A Very Honest Picture Of The War In Ukraine

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness detailing the current status of the war in Ukraine. The article summarizes where we have been, where we are, and where we are probably going.

The article reports:

Aside from the rhetoric, there is a growing consensus among Western diplomats, military analysts, military officers, heads of state, and even much of the media about how to end the endless Ukrainian war.

A proposed peace will see a DMZ established somewhere along an adjusted 1,200-mile Ukraine-Russia border. Tough negotiations will adjudicate how far east toward its original borders Russian forces will be leveraged to backstep.

Publicly in the U.S. and covertly in Europe, all accept that a depleted Ukraine will not have the military strength to retake Crimea and the Donbas.

In 2014, both were absorbed by Russia during the Obama administration. Neither that administration nor any since has advocated a military effort to reclaim them.

Loudly, the U.S.—and again quietly Europe—concedes that Ukraine will not be in NATO—a confirmation that Russia will use to justify to its people its disastrous invasion, and even many Ukrainians will accept.

How will the West deter Putin from his inevitable agenda of reclaiming lost Soviet territory and Russian-speaking peoples? For now, his army is exhausted, its arsenals depleted, and its reputation shattered.

In the future, a commercial corridor, anchored by concessions to American and international mining concerns, will supposedly serve as a tripwire to deter Putin from attacking in-the-way noncombatant Americans.

The media spin on a ceasefire is predictable:

If Trump can coax even a ceasefire, the oddly bellicose left will still rail about “Munich” and Trump as “Putin’s puppet.”

But after perhaps 1.5 million total Ukrainian and Russian dead, wounded, sick, and missing, transatlantic leftists will quietly admit they never had any realistic plan to win by fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

And they certainly were not willing—despite what they claimed in their spasms of braggadocio—to send U.S., U.K., European, or NATO ground troops into Eastern Ukraine.

The article concludes:

So, Putin knows that India, China, and others who buy his oil will not if he reneges on his willingness for a ceasefire.

If and when peace comes, we can already foresee the misinformation that will follow: Trump deserves no credit. Zelenskyy remains the true hero. A now hollowed-out Russia was the real winner.

The only mystery?

Since when did the anti-war left prefer an endless and horrific war to a difficult, messy peace?

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is one of the best summaries of the situation I have read.

The Stories We Have Been Told

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at Front Page Magazine about the myths we have been told about Ukraine.

He reminds us of much of the history of Europe:

Fable one: Trump is appeasing Russia?

Who wiped out the Wagner group in Syria? Who sold offensive weapons to Ukraine first? Who warned Germany not to become dependent on the Russian Nord Stream II deal?

Who withdrew from an unfair missile deal with the Russians? Who cajoled and berated NATO members to meet their military investment promises made following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine?

Fable two: A trade war?

President Donald Trump is not wildly slapping tariffs on Europeans.

He is simply saying that 1945 is now 80 years past and that the asymmetrical tariffs that Europe imposes on U.S. imports should be corrected. The massive trade surpluses Europe accumulates each year should give way to fairer, more balanced trade.

Fable three: America is bullying Europe?

The U.S. does not actively interfere in European elections and politics.

In 2024, Europeans, especially the British Laborites, bragged about sending over campaign “volunteers” to work against Trump and, earlier, his conservative predecessors.

British subject Christopher Steele sought to sabotage an entire American 2016 election with a falsified “dossier.”

The Ukrainian ambassador in 2016 wrote an op-ed all but endorsing Hillary Clinton and trashing her opponent.

Fable four: Negotiating with Putin is selling out?

In the long history of Western diplomacy with mass-murdering tyrants, Putin doesn’t even rank among the worst. Just ask his former reset partners Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

FDR fueled mass-murdering “Uncle Joe” Stalin’s Red Army as a way to defeat Nazi Germany.

Richard Nixon flattered and cajoled the greatest mass murderer in history, Mao Zedong, to triangulate China against the Soviet Union.

Fable five: Europe is going to save Ukraine?

Europe rushed to congratulate and celebrate with Zelenskyy after his pre-planned White House blow-up. They are loudly announcing that a supposedly isolationist and appeasing U.S. — which has sent more aid to Ukraine than all nearby European nations combined — will now be supplanted by a “new” muscular and rearmed Europe.

We sincerely hope so.

The article concludes:

Aside from all the present posturing and mock-heroics, the only way to save Ukraine is for the U.S. president, Donald Trump, to reflect joint Ukrainian, American, and European interests in stopping the war, forcing Putin as far back eastward as possible where he started in 2022, and creating a credible deterrent along with a DMZ/industrial corridor tripwire to stop another 2008, 2014, and 2022 invasion.

Anything else is empty carnival barking.

Hopefully, the current negotiations will finally end the war.

About Those Nominees

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about President Trump’s cabinet nominees. He took a stroll down Memory Lane in case some of us have forgotten some of the actions taken by President Biden’s Cabinet members.

In writing about Kash Patel as FBI Director, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us:

But what will Patel not do as the new director?

He will not serially lie under oath to federal investigators as did interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a current Patel critic.

He will not forge an FBI court affidavit, as did convicted felon and agency lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

He will not claim amnesia 245 times under congressional oath to evade embarrassing admissions as did former Director James Comey.

He will not partner with a foreign national to collect dirt and subvert a presidential campaign as the FBI did with Christopher Steele in 2016.

He will not use the FBI to draft social media to suppress news unfavorable to a presidential candidate on the eve of an election.

He would not have suppressed FBI knowledge that Hunter Biden’s laptop was genuine—to allow the lie to spread that it was “Russian disinformation” on the eve of the 2020 election.

He will not raid the home of an ex-president with SWAT teams, surveil Catholics, monitor parents at school board meetings, or go after pro-life peaceful protestors.

Then Victor Davis Hanson talks about Pete Hegseth:

What will Hegseth likely not do?

Go AWOL without notifying the president of a serious medical procedure as did current Secretary Lloyd Austin?

Install race and gender criteria for promotion and mandate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training?

Insinuate falsely that cabals of white supremacists had infiltrated the military—only to alienate that entire demographic and thus ensure the Pentagon came up 40,000 recruits short?

Oversee the scramble from Kabul that saw $50 billion in U.S. military equipment abandoned to Taliban terrorists?

Watch passively as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental United States for a week?

Allow the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to promise his Chinese communist counterpart that the People’s Liberation Army would first be informed if the President of the United States was felt to issue a dangerous order?

Rotate into the Pentagon from a defense contractor boardship and then leave office to rotate back there to leverage procurement decisions?

Oversee the Pentagon’s serial flunking of fiscal audits?

Next, Robert Kennedy, Jr.:

But what will RFK also not do as HHS secretary?

Oversee his agencies circumventing U.S. law by transferring money to communist China to help it produce lethal gain-of-function viruses of the COVID-19 sort—in the manner of Dr. Fauci?

Organize scientists to go after critics of mandatory masking and defame them?

Give pharmaceutical companies near-lifetime exemptions from legal jeopardy for rushing into production mRNA vaccines not traditionally vetted and tested?

Leave office to monetize his HHS expertise and thus make millions from the pharmaceutical companies?

Please follow the link to the article–there is more!

The article concludes:

We are going to hear some outrageous things in the upcoming congressional confirmation hearings.

But one thing we will not hear about are the crimes, deceptions, and utter incompetence of prior and current government grandees.

The current crew, not their proposed Trump replacements, prompted the sick and tired American people to demand different people.

Voters want novel approaches to reform a government that they not only no longer trust but also now deeply fear.

True.

 

A Tale Of Two Administrations

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at America Greatness about the current presidential campaign. The records and beliefs of the two candidates are very different, but some of the talking points don’t reflect that.

The article reports:

Now Harris asserts that Trump is a “fascist,” a “dictator,” and “unfit” for office. But this new talking point will also not stop the Harris campaign’s hemorrhaging—and for a variety of reasons.

First, voters see the election as a conflict of two absolutely antithetical visions.

On the one hand, is the prior Trump 2017-20 concrete record: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran, and China, low inflation, low interest rates, lower crime, lower taxes, strong deterrent military—and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the woke/DEI agenda.

On the other hand, is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12-20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris’s earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular DEI/Woke agenda.

Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of their hard left-wing agendas—policies she has embraced for much of her adult life.

So suddenly, in the last 90 or so days, Harris has completely flipped and flopped.

Now she is for more of, not defunding, the police. She pivots for a secure border, not 20 million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about fossil fuel energy, not banning fracking, and for increasing, not cutting, defense.

The article reminds us:

Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party’s primary-winning nominee. They did not nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they did not anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life.

Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He does not seek unconstitutional means of destroying the Electoral College. He is not demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to obtain four partisan senate seats.

Third, as for Trump being “unfit” and lacking “decorum,” it depends on what were the Biden-Harris standards?

Having a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House “pride party?”

Biden’s reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a f—ing idiot” and “son of a b—ch?” Bragging about locking Trump up, while waging lawfare against him?

The article concludes:

The election will not be decided on these empty talking points or fake media-generated narratives.

Instead, only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?

If the voters are informed and the election is honest, President Trump wins.

The Consequences Of The Biden Administration’s Middle East Policy

The Biden administration’s Middle East policy is simply a continuation of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy–strengthen Iran and weaken Israel. President Obama may or may not have been an anti-Semite–I am not going there right now. The idea was that a strong Iran would add stability to the Middle East. It was a really dumb idea because Iran wants to control the Middle East, not make peace. The policy of both administrations has been a disaster and has resulted in increased terrorism and loss of life in both Israel and its enemies.

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about the situation in the Middle East.

The article notes:

Both the Harris-Walz presidential ticket and now lame-duck President Joe Biden keep insisting that they are Israel’s best friend.

A snarly Biden recently bragged at a contentious press conference, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think [Netanyahu] should remember that.”

Yet the thin-skinned and triggered Biden’s prickliness poorly hid—or perhaps revealed—the truth: this current administration knows that it is responsible for the current explosion of the Middle East and the particular dilemmas of Israel.

Biden further revealed his blame-gaming of the Israeli government when asked another loaded question about purported Netanyahu election interference, saying, “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know.”

Election interference?

Biden apparently forgot who just flew Ukrainian President Zelensky into swing state Pennsylvania, just as early and mail-in voting there began, to lobby for more aid even as he trashed candidates Trump and Vance to a left-wing magazine.

Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris refused to say whether the Netanyahu administration is even an ally of the United States.

The Biden administration (and candidate Kamala Harris) are trying to have it both ways–they want to seem to support Israel, but they don’t want to alienate the Muslim voting bloc.

The article concludes:

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: attack the Jewish state and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did in unison.

Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

The final irony?

Israel has concluded that Biden-Harris foolhardiness can be toxic—and endanger its very survival—and so will not agree to its own suicide.

Instead, Israel seeks to finish a multifaceted war it did not seek. And one of whose beneficiaries from Israeli blood and treasure will be the U.S. itself, given Israel is now systematically weakening America’s own existential enemies.

Israel is right to remove the terrorist threat that will not always be aimed only at Israel—it will eventually come our way.

The Role The Media Has Played For The Past Nine Years

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. Unfortunately, most of our mainstream media seems to have been stricken by the disease. Also unfortunate is the fact that because they have been stricken by the disease, they have done some serious damage to America.

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness detailing some of the escapades of the American press in the past nine years. It all began when Donald and Melania Trump came down the escalator.

Here are a few of the lies that have been told:

Citing the bogus “Steele dossier,” loser Hillary Clinton and other Democrat grandees claimed that the victorious Trump was an “illegitimate” president.

Almost immediately, the left and media then pushed for the appointment of special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He assembled a ‘dream team’ of partisan prosecutors to prove Trump-Russian collusion

…More hysteria followed when Trump was impeached in December 2019.

The left claimed he had pressured the Ukrainian government to look into the family of Joe Biden (then a potential 2020 election opponent) for its corruption with Ukrainian oligarchs—as a condition for releasing military aid designated to Kyiv.

Yet Hunter Biden was paid nearly $1 million a year by a Ukrainian energy company to enlist his father, Vice President Joe Biden, for quid pro quo services.

In turn, Joe Biden himself later bragged he had pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor, Victor Shokin—who happened to be looking too closely into the various shady schemes of the Biden family.

The deceptions and lies continued.

The article contains numerous examples of how the media lied to influence public opinion–one of the most egregious being the media and intelligence community’s lies about the Hunter Biden laptop. A lie that probably greatly impacted the results of the 2020 election.

The article concludes with a recent lie:

During the 2020 Democratic primaries, the general election, and throughout the first three years of the Biden administration, it was evident that Joe Biden was physically and mentally incapable of serving as president.

Yet his aides and the media all misled the American people. They insisted that Biden was vigorous and sharp.

Then suddenly in June 2024, within a 24-hour period, Biden was declared by these same insiders as unfit to continue as the Democratic nominee.

Their new problem with Biden was not just his long-standing embarrassing dementia. Rather bad polls increasingly warned that voters no longer believed their lies and thus would likely not reelect Biden but would instead punish most Democrats in the upcoming 2024 election.

So, a new media narrative arose: the once-hale Biden was forced to resign as the Democrat nominee. His once widely caricatured vice president, Kamala Harris, just as abruptly was coronated as his replacement candidate by an equally suddenly gushing and colluding media.

In sum, for some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies.

They did so because they proclaimed Donald Trump too dangerous to be president and therefore any means they employed to stop him were to be justified. And they are doing so yet a third time in 2024.

As they continue, they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public—and embarrassed their country before the world.

There are still people who still trust the mainstream media. We will see how many Americans believe what they are being told on November 5th.

Remember What Actually Is

It’s very easy in the heat of a moment to forget the history of a conflict (ask any husband or wife who has had an argument with their spouse). Somehow in the fog of the war in Gaza, a lot of basic history and truth has been forgotten. On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about the war in Gaza. He reminds us of the roots and events of that war that the media seems to be overlooking.

The article reports:

Occupied Gaza.” Prior to October 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.

So Gaza has been occupied by Hamas, not Israel, for two decades.

The Jews were not allowed to buy property in Gaza. Any Arab that sold land to a Jew was executed. That is the example of an apartheid state.

The article also notes:

Collateral Damage.” Hamas began the war by deliberately targeting civilians. It massacred them on October 7 when it invaded Israel during a time of peace and holidays. It sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities for the sole purpose of killing noncombatants. It has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, since it believes any Jewish death under any circumstances is cause for celebration.

Hamas places its terrorist centers beneath and inside hospitals, schools, and mosques. Why? Israel is assumed to have more reservations about collaterally hitting Gaza civilians than Hamas does exposing them as human shields.

Disproportionate.” We are told Israel wrongly uses disproportionate force to retaliate in Gaza. But it does so because no nation can win a war without disproportionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.

The U.S. incinerated German and Japanese cities with disproportionate force to end a war both Axis powers started. The American military in Iraq nearly leveled Fallujah and Mosul by disproportional force to root out Islamic gunmen hiding among innocents. Hamas has objections to disproportionate violence—but only when it is achieved by Israel and not Hamas.

Two-state solution.” Prior to October 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegitimate without scheduled elections.

It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutionalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbor.

Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigenerational efforts to form their own “one-state solution.”

Please follow the link above the read the entire article. It is a reminder of how the truth has been propagandized as the war has continued.

Changing The Rules

On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The New York Post detailing how the Democrat party has changed some of the basic rules of our Republic in recent years. It’s a long list.

Here are the highlights of the list:

1. When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t.

2. Call for the end of the Electoral College — but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition.

3. In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate.

4. Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same.

5. Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same.

6. Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate, any Supreme Court officials, politicians or citizens you oppose.

7. Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival.

8. Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear anyone as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment.

9. Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault — but only if they are radical supporters of your party.

10. Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda — but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences.

That’s just the top ten. Please follow the link to the article to read the next ten. It’s amazing how far we have fallen in recent years. When you read the list of things that used to be considered out-of-bounds that have been done since 2016 or so, it is scary.

 

 

 

Red Laws And Blue Laws

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about the use of the law as a political instrument. The contrasts how the law was applied in similar cases based on the politics of the person involved.

The article reports:

One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

The article notes:

Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

Please follow the link to the article to read the entire article. What has  happened to our justice department in recent years reads more like Soviet justice than American justice.

Victor Hanson’s Statement On Special Counsel Hur’s Report

Victor Davis Hanson’s Twitter statement on Special Counsel Hur’s report:
Biden is Too Demented to Be Found Guilty of Crimes,  But Not Too Demented to Be President? Special Counsel Robert Hur just found Joe Biden was guilty of violating national security laws in removing classified documents— after examining then Senator and Vice President Biden’s some 15-year habit of removing classified files to his offices and residences, where they were stored in unsecured fashion.
Period. End of story.
Hur then as a disinterested Special Counsel, not a local county prosecutor on a limited budget, logically would have indicted and prosecuted Biden.
It really is a jury’s decision to determine whether Biden was guilty or innocent, or whether he is pardoned/exempted by reason of dementia.
It is not the role of Hur, as a prosecutor and advocate for the state, to imagine how difficult his case might be to prove someone so incapacitated like Biden was guilty, as Hur’s own research and investigations had otherwise indicated that he was.) Is mindset, intention, or mental status a normal consideration of violations of national security laws, or is it the act itself?
So we are back to the James Comey defense: Hillary was guilty but in Lord and Savior Comey’s judgement no jury would likely convict a presidential candidate of such stature of violating national security laws. (NB:  After her reprieve, Hillary immediately claimed such extenuating circumstances were proof of her innocence! And Biden in a nanosecond likewise claimed he is now exonerated too, as was the administration’s plan all along).
Finally note the following:
1) The Left, Hur, and others believe that someone who has lost his faculties and who would not be allowed to drive a semi-truck, teach a class, diagnose a patient, argue a case, wire a house, or cook a hamburger is nevertheless fit enough to run the United States of America.
2) Note this same old/same old shocking but predictable asymmetry. Trump is a mere four years younger than Biden. The left fixated on the fact that he recently confused Nikki Hayley with Nancy Pelosi. Are we then to expect Jack Smith to follow the precedent of his fellow special counsel Hur, who was likewise appointed by Biden administration AG Merrick Garland and thus to conclude that although Trump violated the law by removing files, he seemed too confused to indict, given the likelihood of a sympathetic jury?
3) Hur himself tried to preemptively defend himself from the obvious conclusion that he extended special considerations not to indict Biden in a manner Jack Smith did not to Trump. Yet he omits that there were key differences in the two cases:
Biden had no putative right, as did Trump as President, to declassify files he took home.
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago walled and surveilled estate was far more secure than Biden’s rickety garage.
Biden had stored files for over a decade not less than two years.
Biden’s attorneys came forward just days before Smith was appointed on November 18, 2022. So it was not altruism that prompted their confession after Biden’s years of secretly hiding such illegality, but rather fear that Trump would soon be hounded for a ”crime” of which Biden was found out to be long guilty. So they went public to preempt that charge and falsely claim civic virtue.
This is just more of a long, disgusting pattern of biased applications of the law: Jan 6 vs 2020 May to October deadlier and more violent riots; election denialism of Trump versus Stacey Abrams’s nonstop claims of being the real governor of Georgia; “insurrection” called for in Trump’s speech vs Kamala Harris’s threats that the 2020 riots (“protests”) would and should keep going; the Trump 2020 election gambit versus the 2016 Leftwing coordinated effort to leverage electors into renouncing their states’ popular vote mandates. And so on.
No Department of Justice in our history has ever done more to undermine Americans’ confidence in the fair and equitable application of justice.
This is not the America we grew up in.
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Posted on Twitter by Victor Davis Hanson:

Victor Davis Hanson
@VDHanson
As Gen. Milley leaves office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on his last day  he goes out ranting about his loyalty to the Constitution and not  to a “dictator,”—blasting Trump without mentioning Trump, and thus trumping as it were Trump’s own excesses with those of his own. So transits the most politicalized and weaponized 4-star CJS since the office was created. Would that instead Milley had at least explained the 2021 historically disastrous flight from Kabul and defeat in Afghanistan, or the radical implementation of woke agendas into the Pentagon retention and promotion policies, or why he felt the illustrious and renown Professor Kendi, of current Boston University “Center for Antiracist Research” infamy, should be required reading for the U.S. military at time when its recruitment is descending into historical lows and its deterrent reputation is seriously questioned. So what about Milley’s own “constitutional” legacy? Is it that an officer who deems his civilian President and Commander in Chief dangerous—as diagnosed by 4-star psychiatrist, state department diplomat, and now theater commander Milley—has a right to commandeer the chain of command, usurp powers that are expressly by law denied to him, and then take it on himself in a time of Chinese-American tensions to freelance, by contacting his communist counterpart to warn him about his own president’s diagnosed volatility,  and to reassure the hardened Stalinist that Dr/Gen. Milley will inform him first of any precipitate action from the White House. Dictatorial much? Americans might ask the departing Milley, two questions, 1) if Trump is reelected in 2024, will a retired General Milley, as did his retired 4-star colleagues in 2020, violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and repeat his current charges against a second-term President Trump—matching the previous invective of his colleagues’ accusations of “liar”  or “Mussolini”?. And 2) what would Milley have done had a subordinate like himself, say a 3-star general, decided that Gen. Mark Milley’s Beijing gambit and his arrogation of command powers that were not legally his own, posed a grave threat to the republic? And thus would such a 3-star call up theater commanders to warn them to resist Milley’s reckless orders and to report to him first, followed by his  phone call to the top Chinese PLA general to assure them that if Milley somehow gave an order deemed by the 3-star to be dangerously provocative, then he would not only not obey it but rather first warn the Chinese military of Milley’s unstable state of mind. Is that the kind of military Milley wishes to leave as his legacy, as he departs barking accusations at the moon?

Good Analysis From Victor Davis Hanson

On Friday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at Townhall about the media’s handling of recent scandals.

The conclusion of the article is most telling:

The 2020 Biden campaign and an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.

Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.

The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and, by extension, Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.

No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.

Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.

For the last eight years, discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.

However, there are some things mentioned in the article that are even more disturbing:

Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election. The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.

Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.

Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.

They again discounted Hunter’s laptop, explicitly demonstrating that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father, Joe –variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.

Part of being a representative republic is having educated voters. Right now the media is doing everything it can to avoid educating voters on the scandals surrounding the Biden family. Unless you have cultivated a group of alternative news sources, you are an uninformed or misinformed voter. If uninformed or misinformed voters make up the majority of the electorate, our republic will not survive.

A Warning

On Monday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about what has happened to America in recent years.

The article notes:

We are in the midst of one of the most radical revolutions in American history. It is as far-reaching and dangerous as the turbulent years of the 1850s and 1860s or the 1930s. Every aspect of American life and culture is under assault, including the very processes by which we govern ourselves, and the manner in which we live.

The Revolution began under the Obama administration that sought to divide Americans into oppressed and oppressors, and then substitute race for class victimization. It was empowered by the bicoastal wealth accrued from globalization, and honed during the COVID lockdown, quarantine-fed economic downturn, and the George Floyd riots and their aftermath. The Revolution was boosted by fanatic opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. And the result is an America that is unrecognizable from what it was a mere decade ago.

Here are 10 upheavals that the Left has successfully wrought.

1. Free expression

2. The Weaponization of Justice

3. The Attack on the Supreme Court

4. The Media-Democratic Fusion

5. The Destruction of Common Law

6. The Erosion of the Military

7. Sexes

8. Race, Not Class

9. Debt is a Construct

10. Universities

The article concludes:

None of the above was true at the millennium; all are now—with more still to come.

Please follow the link above to read the details. The fact that we have come so far in such a short time is frightening.

Baggage Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article addressed to the people who are complaining that President Trump has too much baggage to run for President in 2024. I would like to note that a lot of the ‘baggage’ that President Trump carries is media-created–Russiagate, impeachment used as a political tool, imaginary connection to the riots on January 6th, various sexual charges, mostly unproven, that have had minimal consequences to past presidents. Yes, he does do main tweets, but that has to do with his ability to fight back rather than play dead like most Republicans.

The article notes:

The eminent thinker and military historian Victor Davis Hanson enumerated the “baggage” that President Trump doesn’t have but the Democrats do.

1) Trump did not violate federal law, as did Hillary Clinton, by destroying federally subpoenaed emails and devices in order to hide evidence.

2) Trump did not violate federal law, as did Hillary Clinton, by sending classified government communications on her own, through an unsecured home-brewed server.

3) Trump did not violate federal law, as did Hillary Clinton, by hiring a foreign national, who is prohibited from working on presidential campaigns, to compile a dossier to smear her presidential opponent.

4) Trump did not violate federal campaign laws, as did Hillary Clinton, by hiding her payments (as “legal services”) to Christopher Steele through bookkeeping deceptions.

5) Trump did not, as did Bill Clinton, use a crony to search out a high-paying New York job for a paramour in order to influence her testimony before a special counsel.

6) Trump did not, as did Bill Clinton, receive a $500,000 “honorarium” for speaking in Moscow while his wife, our secretary of state, approved a longstanding and lucrative desire of the Kremlin for North American uranium to be sold to a Russian consortium.

7) Trump did not, as did Obama, promise Putin that he would be “flexible” on “missile defense” if during his own reelection bid Putin in return would give him “space”. That quid pro quo arrangement led to the U.S. abandonment of key joint missile defense systems with Poland and the Czech Republic, and, reciprocally, less than two years later a Russian invasion, mostly unopposed by the United States, of eastern Ukraine and the Crimea.

8) Trump did not boast publicly, as did Joe Biden, that he used U.S. foreign aid monies as leverage to have the Ukrainian government fire a prosecutor who may have been looking into the Biden family’s efforts to sell influence to corrupt Ukrainian interests.

9) Trump did not, as the Bidens did, set up a family consortium to leverage monies from Ukraine, Russia, and China, on their shared expectations that he might soon run for and be elected president and become compromised. Trump is not mentioned, as is Joe Biden, in family business communications as a recipient of a 10 percent commission on such payoffs.

10) Trump did not, unlike Biden, remove presidential papers—without any authority to declassify them—and leave them scattered and unsecured in a garage and various residences and offices.

11) Trump did not, as did private citizen and former Secretary of State John Kerry, meet clandestinely while out of the office with Iranian officials to help them resist current U.S. policy toward Iran—or what the Boston Globe characterized as “unusual shadow diplomacy” to “apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside.

12) Trump did not, unlike Biden patronizingly call Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

13) Trump did not, unlike Biden dismiss two black journalists, respectively with the putdowns “you ain’t black” and “junkie.”

14) Trump did not, unlike Biden refer to two prominent people of color as “boy.” 

I think that pretty much sums it up.

The War Against Americans

On Wednesday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness detailing how the political left has escalated the war on everyday Americans. The article cites numerous examples.

The article notes:

Special-counsel John Durham just issued his final report on wrongdoing within the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice. 

The summary confirms that our premier investigatory and intelligence agencies interfered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. 

Directors and high-ranking FBI officials lied under oath. They misled Congress. They altered court documents and deceived federal judges. 

…The FBI contracted Twitter to suppress news stories. It kept the Hunter Biden laptop under wraps, even as former intelligence officials flat out lied it was likely “Russian disinformation.” That was a blatant effort to aid the 2020 Biden campaign.

The IRS just conceded whistleblowers were correct and the agency fired its entire multiyear audit team responsible for investigating Hunter Biden’s purported tax irregularities. 

The agency claimed it was ordered to do so by the Department of Justice, headed by Biden’s appointee Merrick Garland.

California is facing a crushing $32 billion deficit. Yet it flirts with an $800 billion-dollar “reparations” payout to the state’s black residents. 

…Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis—all outside Florida—have the highest black murder rates in the nation. 

Florida in contrast, with a black population of 3.3 million, has the second largest number of black businesses in the nation. The chairman of the NAACP’s board of directors is himself a Florida resident! 

Black Lives Matter has just announced it lost millions of dollars in investments and ran up huge deficits. 

The culprit was its former corrupt leadership. 

The article also notes:

In almost every American city and town, biological males, with enormous advantages in size and musculoskeletal mass, routinely win women’s sporting competitions. 

They are systematically destroying decades of progress that sought to ensure parity between men and women’s sports. 

Corporate America has joined this cultural revolution hysteria. Companies are apparently now hellbent on destroying their brands, profits, and net worth.

Under pressure from the LGBTQ activists, the Los Angeles Dodgers reinvited the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” to celebrate Pride night at Dodger Stadium. 

Catholics and Christians had objected to the invitation because the group’s notoriety hinges on its sexualized and often pornographic mockery of Catholic ritual, the Holy Trinity, and Christian faith. 

The supposedly courageous group would never dare extend its street-theater blasphemy to other religious groups such as Muslims or Hindus. 

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. As Americans, we have been asleep, and we are paying a price for it. No one involved in the government interference in the past two presidential elections is sitting in jail. Meanwhile, people who simply walked through the Capitol on January 6th have not yet had their day in court. We are losing our nation.

A Coup We Never Knew

On January 6, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The Daily Signal about the changes we have seen in America over the last two years.

The article begins:

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?

Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes, with placards declaring “Off with their d—s”?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?

How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?

That is just the beginning. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The article concludes:

Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? Whose idea was it to reboot racial segregation and bias as “theme houses,” “safe spaces,” and “diversity”? How did that happen in America?

How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

It’s time to join or to start a local grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the rights and structure defined in the U.S. Constitution. We have a number of organizations like that in eastern North Carolina. Hopefully there are some where you live.

Solutions For America

On December 18th, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “10 Steps to Save America.”

The article lists his ten ideas:

Cut the Debt

Secure the Border

Tap Natural Resources

Oppose Discrimination

Disrupt and Reform Higher Education

Revive the Armed Forces

Fix Voting

Drain the Swamp

Upend the Welfare State

Restore Norms

Many of these problems are the result of well-meaning policies that were supposed to solve the problems they created. The welfare state was supposed to end poverty. Instead it created a bureaucracy that has no incentive to reduce the number of people on welfare. Draining the swamp refers to the administrative state that is currently making most of our laws–instead of the legislative branch of the government that is supposed to make them. Restoring norms like community standards, marriage as the foundation of our society, and protecting children from pornography would be a step forward.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. These are things we can all work to implement that would definitely improve the future of our country.

The Realities Of Ukraine

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The Daily Caller about the war in Ukraine. The article lists ‘ten realities’ about what is happening in Ukraine.

Here is the list:

One — Reassuring an enemy what one will not do ensures that the enemy will do just that and more.

Two — No-fly zones don’t work in a big-power, symmetrical standoff.

Three — Europe, NATO members and Germany in particular have de facto admitted that their past decades of shutting down nuclear plants, coal mines and oil and gas fields have left Europe at the mercy of Russia.

Four — China is now pro-Russian. Beijing wants Russian natural resources at a discount.

Five — Americans are finally digesting just how destructive the humiliating flight from Afghanistan was.

Six — The Ukraine war did not cause inflation and record gas prices.

Seven — Putin did not invade during the Trump tenure, although he had been more aggressive under previous American leadership with his prior attacks on Georgia, Ukraine and Crimea.

Eight — It is not “escalation” to send arms to Ukraine.

Nine — Putin may never fully absorb Ukraine as long as it can easily be supplied across its borders by four NATO countries.

Ten — It is not “un-American” to point out that prior American appeasement under the Obama and the Biden administrations explains not why Putin wished to go into Ukraine, but why he felt he could.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article for the details.

The article concludes:

We should not rehash the past but learn from it — and thereby ensure Putin is defeated now and deterred in the future.

A strong America with strong leadership makes the world a safer place.

Priorities?

On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article by Victor Davis Hanson that provides some perspective on the current war in Ukraine.

The article notes:

Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine.

In response, the Biden administration’s climate change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet-owning John Kerry, laments that Russian President Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.

“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact.”

“Impact”?

Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children?

The article also asks the obvious question:

But how will the Biden administration square the circle of its own ideological war against oil and natural gas versus handing the advantage to our oil- and gas-producing enemies, as Russia invades Ukraine?

Or put another way, when selfish theory hits deadly reality, who loses? Answer: the American people.

President Joe Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to provide green Germany with loathsome, but life-saving, natural gas.

But first Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. He has no problem with pipelines per se, just American ones.

While Biden doesn’t like the idea of Germany burning carbon fuel, or Putin reaping enormous profits from Berlin’s self-created dependency, or Germans importing liquified natural gas from America, Biden also does not like the idea of forcing German families to turn off their thermostats in mid-winter when there is Russian-fed war not far from Germany’s borders.

Here at home, Biden gets even crazier. As our enemies around the world reap huge profits from record high oil and gas prices, did Biden ask Alaska, North Dakota or Texas to ramp up production?

In other words, did he ask Americans to save fellow cash-strapped Americans from a self-created energy crisis, in the way he assured the Germans that during war reality trumps theory?

The article concludes:

Biden also has beseeched the once sanctioned, terrorist Iranian government. He wants Tehran to help us out by upping the very oil and gas production that America has tried to curtail for years. In return, Iran is demanding a new “Iran Deal” that will soon ensure the now petro-rich theocracy the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

On the eve of the Russian invasion, Biden begged Putin to pump even more oil to supplement its current Russian imports to the United States.

Did Putin see that surreal request as yet another sign of American appeasement that might greenlight his upcoming planned invasion? In Russian eyes, was it more proof of American weakness and craziness after the humiliating flight from Afghanistan?

Biden has blasted the human rights record of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Now he is begging the monarchy to pump more of its despised carbon-spewing oil to make up for what his administration shut down at home. Is that why the Saudi royals refused to take his call?

The moral of Biden’s oil madness?

Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed.

Because we have given up American energy independence (and the ability to supply Europe with energy), we are funding Russia’s war on Ukraine. Until our leaders are willing to acknowledge that fact, I don’t see the war in Ukraine ending or the war on American energy ending.

Where Is America Headed?

Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The Daily Signal yesterday titled, “Are Americans Becoming Sovietized?” In the article, he lists ten traits of the Soviet Union that seem to have found their way into America. Please follow the link above to read the entire article, I am only going to list the ten things. The article contains the details of each.

These are the ten symptoms of Sovietism:

1. There was no escape from ideological indoctrination—anywhere.

2. The Soviets fused their press with the government. 

3. The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.

4. The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.

5. The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.

6. The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.

7. The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.

8. Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized according to ideology.

9. The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct Soviet thought.

10. The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom.

The parallels are frightening.

The Political Impact Of The Long Fight To Remove President Trump

On Tuesday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at National Review about the impact of impeachment on President Trump.

The article includes a number of observations about the impact of the endless investigations of the President:

Quietly, the approval ratings of Trump have been rising to pre-impeachment levels and are nearing a RealClearPolitics average of 45. Support for impeaching Trump and/or removing him is not increasing as the House Democrats expected. It is essentially static, or slowly eroding, depending on how polls phrase such questions.

Apparently, an exhausted public did not see “Ukrainian” impeachment as a one-off national crisis akin to the Nixon inquiry and the Clinton impeachment and trial that merited national attention. The impeachment vote instead is being confirmed in the public mind as part of a now boring three-year impeachment psychodrama (from impeachment 1.0, the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, the 25th Amendment, and Michael Avenatti/Stormy Daniels comedies to Robert Mueller’s “dream team” and “all-stars”). The progressive logic of the current jump-the-shark monotony is to become even more monotonous, the way that a driller leans ever harder on his dull and chipping bit as his bore becomes static.

The Democrats believed that all of these efforts would be like small cuts, each one perhaps minor but all combining to bleed Trump out. But now we know, given polling data and the strong Trump economy, that the long odyssey to impeachment has had almost no effect on Trump’s popularity, other than losing him 3–4 points for a few weeks as periodic media “bombshells” went off.

The reality may be the very opposite of what Democrats planned. The more the Left tries to abort the Trump presidency before the election, the more it bleeds from each of its own inflicted nicks. As an example, Rachel Maddow’s reputation has not been enhanced by her neurotic assertions that Trump’s tax returns would soon appear, or that the Steele dossier was steadily gaining credibility, or that yet another tell-tale Russian colluder had emerged from under another American bed.

The constant drumbeat of accusations is simply not resonating. Yet, the Democrats continue with a playbook that is not working.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It includes a lot of information that has been overlooked amidst the hype.

The article concludes:

Instead, voters are exhausted by his haters and their crazy agendas. They grow enraged over how the Mueller and Horowitz investigatory reports have disproved all the daily media, celebrity, and political assertions. And they are upset about the larger culture of the anti-Trump Left, from the fundamentals of open borders and identity politics to the trivia of transgendered athletes, Colin Kaepernickism, and the open-border, Green New Deal socialism. An auto worker who votes as a true-blue union Democrat but likes Trump’s trade policies, a no-nonsense farmer who worries about farm exports but likes deregulation, and a teacher who votes a liberal slate but has no way to control his classroom may not seem like Trump voters, but some such voters are terrified by the cultural trajectory of what the Trump-hating Left has in store for them all.

For a majority, refined and arrogant progressive mendaciousness voiced in condescending nasal tones has become far more repugnant than all-American hype in a Queens accent.

What is happening in America may be an indication that representative government may be making a comeback. We may be entering a time when elected officials will actually be required to represent the people who elected them.

Why Does The Establishment (Republicans and Democrats) Hate Donald Trump?

Yesterday Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Why Do They Hate Him So?” The article analyzes the reasons that President Trump is opposed by both the political left and the establishment right.

The article states:

Again, why the unadulterated hatred? For the small number of NeverTrumpers, of course, Trump’s crudity in speech and crassness in manner nullify his accomplishments: the unattractive messenger has fouled an otherwise tolerable message.

While they recognize in the abstract that the randy JFK, the repugnant LBJ, and the horny Bill Clinton during their White House tenures were far grosser in conduct than has been Donald Trump, they either assume presidential ethics should have evolved or they were not always around to know of past bad behavior first hand, or believe Trump’s crude language is worse than prior presidents’ crude behavior in office.

The article continues:

Had Donald Trump in his first month as president declared that he was a centrist Republican —as many suspicious Never Trumpers predicted that he would, true to past form—and promoted cap-and-trade and solar and wind federal subsidies, tabled pipeline construction and abated federal leasing for gas and oil production, stayed in the Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Accord, appointed judges in the tradition of John Paul Stevens and David Souter, praised the “responsible” Palestinian leaders, pursued “comprehensive immigration reform” as a euphemism for blanket amnesties, then Trump would be treated largely as a George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush: hated, of course, but not obsessively so.

More importantly, had Trump just collapsed or stagnated the economy, as predicted by the likes of Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, he would now be roundly denounced, but again not so vilified, given his political utility for the Left in 2020 as a perceived Herbert Hoover-esque scapegoat.

Had Trump kept within the media and cultural sidelines by giving interviews to “60 Minutes,” speaking at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, bringing in a few old Republican hands to run the staff or handle media relations like a David Gergen or Andrew Card, Trump would have been written off as a nice enough dunce.

But Trump did none of that. So, the hatred of the media, the Left, the swamp, and the celebrity industry is predicated more on the successful Trump agenda. He is systematically undoing what Barack Obama wrought, in the manner Obama sought to undo with his eight years the prior eight years of George W. Bush.

But whereas the Obama economy stagnated and his foreign policy was seen by adversaries and rivals as a rare occasion to recalibrate the world order at American’s expense, Trump mostly did not fail—at least not yet. We are currently in an economic boom while most of the world economy abroad is inert. Had the economy just crashed as predicted, the Trump agenda would have been discredited and he would be written off a pitiful fool rather than an existential monster.

Again, hatred arises at what Trump did even more than what he says or how he says it.

The obvious conclusion:

The bipartisan Washington establishment? If an outsider Manhattan wheeler-dealer without military or political experience can at last call an appeased China to account, can avoid a Libyan fiasco, can acknowledge that America is tired of a 18-year slog in Afghanistan when others would not, or believes ISIS thrived as a result of prior arcane restrictive U.S. rules of engagement—and he is proven largely right—then what does that say about the credentialed experts who dreamed up the bipartisan conventional wisdom that with a few more concessions China would eventually become Palo Alto or that Libya would bloom at the heart of the Arab Spring?

The Left detests Trump for a lot of reasons besides winning the 2016 election and aborting the progressive project. But mostly they hate his guts because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

And that is absolutely unforgivable.

Be prepared for a very nasty year before the election in 2020. There are a lot of very unhinged people in politics and in the media.

Act II

The Mueller Report fizzled. Donald Trump is still President. The House of Representative is preparing for impeachment on possible charges of a cover-up where there is no crime. Most of the Democrat candidates running for President in 2020 support socialism, killing babies up until the moment when they are actually born, open borders, free healthcare for everyone (including those here illegally), and free college. What could possibly go wrong? Well, now is the time to get out the popcorn.

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The National Review about the collapse of the Russian-collusion narrative.

Mr. Hanson points out a few obvious facts that made the narrative doubtful from the start:

One, the Washington swamp of fixers such as Paul Manafort and John and Tony Podesta was mostly bipartisan and predated Trump.

Two, the Trump administration’s Russia policies were far tougher on Vladimir Putin than were those of Barack Obama. Trump confronted Russia in Syria, upped defense spending, increased sanctions, and kept the price of oil down through massive new U.S. energy production. He did not engineer a Russian “reset” or get caught on a hot mic offering a self-interested hiatus in tensions with Russia in order to help his own reelection bid.

The article concludes by noting that the rats are deserting the sinking ship:

Comey is also in a tiff with his former deputy, Andrew McCabe. Both know that the FBI under Comey illegally leaked classified information to the media. But Comey says McCabe went rogue and did it. Of course, McCabe’s attorney shot back that Comey had authorized it. Comey also claims the Steele dossier was not the chief evidence for a FISA warrant. McCabe insists that it was. It’s possible that one might work with prosecutors against the other to finagle a lesser charge.

Former CIA director John Brennan has on two occasions lied under oath to Congress and gotten away with it. He may not get away with lying again if it’s determined that he distorted the truth about his efforts to spread the Steele dossier smears. A former CIA official claims that Comey put the unverified Steele dossier into an intelligence community report on alleged Russian interference. Comey has contended that Brennan was the one who did.

It’s possible that both did. Doing so would have been unethical if not illegal, given that neither official told President Obama (if he didn’t already know) that the silly Steele dossier was a product of Hillary Clinton’s amateurish efforts to subvert the 2016 Trump campaign.

In sum, the old leaky vessel of collusion is sinking.

The rats are scampering from their once safe refuge — biting and piling on one another in vain efforts to avoid drowning.

The really scary part of this is that if Hillary Clinton had been elected, we would know none of this, and using the government to spy on political opponents would have become a way of life in America. Unless the people responsible for using the government as a political weapon are brought to justice, using the government to spy on political opponents will become a way of life in America.

Trying To Keep The Drip Going

Someone once told me that the Grand Canyon was the result of water dripping on a rock. I’m not sure if that is true, but it is an interesting thought. The Congressional Democrats are actually setting out to prove or disprove that theory.

Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill titled, “Note to Team Mueller: If you don’t indict, you can’t incite.” Those are wise words that could actually do a lot of good in healing the divide in America if they were heeded.

The article states:

I’ve covered the Justice Department for three decades, and seldom have I seen a story like the one published in The New York Times this week under the headline, “Some on Mueller’s Team Say Report Was More Damaging Than Barr Revealed.”

What concerned me most is that the story’s anonymous allegations reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the role prosecutors play, including special counsels such as Robert Mueller.

The job of prosecutors is not, as the Times headline suggested, to pen “damaging” narratives about people they couldn’t indict. And it’s not their job to air those people’s dirty laundry, or that of suspects outside of a grand jury room or a courtroom.

Mueller concluded there wasn’t evidence President Trump colluded with Russia to hijack the 2016 election, and therefore no indictment was warranted. And he punted on the question of obstruction, leaving his bosses — Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — to determine that there wasn’t enough evidence to indict the president on that charge.

And, most significantly, there were no other people charged. That means Trump legally could not be named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an obstruction plot.

Many of the Democrat Congressmen (and Congresswomen) who are calling for the full, unredacted release of the Mueller Report are lawyers. They know that the full Mueller Report includes both Grand Jury testimony and classified information. They know that Grand Jury testimony is not public information and often contains things that may be misleading or have a negative impact on an innocent person’s life. Theoretically they are also aware of the rules regarding the handling of classified information. So if they understand the law, why are they requesting that the Attorney General break the law? Actually, the subpoena for the Mueller Report is simply part of a larger strategy.

The Attorney General is compelled by law to deny the subpoena. This sends the case to the courts where it will be tied up for at least two years–through the 2020 presidential election. I am sure some of the actions of whatever court is involved will keep the story in the news through the election.

Recently someone familiar with the report noted that the summaries in the report, written by highly partisan investigators contain classified information or Grand Jury testimony. If Congress has the full report (or even the redacted version), they can selectively leak things (that might be misleading) to keep the collusion-delusion in the headlines. Victor Davis Hanson noted in a recent article that the Russian investigation was a soft coup attempted by the deep state. I have no reason to believe that the attempt is over.

Imagine If You Will…

“Imagine if you will…” was the opening line of a television series “The Twilight Zone” which ran from 1959 to 1964. Rod Sterling was the host, narrator, and producer.

On January 20th, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness titled, “Should the FBI Run the Country?” The article reminded me of the opening to “The Twilight Zone” in that is imagines the scenario of the FBI running the country. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to read the entire article, but I will provide a few highlights here.

The article states:

During the campaign (2008), unfounded rumors had swirled about the rookie Obama that he might ease sanctions on Iran, distance the United States from Israel, and alienate the moderate Arab regimes, such as the Gulf monarchies and Egypt.

Stories also abounded that the Los Angeles Times had suppressed the release of a supposedly explosive “Khalidi tape,” in which Obama purportedly thanked the radical Rashid Khalidi for schooling him on the Middle East and correcting his earlier biases and blind spots, while praising the Palestinian activist for his support for armed resistance against Israel.

Even more gossip circulated that photos existed of a smiling Barack Obama with Louis Farrakhan, the Black Muslim extremist and radical pro-Gaddafi patron, who in the past had praised Adolf Hitler and reminded the Jews again about the finality of being sent to the ovens. (A photo of a smiling Obama and Farrakhan did emerge, but mysteriously only after President Obama left office).

Imagine that all these tales in 2008 might have supposedly “worried” Bush lame-duck and pro-McCain U.S. intelligence officials, who informally met to discuss possible ways of gleaning more information about this still mostly unknown but scary Obama candidacy.

The article continues:

But most importantly, imagine that McCain’s opposition researchers had apprised the FBI of accusations (unproven, of course) that Obama had improperly set up a private back-channel envoy to Iran in 2008. Supposedly, Obama was trying secretly to reassure the theocracy (then the object of Bush Administration and allied efforts to ratchet up pressures to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons) of better treatment to come. The conspiratorial accusation would imply that if Iran held off Bush Administration pressures, Tehran might soon find a more conducive atmosphere from an incoming Obama Administration.

Additional rumors of similar Logan Act “violations” would also swirl about Obama campaign efforts to convince the Iraqis not to seal a forces agreement with the departing Bush Administration.

Further, conceive that at least one top Bush Justice Department deputy had a spouse working on the McCain opposition dossier on Obama, and that the same official had helped to circulate its scandalous anti-Obama contents around government circles.

In this scenario, also picture that the anti-Obama FBI soon might have claimed that the Obama Iran mission story might have been not only an apparent violation of the Logan Act but also part of possible larger “conspiratorial” efforts to undermine current Bush Administration policies. And given Obama’s campaign rhetoric of downplaying the threats posed by Iran to the United States, and the likelihood he would reverse long-standing U.S. opposition to the theocracy, the FBI decided on its own in July 2008 that Obama himself posed a grave threat to national security.

More importantly, the FBI, by its director’s own later admission, would have conjectured that McCain was the likelier stronger candidate and thus would win the election, given his far greater experience than that of the novice Obama. And therefore, the FBI director further assumed he could conduct investigations against a presidential candidate on the theory that a defeated Obama would have no knowledge of its wayward investigatory surveillance, and that a soon-to-be President McCain would have no desire to air such skullduggery.

I am sure you can see where this is going.

The article concludes:

Obama, in our thought experiment, would have charged that the role of the Bush-era FBI, CIA, DOJ, and special counsel’s team had become part of a “resistance” to delegitimize his presidency. Indeed, Obama charged that conservative interests had long wanted to abort his presidency by fueling past efforts to subvert the Electoral College in 2008, to invoke the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause (based on rumors of negotiating lucrative post-presidential book and media contracts by leveraging his presidential tenure), as well as introducing articles of impeachment.

Celebrity talk of injuring Obama and his family would be daily events. Actor Robert De Niro talked of smashing Obama’s face, while Peter Fonda dreamed of caging his children. Johnny Depp alluded to assassination. It soon became a sick celebrity game to discover whether the president should be blown up, whipped, shot, burned, punched, or hanged.

Imagine that if all that had happened. Would the FBI, CIA, or FISA courts still exist in their current form? Would the media have any credibility? Would celebrities still be celebrities? Would there ever again be a special counsel? Would we still have a country?

Hopefully by now many Americans have awakened to the government abuses involved in surveillance of the Trump campaign, appointment of the Special Counsel, arrests of people associated with President Trump for things not related to any of what the Special Counsel is supposed to be investigating, and inappropriate use of force to arrest a 60-something-year-old man with a deaf wife. No wonder the FBI and DOJ are fighting so hard to prevent the truth of their abuses of power during the Obama administration from being revealed.