Cannot Neuter Most Republican Politicians. Wasserman Fails Another Test! Cruz In, Sessions Out? Master Sergeant Martin. Trump and Republicans Going Down In Flames?

You can't do this to most Republican politicians because they lack testicles.
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Americans hunger for a rational health plan, N Korea hungers, Russia meddles in The Middle East, Europe is run over with refugees, Turkey and NATO are estranged, we need tax reform, Iran continues pursuing its nuclear ambitions and America needs an economy that expands at a higher rate However,  all Democrats and their obsessed friends in the mass media are concerned with is collusion.

Yet, there is no evidence any laws were broken so they continue their bitch/witch hunt in the frustrated hope they will uncover a hook on which to hang their blood thirsty coat even if the collusion is created by some "gotcha" act.  Many in the establishment, regardless of party affiliation, fear Trump because he has shined a light on their power, their manipulation and their swamp.  They want him out of their hair and will not let go until they have destroyed him.  Trump, on the other hand, in his own unorthodox , unconventional and boorish. to others. manner is good at accommodating their desires.

Where this all ends is anyone's guess but one thing is for sure, America is and will continue to suffer as long as this demoniac march toward impeachment continues.

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Wasserman fails the test - again. (See 1 below.)
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Cruz to replace Sessions?

There comes a time when Trump's public "jerking" Sessions around will wear thin and will boomerang and I believe we are there. (See 2 below.)
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Israel relents but not  Master Sargeant Martin. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Meanwhile, "A Better Deal" will prove a "Raw Deal" but never discount there are those who believe in a free lunch.

If Republicans continue to "jerk" the nation around as they are doing it will not matter what the Dem's message because they are going down like a flaming plane.(See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Feds arrest IT staffer for Wasserman Schultz trying to leave country.

A House IT staffer at the center of a congressional computer equipment scandal has been arrested by federal officials and charged with bank fraud, Fox News has learned.

Fox News is told officers and agents from the U.S. Capitol Police, the FBI and Customs and Border Protection were involved in the arrest of Imran Awan at Dulles International Airport. 

Awan, 37, of Virginia, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to one count of bank fraud during his arraignment in federal court in Washington, D.C. He was released but will have to wear a GPS monitor and abide by a curfew. 

Awan also was ordered to turn over all his passports. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Aug. 21. 

Law enforcements authorities for months have been looking into how Awan may have double-billed the House for equipment like computers, iPads, monitors, keyboards and routers. Several relatives of Awan worked for House Democrats and were fired months ago. Awan, however, was kept on staff by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., even though he was no longer allowed access to the House server network.

Wasserman Schultz, though, has now fired Awan. Spokesman David Damron said Tuesday in a statement:

"Mr. Awan previously served as a part-time employee but his services have been terminated. No charges, evidence or findings from the investigation have been formally shared with our office, so we cannot comment on them."

Authorities also have looked into IT workers putting sensitive House information on the “cloud” and potentially exposing it to outside sources.

Fox News is told that federal officials arrested Awan at Dulles airport in suburban Virginia as he was “trying to leave the country.” 

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ TO ALLOW LAPTOP SCAN AFTER STONEWALLING

The criminal complaint and affidavit said he had bought a ticket to fly Monday to Doha, Qatar, and then Lahore, Pakistan, with a return flight booked for early January. The affidavit specifically alleged he engaged in a scheme to defraud a Congressional Federal Credit Union. It did not appear to go in depth into the other matters investigators have been looking into. 

Meanwhile, the counsel for Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, recently began negotiating with Capitol Police for access to her laptop in the case. Until this point, she had resisted USCP efforts to look at her computer – even suggesting “consequences” for the agency if the computer was not promptly returned.

Fox News first reported last week that arrests were coming in the case.

Awan and his relatives worked for House Democrats for more than a decade, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. But Awan declared bankruptcy in 2012.

Awan is of Pakistani descent, and Democratic sources have argued the family’s ethnicity is a factor in the attention they’re receiving. 

Fox News' Chad Pergram and Jake Gibson contributed to this report. 

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2)Trump’s Sessions Abuse

His demand that his AG prosecute Clinton crosses a red line.

By The Editorial Board

Donald Trump won’t let even success intrude on his presidential ego, so naturally he couldn’t let the Senate’s health-care victory stand as the story of Tuesday. Instead he continued to demean Jeff Sessions, and in the process he is harming himself, alienating allies, and crossing dangerous legal and political lines.

For a week President Trump has waged an unseemly campaign against his own Attorney General, telling the New York Times he wished he’d never hired him, unleashing a tweet storm that has accused Mr. Sessions of being “beleaguered” and “weak.”

Mr. Trump is clearly frustrated that the Russia collusion story is engulfing his own family. But that frustration has now taken a darker turn. This humiliation campaign is clearly aimed at forcing a Sessions resignation. Any Cabinet appointee serves at a President’s pleasure, but the deeply troubling aspect of this exercise is Mr. Trump’s hardly veiled intention: the commencement of a criminal prosecution of Hillary Clinton by the Department of Justice and the firing of special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

On Tuesday morning Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Sessions “has taken a very weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes. ” This might play well with the red-meat crowd in Mr. Trump’s Twitterverse, but Sen. Lindsey Graham was explicit and correct in describing the legal line Mr. Trump had crossed.

“Prosecutorial decisions should be based on applying facts to the law without hint of political motivation,” Sen. Graham said. “To do otherwise is to run away from the long-standing American tradition of separating the law from politics regardless of party.” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis also came to Mr. Sessions’ defense, citing his “unwavering commitment to the rule of law,” and Sen. Richard Shelby called him “a man of integrity.”

We will put the problem more bluntly. Mr. Trump’s suggestion that his Attorney General prosecute his defeated opponent is the kind of crude political retribution one expects in Erdogan’s Turkey or Duterte’s Philippines.

Mr. Sessions had no way of knowing when he accepted the AG job that the Russia probe would become the firestorm it has, or that his belated memory of brief, public meetings with the Russian ambassador in 2016 would require his recusal from supervising the probe. He was right to step back once the facts were out, not the least to shelter the Trump Administration from any suspicion of a politicized investigation.

If Mr. Trump wants someone to blame for the existence of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he can pick up a mirror. That open-ended probe is the direct result of Mr. Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey months into his Russia investigation and then tweet that Mr. Comey should hope there are no Oval Office tapes of their meeting. That threat forced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel.

As a candidate, Mr. Trump thought he could say anything and get away with it, and most often he did. A sitting President is not a one-man show. He needs allies in politics and allies to govern. Mr. Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions makes clear that he will desert both at peril to his Presidency.

No matter how powerful the office of the Presidency, it needs department leaders to execute policy. If by firing or forcing out Jeff Sessions Mr. Trump makes clear that his highest priority is executing personal political desires or whims, he will invite resignations from his first-rate Cabinet and only political hacks will stand in to replace them. And forget about Senate confirmation of his next AG.

Even on the day that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was scraping together enough Republican votes to avoid a humiliating defeat for the President on health care, Mr. Trump was causing Senators to publicly align themselves with Mr. Sessions. Past some point of political erosion, Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda will become impossible to accomplish. Mr. Trump prides himself as a man above political convention, but there are some conventions he can’t ignore without destroying his Presidency.

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3) Why Israel Removed the Metal Detectors

The security services will do anything to prevent another intifada—including prop up Mahmoud Abbas.

 By Daniel Pipes

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party announced Saturday that the “campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun, and will not stop until a Palestinian victory and the release of the holy sites from Israeli occupation.” Fatah demanded the removal of metal detectors and other security devices from the entrance to the Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. A week earlier two Israeli policemen were killed by terrorists who had stashed their weapons inside the mosque.

The Fatah statement was illogical and hypocritical. Many mosques in Muslim-majority countries use the same security technology to protect worshipers, tourists and police. Yet Mr. Abbas managed to force the Israeli government to remove them. He did it by deflecting attention from the policemen’s murders and stoking fear of a religious conflagration with vast repercussions.

The Temple Mount crisis highlights with exceptional clarity three factors that explain why a steady 80% of Palestinians believe they can eliminate the Jewish state: Islamic doctrine, international succor and Israeli timidity.

 Islam carries with it the expectation that any land once under Muslim control is an endowment that must inevitably revert to Muslim rule. The idea has abiding power: think of Osama bin Laden’s dream of resurrecting Andalusia and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of regaining influence over the Balkans. Palestinians consistently report their belief that the state of Israel will collapse within a few decades.

A confrontation over the Temple Mount uniquely excites this expectation because it reaches far beyond the local population to arouse the passions of many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. The most prominent Muslim leaders and institutions overwhelmingly supported Fatah’s position on the Temple Mount security provisions. Islamic voices outside the pro-Palestinian consensus are rare. Palestinians rejoice in their role as the tip of an enormous spear.

Palestinians’ illusions of might enjoy considerable international support. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization routinely passes critical resolutions aimed at Israel. Columbia University houses something called the Center for Palestine Studies. Major corporations such as Google and news organizations like the British Broadcasting Corp. pretend there’s a country called Palestine. Foreign aid has created a Palestinian pseudo-economy that in 2016 enjoyed a phenomenal 4.1% growth rate.

In the Temple Mount crisis, the U.S. government, the Europeans and practically everyone else lined up to support the demand for the elimination of metal detectors, along with high-tech cameras or any other devices to prevent jihadi attacks. The Quartet on the Middle East welcomed “the assurances by the Prime Minister of Israel that the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem will be upheld and respected.” With this sort of near-unanimous support, Palestinians easily imagine themselves stronger than the Jewish state.

Israel’s security services timidly avoid taking steps that might upset the Palestinians. This soft approach results not from starry-eyed idealism but from an exceedingly negative view of Palestinians as unreformable troublemakers. Accordingly, the police, intelligence agencies and military agree to just about anything that ensures calm while rejecting any initiative to deprive the Palestinians of funds, punish them more severely or infringe on their many prerogatives.

The Israeli security establishment knows that the Palestinian Authority will continue to incite and sanction murder even as it seeks to delegitimize and isolate the state of Israel. But those security services emphatically prefer to live with such challenges than to punish Mr. Abbas, reduce his standing and risk another intifada. The collapse of the Palestinian Authority and a return to direct Israeli rule is the security services’ nightmare. Mr. Abbas knows this, and this week’s fiasco demonstrates that he’s not afraid to exploit Israeli fears to advance his dream of debasing and eventually eliminating the Jewish state.

Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.

3a) Special Forces Soldier arrested

BERKELEY, California (Reuters) U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant John Martin was arrested in connection with an altercation involving an estimated 100 anti-fascist protesters.

Aerial footage shows Master Sergeant Martin involved in a violent melee which ended in 53 anti-fascist protesters in the hospitals with 24 of them listed in critical condition.

The injured personnel were brought to Alta Bates Summit Medical Center Berkeley Campus.
According to Berkeley authorities, the incident started when Master Sergeant Martin was visiting the Berkeley campus to speak at a rally for wounded warriors. According to several eyewitnesses, as Master Sergeant Martin was exiting the vehicle he was immediately assaulted by an estimated 100 demonstrators who were there to protest the involvement of the United States military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Campus police were unable to quell the violent skirmish due to the amount of demonstrators assaulting the Special Forces Soldier. One campus officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was shocked by the number of people who were injured by Master Sergeant’s ability to defend himself. The officer was more involved with extracting the numerous injured demonstrators out of the destructive path of Master Sergeant Martin. “The City of Berkeley Police Department is a small to medium-size department,” he said “Our police department total is 176. I can tell you most of that 176 responded here today.”

According to the Berkeley campus police report 26 of the 100 estimated demonstrators were arrested. Their charges ranged from battery on a law enforcement officer to inciting a riot to resisting police with violence, according to their arrest reports. One was charged with marijuana possession. Master Sergeant Martin was part of the 26 arrested and was segregated at the Berkeley Police Department.

The Berkeley Progressive Coalition, which organized the protest, has scheduled a second demonstration beginning at noonSaturday outside the Superior Court of CA, County of Alameda – Berkeley Courthouse. There protesters will call for the release of those jailed Friday.

The Chief of the Berkeley Police Department spoke to reporters and stated Master Sergeant Martin will not be charged with any offenses related to today’s incident. He states, “Master Sergeant Martin was simply defending himself against a group of demonstrators who thought he was an easy target.” As other news agencies pressed and asked the Chief of Police if he would consider, and classify Master Sergeant Martin’s Special Forces training as the use of “deadly force?” The Chief eloquently replied, “We have high hopes that Master Sergeant Martin would consider our proposition of being the lead hand-to-hand instructor for our police department when he retires next year.”

Master Sergeant Martin was observed leaving the police station from a side entrance in an unmarked police car and was taken out the back gate of the police department.

The Department of the Army Special Forces spokesman from the Pentagon, LTC Richard Cabeza, said they were looking into the incident as a teaching point to other Special Forces Soldiers on how to defend themselves in similar situations and he will be consider for a soldiers medal due to being in harms way and potentially saving the lives of several demonstrators from getting killed by his own hands.

Snowflakes .........be careful you could melt.

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4)‘A Better Deal,’ or Just a Better Spiel?

Democrats have unveiled their 2018 agenda, and it suggests they understand why they lost to Trump.

By Jason L. Riley

Have Democrats finally come to grips with why they lost the presidential election? On Monday party leaders traveled to a rural Virginia county that Donald Trump won by 20 points. There they unveiled their 2018 campaign platform, called “A Better Deal.” The plan keeps in mind both kinds of Democratic candidates—blue-state progressives and red-state moderates. It includes a $15 minimum wage, a proposal to lower prescription-drug costs, new child-care support and tougher regulation of Wall Street.

One of the document’s authors, Rep. Cheri Bustos, is among the dozen Democrats who won a congressional district last fall that went for Mr. Trump. Ms. Bustos, who represents working-class northwestern Illinois, is precisely the type of Democrat party leaders ought to be listening to, and bully for them if they’re taking her counsel.

“In the last two elections, Democrats, including in the Senate, failed to articulate a strong, bold economic program for the middle class and those working hard to get there,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in an op-ed announcing the new agenda. “We also failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special interests. We will not repeat the same mistake.” This is a long way from blaming Hillary Clinton’s loss on those deplorables.

Still, not everyone on the left wants to focus on winning back the voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who backed Barack Obama but rejected Mrs. Clinton. Some would rather try to rebuild the twice-successful Obama coalition of young voters, minorities and socially liberal whites. The mathematical reality is that Democrats will probably have to do a little bit of both.

Those white voters who switched from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump are simply too numerous to write off. Yes, Democrats could win the popular vote without them, but maybe not the Electoral College. Therefore, the party needs a message that resonates with its base but also with voters who are turned off by the overt racial and ethnic appeals Democrats have long relied on.

Whether “A Better Deal” will do the trick may be up to President Trump. His low job-approval numbers don’t much faze him. He has done little to broaden his appeal, perhaps because he isn’t on the ballot next year. His base seems to care more about his in-your-face style than concrete legislative accomplishments. The president ought to understand, however, that some of his support is quite soft and has already started to erode. Republican and independent voters who reluctantly backed Mr. Trump have lost confidence in his ability to address their concerns.

His approval rating among white college-educated women has fallen to 31% from 44% since the election, according to Washington Post/ABC News polls. Fifty-nine percent of these voters would now prefer a Democratic Congress, compared with 35% who favor the GOP. Independent voters who initially were “somewhat approving” of Mr. Trump are increasingly “somewhat disapproving.” The stadium rallies the president holds don’t seem to be doing it for them, and they may swing back toward a Democratic Party that appears eager to pursue them.

The president’s unpopularity is affecting his ability to control the Republican caucus and push his agenda in Congress. Mr. Trump can earn loyalty from lawmakers and officials in his administration by demonstrating it himself. If he wants to change the subject to tax reform from Russia investigations and internecine strife in the West Wing, maybe he should stop sounding off to New York Times editors about matters best handled out of public view.

Even if the president’s job-approval numbers don’t concern him, they most definitely concern Republicans up for election next year. Lawmakers like to run on accomplishments, and so far this Congress doesn’t have many. Now that voters have handed the GOP control of the Oval Office and both the House and Senate, the party is out of excuses.

It’s progress if Democratic leaders have accepted why they really lost last year. But the party still needs to spend the next 15 months figuring out how to win again. Demonizing Mr. Trump didn’t work last time. Reaching out to his voters instead of scoffing at them might be a better tactic. If Mr. Trump and Republicans want to hang on to their majorities, they’ll have to show voters that they can govern.

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