“A single, ominous question now hangs over the White House: What could possibly cause President Trump to put the interests of Russia over those of the United States?” Senator Schumer insinuated in 2018.
Why is Schumer putting Russia’s interests ahead of those of the United States by blocking Nord Stream 2 sanctions on Putin’s pet pipeline into Europe?
Schumer, along with a number of other top Democrats, is a beneficiary of campaign contributions from top Democrat fundraiser Vincent Roberti whose lobbying firm was paid over $8.5 million by Nord Stream 2 which is owned by Putin's state-run Gazprom energy monopoly.
Roberti, a former Dem politician, has maxed out his donations to Schumer and to Rep. Eric Swalwell, who may have been cheating on Fang Fang with Vladimir, and threw in a generous $171,000 to the DCCC, as part of the over $545,000 donated to the Democrat political machine.
The top Dem bundler is reportedly lobbying on “issues related to the U.S. position toward the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, including potential financial sanctions affecting the project.”
Suddenly, Schumer, who was accusing the GOP and Trump of being in bed with Putin, and demanding that they vote on sanctions, was refusing to hold a floor vote on Russia sanctions.
“Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump,” Schumer had smeared back then. What damaging info does Putin have on Chuck?
President Trump, at the time, had urged that, “we should start an immediate investigation” into Schumer’s ties with Russia, and described him as a “total hypocrite”. That is an understatement.
Three years ago, Schumer was clamoring that putting off sanctions on Russia, “is an extreme dereliction of duty by President Trump, who seems more intent on undermining the rule of law of this country than standing up to Putin.” That describes Schumer in a nutshell.
But not just Schumer.
“With him, all roads lead to Putin,” Pelosi had ranted. “I don't know what the Russians have on the president, politically, personally, or financially.”
Roberti plowed $46,100 into Pelosi's Victory Fund. He also appears to have maxed out his contributions to the House Majority Leader and gave $5,000 to her PAC to the Future.
That’s not too shocking since Pelosi toasted Roberti and his wife at their wedding.
“Trump denial of Russian collusion rotten at core and doomed to unravel,” Senator Richard Blumenthal had tweeted. “Expect more serious convictions and indictments early in 2018 as the Special Counsel climbs the ladder of criminal culpability.”
The serious convictions and indictments, along with the criminal culpability, unraveled.
Meanwhile Roberti maxed out his donations to Blumenthal.
"Yet another reason to call for an independent prosecutor into the #TrumpRussia ties," Senator Catherine Cortez Masto tweeted after having accused President Trump of endangering national security.
Roberti also maxed out his contributions to Masto.
Senator Patty Murray had called for "a special prosecutor to examine the Trump campaign's ties to Russia".
Murray, like Schumer and Mastro, got the maximum amount from the Nord Stream 2 lobbyist, along with Senator Maggie Hassan, who had also demanded a special prosecutor for Trump.
Senator Cory Booker alleged that President Trump had "betrayed" his role and that he was "weak and submissive" to Putin.
The New Jersey hack, who always has one hand out, got a cool grand from Roberti.
But the real lobbying effort to stop the Nord Stream 2 sanctions is coming out of the Biden White House with top associates of the notoriously corrupt politician pushing Senate Dems to let Putin have his pipeline. And that’s after Biden shut down the Keystone XL pipeline for America.
Biden falsely claimed that waiving sanctions on Putin's pipeline was in “U.S. national interests."
Roberti is a longtime Biden pal who boasts of having advised him on his 2008 presidential bid and reportedly flew him out to his hometown during the campaign.
Another Biden donor and lobbyist working for the foreign companies that partnered on Nord Stream 2 signed a check to Biden’s victory fund that Democrats refused to return until they were shamed into doing so by the New York Post.
“Where are the Republicans who know in their heart the president is giving away the store to Vladimir Putin?” Schumer had demanded.
Where are the Democrats who know Biden is giving away the store? Cashing their checks.
Secretary of State Blinken claimed that refusing to sanction Putin's pipeline would “rebuild relationships with our allies and partners in Europe.” Had a Trump administration cabinet member said something like that, we'd already be in the middle of three investigations, one by the FBI, another by the CIA, and a third by Rep. Adam Schiff's poolboy, but no one cares now.
After years in which Schumer could talk about nothing so much as Putin, he hardly has anything to say about the Russian ruler over the past year. That’s understandable considering that Biden joined Putin’s phony arms pact when President Trump wouldn’t do it, and refused to sanction Nord Stream 2. If Schumer has anything to say about Putin now, it’s, “Da, Comrade.”
There’s no more talk of special prosecutors and no suggestions that Putin is rigging elections. Not when a lobbyist for a Swiss company owned by the Putin regime is signing the checks.
There are no more of Schumer’s “ominous questions” when the answers are all too clear.
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What next?
As Russia gears up to invade Ukraine, the West faces a choice
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
ALONG RUSSIA'S border with Ukraine, a massive military buildup is underway. Russian cyberattackers are targeting Ukrainian government agencies and utilities. A manifesto published by Vladimir Putin denies Ukraine's right to sovereignty. Moscow is accusing American contractors of arming Ukrainian forces with chemical weapons. A "draft treaty" issued by the Kremlin demands that Ukraine be permanently excluded from joining the NATO alliance — or "our response will be military."
The writing is on the wall: Putin is planning to invade Ukraine.
Having paid no serious penalty for forcibly annexing Crimea in 2014, for seizing swaths of Georgia, or for deploying Russian troops to occupy a "breakaway" region of Moldova, Putin is poised to conquer eastern Ukraine and restore it to Russian domination. The most important of the captive republics to declare its independence when the Soviet Union broke up 30 years ago, Ukraine would be dragged back into Moscow's "sphere of influence." The country's transition from authoritarian Soviet satrapy to Western-oriented democracy would be at an end. The NATO membership favored by a large majority of Ukrainians would be permanently off the table. And a significant piece of the West's strategic and moral victory in the Cold War — a victory Putin has described as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century" — would be undone.
In Washington, rhetorical support for Ukraine has been admirably bipartisan and unreserved. Will strong words be matched by equally strong action in the event of a Russian attack? That's much less clear.
President Biden says he warned Putin during a two-hour conversation on Dec. 7 that a Russian invasion would trigger economic sanctions "like none he's ever seen" and that he would face much stiffer retaliation than when he seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. "Things we did not do in 2014," Biden told Putin, according to national security advisor Jake Sullivan, "we are prepared to do now." Presumably that includes equipping Ukraine with the lethal military equipment that President Obama balked at sending seven years ago, such as Stinger surface-to-air missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, and upgraded artillery munitions. But Biden ruled out any deployment of US combat troops on the grounds that Ukraine is not a full-fledged NATO ally.
In a speech to military commanders last week, Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia is an endangered victim, which must defend itself from an aggressive and threatening NATO alliance.
In the classic manner of belligerent despots bent on attacking a weaker neighbor, Putin claims that Russia is the victim and that it has no choice but to defend itself from the ominous aggressiveness of NATO and the United States.
"We are deeply concerned by the buildup of US and NATO armed forces on our borders and by exercises, including unplanned military drills," he said in a speech to Russian military commanders on Tuesday. "We have nowhere further to retreat. Do they really think we'll sit idly as they create threats against us?" Like Adolf Hitler's accusation in 1939 that Poland posed a mortal threat to Germany, Putin's charge flips the truth on its head to justify his own revanchist hostility.
"Putin's list of completely fabricated threats here is truly striking . . . and scary," tweeted Michael McFaul, who served as US ambassador to Moscow during the Obama administration. "If he's trying to scare us by acting crazy, he's succeeding w/ me."
For years, Putin and his apologists have railed against NATO's post-Cold War enlargement, repeatedly portraying it as a danger to Russia's national security and proof of the West's bad faith. This has always been gaslighting. NATO has never menaced Russia. On the contrary: It was the threat of Russia's aggression that led most of its former unwilling satellites to seek the protection of NATO membership.
"After decades of Soviet domination, we are all afraid of Russia," said Lech Walesa, Poland's democratic hero and Nobel peace laureate, in 1993. "If Russia again adopts an aggressive foreign policy, this aggression will be directed against Ukraine and Poland." The Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — had equal reason for anxiety. They had been invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 and then abused by Moscow for the next 49 years. It was perfectly reasonable for them to fear what Russia might attempt in the future and to seek shelter under NATO's mutual-defense umbrella.
As Russia readies an assault on Ukraine, the United States and its allies must choose now between appeasement and deterrence. The temptation will be to try to mollify Putin by giving him half a loaf — by agreeing to blackball the former Soviet republics from NATO membership, perhaps, or by tacitly accepting Russian hegemony in eastern Ukraine.
But appeasement will not satisfy Putin's appetite for conquest. "Moscow has never signaled limits to its ambitions," writes Nigel Gould-Davies, a British diplomat and senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. "Russia has at no point suggested that a settlement over Ukraine would restore relations with the West. . . . All evidence suggests that complicity in compromising Ukraine's sovereignty would not mollify Russia but embolden it."
The stakes in Ukraine involve more than territory. Thirty years after the Cold War's end, Russia continues to reject the right of small nations to shape their own destiny, free from intimidation by big powers. Putin, who cut his teeth in the KGB, does not acknowledge that Russia's neighbors are entitled to enter into alliances without Moscow's approval or to pursue their own peaceful interests even if they are at odds with the Kremlin's preferences.
America and its allies made no effort to thwart Putin's rapaciousness in Crimea seven years ago. They must do so this time. Especially after the Afghanistan debacle, it is more urgent than ever for the free world to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy, and to force Russia's dictator to back down. If Putin gets his way yet again, it will be only a matter of time before a fresh victim is in his crosshairs.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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The White House is vindictive, tone deaf and totally incompetent:
While White House and Media Attack Manchin, Back Home He's Receiving PraiseBy Katie Pavlich
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The Biden Presidency: A Horrible Accident of History
By Larry O'Connor
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The U.N is a bloated, expensive and worthless organization and serves little purpose expect to spread hate. We would move it to China and make a parking lot that collects revenue and free up parking spaces and police protection.
The U.N.’s Israel Libel Machine Expands
Turtle Bay creates a permanent commission to attack the Jewish State.
By The Editorial Board
In 2021 the Israeli electorate traded former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative government for a centrist coalition backed by Arab parliamentarians. But the relentless assault against the Jewish State by the United Nations will continue in 2022 and beyond. Last week the General Assembly signed off on a multimillion dollar sinecure for a permanent “Commission of Inquiry” into its most hated member.
The U.N.’s Human Rights Council resolved in May to “investigate violations of international humanitarian law” in the wake of the 11-day Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. The conscientious proponent of the resolution was Pakistan—last seen supporting the Taliban’s Afghanistan takeover—with human-rights champions China and Cuba also voting yes.
The cause of the May conflict was a rocket barrage on Israel by the Iran-backed terrorist groups Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip, and Islamic Jihad. The pretext was an ongoing court battle between Jews and Palestinians over property in an East Jerusalem neighborhood. Because of the success of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defenses, alarms and widespread bomb shelters, only 13 Israelis were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught of more than 4,000 rockets.
About 260 Palestinians were killed as Israel’s air force tried to disable terrorist attack sites packed into civilian areas in Gaza. Israel has said 225 of those killed were militants and some of the remainder were killed by Hamas rockets that fell short of Israel. The U.N. has estimated that half or fewer of the Palestinians killed in the conflict were militants.
Israel’s defense of its civilians was lawful, targeted and restrained, but the U.N. wants to use the war as a pretext to indict Israel for “crimes,” real or imagined. The commission staff, led by figures with records of anti-Israel rhetoric, are charged with “investigating all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (meaning causes excluding Hamas terrorism) and delivering biannual U.N. reports indefinitely into the future.
Israel is already an irrational fixation of the U.N., which issued 17 resolutions condemning it in 2020. But the funding stream approved at the General Assembly Thursday further institutionalizes the anti-Israel libel machine. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs notes that the new commission will have 24 permanent staff, compared to 20 permanent staff for the Human Rights Council branch covering all of Asia. With an annual budget greater than $5 million, it will fund “790 days of travel for experts and staff every year from 2022 on.”
The commission has issued a public “call for submissions” and will recommend “criminal and command responsibility” for anything Israeli officials have ever done or may do in the future—an extraordinary attack on the sovereignty of a democratic member state.
As international order frays, the U.N. is focused on enlarging impotent bureaucracies and encouraging malevolent ideological campaigns. This will inflame Israeli opinion and do nothing to solve the conflict. The Biden Administration says it will oppose the new commission, but it ought to use it as a reason to exit the Human Rights Council and stop funding it.
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What a total jerk! No wonder so many black kids are more likely to be raised without any sense of right and wrong and are more into killing rather than loving each other.
Sorry, Hannah-Jones: Parents DO deserve a say in what their kids are taught
Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the historically suspect 1619 Project, says parents shouldn't have a say in what their kids are taught. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
The author of The New York Times’ divisive, anti-American “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, admitted Sunday she’s “not a professional educator.” Meanwhile, expert historians have challenged the accuracy of her work. Given all that, why on Earth is the 1619 Project becoming part of the curriculum in many schools across the nation?
The Times scribe claims decisions about what to teach kids in school should be left to teachers, who — unlike her and everyday parents — have “expertise in the subject area.” The question of whether to include moms and dads in such decisions has become a flash point in school districts where many have complained about critical race theory. When Virginia Democrat Terry McAuliffe similarly argued that parents should defer to teachers, parents exploded, and it contributed to his loss in his state’s race for governor last month.
But it’s obvious why Hannah-Jones wants to empower school officials over parents: Many of them are progressives like her, have embraced her 1619 nonsense and seek to indoctrinate kids with these lightning-rod ideas — whether parents approve or not.
Again, professional historians on both the left and the right have found fault with the project. For instance, she claims the American Revolution was primarily fought to protect slavery — which a host of experts says is bunk. Do the teachers and administrators who embrace it have more “expertise” than them? And consider: If teachers didn’t back Hannah-Jones, would she defer to their “expertise” then? Ha!
Fact is, parents should always be given a say in their kids’ education; they’re the ones, after all, ultimately responsible for their kids’ futures. And many (rightly) abhor the idea of having their kids taught the divisive, fact-challenged notions of Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project, which claims America was founded on slavery, and critical race theory, which splits Americans into victims and oppressors based merely on their race.
The Times writer and her paper are free, of course, to publish whatever idiocy they want. But Americans are also free to reject it. And fortunately, they seem to be doing just that.
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Biden never was a star now he is just fading flesh:
Sen. Biden’s Shrinking Presidency
Thirty-six years in the upper chamber left its mark on the man now in the Oval Office.
By William McGurn
When Politico’s Tim Alberta asked Joe Biden during a December 2019 Democratic debate what the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator would bring to the presidency, Mr. Biden went with his top selling point: experience. Experience, he said, gave him the chops he needed to revive an ailing economy and restore America’s global leadership.
“I have more experience in doing that than anybody on this stage,” he declared. When Mr. Alberta followed up by noting that he’d be 82 at the end of his first term—“the oldest president in American history”—Mr. Biden was ready for that too.
“More like Winston Churchill. ”
One year in, it’s safe to say that of all the Biden comparisons that come to mind, Churchill isn’t one. From the president’s humiliating exit from Afghanistan and his failure to make good on his promise to shut Covid down to inflation and his inability to get his signature domestic legislation through a Senate his own party controls, Mr. Biden’s experience is proving woefully inadequate.
The increasing allusions to Jimmy Carter, a metaphor for political haplessness, suggest more and more Americans are concluding Mr. Biden isn’t up to the job. Most people elected president (unlike Donald Trump ) don’t get there without at least some political experience. But Mr. Biden’s presidency reminds us that not all experience is equal, and if his experience isn’t working, maybe it’s because so much of it was in the Senate.
Senators, unlike governors, aren’t executives. They’re legislators, who work with a different skill set.
In the clubby Senate, Mr. Biden was known as an affable colleague willing to work with Republicans to get a deal done. This might have been the one area where his experience could have been a plus, especially with a 50-50 Senate and a tiny Democratic majority in the House. But Mr. Biden oddly decided he didn’t need Republicans. One result was that the progressive fringes ended up driving his agenda.
As president, when Mr. Biden dozes off, loses his place, mispronounces some foreign name, or drones on with long, boring stories, it provokes speculation about his mental capacity. In the Senate, all these things make you one of the boys. Or girls, as in the case of 88-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has had to fight off Democratic whispers that she’s too old for the job.
The good news for a senator is that even someone with questionable mental facilities can mostly get by so long as he (or she) can be wheeled out for a vote when needed. The president, by contrast, is constantly in the public eye. Yet instead of embracing the leadership the presidential pulpit affords, Mr. Biden appears content to leave the fate of his agenda to be worked out in the back rooms of Congress.
The other big difference between senators and presidents has to do with achievements. Because legislatures are collective, senators face a double whammy. On the one hand, they have a hard time receiving full credit even for things they’ve pushed through; on the other hand, every contentious vote can be turned into a powerful attack ad by an opponent.
Over Mr. Biden’s long career he has flip-flopped on a variety of public policies from the Iraq war and the Senate filibuster to federal funding for abortion and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which he wrote but which is today blamed for the mass incarceration of African-American men. Mr. Biden’s ability to, ahem, rise above principle helps explain why he got along so well in the Senate. But the inability of even his closest allies to identify a principle Mr. Biden has stood for consistently over his nearly half-century in politics is also why he is having such difficulty leading his own party.
It’s a problem not limited to Mr. Biden. Bob Dole and John McCain were each forceful Senate figures in their day. But each also had a difficult time as presidential candidates articulating a clear vision of what they stood for. In his 1996 run for the White House, Dole summed up this identity crisis when he told a Republican audience, “I’ll be anything you want me to be.”
What they had in common was the sense that they were running for president simply because it was their turn. Dole was 73 when he became the Republican nominee, and McCain was 72 when he did 12 years later. In 2020 Mr. Biden was 77. Like the campaigns of his GOP predecessors, Mr. Biden’s run carried the whiff of an elder trying to collect the gold watch he thought he deserved.
At a press conference a few days before Christmas, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki joked that the president “always thinks of himself as a senator” when a reporter mistakenly referred to “Senator Biden.” She meant it as a joke. Then again, maybe not.
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We won't really know til it happens:
And:
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Islamist's just love to hate:
Report: CAIR to be Named Among Wiesenthal Center's Top Global Anti-Semites
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