Monday, September 23, 2019

I Am An Evil Person, Government By Hooligans and The Young and The Oval Office Run By A Switchboard. Iran Holds The Key.


Today I watched a bunch of hooligans shut down D.C because they are concerned about climate change.

The climate change issue has no definitively worthy and  conclusive scientific evidence to support it worthy of shutting down a city or spending billions of dollars while other nations watch us raise the cost of everything, as we assume more debt etc. and become even more non-competitive.

Does anyone believe air does not move so when China fouls their air it will remain above China and when we clean our air it will remain only above America? I was led to believe air moves.

Climate change concerns are one more issue our radical chaos friends perpetuate to divide us as a nation so we will collapse from within and most assuredly not from weather changes.

I have no doubt, man and cows have some impact on climate and air conditions but there is yet to be enough scientific evidence to justify destroying our economy, causing vast unemployment and wrecking our nation on expenditures that do not justify their cost. But then I am an evil person.

Using children to make their case is clever because who can argue with children who charge anyone who disagrees with their petulant nonsense are evil? (See 1 and 1a below.)

What adults have done to this child borders on child abuse.

Newton Minnow once described TV as creating a vast wasteland. What TV does is elevates the likes of Al Sharpton (Who appeared on Tucker Carlson this evening) to become an expert on climate change as being a civil rights issue.  I guess Al believes black people breathe in more fouled  black  air than white people.

So where are we :

a) Less illegal immigration because walls are being built and Mexico has devoted 26,000 troops to responding to Trump's threats.  No Mexico is not going to pay for our walls but they are paying for their troops.

b) Some of our great cities have become toilet bowls for the homeless who are spreading diseases that we found cures for centuries ago.

c) Democrats have found another reason to impeach Trump because he allegedly threatened the leader of Ukraine and withheld funds due them.  Of course the whistle blower was not on the phone nor did he actually hear the call but Schiff enjoys making trouble even though he has proven to be a dangerous lying fool along with his sidekick, Rep. Nadler. (See 2 and 2a below.)

d) Democrat candidates continue to come up with costly ideas of how to turn America into Venezuela and one candidate, who thinks of himself as Spartacus,  is now begging for money so he can continue to stay viable in order to  attack Trump. Does someone have a tin cup?

e) Iran's leaders have decided America's allies would rather do business with Iran than stop them from attacking sovereign nations, disrupting world shipping and  destroying the world's oil fields.
That said, at least England, France and Germany have joined America to some degree.
"LOL: Europe ‘Comes Out’ Against Iran for Attack on SaudisClarion's satirical account of what led up to the joint statement Read and Share "

Consequently, Trump may not be able to enjoy the flexibility of considering a military response. (See 3 below.)

f) While all of the above is happening The Democrat Party is tearing itself apart because Ms.Pelosi cannot control 4 "bitches" she promoted to prominent positions thereby allowing them platforms they do not deserve because they did nothing to earn them.

g) I did not hear Trump's speech before the UN but those that did said it was his best ever.  They specifically stated he did not repeat himself nor use personal references or words and defined clearly what is meant by Make America Great Again. 

h) I can cite other bizarre happenings emanating from the mass media midgets but I assume you have gotten my drift.
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Dick
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1)




We Should Not Set Global Policy Based on a 16 Year Old With a Developmental Disorder


Setting world policy based on the histrionics of a sixteen year old with developmental disabilities would be terrible policy.What is worse is that this child will one day, we hope, reach the decade where she is convinced life will have ended and will see that there is so much for which she should be happy and hopeful. She claims people are robbing her of her future, but people have robbed her of her present.We should hope that someone can calm and comfort her and make her realize that the doom and gloom into which she has been indoctrinated is a pessimistic ideology not based in reality. We should hope that when the adults around her stop finding her useful that she will still find good use and value in the world.But we should absolutely not set global policy based on the demands of a fearful and angry child who has been fed a bunch of lies and half-truths. We should absolutely not give into the ideas of authoritarianism to impose dark age environmental policies on western society.

1a)In his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle), written in the 1920s, Adolf Hitler said, “Whoever has the youth has the future.” Even before they came to power in 1933, Nazi Party leaders had begun to organize groups that would train young people according to Nazi principles. .....
Climate Change Protest NO PLACE for Kids ! Express Readers Tell Students Go Back to School
CLIMATE Change activists have been taken to task for encouraging tens of thousands of children to skip school and be part of a mass protest, following an Express.co.uk poll.
By Carly Read 

And:

Dennis Prager: If You Can't Sell Your Hysteria to Adults, Try Kids

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2)

Trump, Ukraine and yet another liberal rush to cry ‘impeachment’



The Democrats’ impeachment push against President Trump, over his dealings with the Ukrainian government, is one more trip down the “collusion” rabbit hole, and it will prove as pointless as the original.
This time, Democrats and their media cheerleaders really think they have nailed Trump. They have reprised the hysterical tone of the Mueller era, with breathless reports about a whistleblower complaint concerning the president allegedly pressuring Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Finally, anti-Trumpers believe, the president has handed them the silver bullet with which they will vanquish the demon of 2016.
But liberals shouldn’t be surprised that the story doesn’t appear to have fueled a public outcry for impeachment. Nor should it. This seems similar to the many misleading and ultimately insubstantial reports about “collusion” with Russia, the Stormy Daniels kerfuffle or any of the half-baked scandals du jour that have popped up with regularity since his inauguration.
The Ukraine-Biden affair is just one more instance of Democrats trying to sell us on the false notion that Trump’s questionable judgment and style of governing are equivalent to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the Constitution ­requires for removing a president from ­office.
There’s no proof that either Biden or his son did anything illegal in Ukraine, even if there is the appearance of a conflict of interest. Having a family member of a high administration official, like Biden, who had direct dealings with the Ukrainian government on the board of a major energy company there showed bad judgment. The former vice president also successfully pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who now claims to have been investigating Hunter Biden’s firm.
By the same token, for Trump to ask the Ukrainian president to investigate this also seems wrong, especially if it was accompanied by an implicit threat of withholding the military aid that country needs to defend itself against Russian aggression. Trump denies the charge.
But despite all the huffing and puffing by Trump’s critics, it’s not clear what, if any, laws Trump broke by asking about Biden’s business. Nor does the whistleblower statute cover a president’s dealings with a foreign nation.
The Constitution gives presidents virtual carte blanche to conduct US foreign policy. That’s something that frustrated critics of President Barack Obama’s secret dealings with Iran that led to a scandalously weak nuclear deal.
As much as the Democratic-controlled House has the right to conduct oversight over the executive branch, demanding the transcripts of private conversations with foreign leaders would make it impossible for any future president to do his job. And for an intelligence official or operative to treat Trump’s talks with Ukraine as a potential violation of law seems, at best, an overreach. Here, too, there are echoes of the “collusion” hoax, with a politicized US security establishment actively working to undermine a duly elected chief executive.
Few in the media cared about the younger Biden using his access and family name to profit in China and Ukraine, especially when compared to the current obsession with treating the Trump family’s dealings abroad as patently criminal. If Democrats want to hold impeachment hearings about Trump’s conversations, they will only shine a brighter light on Hunter Biden’s unseemly activities at the same time the former vice president was throwing his weight around in Kiev.
Yet you don’t have to approve of the activities of the Bidens or Trump’s brazen effort to have the Ukrainians dig up the dirt to understand that discussion is being driven by partisanship on both sides — not concern for the law.
If Republicans are dismissing the Ukraine charge, it’s understandable. House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and his media echo chamber have no credibility left after the way they flogged misleading news stories about Russia based on leaks that never panned out.
Schiff’s only goal is to find something that will justify impeachment, even if there are no valid legal grounds to do so. This gambit is more than likely to prove yet another dead end that only further discredits liberal efforts.
The only valid way to get rid of Trump is at the ballot box in November 2020. The more energy the Democrats spend on trying to delegitimize the results of the last election, the better Trump’s chances of ­securing another four years in the Oval Office.
2a) Trump’s Ukraine Call

Do we really want a President’s private talks with world leaders exposed for all to hear?

President Donald Trump in Houston, Texas, September 22, 2019. Photo: saul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The story of Donald Trump ’s phone call to Ukraine’s new president is unfolding in the familiar if depressing Trump -era pattern. An accusation leaks from an unidentified intelligence source about the President’s July 25 call, and his political and media opponents immediately conclude he has betrayed America and deserves censure or impeachment. Mr. Trump says the conversation was “perfectly fine and routine.” The public is left to sort the truth from the partisan histrionics.

Mr. Trump acknowledges that he asked Ukraine’s new President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden as part of his effort to clean up corruption. More on Mr. Biden later, but Mr. Trump’s request showed bad judgment. He was trying to draw a foreign leader into the middle of American presidential politics, which can only lead to political trouble. We learned that from the Russia fiasco of 2016.

The request to Mr. Zelensky is worse if it came with a threat to cut off U.S. military aid. Mr. Trump and others say there was no quid pro quo request. But we know the Trump Administration delayed U.S. aid to Ukraine in early July for unexplained reasons. The U.S. released the aid later after bipartisan criticism of the delay. Mr. Zelensky surely understood the potential risk of not complying with Mr. Trump’s request even if Mr. Trump wasn’t explicit.

What we know of the call underscores Mr. Trump’s greatest flaw as President, which is his political narcissism. Every decision boils down to how it affects him or his re-election prospects. Other Presidents have made similar calculations, but Mr. Trump lacks the basic filter to know when he is crossing a line that creates trouble for himself or the country.

Yet in making sense of all this it’s impossible to ignore the excesses and double standards of Mr. Trump’s opponents. Like the Russia collusion claims, this one began with a charge from an unidentified source in the intelligence bureaucracy. He’s reported to be a “whistleblower,” but we know nothing about his role, his access or his motivation.

An inspector general has found the claim credible enough to require reporting to Congress’s intelligence committees. But the acting director of national intelligence disagrees after consulting with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. As we read the relevant whistleblower statute, section 3033(k), it doesn’t seem to apply to the President and probably not even to the substance of this accusation.

More troubling is that none of the whistleblower’s cheerleaders in the press and Congress seem to care about the precedent of making a President’s private calls with other world leaders open to public scrutiny. Imagine if this happened to JFK ’s calls amid the Cuban Missile Crisis or to Richard Nixon ’s during the Arab-Israeli war of 1973. We have reached a dangerous pass if intelligence officials feel they have open season to use whistleblower laws whenever they dislike a President or one of his policies.

Then there is the failure of Mr. Trump’s critics to appreciate that to millions of Americans this all looks like Russia redux. That melodrama started with intelligence accusations and dubious “unmasking” of Americans that we later learned came from Obama Administration officials. That doesn’t justify Mr. Trump’s request, but it does explain why Republicans aren’t joining the rush to judgment.

Little of the breathless reporting about Mr. Trump’s Ukraine call stops to note that Democrats and the Clinton campaign financed foreign accusations against Mr. Trump to defeat him in 2016. Those accusations, though uncorroborated, were used to justify wiretaps against at least one Trump campaign official, and to gin up a two-year special counsel investigation that severely damaged the Trump Presidency. All without finding evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

As for Mr. Biden, the excavation of Mr. Trump’s call means his interventions in Ukraine will also get a thorough vetting. As vice president, Mr. Biden threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees to a previous Ukraine government if a prosecutor investigating corruption wasn’t fired. The prosecutor was investigating, among other things, a Ukrainian natural gas company that hired Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, as a director and also retained Hunter’s law firm. The prosecutor was fired.

Joe Biden says his demand was in the U.S. national interest and had nothing to do with his son. That may be true, but it does appear to be the kind of a conflict of interest that Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of having all the time with less evidence.

All of this is likely to play out in the familiar Trump-era fashion, with Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff making claims that turn out to be exaggerated, the media resistance hyping impeachment, and Mr. Trump fighting back in tweets that call the whole thing a hoax. Without evidence of worse behavior by Mr. Trump, nothing much is likely to come of it.
Americans will have to add all this to their judgment in 2020 about whether Mr. Trump or his fanatical opponents are the bigger risk to American well-being.
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3)

Don’t Rule Out War With Iran

Pundits think Trump won’t fight. But as sanctions bite, Tehran could cross a line.

By Walter Russell Mead

Global View: A miscalculation by Iran could have far reaching consequences as the United States seeks to de-escalate conflict in the region. Image: AFP Photo / Iranian Presidency
There was a short-lived war scare following Iran’s Sept. 14 attack on Abqaiq, an important Saudi oil-production facility, and a nearby oil field. The scare faded as pundits concluded that underneath the chest-thumping, Donald Trump was more chicken than hawk—that for all his “cocked and loaded” bluster, he is ultimately willing to let Iran get away with mayhem in the Gulf and possibly even willing to cut a new deal with Tehran on its terms.

That’s a misreading of President Trump and his political base. Jacksonian America is certainly tired of “endless wars.” The president understands and shares that concern. America’s steady move toward energy independence also reduces public concern about the Middle East. But Jacksonian America is neither patient nor pacifist, and there are provocations that would transform Jacksonian opinion overnight. The widespread if erroneous belief that the USS Maine had been sunk by a Spanish mine in 1898 forced a reluctant President William McKinley into the Spanish-American War.

Iran’s recent provocations have not yet crossed the classic Jacksonian red lines. Iran has not attacked American troops, launched terror strikes against the American homeland, fired on American-flagged vessels, interfered with the oil trade enough to cause a price shock in the U.S., made such progress on its nuclear program that an Iranian bomb is imminent, or invaded the territory of a country the U.S. has promised to defend.

Yet Tehran has been inching closer to these lines, and it may yet cross them. As the administration sees it, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told me in a recent interview, the regime is trapped. The last major round of American sanctions, which took effect in May, essentially cut off Iran from world oil markets. Now Tehran faces excruciating trade-offs: how much money does it spend on Bashar Assad in Syria, on Hezbollah in Lebanon, and on the Houthis in Yemen while millions of middle-class Iranians go broke?

The North Koreans have said that they will make their people eat grass for 50 years to preserve their nuclear program, but senior U.S. officials believe the Iranian regime can’t match that resolve. Tehran is frantically seeking an escape as the pain of sanctions intensifies. The Financial Times estimates its economy will contract 9.3% in 2019.

Iran’s actions since May—demanding money from the Europeans, restarting its nuclear program, attacking Gulf shipping, and inflicting massive damage on a major oil facility—all have aimed at forcing the U.S. to provide, or at least to allow others to provide, some relief to the flagging Iranian economy. That the American response to these provocations has mostly involved angry tweets has convinced some in Tehran—and Washington—that Mr. Trump will never fight.

This misses the broader American strategy. The U.S. isn’t bombing Iran, but neither is it yielding on sanctions. As administration insiders see things, the driving force shaping the confrontation is Iranian impotence rather than American vacillation.

Mr. Trump’s restraint so far is a sign of America’s wider geopolitical strength. Thanks to American fracking, Iran’s troublemaking in the Gulf hasn’t affected American motorists at the pump. As one insider put it to me, “The Permian Basin saved Tehran.”

If Tehran continues to escalate its provocations in the Middle East and beyond, it will deepen its international isolation. On Monday, France, Germany and the U.K. blamed Iran for the Saudi attack. Continuing escalation will sooner or later cross a red line that would lead Mr. Trump’s political base to support a strong military response. Alternatively, Iran can return to the negotiating table on terms favorable to the U.S. and agree to both tighten the nuclear accords and limit its regional ambitions.

It is absolutely true that the Trump administration doesn’t want war with Iran, and not only because wars are politically risky. But that consensus is unstable, and Iran could easily blunder into a kinetic confrontation as it continues to writhe under the sanctions—especially if it internalizes the mistaken belief that Mr. Trump’s patience has no limits.

Another incident on the scale of the Abqaiq attack might be impossible to ignore. Last Friday Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced the deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia. This is a political as well as a military measure. Like the troops in Berlin during the Cold War, those American forces will serve as a tripwire. If Iran launches an unprovoked attack against Americans who are conducting a necessary and lawful defensive mission, Washington’s calculus could change in a heartbeat.

The mix of military restraint and sanctions resolve has worked well for Washington so far. Even Iran hawks are happy with the impact the sanctions are having. But the chances of a military confrontation between Iran and the U.S. are rising, not falling. Strategic patience in Washington matched by strategic realism in Tehran is the world’s best hope for peace.
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