Saturday, December 19, 2020

Strassel interviews Barr. Does It Come Down To This? Shove It Joe. Another Rant. Zito. Is Deep State Tossing Biden Under The Bus?

















http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2020/12/19/as-bad-as-that-hack-of-u-s-government-agencies-was-its-far-worse-than-you-think-by-rick-moran/

And:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/professor-the-votes-of-black-americans-should-count-twice?itm_source=parsely-api?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=122120-news&utm_campaign=position1

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William Barr: ‘One Standard of Justice’

The departing attorney general talks about John Durham, Robert Mueller, Hunter Biden, Mike Flynn and the flak he’s taken from both parties. 

By Kimberley Strassel

The U.S. attorney general is meditating on one of his frustrations with the modern Justice Department: The outside world keeps moving faster; the wheels of justice ever more slowly. “Nobody wants to take responsibility anymore,” William Barr says with a hint of incredulity. “They wring their hands and push issues around the bureaucracy and trade memos for months.” His response: “Bring it to me! I’ll make the decision. That’s what I’m here for!”

If Mr. Barr, 70, dominated headlines over the past two years, it’s because he made a lot of tough calls. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s constitutionally dubious claims that President Trump committed obstruction of justice? No. An investigation of the 2016 Russia-collusion probe and the dismissal of charges against Mike Flynn ? Yes. New oversight of sensitive political investigations and surveillance of U.S. citizens? Yes. A criminal referral about Mr. Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president? No. Repeated demands—from the left and the right—for his department to engage in politics? No, no, no.

Consequential decisions have a way of annoying people—Democrats, Republicans, the staff, one’s boss—but Mr. Barr, who’d been attorney general before, from 1991-93, knew that going in. “I’m in a position in life where I can do the right thing and not really care about the consequences,” he told senators during his January 2019 confirmation hearing. In a 90-minute phone interview Tuesday—less than 24 hours after the announcement of his resignation, effective Dec. 23—he sounded his usual spirited self.

He reminds me why he took the job in the first place: “The Department of Justice was being used as a political weapon” by a “willful if small group of people,” who used the claim of collusion with Russia in an attempt to “topple an administration,” he says. “Someone had to make sure that the power of the department stopped being abused and that there was accountability for what had happened.” Mr. Barr largely succeeded, in the process filling a vacuum of political oversight, reimposing norms, and resisting partisan critics on both sides.

Mr. Barr describes an overarching objective of ensuring that there is “one standard of justice.” That, he says, is why he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the FBI’s 2016 Crossfire Hurricane probe. “Of course the Russians did bad things in the election,” he says. “But the idea that this was done with the collusion of the Trump campaign—there was never any evidence. It was entirely made up.” The country deserved to know how the world’s premier law-enforcement agency came to target and spy on a presidential campaign.

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s appointment should not have been necessary. Mr. Mueller’s investigation should have exposed FBI malfeasance. Instead, “the Mueller team seems to have been ready to blindly accept anything fed to it by the system,” Mr. Barr says, adding that this “is exactly what DOJ should not be.”

Mr. Durham hasn’t finished his work, to the disappointment of many Republicans, including the president, who were hoping for a resolution—perhaps including indictments—before the election. Mr. Barr notes that Mr. Durham had to wait until the end of 2019 for Inspector General Michael Horowitz to complete his own investigation into the FBI’s surveillance. Then came the Covid lockdowns, which suspended federal grand juries for six months. Mr. Durham could no longer threaten to subpoena uncooperative witnesses.

“I understand people’s frustration over the timing, and there are prosecutors who break more china, so to speak,” Mr. Barr says. “But they don’t necessarily get the results.” Mr. Durham will, and is making “significant progress,” says Mr. Barr, who disclosed this month that he had prior to the election designated Mr. Durham a special counsel, to provide assurance that his team would be able to finish its work. The new designation also assures that Mr. Durham will produce a report to the attorney general. Mr. Barr believes “the force of circumstances will ensure it goes public” even under the new administration.

The biggest news from Mr. Durham’s probe is what he has ruled out. Mr. Barr was initially suspicious that agents had been spying on the Trump campaign before the official July 2016 start date of Crossfire Hurricane, and that the Central Intelligence Agency or foreign intelligence had played a role. But even prior to naming Mr. Durham special counsel, Mr. Barr had come to the conclusion that he didn’t “see any sign of improper CIA activity” or “foreign government activity before July 2016,” he says. “The CIA stayed in its lane.”

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham’s probe is now tightly focused on “the conduct of Crossfire Hurricane, the small group at the FBI that was most involved in that,” as well as “the activities of certain private actors.” (Mr. Barr doesn’t elaborate.) Mr. Durham has publicly stated he’s not convinced the FBI team had an adequate “predicate” to launch an investigation. In September, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified a document showing that the FBI was warned in 2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign might be behind the “collusion” claims.

Mr. Barr says Mr. Durham is also looking at the January 2017 intelligence-community “assessment” that claimed Russia had “developed a clear preference” for Mr. Trump in the 2016 election. He confirms that most of the substantive documents related to the FBI’s investigation have now been made public.

The attorney general also hopes people remember that orange jumpsuits aren’t the only measure of misconduct. It frustrates him that the political class these days frequently plays “the criminal card,” obsessively focused on “who is going to jail, who is getting indicted.”

The American system is “designed to find people innocent,” Mr. Barr notes. “It has a high bar.” One danger of the focus on criminal charges is that it ends up excusing a vast range of contemptible or abusive behavior that doesn’t reach the bar. The FBI’s use “of confidential human sources and wiretapping to investigate people connected to a campaign was outrageous,” Mr. Barr says—whether or not it leads to criminal charges.

Also outrageous, in Mr. Barr’s view, was the abuse of power by both the FBI and the Mueller team toward Mr. Trump’s associates, especially Mr. Flynn. The FBI, as a review by U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen found, pulled Mr. Flynn into an interview that had “no legitimate investigative basis.” The Mueller team then denied Mr. Flynn’s legal defense exculpatory information and pressured Mr. Flynn into pleading guilty to lying.

Mr. Barr didn’t order a review of the case until Mr. Flynn petitioned to withdraw his guilty plea in January 2020. Mr. Jensen’s review then made clear that the case “was entirely bogus,” Mr. Barr says. “It was analogous right now to DOJ prosecuting the person Biden named as his national security adviser for communication with a foreign government.” The Justice Department agreed to drop the charges in May, although Judge Emmet Sullivan spent months contesting the move until Mr. Trump finally pardoned Mr. Flynn. Mr. Barr declines to comment on Judge Sullivan’s maneuvering.

Likewise, Mr. Barr didn’t “go looking” to get involved in the case of Trump associate Roger Stone, convicted of charges including witness tampering and lying to investigators. Mr. Barr thinks Mr. Stone violated the law. But when Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors “wanted a penalty for him that was unprecedented and outlandish”—seven to nine years in prison—“I wasn’t going to have the department seek such a harsh penalty,” he says. He overruled the career prosecutors’ recommendations in February, and the judge sentenced Mr. Stone to less than half the time the Mueller team had sought.

Mr. Barr took flak from the left for that decision, and even more for a Constitution Day speech this year in which he reminded Democrats and the media that this is exactly how the system is designed to work. The Justice Department’s powers are vast, and professional attorneys therefore are subordinate to democratically accountable officials. “The Department of Justice is not a trade association for prosecutors,” Mr. Barr says. Its client is the American people; its duty is to ensure the principles and standards of justice are fairly executed.

He took flak from the right for not bringing the Justice Department hammer down on Mr. Trump’s adversaries. “A lot of Republicans think that’s playing by Robert’s Rules—you are being soft on the other side. And I understand that frustration. It’s painful that the system is used against Republicans and there is an AG not willing to do the same thing against Democrats. But that is the only way we find our way back,” he says—meaning back to one standard of justice, to not using the Justice Department as a political tool.

He also makes no apology for declining to divulge before the election that Hunter Biden was under investigation. He acknowledges that the Justice Department’s rule against confirming probes involving office-seekers is “not absolute” and that he could “imagine” a “dilemma” in which government has “decisive evidence of a serious crime against a candidate.” But in the absence of those conditions there’s “damn good reason for the rule,” which protects disfavored politicians, and private citizens with whom they’re associated, against the deep state.

“Think about the power it would give the federal bureaucracy,” he says. “The standard for investigating someone is low. So just gin up an investigation, make it public, affect every election.”

Along with these politically charged topics, Mr. Barr is eager to talk about “the other part of the job”—meaning “the management of the work of the department—the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. Marshals, all our legal responsibilities.” The department’s politicization has overshadowed all that but Mr. Barr says it’s a big reason he took the job and is proud of the department’s work. He highlights its efforts on drug enforcement and opioids, and his regrets that Covid slowed that momentum. He highlights Operation Legend, a successful law-enforcement initiative to fight violent crime.

He’s also proud of the department’s interventions to protect free speech and religious freedom. As early as April, Justice had intervened on behalf of a Mississippi church whose congregants had been ticketed during a drive-in service amid Covid, and it continued to support institutions denied their constitutional rights by lockdowns. The department has also intervened to protect college students’ free speech on campus. “The only rights that receive attention anymore are those that involve human pleasure-seeking,” he says. “But the foundational rights are what we rely on as a people to reason and to make rational judgments on things. . . . The reason we have free speech isn’t because everyone’s views are right; it is because we try to reach the truth through the dialectic of competing viewpoints.”

Mr. Barr had planned to stay on in a second Trump term to work on issues like this: He worries about an onslaught of synthetic opioids and methamphetamines and increasingly powerful Mexican cartels. He was looking forward to a restored FBI gearing counterespionage efforts against China. He’s sorry he won’t be able to continue pushing a zero-tolerance policy toward “violence in our political process.” He’s skeptical the Biden administration will deal effectively with the growing power of big tech companies, in particular the problem of censorship.

I ask if he has any advice for his successors, and he rounds back to the personal quality that defined his own tenure. “There has been a tendency for AGs to let the bureaucracy run itself, to sit in the office and look at the inbox,” he says. “After all, you can never get in trouble by going along with the institution.” But institutions are supposed to stand for principles, and it’s the attorney general’s job to reinforce them every day: “Be active. Make sure people understand the priorities, understand what they are there to do. Make the decisions.”

Ms. Strassel writes the Journal’s Potomac Watch column.

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Has it really come down to this?

I made a snowman  

8:00 AM  I made a snowman today.

8:10  A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn't make a snow woman.

8:20  So, I made a snow woman.

8:22  My feminist neighbor complained about the snow woman's voluptuous chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere.

8:25  The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could have been two snow men instead.

8:28  The transgender man.. woman...person asked why I didn't just make one snow person with detachable parts.

8:35  The vegans at the end of the lane complained about the carrot nose, as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.

8:40 I am being called a racist because the snow couple is white.

8:45  The Muslim gent across the road demands the snow woman wear a burqa.

8:55  The Police arrive saying someone has been offended.

9:00  The feminist neighbor complained again that the broomstick of the snow woman needs to be removed because it depicted women in a domestic role.

9:07  The council equality officer arrived and threatened me with eviction.

9:14  TV news crew from the CNN shows up. I am asked if I know the difference between snowmen and snow-women? I reply, "Snowballs" and am now called a sexist.

9:15  I'm on the News as a suspected terrorist, racist, homophobic, sensibility offender, bent on stirring up trouble during difficult weather.

9:20  I am asked if I have any accomplices. My children are taken by social services.

9:30n  Far left protesters offended by everything are marching down the street demanding for me to be beheaded.

Moral:  There is no moral to this story. It's just a view of the world in which we live today.👽
                                                    Merry Christmas 

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               THE TERRORISTS  SPEAK

Let us all be: a “United States” again,  message from Joe Biden.

 

WHY SHOULD THAT BE AN ISSUE WITH ME ?

 

For the last 4+ years, the Democrats have gone scorched earth.

You have salted the fields and now you want to grow crops.

The problem is we have memories longer than a hamster.

We remember the protests the day of/after inauguration.

We remember the 4 years of personal attacks and endless name calling

We remember “not our president” and the “Resistance…”

We remember being called racist and evil.

We remember Maxie Walters telling followers to harass Trump supporters in department stores and gas stations.

We remember the Presidents press secretary being chased out of a restaurant.

We remember hundreds of Trump supporters being physically attacked.

We remember Trump supporters getting Doxed, and fired from jobs.

We remember riots, and looting.

We remember “a comedian” holding up the President’s severed head.

We remember a play in Central park paid with public funding, showing the killing of President Trump.

We remember Robert de Niro yelling “Fuck Trump” at the Tony’s and getting a standing ovation.

We remember Trump being accused of being a Russian spy and the media going with it. Trying to frame him for treason.

We remember Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union Address.

We remember how totally in the tank the mainstream media was in opposition.

We remember non-stop in your face lies and open cover-ups from the media.

We remember the MSM cabal in 24/7 Hate Trump broadcasts.

We remember the press not holding Democrats responsible for anything and hiding anything negative.

We remember conservative voices neutered by Tech companies (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.).

We remember the partisan impeachment.

We remember the President and his staff being spied on; even before he was President and Obama & Biden knew of it.

We remember Republican congressmen shot on a ballfield by a Socialist supporter of Bernie Sanders.

We remember every so-called comedy show turn into nothing but Trump hate fest.

We remember 95% negative coverage in the news from the mainstream media and newspapers.

We remember the state governors asking for and getting everything they wanted to address COVID-19 then blaming Trump.

We remember leftists threatening outside the homes of prominent Republicans and TV commentators who support Trump.

We remember the vile attempted destruction of Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats, Kamala Harris in particular.

We remember people pounding on the Supreme Court doors.

We remember that we were called every name in the book for supporting President Trump.

We remember that many in Hollywood said they would leave after Trump was elected, but they stayed here anyway.

We remember the hundreds of taxpayer funded police cars burnt during your ‘mostly peaceful’ demonstrations.

We remember our conservative voices being cancelled on major US campuses.

 

This list is endless, but you get the idea.

My friends will be my friends, but a party that has been attacking the President for 4 long years

does not get a free pass with me.

 So Joe, take your, "Let’s be United" and shove it.

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Another Rant:
In the short run, the market will likely rise as the election is now behind us until Jan 5, rates remain low, the vaccine is highly successful in all respects and is being efficiently produced and distributed which means businesses can reopen fully by mid to late May, and the summer travel season to resorts and places like Vegas and national parks will be booming like never before as the pent up demand explodes, and all those savings are spent. Checking account deposits are up 85% this year, to $4.6 Trillion. That means consumers and companies have enormous amounts of cash waiting to be spent and invested.  JPM has $1.5 Trillion of liquidity. M1 is up 67% this year. And now a stimulus package is being approved after needless stupid, disgraceful delay of months by Pelosi. So maybe we end the year closer to 3750 than 3700. It also means Wall St believes Jan 5 will go Republican.

 

All of that is nice, but completely ignores potential risks in 2021. Jan 5 is far from certain to go Republican. It probably will, but we don’t know. The Hunter scandal is just beginning, and is very possibly going to mean the Joe term could possibly be short, the Paris accord will mean much more regulation and higher costs for companies, and Iran is going to try to do something bad in the next few months after they have wrung all they could out of Kerry and Biden and gotten sanctions lifted. New regulations will be flowing rapidly out of DC, and that means much higher costs to operate, especially  in regard to environment issues. Lenders will be burdened with lots of new racial regulations and quotas meaning distorted bank lending.

 

China will pressure Biden if they really have him compromised, as I believe they do. All of this assumes Republicans win  Jan 5. If not, then all hell breaks loose in Congress after January 20. To top it all off, the Manhattan DA is going to go all in to try to charge Trump with various crimes to offset and divert the media from the Biden scandal.  If that happens, the pushback from Republicans will create new chaos.  So on one hand we will have a booming consumer economy as pent up demand drives growth much higher, but on the other hand there will be both geopolitical and domestic chaos, and an anti-business policy program in DC, and black swans circling.

 

There will be special emphasis on crushing the fossil fuel industry which will drive up energy costs for everyone and especially the lower income workers. The Biden foreign policies of appeasement will lead to a rerun of the disastrous world we had under Obama. And now we have the cyber breach and no way for us to know what comes next with that. If Trump had been reelected I would forecast the market hitting new record highs in 21. But with Biden, it could go either way, and not nearly so high as it would have under Trump.

 

There is nothing new the Fed can, or will , do to juice the economy. It is all now fiscal stimulus. Powell says inflation will remain low and internationally it is more deflationary right now. Capital markets are functioning very well now. Rates will remain low through 2021, and maybe 22, but interest rates forecasting is always risky over time. If we get a positive scenario going forward, I believe rates will probably rise in 2022, not wait until 23. Powell admitted the Fed has underestimated the strength and resilience of the economy. The ten year in 22 could go above 2% if the economy really pops in late 21. Fannie and Freddie will probably get recapitalized next year, but now Biden will interfere by putting in new requirements for racial quotas or some other similar requirements that will distort the smooth functioning of these two entities.

 

There will then be distortion of the housing finance market as the credit quality will decline on mortgages in order to meet made up quotas for minority communities. There will be intense pressure on banks to make loans to low credit minority people. Remember subprime, and how the government brought us that wonderous result when they outlawed red lining and subprime became the thing to do. This will not be much different. Either you have race blind strong underwriting, or you have loans going to people who should not have them, and the result is later problems in the mortgage markets. One more example of they never learn.

 

If they reopened everything, and just mandated masks and distancing, and if they opened all schools for 5 day attendance, the economy would improve much faster, and there would likely not be much difference in infections. CDC just released research that shows kids in school are not at risk. The few kids who did get sick have mostly not gotten it in school , and they have other health issues. There is no reason not to fully open schools for 5 days in person, but the unions continue to refuse and let kids get harmed. 75% of infections occur in the home, not in public settings. If they fully reopened everything there would be far less need for a stimulus program and additions to the debt. People wear masks often when outside, not at home, so home gatherings is where the problem lies. If FL and TX can be mostly open with no worse infection rates than CA and NY, then so can CA and NY. This is not hard to understand that these blue state shutdowns are as a result of politics, arrogance, or ignorance.   

 

The SEC has finally cracked down on Robinhood, and forced them to reveal that they get paid by Wall St for delivering stock orders to them. Robinhood just paid a big fine. As a result Robinhood executions are relatively poor.  The other online brokers do also get paid to deliver orders, but are much better at execution.

 

Whatever happens, there will not be one day when the whistle blows and the economy suddenly shoots ahead. It will evolve as the blue states and cities are slow to reopen, and as people reemerge from their caves. Johns Hopkins believes that by late April the crisis will have mostly passed, and some people will wonder why they need the vaccine anymore. They also believe that between 30% and 50% of the adults in the Midwest have had the virus in some form, and are now immune for another three years. If that is so, then the rate of infection will drop quickly from here in those areas, and with the vaccine we could see very few new cases by May-June. The economy will  be mostly reopened by then except maybe in a few blue state areas. It causes you to wonder how come in places like CA with all sorts of lockdowns, mask mandates and restrictions, the virus is raging, but in FL with few restrictions, it is no worse, and there are lots of old people.

 

 Recovery will depend on industry, and even within industries like hotels, it will depend on segment. Many malls will close, and eventually get plowed under and redeveloped as mixed use projects.  Manufacturing will do very well as will distribution. Airlines will boom by summer as the vaccine is widespread, and consumers rush to travel again. Urban office will slowly reoccupy while office in places like Austin, Dallas, Denver, Boise, Vegas, Nashville and Miami boom due to the flight from coastal Dem run cities continues. Office staffs will be 25%-30% work from home full time, another 25% or so come in two or three days a week, and maybe share desks in some cases, retail centers continue to close, and distribution and industrial booms. The oil industry will face enormous problems with new regulations to try to shut them down.    NYC and CA will continue to bleed taxpayers, and TX and FL will boom beyond their best projections. 

 

The shutdowns in Dem cities are counter-productive. They shut restaurants where the infection rate is 1.4% thereby driving people to have gatherings in their homes where the infection rate is 75%. Makes perfect sense. The more they do shutdowns in NYC and CA the more there is crime, homeless, and no way to make a living, but living costs remain high. Now we have another result, which is retail sales down in November as more shutdowns cost jobs. One very interesting thing is, while the left attacks Wall St and the rich making a lot of money on stocks, they are solving a sizable piece of their deficits in CA and NY from all of the taxes they are collecting from all of the high profit stock sales due to trades in the stock market. Without the booming stock market the blue states would be in even worse trouble. The more they raise taxes and destroy life style, and chase away the rich and Wall St firms and Silicon Valley companies, the less they collect taxes on stock sales. The more you shutdown restaurants and other business, the less sales taxes you collect. The less employees due to shutdowns the less unemployment taxes.

 

You just really wonder if any of these politicians ever took an econ course. Makes you really wonder about the governor of NJ if he ever learned anything when he worked at Goldman. The data are very clear-raise taxes and the rich leave with their tax payments. Shut down small business and tax collections decline, creating more need to raise taxes to chase away more taxpayers.  Wall St operations have changed dramatically, and there is no need for everyone to be in NYC anymore. With the end of stock commissions, cost of operating has become a huge issue, further driving some of these operations out of Manhattan to places like FL.  The Wall St of today has little similarity to the Wall St I worked in.

 

The losing cities will drown in deficits, and their union pensions will face insolvency. Maybe we will be lucky and there will finally be legislative actions to redo pensions which are now unsustainable. Under Biden the changes needed are very unlikely. Government pensions is the next financial crisis, and it is coming soon to a blue state near you. There will be a massive political battle as we have seen these past few weeks in DC over funding for states and cities. That fight is really all about pension bailouts, and if the Republicans hold the Senate, it will get even uglier. Blue states need to cut their wasteful budgets, and revise their giveaway pension plans and health retirement programs, or there is no end to the crisis. With Biden in the White House there will be no good solution unless McConnell is leader.

 

Biden has rehired the failed Obama cabinet and agency heads, plus some others who happened to be black, Latino, or gay, but with no other particular talents for their new roles. The appointment of Gina McCarthy as head of environmental policy is a coming disaster. Combined with his Interior Secy pick, fracking and pipelines are going to be under constant attack, and US energy independence will be severely compromised. Areas of NY and New England that are insufficiently supplied with gas will remain so to the detriment of consumers. There is one saving grace. The 223 district and appeals judges and SCOTUS judges will stop some of what the radicals will try to do with fracking and other regulatory constraints. Hopefully there will be injunctions preventing the worst things. Buttigieg could not manage a small town  and maintain roads, and now is Secy of Transportation purely because he is gay. He has zero knowledge of transportation.  And now he is considering Iger as ambassador to China. Iger is completely compromised by China. His appointment would be a disaster for US policy re China.

 

This entire group of Obama retreads, and politically correct choices,  will make many of the same mistakes they made last time on foreign affairs and the economy in the belief that all they need to do is talk nice to China, Russia, the EU and Iran, and rejoin various organizations like Paris and the WTO, and all will be OK in the world. The definition of an idiot is to do the same mistakes twice. This crew is obviously unable to learn from the past, and will think they can just redo the Iran deal and they will behave properly. As to China they already are saying we need to “cooperate”, despite the revelations of the past couple of weeks of how China has infiltrated universities, and influenced Wall St, the press, and even Congress.

 

The constant complaints that Trump destroyed alliances and we all need to just get together again and deal with China as a group, are naïve in my view. Sometimes I wonder, am I the only one paying attention to what is really happening. China is buying influencers all over, and dangling dollars and a huge consumer market, and many are jumping at the bait. The EU has no foreign policy as a group, and they act individually when it suits their purpose regardless of what the US wishes. Examples: Germany is trying to go ahead with the Nordstream pipeline despite everyone else saying don’t do it.  They are now about to allow Huawei to provide equipment to its 5G system despite the US saying it will compromise all German communications and needs to be barred.  

 

There had been no real attention paid to NATO all through the Obama administration, and NATO became a paper military force unable to do much of anything. They let the US fund it all, until Trump said no more. That is what group think and alliances result in- no concerted action until it is too late, or until someone like Trump says -this makes no sense for the US. This is not the fifties and sixties any more when Europe needed us, and the cold war was at its height. Asian countries live off of trade with China. Do you really think they will jointly do things to pushback on China and lose their main trade partner. No, they will do more  in order to do  more trade with China. These nations have a very different agenda from the US. China is an existential threat to the US now, and we need to continue to confront them, not to play nice.

 

If the EU and the UN and WTO have all failed to act against China thus far given the virus, Hong Kong, concentration camps, South China Sea, and threats against Taiwan, what makes anyone think they will suddenly do anything when a China appeaser like Biden is president , and we rejoin these organizations that concede to China on many fronts.  Just recall that they all thought when China joined the WTO they would play by the rules. China just used WTO to cheat even more. China will continue to con the world, and use cash to bribe capitulation made to look like cooperation. China used the WHO to convince the world the virus was no problem until they were able to spread it across the globe and change the outcome of the US election. But Biden wants to immediately rejoin these organizations.

 

Don’t believe any numbers Stacy Abrams puts out, or that you hear or read. Karl Rove went thru the real numbers, and Abrams and the press are lying again, by huge amounts. There are not a lot of new signups for Dems this election, and a bunch are Republicans. In addition, the Republicans have hired 4,000 poll watchers and an army of lawyers to be present at all moments on election day checking for duplicate voters, and doing signature verification, and to stay with machines and ballots all night.  This time they are getting new rules for voting specified now, and if not good and set now, they will be in court by next week. There will not be any chance for the games Abrams was playing, especially in Fulton county where most of the problems occurred. The Secy of state seems to be being left out of all this, or is not being paid attention to as he has not prosecuted any of the over 1700 people caught cheating on Nov 3, nor Stacy Abrams group which was caught registering dead people. This time Republicans will be on every vote and they will win.

 

Janet Yellen just met with the leaders of the Defund Police movement and BLM, and pledged to make racial issues the “centerpiece” of the recovery efforts. She also agreed to “pursue long term systemic racial issues and structural issues causing the wealth disparity.” Translation: instead of focus on rebuilding the economy itself, and growth in GDP, they will instead create all sorts of new racial quota rules for lenders, employers, and landlords, and new subsidy programs. As we saw starting in Q2 2017, the best way to help minorities is to create a robust economy where there are a lot less regulations and lower taxes, resulting in more jobs than workers. Low income wages were rising at 9%, and family income was finally growing again  after ten years of no growth.

 

 In early 2020 we had record low unemployment and record high wages for minorities, and no new regulations, subsidies and entitlements. Q1 had very low gas prices, which is like a wage increase for low income workers, which will go away as they try to shut down fracking through new regulation, and pressure on banks not to lend to the oil industry by pushing through higher capital reserve requirements on oil industry loans. With the Biden/Yellen policies, unemployment will be higher than it needs to be for minorities, and gas prices will rise. But they will look good to the radicals. They simply never learn anything from history. This is the first step in how they will hold back growth, just as they did in 2009-2016. Same people doing the same idiotic, counterproductive things.

           

How did China pick out an ordinary city council guy in CA to be a target, and then help him get elected. How did Pelosi decide to take this novice and put him on Intel plus the committee that oversees CIA. Who of her friends in San Fran pushed Swalwell to get these assignments. Why was Swalwell’s father and sister still in touch with the spy until two weeks ago when the story broke, and why is Pelosi refusing to remove him from these committees.

 

What was drug addict, totally unqualified Hunter getting paid for if not access to Joe. And if Joe never knew anything about Hunter selling access to him, what was Hunter and his partners selling for millions of dollars. What did Joe think was going on in the office he got keys to. Did he ever ask Hunter what was he doing on Airforce II flying to China with him for 14 hours. Why did Joe get the Ukraine prosecutor fired soon after Hunter starting getting paid by Burisma. And the press refuses to ask these questions. Why not just ask do you know Tony Bobalinsky, and did you ever meet him. And now Joe says Hunter is “the smartest guy I know”. Wow.

 

For all my Republican readers who still think the election is not over, or that there will be some sort of maneuver on Jan 6 to elect Trump: I try to deal in reality, not hope. I have no doubt there was real fraud, and that the MI audit of Dominion has uncovered major issues, and 1700 people voted twice in GA, 1100 dead people and 4,000 illegal aliens voted in NV, etc.  However, the SCOTUS and other judges have made it clear this is a political issue, and not a legal one in their view- they just do not want to be involved in overturning the election. You can disagree all you want, but that is reality now. I try to just deal in reality, and the implications flowing from that, not wishes or other concepts that are never happening.

 

 If Republicans hold the Senate, they will conduct a major investigation and report on all the fraud, and work to prevent any rerun of that in GA, and in 2022 when they can get complete control of Congress. McConnell said it is over, and that makes it so. We need to move on and learn what really happened, and prevent it from happening again. Mail in balloting was the disaster that was predicted and led to fraud. 2020 will go down in history as the worst political fraud and abuse of power by Congress in decades, or maybe in history.

 

Between the Biden crimes, what Durham is going to announce, and this voting situation, and the whole Russia hoax and Ukraine impeachment, there has been extraordinary criminality on a massive scale by the Dems. And the press has covered it all up, and helped push the false narratives, which is a major scandal of its own that must change, or we lose democracy. Between universities, the press, and other institutions pushing identity politics, and a cancel culture, democracy is at major risk right now.  

 

Here are some interesting numbers. Trump actually won a higher percent of voters in cities than in 2016. He actually went up 3.7% in Philadelphia in share of voters despite the apparent cheating. The problem for Trump was in the suburbs. There he lost support by a wide margin. The further the suburb was from the city the better he did, but his margins still declined. The interesting thing was, Republicans down ballot did better than Trump in these same suburbs.  Republicans won Congressional races where Trump lost in these suburbs. This implies Trump lost based on his personality, and the burbs are still centrist.  Important data for 2022. Biden did worse in working class and Hispanic counties. In all, the suburbs is where the battles will be fought, and the Republicans did not do so badly as the press would have you believe. Trump lost the election due to his own personality and tweets, and the all out attacks by the press and Silicon Valley, and not due to his policies, or his achievements.  Republicans can win control in 22, and Nicky Haley could win the suburbs easily in 24.

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Livelihoods and liberty left in the lurch
By Salena Zito

ROSS TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania — Seven years ago, combat veteran Jack Mook was a hard-nosed Pittsburgh detective who stumbled upon two young brothers who showed up intermittently at the boxing gym where he volunteered. The boys were living on the edge of despair: Their birth parents had failed them, their foster parents had failed them, and the system had failed them.
In short order, Mook got an emergency order and brought the boys home. Nights out for Mook the bachelor became family nights of pizza and board games. Healthier food became part of their diet, and so did rules, homework, and structure.

In the years it took Mook to become their father legally, he learned one thing: Government, bureaucracy, and institutions designed to serve consistently failed their missions on several levels.

Today, he is retired from the force and opened a boxing gym that trains young athletes — a business, like many small businesses across the country, that has been forced to close under government edicts.


Click here for the full story.

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Here is a piece written by a learned friend of mine that I think you will find most interesting. As time goes by more and more of what were considered conspiracy theories are coming to be proven true. As this piece anticipates, 2021 probably will prove to be a very interesting year for this country.

Bert

SCOTUS has ended it, and now the electoral college finalized it. Biden will be president, at least for a while. I had predicted Trump would win, but apparently I was wrong, or maybe I was almost right. We will never really know.
 
I don’t think there is any question Joe was on the take all these years, and Hunter was the bag man. The prosecutors have issued supposedly 24 criminal subpoenas.  They don’t do that just for missing a single failure to declare $400,000 of income. This is way bigger than some failure to declare  income one year.  Joe got his 10%, and as Hunter said in an email to his sister, he was annoyed to have to give so much of the money to Dad. There is zero question Joe was deeply involved based on the first hand testimony and emails Bobalinsky has provided to the FBI and US Attorney. It is unclear how long before the indictments come, and if Barr will name special counsel, which he should.  I believe Hunter is guilty of taking massive bribes, well beyond what we know now, money laundering, securities fraud and possibly the child porn that has been rumored. The press keeps saying Hunter is a “troubled guy”, but he really a major crook and drug addict. Remember when they rolled out the letter from 55 national security experts saying it was Russian disinformation. Nobody but Fox listened, or reported, when Ratcliffe said no it is not. This is not the little BS stuff that the brothers of other presidents did.
 
Then we have the investigation of brother James in PA, and there was also the corrupt contract to James in Iraq for which he had zero qualifications. Joe and Jill had keys to the office where Hunter and the Chinese had their company, and presumably the “chairman” had an office there, but Joe had no idea what that office he shared was for, or who the Chinese guy sitting there was???  But the press never has asked what that was all about, and how he can have an office at a company but never know what the company was. The press has now proven they are totally corrupt and dishonest. Even now, they refuse to even ask Joe one question about it, other than Fox. Some still don’t even report on it. Several have not covered Swalwell. Now we can speculate if the real reason Joe hid in the basement was to avoid anyone asking about Hunter and James.
 
Trump was right.  The Bidens are a criminal family, and China has the ability to blackmail Joe, as do others. He is the Manchurian candidate come to real life, and the press continues to try to claim Joe is innocent, and not a subject of the investigation. They were wrong about Hunter, so there is no reason to believe anything they say about Joe, who they are protecting. While you are at it, don’t forget how Joe altered the bankruptcy bill decades ago for MBNA, and then later sold his $200,000 house to an MBNA executive for a price that was several times its then value. House prices in DL did not rise 600% in 20 years. Only his house did. And now the Chinese businessman and official who was Hunter’s partner has “disappeared”.
 
Barr did exactly the right thing not to say anything per DOJ rules. It would have been trashed by the press as an election ploy, and not real, but this way nobody can say that. Now the investigation cannot be attacked as a Trump diversion. It very possibly may have changed the outcome, but we will never know. Now that Barr has resigned, we will see if the acting appoints a special counsel for the Hunter case. Barr did  a great job as AG and likely just decided he was going to spend Christmas with his family and relax, and be done with all of this to save his personal legacy.
 
What we now need to worry about is Joe being forced to resign in the next year as the indictments come, and the prosecutors lay it all out. Millions went somewhere and Joe has been living well beyond his nominal income. In addition we have Biden’s cognitive decline which will get more apparent as he is more exposed.  He could not even remember how to pronounce Bacerra’s name. Then, in addition,  Durham comes on top of that, and since he has just expanded his team and expanded his investigation, and is now special counsel, it will be the blockbuster I have been predicting.
 
Standby for president Harris potentially.  It is now a very real possibility. The Republicans will have a real dilemma. If they push for Biden to leave, we get president Harris and a Pelosi VP until a new VP is selected.  Then that VP nomination will be a radical who Republicans will vote against. 2021 is potentially going to be a year of major chaos and constitutional crisis.. As a result, the Republicans should be able to take the House in 22, and the White House in 24 once all of this is laid out publicly. Trump will say, I told you so, and that the press is corrupt, and fake news, and he will be correct. Meantime China and Iran will take advantage. Just when you thought nothing could be worse than 2020.
 
There seems to be no question the Dems used mail in voting as we all worried they would, but the RNC blew it completely by not going after the problems before the election. Had they moved in court in October, some of their cases would have been pursued by courts. Several failed due to laches- delay. As I had said in September and October, Pelosi wanted mail in badly for a reason. In GA, the secy of state blew it completely. They also really blew it in PA. At least on Jan 5 there will be so many watchers, and checks on signatures, that it will be honest. All of the Biden mess will likely help to get Republicans out to vote, as will the party line of the election being stolen. Now a group of black ministers has come out against Warnock over abortion-a big issue in GA. It is all about get out the vote. It is probable that Loeffler and Perdue will both win, but until it is over we can’t be sure. Then Abrams will declare the vote to be rigged, and the press will take her side again. Hypocrisy once again.
 
So now 77% of Republicans and 27% of independents, and even 10% of Dems  think Trump really won. We know we can’t trust the FBI, or parts of the intelligence community. We see mayors and city councils trashing cops and defunding them, and the press and big corporations and school systems buying into the BLM propaganda, and schools using the 1619 project books. Crime is spiraling out of control in major cities, and city councils and mayors of those places are letting it happen, and blaming the cops, and calling us all racists.
 
We see universities brain washing kids with left wing ideology, and teaching them is it perfectly OK to quash freedom of speech when you don’t like what someone says or thinks. We know the press is totally corrupt and biased, and the news is fake much of the time.  And now we have a true crook about to become president, and a Congressman on the intel committee who has been compromised. We need to go all in for Jan 5, and for 2022 elections. The country is on the precipice, and we need to pull it back. They tried to impeach Trump for Russia collusion of which there was none, and then for a call with Ukraine to ask about Hunter, which was now known to be a very legit request. But Swalwell was sleeping with a Chinese agent, and she was putting an intern in his office, but Pelosi thinks it is fine for him to be on Intel. Meantime Don Jr was pounded by the media for a twenty minute meeting with some Russians where nothing happened. Sometimes I think I live in another country.
 
Between the Hunter case, and Operation Warp Speed, Trump will be vindicated. Warp Speed by all accounts from non-partisan health experts was a true historic miracle accomplishment, and will save hundreds of thousands of lives. We need to hope Biden and his people don’t screw with it, and mess it up now.  Someone should ask him in March if he thought the system had worked well and saved lives. He said Trump had no plan, and was responsible for killing tens of thousands of people, and that is the line the press pushed. Now we see how totally wrong they were. The vaccine has been a massive logistics and management undertaking unlike any before.  Trump was able to pull together private and public assets, and create well led teams to make it happen. From there the general and the drug companies made it happen. It was a spectacular team effort with great leadership. And Biden and Harris get Person of the Year from Time. It is like Obama getting the Nobel Prize for showing up for work.  
 
The Dems are destroying lives with all the shutdowns. Millions of individuals started small businesses, and now are getting crushed and destroyed. We all know how bad the virus is, and how to be careful, and how to run our own lives. If people choose to go out and take the chance of getting sick, that is their decision, not the government’s role to control. The government informs, and then individuals should be left to make their own decisions as to what to do with their own life. Some people go out and do things that risk their lives every day, and some die every die as a result. Some argue that it is the government’s role to protect the citizens, but they are destroying millions of people’s lives with the shutdowns. They are forcing millions to be unemployed unnecessarily. The damage to young kids is unrecoverable, especially for minority kids and their parents. Then they refuse to give in on liability protection for these small businesses to appease their plaintiff lawyer supporters.
 
It is OK for Target and Home Depot to be open, but not the small restaurant around the corner. This is going to cause a major revolution in the next elections. CA and NY could actually go Red. As someone who started several companies, I am heartbroken to watch these risk taking  entrepreneurs get ruined by politicians. The contraction rate for restaurants in NY is 1.4%, while it is around 75% due to gatherings in homes, but restaurants get shut down. Religious services are limited, but protests are OK. Here in FL we are free to go about our lives as almost normal. FL economy is booming, and thousands of people from the north arrive daily, but in CA and NY, the big taxpayers are fleeing daily. In red states the unemployment rate is under 6% in several, but over 9% in blue states, and is about to rise with the new shutdowns. Is there something they don’t get? The data are clear. In Fl we play tennis, go to restaurants and bars, and church, if we choose to, and enjoy life. I was just in a restaurant and nearby 8 older people were enjoying dinner at the same table.  We choose what we do , not the government. And our taxes are much lower. You might notice how Biden stopped demanding a 100 day mask mandate.  Nobody was caring what he has to say.
 
What to make of all of this for investing. That is very hard to know. The main thing is still Jan 5. If the Republicans win, then there is some hope to mitigate what would otherwise be a radical set of new laws and regulations. It will leave Republicans in charge of committees to undertake investigations, and to stall or turn down the worst of Biden’s nominations like Bacerra.  It also means they have a real way to affect the budget, which is key.  And if my Biden resignation scenario does happen, then they can keep a left wing nut from becoming VP since the Senate has to approve the person. With the vaccine starting to be administered, the economy will be recovering fairly quickly by April, as things are reopened. The Hunter indictments will not likely happen until early spring as they go through the grand jury and other legal processes. The prosecutors will be absolutely certain they have clear and irrefutable evidence before they issue the indictments. Hopefully there will be a special prosecutor.
 
So for the next few months there will be no bad impact on the market  assuming the Jan 5 vote goes Republican, and the vaccine distribution goes well. If Jan 5 does not, be out on Jan 6, or if it looks like a Dem win is coming, be out before. So we are very likely to have a rapidly recovering economy here, and around the world during 21, but chaos in DC as the Hunter case unfolds, and Durham follows behind that. It will be a lot  like  Watergate, only far worse. Add to that, Iran doing something really stupid to retaliate for the assassinations, and thinking with Biden as president they can get away with attacking Israel and killing a US general or ambassador. China will then likely see the weakness in DC, and push somewhere in the world -maybe Taiwan. This all may sound crazy, but if you think of the individual pieces, and how they tie together, it is very possible. I am not predicting these things will happen, but I believe there is a good chance some, or all will, and we need to be prepared for that.
 
The markets may become vey volatile in the first half of 21 if some of these things happen, so don’t just buy the wonderful optimistic forecasts of Wall St. Be aware, and do not believe what NBC, CNN, MSNBC, the NYTimes, WAPO, or ABC tell you. It is almost certain they will be lying again. And for sure, do not believe much of anything on the internet. For the moment the market will be positive as the vaccine production ramps up. The issue for the market right now is that Wall St is ignoring these other issues, and is only focused on the vaccine, and assuming the Jan 5 result is Republican. Don’t be follower.  Keep your eye on all these other problems, and be ready to react even if Wall St says all is wonderful. They are almost always late to  recognize reality, as they were in 2008, when several of us were already long out of the market because it was obvious to us that the crash was inevitable as early as spring of 2007. Pay attention to what is really going on in the world, and make your own analysis and decisions.  
 
If you own some shares in the latest hot IPOs you are best to get out now. Snowflake is valued at 200 times revenue and more than Goldman, and twice the value of Pfizer.  Door Dash is valued the same as GM, and Airbnb is $83 billion, which is more than Fed EX. And Marriott. Newly public tech IPOs are now valued at an average of 24 times REVENUE. The average for Nasdaq stocks is 4.3x. No matter how good these tiny companies are, they can’t grow that fast. All these young CEOs are not geniuses like Bezos or Musk. This is nuts. These stocks will fall back to reality one of these days, and it will be ugly. Don’t be a pig if you happen to have a profit in any of these stocks.
 
You will sometimes hear Blackrock demanding some very liberal things of companies as the largest investor in Wall ST.  Just be aware Larry Fink wanted to be Treasury Secy, and failing that, he wants to be very influential in the Biden White House. So what you hear out of Blackrock is Fink pushing his own personal  political agenda. That is your money he is likely managing on one way or the other through ETF’s or proxy fights or some other way. 
 
Brexit was due to die, but at the last moment they decided to keep talking. Neither side wants to bear the brunt politically and economically if there is no deal at all. The issues are real, so coming to an agreement is very hard and still  not certain. They are as bad as Congress-no compromise. We will see who blinks.  It may well be the EU, but we don’t know yet.   Keep your eye on this situation as it will impact markets.
 
CA is finally about to see the reckoning for its radical policies. The tax paying base is fleeing. Until the virus, the belief was nobody wanted to leave Silicon Valley because that was where the top jobs and hot companies were. The virus changed everything. Just in the past week or so, HP, Tesla, and now Oracle, all left for TX. We are not hearing in the media about the small companies leaving, but Denver, Boise, and other cites are now seeing a flood of techies arrive. With virtual communication, over the past year, it is now well established that a lot of tech types can work anywhere effectively, and at far less cost. With those companies showing the way, it will now be deemed OK to leave for Austin or Houston or other places. The tax savings and cost of living savings is huge, and the regulatory situation is vastly different in TX and FL.
 
AZ completely blew it with their new tax. Likely a result of too many Californians moving there. There is a high probability that the Miami Dade area will become Wall St south as Goldman has shown that even the big banks can operate some of their big departments from tax free, lower cost locations. Palm Beach is going to become the southern center of the universe for many in Wall St. Over the next five years we are likely to see a shift in where financial and tech businesses operate from, and the pandemic will have been the trigger that finally made it happen with remote work. Zoom will likely be overwhelmed by Microsoft or some other tech company passing them by with even better ways to do meetings and collaborate online. They now have the ability to do remote robotic surgery, so why not remote robotic lab work, to enhance collaboration on innovative technologies.
 
There will be a major boom in online services for collaboration, but there will always be a need for face to face work in some projects that require bouncing ideas back and forth, and for the need to watch body language, as in questioning witnesses at trial. It will all evolve over the next few years, but we are never going back to Silicon Valley being the only center of the tech universe, and NY being the only center of the capital markets. Silicon Valley is not going away, but over time a material piece of the tax paying base will be gone from CA. The radical politics of the Dem run cities and states, and the rapidly improving technology of communication, will combine to change the nature of working and locating.
 
By 2024, the politics of the nation will have changed. Republicans will again be ascendant. We already see it starting in the big shift in the House elections and state level legislatures, with so many Republicans taking seats the Dems thought they could win. Republicans flipped 13 seats, and several in CA. Watch to see if Pelosi will try to refuse to seat the Republican winners in Iowa and upstate NY. She is the one stopping people and small business from getting relief and the Dems will pay a big price for that in 22. The pendulum will swing back. The big question is, will universities change also. That is where things begin with radical ideology, and that is what really needs to change.
 
Elections in NYC in November will likely see a moderate Dem or even another Giuliani get elected. The next governor of CA is very possibly going to be a Republican as the virus closedowns extract severe pain and anger, and as the young techies flee to other states. We are now in the early stages of cultural, work, and life style changes, and voting pattern changes that are not yet fully predictable. This is now the technology driven second industrial revolution I have referred to in the past. Amazon and Google are doing what the government can’t do, training low level workers how to use computers and to make them employable and able to get ahead.
 
Instead of big companies committing to hire 1 million blacks, they should instead commit to train millions of minorities in technology and basic remedial English and math they never got in school, all for free. That would do vastly more for everyone than hiring and promoting people by skin color with no real training or skills. Once again we have big companies doing what they perceive as politically correct, and publicity good, as opposed to effective solutions of the real problems of bad educations due to teachers unions, wasteful government run training which has never really worked, and poor cultural backgrounds. Big corporations have become as bad as DC politicians.
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Deep State is Already Tossing Joe Biden Under the Bus



If you think that Fox News threw its viewers under the bus swiftly, check out the speed with which the Deep State is throwing Joe Biden to the wolves. Now that’s fast! For the one-millionth time, I believe down to my bones that there’s a less than one-percent chance that Joe Biden will ever set foot in the White House. But the Deep State is assuming that Biden will be president on January 20 – and they plan to boot him out of the White House by approximately February, so they can get to work with Kamala Harris “in charge.”

Joe Biden was only ever useful as a figurehead in 2020. He was the soft, dimwitted, doddering old fool that the Democrats could sell to the voters as a “moderate.” When people looked at Joe Biden, they wouldn’t see him as dangerous to the country.

The Democrats could pretend to kinda-sorta distance themselves from their shock troops in Antifa and Black Lives Matter that were destroying major cities over the summer. The media, of course, played along. They didn’t cover the major rioting, looting, murder, rape and statue-wrecking of BLM-Antifa. They didn’t let Kamala Harris talk on camera at all. They minimized Joe’s public appearances as well, but they talked about how competent he was.

It was all a sham, of course.

When the Hunter Biden laptop revelations and footsie videos appeared on the internet, the media circled the wagons and called it “Russian misinformation.” Twitter, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube banned anyone from talking about. No one was allowed to know that the Biden family had been selling Joe’s name in a global influence-peddling operation, or that the Bidens are owned by the Communist Party of China.

But now that Election Day has come and passed, so has the usefulness of Joe Biden. The same people who propped up a one-foot-in-the-grave candidate all year long are now ready to send that same candidate to the glue factory.

Once the votes had been cast, we suddenly learned that, oh, by the way, there’s been an ongoing two-year Department of Justice investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances. (Thanks for mentioning that, Bill Barr.) The IRS is investigating him as well. The allegations include money laundering, wire fraud, tax fraud and other possible crimes. “The Big Guy”  will likely be implicated in at least one of Hunter’s crimes.

The writing is on the wall. Joe Biden will cite exhaustion or COVID or whatever as the excuse in a few weeks, and he will resign. Kamala Harris will take his place, with somebody like Pete Buttigieg or Nancy Pelosi named as the new vice president. And then the “investigation” into the Biden family will quietly go away – maybe even with a pardon from “President” Harris.


 


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