want to get away as far as possible from a guy like this. A sane person would denounce all the sick and violent sentiments at a minimum. Yet O’Keefe’s outfit noted the curious unwillingness of Sanders to get rid of Jurek or at least condemn the sentiment here:
“Gossip” is when someone says something about you. Self-incrimination is when you say it yourself. https://t.co/cuM8bXszrL
The only action, in fact, is Sanders staffers locking their twitter accounts, including even those on the public relations team.
If this were President Trump, the first thing out of his mouth would be “You’re fired!”
But Bernie, who commands unusual loyalty among his staff and voters, is choosing to stay loyal to the staffer with these Pol Pot fantasies. The kindest explanation might be that he cynically imagines that no one is going to care and he could use the man’s talents or else maybe needs the antifa vote. The less kind explanation comes from Jurek himself:
A subsequent O’Keefe video had Jurek declaring that the Sanders campaign was actually full of people like himself and in one O’Keefe tape, he rolled off a string of first names.
That suggests that maybe Sanders can’t fire Jurek because they’re all like that and he’d actually have to fire his entire Iowa operation.
There’s also a third detail:
Jurek himself said that Sanders was faking it about the ‘democratic’ socialism, because he too was the real thing. So much for deniability, it sounds like he has the same views.
It raises questions about the whole picture Sanders stands for. Violence has been a part of the Sanders operation for years. Recall that it was a Sanders staffer, James Hodgkinson, who attempted to assassinate GOP congressional leader Steve Scalise and wounded him badly with gunfire. John Hinderaker at Power Line has some excellent observations about that here.
Sanders escaped blame for it on the grounds that any campaign could have a crazy staffer. But the Iowa stuff tells a story of apparently all crazy staffers, hellbent on gulags, reeducation camps, Kulak targeting, burning cities, murdered resistors and all the things that really happened in every country that ever became a socialist hellhole.
This is scary stuff, calling for your vote based on a cute grumpy grandpa personality fronting for the sick horrors of socialism. Once in, there are no outs, just ask a Venezuelan. The Democrats are apparently looking for a means of rigging Sanders out, but given that socialist Sanders becomes a “Democrat” only at election time, they never should let him in to start with. Now he’s the frontrunner and he’s showing what he’s made of. O’Keefe says that Jurek still has his job and Iowa moves apace. The only thing left is to expose him, and for that O’Keefe has done a tremendous public service.
National news media figure and multiple award-winning, straight-shooting investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has refiled a lawsuit against the federal government for illegally and unconstitutionally hacking her computers and trespassing at her home. It’s a whopper of a lawsuit, naming high-profile Deep State officials including Rod Rosenstein of Trump Spygate fame, the high-ranking Justice Department official who told colleagues he’d wear a wire to surreptitiously record Donald Trump at the White House when the Deep State coup was in its earlier stages.
Attkisson’s first lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice for failing to expressly name the government spies and conspirators who hacked her computers and remotely planted classified materials, obviously to set her up. The Department of Justice, where Rosenstein worked, had repeatedly obstructed Attkisson’s attempts to get information through litigation discovery. The court dismissed nevertheless, and even gave immunity to former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, whom Attkisson did name in her first lawsuit.
One federal court of appeals judge even called this dismissal of her lawsuit “Kafkaesque” given how well-nigh impossible it was for her case to proceed under our justice system’s rules and judicial interpretations rigged in ways that protect government lawbreaking. Sharyl described her first lawsuit and some of the shocking roadblocks used by the government to American Thinker readers here, and has even written a best-seller, Stonewalled, describing these events in greater detail. But as anyone following the news knows, the lawbreaking Deep State can’t even be shamed by exposure of its illicit deeds.
In her lawsuit refiled on January 10, Attkisson relied on a whistleblower who was actually involved in hacking her computers. He identified some of the other government officials complicit in the very disturbing spying on her. The refiled complaint quotes government forensics experts as being “quite shocked,” demonstrating some within the government Intelligence Community thankfully have consciences.
The spying occurred after she crossed the Obama administration with her unrelenting reporting on the gun-running scandal called Fast and Furious, then continued through her reporting on the Benghazi disaster, where a United States ambassador and three others stationed at the embassy in Libya were murdered while Obama and then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton failed to respond with help and protection.
The refiled suit meticulously describes the nightmarish facts of how her computers and home were electronically and physically invaded as if she were a real “enemy of the people” and the government was playing Mission Impossible. Forensic details were derived from numerous investigations, leaving the conclusions unquestionable. The spying was conducted using government proprietary spyware and a mysterious United States Postal Service Internet domain. The latter fact is highly relevant, as government experts explained. A multi-agency government spying unit in Baltimore under Rosenstein’s supervision used these techniques, and they were even employed without court-ordered warrants.
The new suit alleges that Rosenstein ordered the spying on Attkisson after directives — later exposed by Wikileaks — showed Obama officials John Brennan and Eric Holder were neck-deep in targeting journalists who were reporting on leaks about Obama administration scandals and lies. Holder’s press secretary even went to Attkisson’s then-employer CBS News complaining that “she’s out of control” with her reporting on these Obama administration scandals.
And it’s a small world, as they say, when it comes to Deep State corruption and spying on Americans. Another Defendant named in the lawsuit is Shawn Henry, who worked under Robert Mueller at the FBI and is now president of CrowdStrike Services. CrowdStrike is the company hired to review Democratic National Committee servers in a well-reported email leak scandal. Without actually examining the servers themselves, Mueller and the FBI curiously and negligently deferred to the findings of CrowdStrike that Russians hacked the servers despite assertions and evidence to the contrary.
The government sources with consciences told Sharyl’s lawyers that she is just one of hundreds of journalists or other American citizens who have been victims of such illegal spying. Her lawsuit rightly claims her case is about a “clear and present danger to our most fundamental protections.” That danger and the corruption behind it became even more pronounced last week when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) appointed David Kris to oversee abuses of the FBI before that court. Thomas Lifson writes that “Kris is highly partisan; a Trump-hater; and, as part of the Lawfare blog, a strategist for the efforts to remove Trump from office,” and is “the last person in the world to fairly investigate mis- and malfeasance in the safeguarding of the rights of citizens when secret courts are asked to approve secret spying on them.” The Deep State is at war with the Constitution, and the cure for its lawbreaking and corruption will not come from the Deep State.
With no sign of the Justice Department and the rest of the Deep State relenting, and with a shocking absence of help from “free press” and civil liberties organizations, Sharyl is still financing this costly litigation on her own. This week I chipped in another $500 through the Sharyl Attkisson 4th Am Litigation GoFundMe page, where people can donate to help Sharyl’s fight for all of us.
I was especially at a loss for words that her GoFundMe total lags far, far behind the GoFundMe hauls for Deep State/Spygate bad guys Peter Strzok ($452,000) and Andrew McCabe ($538,000). So, if you see fit to donate, please do. Sharyl can use our help with this seemingly insurmountable fight.
National news media figure and multiple award-winning, straight-shooting investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has refiled a lawsuit against the federal government for illegally and unconstitutionally hacking her computers and trespassing at her home. It’s a whopper of a lawsuit, naming high-profile Deep State officials including Rod Rosenstein of Trump Spygate fame, the high-ranking Justice Department official who told colleagues he’d wear a wire to surreptitiously record Donald Trump at the White House when the Deep State coup was in its earlier stages.
Attkisson’s first lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice for failing to expressly name the government spies and conspirators who hacked her computers and remotely planted classified materials, obviously to set her up. The Department of Justice, where Rosenstein worked, had repeatedly obstructed Attkisson’s attempts to get information through litigation discovery. The court dismissed nevertheless, and even gave immunity to former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, whom Attkisson did name in her first lawsuit.
One federal court of appeals judge even called this dismissal of her lawsuit “Kafkaesque” given how well-nigh impossible it was for her case to proceed under our justice system’s rules and judicial interpretations rigged in ways that protect government lawbreaking. Sharyl described her first lawsuit and some of the shocking roadblocks used by the government to American Thinker readers here, and has even written a best-seller, Stonewalled, describing these events in greater detail. But as anyone following the news knows, the lawbreaking Deep State can’t even be shamed by exposure of its illicit deeds.
In her lawsuit refiled on January 10, Attkisson relied on a whistleblower who was actually involved in hacking her computers. He identified some of the other government officials complicit in the very disturbing spying on her. The refiled complaint quotes government forensics experts as being “quite shocked,” demonstrating some within the government Intelligence Community thankfully have consciences.
The spying occurred after she crossed the Obama administration with her unrelenting reporting on the gun-running scandal called Fast and Furious, then continued through her reporting on the Benghazi disaster, where a United States ambassador and three others stationed at the embassy in Libya were murdered while Obama and then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton failed to respond with help and protection.
The refiled suit meticulously describes the nightmarish facts of how her computers and home were electronically and physically invaded as if she were a real “enemy of the people” and the government was playing Mission Impossible. Forensic details were derived from numerous investigations, leaving the conclusions unquestionable. The spying was conducted using government proprietary spyware and a mysterious United States Postal Service Internet domain. The latter fact is highly relevant, as government experts explained. A multi-agency government spying unit in Baltimore under Rosenstein’s supervision used these techniques, and they were even employed without court-ordered warrants.
The new suit alleges that Rosenstein ordered the spying on Attkisson after directives — later exposed by Wikileaks — showed Obama officials John Brennan and Eric Holder were neck-deep in targeting journalists who were reporting on leaks about Obama administration scandals and lies. Holder’s press secretary even went to Attkisson’s then-employer CBS News complaining that “she’s out of control” with her reporting on these Obama administration scandals.
And it’s a small world, as they say, when it comes to Deep State corruption and spying on Americans. Another Defendant named in the lawsuit is Shawn Henry, who worked under Robert Mueller at the FBI and is now president of CrowdStrike Services. CrowdStrike is the company hired to review Democratic National Committee servers in a well-reported email leak scandal. Without actually examining the servers themselves, Mueller and the FBI curiously and negligently deferred to the findings of CrowdStrike that Russians hacked the servers despite assertions and evidence to the contrary.
The government sources with consciences told Sharyl’s lawyers that she is just one of hundreds of journalists or other American citizens who have been victims of such illegal spying. Her lawsuit rightly claims her case is about a “clear and present danger to our most fundamental protections.” That danger and the corruption behind it became even more pronounced last week when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) appointed David Kris to oversee abuses of the FBI before that court. Thomas Lifson writes that “Kris is highly partisan; a Trump-hater; and, as part of the Lawfare blog, a strategist for the efforts to remove Trump from office,” and is “the last person in the world to fairly investigate mis- and malfeasance in the safeguarding of the rights of citizens when secret courts are asked to approve secret spying on them.” The Deep State is at war with the Constitution, and the cure for its lawbreaking and corruption will not come from the Deep State.
With no sign of the Justice Department and the rest of the Deep State relenting, and with a shocking absence of help from “free press” and civil liberties organizations, Sharyl is still financing this costly litigation on her own. This week I chipped in another $500 through the Sharyl Attkisson 4th Am Litigation GoFundMe page, where people can donate to help Sharyl’s fight for all of us.
I was especially at a loss for words that her GoFundMe total lags far, far behind the GoFundMe hauls for Deep State/Spygate bad guys Peter Strzok ($452,000) and Andrew McCabe ($538,000). So, if you see fit to donate, please do. Sharyl can use our help with this seemingly insurmountable fight.
Amid all the insane things we’ve done in the Middle East for decades, the killing of Soleimani was a very prudent and justified operation. Naturally, that is the event that triggered outrage from Congress and awakened legislators from their slumber on foreign policy.
After years of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars lost in aimless, unaccountable nation-building activities overseas, Democrats and some Republicans are finally asserting congressional control … only over the one “war” the Trump administration deftly avoided. But the social work operations getting our soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue without any congressional oversight. It’s self-evident that the upcoming votes in the House and Senate restricting President Trump’s powers to counter Iran are all about appeasing the one country in the Middle East that actually affects us in the one theater where Trump actually beat the regime with zero American lives lost. It has nothing to do with asserting congressional control over unaccountable wars.
In two weeks, the House will vote on a bill (H.R. 5543) sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., to block funding for any potential operations against Iran. Support is building in the Senate for a similar plan using the 1973 War Powers Act to bar any use of the military to counter Iran. The lead sponsor, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., claims he has 51 supporters for a binding resolution (SJ Res 68) because GOP Sens. Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Todd Young have agreed to it.
Over the years, in this space, I have railed against these unaccountable and missionless operations refereeing tribal warfare in the Middle East. As the body count mounted every week during Obama’s presidency and then in recent years, I have asked hard questions about why our soldiers are dying. Just two days before the strike on Soleimani, I referred to the Iraq war as a “colossal mistake.” Aside from Sens. Lee and Paul, few of these loudmouths in Congress feigning outrage over the Soleimani strike expressed concern over these wars during that era, and in fact, Democrats consistently voted for defense bills continuing these operations without question.
The president himself has consistently been skeptical of these wars for years and has expressed a desire to leave them in the rearview mirror. But he has gotten no backing from Congress. Quite the contrary. When he decided to leave Syria, which in itself (unlike Iraq) was an unauthorized war, Democrats in Congress held hearings and attacked the president mercilessly. In fact, every single Democrat in the House voted for a resolution condemning the pullout on October 16. Some even said it would boost Iran, which was a bizarre contention given that we were fighting Iran’s and Assad’s Sunni enemies there.
Thus, every time Trump tries to actually change directions and bring troops home, Democrats are practically on the verge of bringing articles of impeachment against him for it. They would likely react the same way over Afghanistan, were the president to follow through with his promise to pull out. Over the weekend, two more of our finest soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were killed by a roadside bomb in Kandahar, where we’ve been moving soldiers around like sitting ducks for 17 years. There is no desire from Congress to act to rein in that operation, despite the expose from the Washington Post demonstrating the lies behind its premise and progress.
Yet, suddenly, when the president takes out the number-one global terrorist of Iran who is not only evil, but killed more Americans and attacked more of our interests than any other player in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, members of both parties are demanding congressional oversight to prevent any war with Iran. For the first time, we actually have a president responding to a direct threat with peace through strength while assiduously avoiding ground conflict and nation-building, yet they are assailing him for using unilateral authority. Iran captured an American naval crew in 2016 and has been escalating attacks with greater intensity in recent months without any end in sight because the regime feared no consequences. Trump’s killing of Soleimani turned out to be the ultimate act of de-escalation.
Democrats continue to find no faults with endless undeclared ground wars in numerous countries throughout the Middle East and Africa where the threat to our interests is a fraction of what Iran has done, killing hundreds of our soldiers in Iraq and attacking our embassy. There is no effort to conduct an operational audit of what we are doing in any of those theaters, but just an insidious motivation to hamstring the president in his successful deterrence against the one adversary that matters and in the one theater where he is actually refusing to get us sucked into a protracted, expensive, and untenable war.
There is no meaningful effort in Congress to ask questions about the billions of dollars we throw at nonexistent, unreliable, and often enemy militaries all over the Middle East and Africa, such as the “Lebanese Armed Forces.” Whenever Trump tries to cut funding to these missions, Democrats cry bloody murder and then pass budgets increasing foreign aid. Just this week, the WSJ reported that we’ve given a total of $11 billion to one side of a civil war in South Sudan that we are now sanctioning as an enemy.
It gets worse than that. Last week, 11 congressmen, including 9 Democrats, sent a letter to the Trump administration demanding that he not follow through with a plan, recently publicized by the New York Times, to pull out of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Four of the signatories of that letter – Reps. Anthony Brown, D-Md., Gilbert Cisneros, D-Calif., Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Jason Crow, D-Conn. – are also co-sponsors of the House bill to block any action against Iran.
Last week, I reported that our troops in Niger were teaching kids how to use dental floss. A simple strike with no collateral damage against the man single-handedly responsible for more of our soldiers dying than in any conflict since Vietnam is off-limits to them, but pulling out of an unauthorized conflict in a far corner of Africa is also bad?
In reality, there is no mystery to the unprincipled behavior of many in Congress. It’s all about virtue-signaling because Iran has become a political issue. Love for the Iranian regime is now on par with abortion, transgenderism, and illegal immigration in terms of Democrat ideology. Those Republicans joining in with them are claiming to be protective of Article I powers, but they are purposely using the issue for Democrat and media agreement with them, but are not aggressively pushing to end the more unjustified conflicts.
Why were none of these “principled” Republicans, much less the Democrats, expressing public concern over the operation to find and kill ISIS head al-Baghdadi? I’m not suggesting I opposed it, but if you think the Soleimani strike was unjustified, then the one against Baghdadi was much less defensible.
One of the common refrains from the “principled” crowd is that just because someone is evil doesn’t mean the president has the authority or justification to take him out. Well, that applied to Baghdadi much more than Soleimani. ISIS was evil, but it didn’t affect our security or interests as much as it affected the Assad regime and the Shiites in Syria and Iraq. Unlike in Iraq, there was no authorization of force in Syria. Unlike with the operation to take out Soleimani, Baghdadi himself was not an imminent threat and was holed up in a corner of Syria. Soleimani, on the other hand, was conducting operations against our bases and attacked our embassy, aside from his history of killing over 600 troops in a war authorized by Congress. Moreover, the attack on Baghdadi was a much riskier ground operation than the drone strike that killed Soleimani.
Yet not a word of complaint from anyone. Why? Because ISIS is viewed as the “good” war. The media has framed ISIS in such a way that opposition to killing Baghdadi would be tantamount to opposing the killing of Hitler. Iran, on the other hand, is viewed as political, even though Soleimani was a much greater strategic threat. But few people ever heard of Soleimani, while everyone saw the ISIS videos on the web of Baghdadi’s minions torturing people. However, a true principled statesman doesn’t conflate gruesome videos with a strategic threat when assessing legal authorization and prudential justification.
Trump of all people was against the Iraq war more than any Republican or Democrat president; nonetheless, he inherited our presence there and was responsible for defending our assets against imminent attack. Thus, from a purely strategic and legal standpoint, if you are a Republican expressing “principled” concern over the Soleimani strike, you should have verbalized that same skepticism against the Baghdadi operation. The fact that no such concern was expressed demonstrates that some Republicans only like to take principled stances when it’s popular with the media. That is not principled.
Use of soft power and one airstrike against Iran in a theater authorized by Congress is the wrong time and the wrong place to suddenly debate presidential war powers. Trump, a man who has consistently expressed a desire to exit these wars, is the wrong president to tag with the allegation of starting unauthorized wars. Those who really care about the principle of congressional oversight, prudent and defined missions, and putting our soldiers first would work shoulder to shoulder with the president to responsibly exit these theaters in a bipartisan fashion. What they are doing instead is merely an exercise in virtue-signaling on behalf of Iran. Anyone who denies that should be asked why they never spoke up about the Baghdadi operation.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network to discuss the ongoing impeachment effort & FISAGate targeting against President Trump.
Did Oregon officials violate their duty to remain neutral on matters of religion when they ordered Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay $135,000 for declining to create a custom same-sex wedding cake, a move that crushed the small, family-owned business?
That’s the question that the Oregon Court of Appeals will answer after having heard oral argument last week in the case of Melissa Klein v. Bureau of Labor and Industries.
Oregon courts are taking up the case once again, after being ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June 2019, the Supreme Court threw out the original Oregon decision that upheld the crushing fine with orders to revisit the case in light of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
That decision held that government officials should not be in the business of deciding whose faith is or is not acceptable. Instead, they must remain neutral on matters of religion.
In court last week, the Kleins’ attorneys argued that the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, led by then-Commissioner Brad Avakian, acted with unconstitutional hostility toward religion in its handling of the case. The Kleins are represented by attorneys from Boyden Gray & Associates and from First Liberty Institute.
They
argued that the Oregon bureau demonstrated anti-religious hostility in several
ways, including awarding “emotional damages” based upon the quotation of a
Bible verse, awarding an amount of damages that exceeds cases involving
physical violence or sexual harassment, and making public statements
demonstrating that the commissioner prejudged the case before hearing the
evidence.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries based its exceptionally large damage award on Aaron Klein’s quotation of the Bible. When a woman inquired about ordering a custom cake for her same-sex wedding, Klein informed her that he was sorry, but he would have to decline because of the family’s religious beliefs.
After she left the bakery, her mother returned to have a conversation with Klein about the morality of same-sex marriage. That’s when he quoted a Bible verse in support of his religious beliefs.
The woman then took offense to her mother’s recounting of the story, which also happened to misquote Klein.
In short, the Oregon bureau concluded that $135,000 was appropriate to compensate the complainants for their reaction to hearing that the Kleins quoted a Bible verse and would not create a custom cake for their wedding due to their religious beliefs.
The
Bureau of Labor and Industries justified the crushing amount of the damage
award with reference to some of its earlier cases. However, in three of those
cases, the victim was actually awarded less money for being subjected
to physical violence, such as being beaten by a baseball bat, or having to
endure sexual harassment at work that lasted for months.
A
Bible quote and the denial of a custom cake should not justify a greater “emotional
damage” award than what happened in those cases.
Finally,
the Kleins’ attorneys argued that the bureau’s commissioner, who was supposed
to be acting as a neutral judge in the case, made public statements indicating
that he prejudged the case before hearing any of the evidence.
For
instance, he made statements to a reporter doing a story about the Kleins’
case, including an assertion, “Everybody’s entitled to their own beliefs, but
that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate.”
Avakian’s statements, made before the case officially came before him, imply that he equated the Kleins’ religious beliefs with discrimination. Yet, as the Supreme Court clearly stated, people like the Kleins are “entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of [their] claims in all the circumstances of the case.”
The
Kleins welcomed everyone into their bakery, but could not endorse messages that
conflicted with their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, Oregon officials forced
them into the difficult choice between their faith and their livelihood.
This
case will decide whether government officials in Oregon have the legal
authority to effectively force faithful business owners to close shop if they
decline to participate in a same-sex wedding or other events that conflict with
their beliefs.
Masterpiece Cakeshop concluded that government officials must remain neutral on issues of religion and cannot act with hostility toward religious believers.
Americans will be watching to see whether the Oregon Court of Appeals follows the Supreme Court’s instructions or if violating one’s own conscience is now the cost of doing business.
Criminal activity imposes huge costs on black residents in low-income neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and many others.
Thousands of black Americans were murdered in 2019. Over 90% of the time, the perpetrator was also black.
Leftists and social justice warriors charge that what blacks have to fear most is being shot and killed by police, but the numbers don’t add up.
For several years, The Washington Post has been documenting police shootings in America. Last year, 933 people were shot and killed by police. Twenty-three percent (212) of people shot and killed were black; 35% (331) were white; 16% (155) were Hispanic, and 201 were of other or unknown races. The high homicide rate within the black community doesn’t begin to tell the full tragedy.
Crime imposes a hefty tax on people who can least afford it. They are the law-abiding residents of black neighborhoods. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside of their neighborhoods. Supermarkets that are abundant in low-crime neighborhoods are absent or scarce in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods.
Because of the paucity of supermarkets and other big-box stores in these neighborhoods, some “experts” and academicians have labeled them as “food deserts.” That’s the ridiculous suggestion that white supermarket merchants and big-box store owners don’t like green dollars coming out of black hands. The true villains of the piece are the criminals who make some businesses unprofitable.
By the way, these are equal opportunity criminals. They will victimize a black-owned business just as they would victimize a white-owned business. The high crime rates in many black neighborhoods have the effect of outlawing economic growth and opportunities.
In low-crime neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS, and other delivery companies routinely leave packages containing valuable merchandise on a doorstep if no one is home. That saves the expense of redelivery and saves recipients the expense of having to go pick up the packages.
In high-crime neighborhoods, delivery companies leaving packages at the door or supermarkets leaving goods outside unattended would be equivalent to economic suicide.
Fearing robberies, taxi drivers, including black drivers, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups and frequently pass prospective black customers who hail them on the street. Plus, there’s the insult associated with not being able to receive pizzas or other deliveries on the same terms as people in other neighborhoods.
Another often-overlooked impact of crime is lower property values. Homes that wouldn’t fetch $10,000, $20,000, or $40,000 suddenly fetch hundreds of thousands when large numbers of middle- and upper-income people purchase formerly run-down properties and fix them up.
This is called gentrification, where wealthier, predominantly white, people bid higher rental prices, thus forcing out low-income residents. As a result of gentrification, there is greater police protection and other neighborhood amenities increase.
Many make the erroneous assumption that black people don’t care about crime. But black people strongly disapprove of the day-to-day violence that’s all too common in their communities.
What compounds that problem is a deep mistrust of police in poor black neighborhoods. This distrust, along with fear of reprisals by black criminals, causes an atmosphere of noncooperation with the police. It creates the “stop snitching” principle.
This principle of snitches being worse than criminals themselves only exacerbates the crime problem in black communities by giving aid and comfort to the true enemies of the community—those who prey on the community and have little fear of being brought to justice. In some cities, less than 10% of murderers are ever charged.
For decades, the problems of blacks could be laid at the feet of racial discrimination. Our ancestors started a civil rights struggle and won. Today, the most devastating problems of blacks are entirely self-inflicted such as high illegitimacy, family breakdown, and unsafe communities.
These problems have little to do with civil rights. But as long as blacks buy into the notion that white racism is the source of their problems, the solutions will be elusive forever.
Before I drifted off out of boredom, I caught the first part of Democratic debate seven, on foreign policy, health care, identity politics and other topics, and oh, what a revelation about these last six characters from the clown car still standing. These are the people who would occupy the White House and you wouldn’t want to be there if it happened.
5. The Warren-Sanders ‘woman president’ wrangle. Before the debate, Elizabeth Warren made waves by claiming Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the presidency. On the surface, it’s hard to believe, given that Bernie has been around the block and remembers Margaret Thatcher only too well. But more to the point, Warren is very fond of bringing up 1970s-style feminist tropes from the Gloria Steinem era – women teachers being fired for being pregnant, for example – that are old and out of date. Warren is famous for her lies – which include that of her being a Native American to claim victim status, her claim her dad was a ‘janitor‘ to claim down-and-out status, her claim her kids went to public schools when they also went to private, to claim working-class status again and union hearts, her claim she was too poor to afford college application fees to sound down and out yet again, when she would have had to have coughed one up for the scholarship she won. It’s all fake. The feminist lies are especially vivid. So now we had the showdown with Warren and Sanders in the same room, and reporters attempting to sort out who was telling the truth, and the one who asked Warren completely accepting her claim as fact. Both were ready – Sanders made several fierce denials and wouldn’t let them try to change the topic, Warren made an icky speech about the importance of women presidents.
PHILLIP: Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
(LAUGHTER)
WARREN: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But, look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it’s time for us to attack it head-on.
And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump?
Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
(LAUGHTER)
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women…
(APPLAUSE)
… Amy and me.
(Which, by the way, wasn’t true, as Bernie pointed out, citing an election he won 30 years ago).
Do you notice something? Warren didn’t stand by her story, she just tried to shift the topic. She should have stood up and told Sanders she knew very well what he said and she didn’t. She didn’t defend her claim at all. Sounds like another whopper.
4. Klobuchar on Iran negotiations. Amy Klobuchar pretty well came off as a boob by saying she was all in for Iran negotiations because Iran wasn’t following its agreements made in … negotiations:
Sen. Klobuchar, if you become president, it’s very possible there won’t be an Iran nuclear deal for the United States to rejoin. Given that, how would you prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon?
KLOBUCHAR: I would start negotiations again. And I won’t take that as a given, given that our European partners are still trying to hold the agreement together. My issue is that, because of the actions of Donald Trump, we are in a situation where they are now starting — Iran is starting to enrich uranium again in violation of the original agreement.
So what I would do is negotiate. I would bring people together, just as President Obama did years ago, and I think that we can get this done. But you have to have a president that sees this as a number-one goal.
And in answer to the original question you asked the mayor, I would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And then you have to get an agreement in place. I think there are changes you can make to the agreement that are sunset, some changes to the inspections, but overall, that is what we should do.
And I am the one person on this debate stage, on the first night of the very first debate, when we were asked what we saw as the biggest threat to our world, I said China on the economy, but I said Iran, because of Donald Trump. Because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies. We can bring them back, understanding this is a terrorist regime that we cannot allow to have a nuclear weapon.
O.K., so let’s get this straight. Iran was violating its treaty it negotiated so the solution is … more negotiations? The mullahs would roll this stupid woman like a Persian carpet if she ever made it into the White House. If Iran’s ignoring the agreements made in past negotiations and getting itself a nuclear weapon instead, why would “bringing people together” make them act any different? They’d negotiate with her, snicker up their sleeves, and go make a bomb. File under woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.
3. Joe Biden’s Mess of Answers on Foreign Policy: Joe’s the man for the status quo ante, the Obama era that somehow brought us Donald Trump, yet somehow was a paradise of sorts. Now it’s Paradise Lost. Three idiocies from this supposed foreign policy man stood out, starting with this North Korea exchange, reminding us all why we voted for Trump:
PHILLIP: Vice President Biden, I want to ask you about North Korea. President Trump has met with Kim Jong-un three times. President Obama once said he would meet with North Korea without any preconditions. Would you meet with North
Korea without any preconditions?
BIDEN: No, not now. I wouldn’t meet with them without any preconditions. Look, what — we gave him everything he’s looking for, legitimacy. The president showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him.
Need to know ahead of the caucuses:
I would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
Umm, Joe, you’ve got the phone line to Kim now. Cat’s out of the bag. Joe says pretend that never happened and he’d would rather work through China, trustworthy China, as his trusted intermediary. Talk about throwing away an advantage and outsourcing the matter to China’s good offices. Sound like a plan? The clown throws away an advantage in the name of Getting Trump.
Here’s another one:
BLITZER: So just to be clear, Vice President Biden, would you leave troops in the Middle East or would you pull them out?
BIDEN: I would leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the Gulf, where we have — where we are now, small numbers of troops, and I think it’s a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now to deal with ISIS.
So they can be target practice, Joe? Same as the good old pre-Trump days? As American Thinker’s brilliant contributor, Monty Donohew has noted in a must-read essay – Trump himself doesn’t do “small numbers of troops” because they only end up as target practice and tempting hostage prospects. Trump blew that decades-old approach out of the water by pulling out U.S. troops from Syria and since then, extremely bad times have followed for terrorists, not just al-Baghdadi but Iran’s notorious Quds Force chieftain, Qassem Soleimani himself, both of whom got blown to hell. Biden would rather they have some convenient targets to work on.
Here’s the real whopper:
BLITZER: Vice President Biden, is Sen. Warren right [about withdrawing all U.S. troops from the Middle East]?
BIDEN: Well, I tell you what, there’s a difference between combat troops and leaving special forces in a position. I was part of the coalition to put together 68 countries to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 other countries.
That’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate for ISIS. They’ll come back if we do not deal with them and we do not have someone who can bring together the rest of the world to go with us, with small numbers of special forces we have, to organize the effort to take them down.
You know, I have three brothers who were in the military, and I know how much our military families sacrifice. But I also know that we have to think about our defense in very different ways. We have to think about cyber. We have to think about climate. We also have to think about how we spend money.
We have a problem with a revolving door in Washington between the defense industry and the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. That is corruption, pure and simple. We need to block that revolving door, and we need to cut our defense budget. We need to depend on all of our tools — diplomatic, economic, working with our allies — and not let the defense industry call the shots.
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who wants a $3 trillion wealth tax to finance her government programs, which total up to $30 trillion in new government spending? The defense budget she wants to cut is a drop in the bucket compared to all that spending she’s planning to throw around on us, a mere $693 billion at last count, not even making the cut to one of her plan of $30 trillion. So that’s the one she wants to cut while flinging money around in the biggest drunkfest of spending of all time? Something tells us she doesn’t get it about numbers.
1. Bernie Sanders’s concern-trolling about all those administrative costs connected to medical care as it is and how he’s supposedly against them.
Sen. Sanders, your campaign proposals would double federal spending over the next decade, an unprecedented level of spending not seen since World War II. How would you keep your plans from bankrupting the country?
SANDERS: No, our plan wouldn’t bankrupt the country. And, in fact, it would much improve the well-being of working-class families and the middle class.
Let us be clear what Medicare for all does. It ends all premiums. It ends all copayments. It ends the absurdity of deductibles. It ends out-of-pocket expenses. It takes on the pharmaceutical industry, which in some cases charges us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs sold abroad as sold here.
What we will do through a Medicare for all single-payer program is substantially lower the cost of health care for employers and workers, because we end the $100 billion a year that the health care industry makes and the $500 billion a year we spend in administrative — the administrative nightmare of dealing with thousands of separate insurance plans.
Is this a joke? Since when does a Soviet-style health care plan such as Bernie proposes not include masses and masses of red tape? Soviet dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich wrote hilarious books about stupid, obtuse, time-serving “blotting paper bureaucrats” who covered the socialist Soviet system. Socialized medicine, like all huge government programs is going to be the Mother of all Bureaucracy, just to administer the nightmare. Since when do government programs not involve bureaucracy? And considering all the paperwork requirements President Obama saddled health insurance companies with in implementing Obamacare, where does Bernie think all that paperwork insurance companies are supposedly profiting off of, is going? That’s right, the government. Moving the bureaucracy to government from the private sector is not going to end any administrative costs. If anything, with nothing to check their costs, it’s going to create incentives for even more paperwork. A government takeover of an entire industry is going to solve red tape? Just ask the student loan industry which got federalized and sank deep into the red tape. Call this one the whopper of the evening.
Before I drifted off out of boredom, I caught the first part of Democratic debate seven, on foreign policy, health care, identity politics and other topics, and oh, what a revelation about these last six characters from the clown car still standing. These are the people who would occupy the White House and you wouldn’t want to be there if it happened.
5. The Warren-Sanders ‘woman president’ wrangle. Before the debate, Elizabeth Warren made waves by claiming Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the presidency. On the surface, it’s hard to believe, given that Bernie has been around the block and remembers Margaret Thatcher only too well. But more to the point, Warren is very fond of bringing up 1970s-style feminist tropes from the Gloria Steinem era – women teachers being fired for being pregnant, for example – that are old and out of date. Warren is famous for her lies – which include that of her being a Native American to claim victim status, her claim her dad was a ‘janitor‘ to claim down-and-out status, her claim her kids went to public schools when they also went to private, to claim working-class status again and union hearts, her claim she was too poor to afford college application fees to sound down and out yet again, when she would have had to have coughed one up for the scholarship she won. It’s all fake. The feminist lies are especially vivid. So now we had the showdown with Warren and Sanders in the same room, and reporters attempting to sort out who was telling the truth, and the one who asked Warren completely accepting her claim as fact. Both were ready – Sanders made several fierce denials and wouldn’t let them try to change the topic, Warren made an icky speech about the importance of women presidents.
PHILLIP: Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
(LAUGHTER)
WARREN: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But, look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it’s time for us to attack it head-on.
And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump?
Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
(LAUGHTER)
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women…
(APPLAUSE)
… Amy and me.
(Which, by the way, wasn’t true, as Bernie pointed out, citing an election he won 30 years ago).
Do you notice something? Warren didn’t stand by her story, she just tried to shift the topic. She should have stood up and told Sanders she knew very well what he said and she didn’t. She didn’t defend her claim at all. Sounds like another whopper.
4. Klobuchar on Iran negotiations. Amy Klobuchar pretty well came off as a boob by saying she was all in for Iran negotiations because Iran wasn’t following its agreements made in … negotiations:
Sen. Klobuchar, if you become president, it’s very possible there won’t be an Iran nuclear deal for the United States to rejoin. Given that, how would you prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon?
KLOBUCHAR: I would start negotiations again. And I won’t take that as a given, given that our European partners are still trying to hold the agreement together. My issue is that, because of the actions of Donald Trump, we are in a situation where they are now starting — Iran is starting to enrich uranium again in violation of the original agreement.
So what I would do is negotiate. I would bring people together, just as President Obama did years ago, and I think that we can get this done. But you have to have a president that sees this as a number-one goal.
And in answer to the original question you asked the mayor, I would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And then you have to get an agreement in place. I think there are changes you can make to the agreement that are sunset, some changes to the inspections, but overall, that is what we should do.
And I am the one person on this debate stage, on the first night of the very first debate, when we were asked what we saw as the biggest threat to our world, I said China on the economy, but I said Iran, because of Donald Trump. Because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies. We can bring them back, understanding this is a terrorist regime that we cannot allow to have a nuclear weapon.
O.K., so let’s get this straight. Iran was violating its treaty it negotiated so the solution is … more negotiations? The mullahs would roll this stupid woman like a Persian carpet if she ever made it into the White House. If Iran’s ignoring the agreements made in past negotiations and getting itself a nuclear weapon instead, why would “bringing people together” make them act any different? They’d negotiate with her, snicker up their sleeves, and go make a bomb. File under woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.
3. Joe Biden’s Mess of Answers on Foreign Policy: Joe’s the man for the status quo ante, the Obama era that somehow brought us Donald Trump, yet somehow was a paradise of sorts. Now it’s Paradise Lost. Three idiocies from this supposed foreign policy man stood out, starting with this North Korea exchange, reminding us all why we voted for Trump:
PHILLIP: Vice President Biden, I want to ask you about North Korea. President Trump has met with Kim Jong-un three times. President Obama once said he would meet with North Korea without any preconditions. Would you meet with North
Korea without any preconditions?
BIDEN: No, not now. I wouldn’t meet with them without any preconditions. Look, what — we gave him everything he’s looking for, legitimacy. The president showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him.
Need to know ahead of the caucuses:
I would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
Umm, Joe, you’ve got the phone line to Kim now. Cat’s out of the bag. Joe says pretend that never happened and he’d would rather work through China, trustworthy China, as his trusted intermediary. Talk about throwing away an advantage and outsourcing the matter to China’s good offices. Sound like a plan? The clown throws away an advantage in the name of Getting Trump.
Here’s another one:
BLITZER: So just to be clear, Vice President Biden, would you leave troops in the Middle East or would you pull them out?
BIDEN: I would leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the Gulf, where we have — where we are now, small numbers of troops, and I think it’s a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now to deal with ISIS.
So they can be target practice, Joe? Same as the good old pre-Trump days? As American Thinker’s brilliant contributor, Monty Donohew has noted in a must-read essay – Trump himself doesn’t do “small numbers of troops” because they only end up as target practice and tempting hostage prospects. Trump blew that decades-old approach out of the water by pulling out U.S. troops from Syria and since then, extremely bad times have followed for terrorists, not just al-Baghdadi but Iran’s notorious Quds Force chieftain, Qassem Soleimani himself, both of whom got blown to hell. Biden would rather they have some convenient targets to work on.
Here’s the real whopper:
BLITZER: Vice President Biden, is Sen. Warren right [about withdrawing all U.S. troops from the Middle East]?
BIDEN: Well, I tell you what, there’s a difference between combat troops and leaving special forces in a position. I was part of the coalition to put together 68 countries to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 other countries.
That’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate for ISIS. They’ll come back if we do not deal with them and we do not have someone who can bring together the rest of the world to go with us, with small numbers of special forces we have, to organize the effort to take them down.
You know, I have three brothers who were in the military, and I know how much our military families sacrifice. But I also know that we have to think about our defense in very different ways. We have to think about cyber. We have to think about climate. We also have to think about how we spend money.
We have a problem with a revolving door in Washington between the defense industry and the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. That is corruption, pure and simple. We need to block that revolving door, and we need to cut our defense budget. We need to depend on all of our tools — diplomatic, economic, working with our allies — and not let the defense industry call the shots.
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who wants a $3 trillion wealth tax to finance her government programs, which total up to $30 trillion in new government spending? The defense budget she wants to cut is a drop in the bucket compared to all that spending she’s planning to throw around on us, a mere $693 billion at last count, not even making the cut to one of her plan of $30 trillion. So that’s the one she wants to cut while flinging money around in the biggest drunkfest of spending of all time? Something tells us she doesn’t get it about numbers.
1. Bernie Sanders’s concern-trolling about all those administrative costs connected to medical care as it is and how he’s supposedly against them.
Sen. Sanders, your campaign proposals would double federal spending over the next decade, an unprecedented level of spending not seen since World War II. How would you keep your plans from bankrupting the country?
SANDERS: No, our plan wouldn’t bankrupt the country. And, in fact, it would much improve the well-being of working-class families and the middle class.
Let us be clear what Medicare for all does. It ends all premiums. It ends all copayments. It ends the absurdity of deductibles. It ends out-of-pocket expenses. It takes on the pharmaceutical industry, which in some cases charges us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs sold abroad as sold here.
What we will do through a Medicare for all single-payer program is substantially lower the cost of health care for employers and workers, because we end the $100 billion a year that the health care industry makes and the $500 billion a year we spend in administrative — the administrative nightmare of dealing with thousands of separate insurance plans.
Is this a joke? Since when does a Soviet-style health care plan such as Bernie proposes not include masses and masses of red tape? Soviet dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich wrote hilarious books about stupid, obtuse, time-serving “blotting paper bureaucrats” who covered the socialist Soviet system. Socialized medicine, like all huge government programs is going to be the Mother of all Bureaucracy, just to administer the nightmare. Since when do government programs not involve bureaucracy? And considering all the paperwork requirements President Obama saddled health insurance companies with in implementing Obamacare, where does Bernie think all that paperwork insurance companies are supposedly profiting off of, is going? That’s right, the government. Moving the bureaucracy to government from the private sector is not going to end any administrative costs. If anything, with nothing to check their costs, it’s going to create incentives for even more paperwork. A government takeover of an entire industry is going to solve red tape? Just ask the student loan industry which got federalized and sank deep into the red tape. Call this one the whopper of the evening.
It’s difficult to imagine the death of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the subsequent shoot-down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 ever being blamed on the president of the United States if the president of the United States wasn’t Donald Trump.
Picture the situation in isolation, without any particulars: The United States makes a decision to take out an Iranian general who’s also a commander in the part of Iran’s military structure designated as a terrorist organization.
Said general is responsible for arming and funding plenty of Iranian proxies, including militias in Iraq that are responsible for over 600 American deaths.
Iran threatens retaliation.
The president of the United States threatens counter-retaliation.
At the same time, they don’t shut down their airspace to commercial aviation and mistake a 737 taking off for an American plane.
They shoot it down, killing 176 people — including 57 Canadians. Canada’s prime minister blames American “escalation” for the shoot-down.
Again, this adumbration of events sounds ludicrous until you pencil in the American president as being Donald Trump and the Canadian prime minister as being (sigh) Justin Trudeau.
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Trudeau, ever eager to convince us all he really is the caricature of left-wing Canadians that American conservatives believe him to be, gave an interview to Canada’s Global News in which he placed the balance of the blame on the United States.
“I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” Trudeau said during the Monday sit-down.
“This is something that happens when you have conflict and war. Innocents bear the brunt of it and it is a reminder why all of us need to work so hard on de-escalation, moving forward to reduce tensions and find a pathway that doesn’t involve further conflict and killing,” he continued.
These are wonderful thoughts if you’re a 20-something “Democracy Now” viewer and considerably less charming if you’re the world leader in a major drama involving the death of a terrorist that a nation-state just happened to squeeze into a uniform.
In part due to the number of Canadian casualties on board Flight 752 — going through Kiev was often the cheapest option to return for members of the Iranian diaspora there — Canada will be chairing a meeting of the International Coordination and Response Group in London beginning Thursday.
That meeting, according to Global News, is “set to lay out [members’] next steps for pushing for credible answers and access to black box data.”
I totally understand Canada’s prerogative behind hosting the meeting. Does Trudeau?
“I think full admission, acknowledgment of responsibility and some form of compensation is going to have to come,” Trudeau said of the meeting.
All right. But from whom? If you follow Trudeau’s argument to its logical conclusion, then the U.S. should compensate the families, since he seems to believe America is responsible for the “escalation” that led to the tragedy.
In other parts of the interview, Trudeau seemed to tacitly acknowledge the plane crash was Iran’s fault. He talked about how it would be “weeks, perhaps even months” before the bodies of victims were repatriated.
“The grief they’re going through is not to be consoled right now. They want answers, they’ve expressed anger and outrage and also immeasurable pain,” Trudeau said of the victims’ families.
“I am hurt like all Canadians. I am angry like all Canadians. But unlike many people I have a job to do that will be able to help these families directly. Getting answers for them is my entire focus right now.”
The answers Global News was most interested in, however, seemed to involve the Trump administration.
For instance, had he spoken to Trump?
“I have spoken to him and I have talked about the need to de-escalate tensions,” Trudeau said.
“I’ve talked about the tremendous grief and loss that Canadians are feeling, and the need for clear answers on how this happened and how we’re going to make sure it never happens again.”
I have an ayatollah you can talk to if you want to complain about this.
classified materials, obviously to set her up. The Department of Justice, where Rosenstein worked, had repeatedly obstructed Attkisson’s attempts to get information through litigation discovery. The court dismissed nevertheless, and even gave immunity to former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, whom Attkisson did name in her first lawsuit. 
