It's a veritable cornucopia of 2020 Iowa Caucus debacle headlines this morning

Iowa caucus: Biden campaign blasts Democratic Party over reporting meltdown

Iowa caucuses delays revive concerns and conspiracy theories of Bernie Sanders supporters

SANDERS CAMPAIGN’S INTERNAL CAUCUS NUMBERS SHOW THEM WINNING IOWA, WITH BIDEN A DISTANT FOURTH

Frustration, questions as delays hamper Iowa caucuses

‘A Systemwide Disaster’: How the Iowa Caucuses Melted Down

Iowa officially has its first caucus-deciding coin flips of the year

Chaos reigns on Iowa caucus night

Iowa caucuses turnout: Entrance poll shows dip in first-timers

Results for Iowa caucuses delayed as state Democratic Party finds 'inconsistencies'

'It’s a total meltdown': Confusion seizes Iowa as officials struggle to report results

What went wrong: Tech troubles behind delay in Iowa results

Iowa Democrats rush "quality checks" after "inconsistencies"

Iowa Reports No Caucus Winner After ‘Inconsistencies’ Bedevil Count

Oops, GAO charge that Trump OMB violated 1974 Impoundment Control Act is hogwash

But concerning the withholding of funds, there is no potential crime here either. There is a process in place to sort out any disagreement between Congress and the president on such a matter. Section 683 of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 states that “whenever the President determines ... that such budget authority should be rescinded … [or] reserved from obligation for such fiscal year, the President shall transmit to both Houses of Congress a special message” to that effect with an explanation. The Congress then has 45 calendar days to concur, or the funds are to be “made available for obligation” and “may not be proposed for rescission again.”

Although Section 684 calls for a special message if the funds are to be deferred within the fiscal year, this special message does not force Congress to concur.

The lack of a special message from Trump for either section is not an impeachable offense. First, the president clearly had not made a conclusive decision that he wanted to propose the funds should be “rescinded” or “reserved from obligation.” Neither Trump nor his Democratic critics disagree that he was awaiting further information before deciding whether or not he wanted the funds conclusively rescinded. All he had done as of this summer was to withhold the funds temporarily. Therefore, it would have been premature for Congress to receive a proposal from him to rescind the funds.

More here.

Washington Examiner lists Pocahonky's identity lies, starting with, well, Pocahonky

Here:

It's common knowledge by now that Warren, one of the top four 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, identified as a Native American, despite being somewhere between 0.1% and 3% Native American . . ..

[T]he senator also fibbed when she promised to serve her full Senate term if reelected in 2018. Her 2020 presidential run began a few weeks after she won that election.

Warren has emphasized again and again that her children attended public schools. Her storyline here suffers from a material omission: Her kids also attended private schools. Perhaps this particular misdirection stems from the fact that she’s campaigning against the school choice programs . . ..

Warren’s brother told the Boston Globe, “My dad was never a janitor," and he said it makes him “furious” that Warren has repeatedly claimed otherwise on the campaign trail.

Warren must know that her own background, as a millionaire whose children attended private school, doesn’t fit easily with her soak-the-rich rhetoric.

Commentators often lump Warren's run in with that of Bernie Sanders. But Sanders's base comes from the young and the working class, while Warren's base is mostly highly educated baby boomers who surely feel a warm glow from the belief they are part of some populist uprising.

After passing NDAA whopper funding The Military Industrial Complex and The Swamp, US House passes another $1.4 trillion in spending in two bills to let Trump say he didn't sign another Omnibus spending bill

TRUMP IS WORKING WITH THEM AGAINST US YOU IDIOTS.

The House passed a $1.4 trillion federal spending package that averts a government shutdown and maintains some funding for a southern border wall. The measure passed Tuesday despite the objections of liberal Democrats and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who said they opposed the $1.375 billion allocated for the construction of a southern border wall as well as other border security provisions. The spending bill would provide funding through the rest of fiscal 2020. It passed in two different measures in order to avoid sending President Trump one “omnibus” package, which he had vowed to reject. 

More here.

It must be costing Hunter Biden a fortune to get Pocahonky to divide the Bernie wing of the party

Joe Biden was a key advocate for the financial bailout, which was approved under the Bush administration and expanded under President Barack Obama. He delayed his Senate resignation in January 2009 to cast his final vote to increase funding for the Troubled Asset Relief Program before taking office as vice president.

“These guys are not the most likable guys in the world,” Biden said about the banks and hedge funds aided by the government intervention. "But here are the facts ... Had we not bailed out the largest bank institutions in the world, there would have been a flat-out depression.”

One of the firms that benefited was Rosemont Capital, a company led by Hunter Biden’s business partners, Chris Heinz and Devon Archer. The firm received the loans at a crucial time for Hunter Biden. The younger Biden had stepped down from his lobbying business in late 2008, reportedly due to pressure on his father’s vice presidential campaign.

More here.

Transcripts of depositions before Democrat Adam Schiff's committee show example after example of halting questioning which might lead to origins of investigation

But so far at least, the investigation seems to have established that Trump's alleged misconduct exists in the eye of the beholder. Some officials heard the Zelensky call as it happened and saw no wrongdoing. Vindman, on the other hand, saw wrongdoing and got in touch with an unknown number of people about it. After that, the story grew and grew. How did one man's impression turn into the impeachment probe of today?

And that is what Chairman Schiff does not want the nation to know.

More here.

Transcript of Vindman Ukraine call testimony shows he offered no new facts, deemed transcript released by Trump "very accurate"

[T]he Vindman transcript also showed a witness whose testimony was filled with opinion, with impressions, who had little new to offer, who withheld important information from the committee, who was steeped in a bureaucracy that has often been hostile to the president, and whose lawyer, presumably with Vindman's approval, expressed unmistakable disdain, verging on contempt, for members of Congress who asked inconvenient questions. In short, Vindman's testimony was not the slam-dunk hit Democrats portrayed it to be. ...

Now, parts of the foreign policy bureaucracy are in open war with the president, channeling their grievances through the House Democrats' drive toward impeachment. When he testifies in public, Vindman will be the living embodiment of that bureaucratic war.

More here.

So-called whistleblower Eric Ciaramella was really just a leaker opposed to Trump Ukraine policy, a holdover from the Obama administration

When the issue of Ukraine was brought up at a policy meeting, Ciaramella mentioned aid to Ukraine. He became visibly upset, the official recounted, when he was told that Trump would review Ukraine policy and that it would likely not be the same as President Barack Obama’s. “He kind of rolled his eyes and went, 'Hmph!' He didn't leave the room, but it was pretty clear that he thought that we were wrong and he was right. ... I never trusted him with anything after that."

More here.

Whistleblower is connected to Joe Biden

The 2020 Democratic candidate with whom the CIA whistleblower had a "professional" tie is Joe Biden, according to intelligence officers and former White House officials.

More here.

Joe Biden in 1976: Diversity is not our strength, that's a bunch of poppycock, differences drive us apart

'Bunch of poppycock': Biden once rejected idea that diversity was America's strength:

Speaking at an annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Boise in February 1976, Biden said: ”I told you [in a previous speech] about my view that the uniqueness of America didn’t lie in the fact that we’re a great melting pot. We hear that all the time, about it being black and white, rich and poor, Christian and Jew — therefore we’re strong. I told you then, I thought that was a bunch of poppycock.

“The fact we are black and white doesn’t bring us together as a nation. The fact that we’re Christian and Jew doesn’t send us running into one another's embrace to herald our differences. The fact is that people fear differences. The fact that the reason this nation is able to be the most heterogeneous nation in the history of mankind is not because it’s a melting pot. It’s because unlike any other nation in the world, we are uniquely a product of our political institutions.

“If France tomorrow, for example, were to turn in a monarchy, I told you, I did not believe that France would substantively change. Because in France there’s an ethnicity that binds them together, a cultural tie. You don’t have that in America,” he added.

"Just look around this country to see how different we are. Unless we get the American people from Delaware to Idaho, Massachusetts to California, believing that the political system can produce results for them, this country is going to spin apart like a gyroscope out of kilter,” said Biden.

“You were saying, ‘No, it can’t happen here, this is America, we’re unique, we are something different.’ Well, the Lord ain’t made a new brand of man in a long time. It can happen here, we can split apart, and we’re moving in the direction of doing just that.

“Without [the public’s] confidence, without their participation in the system, this nation will not see a tricentennial, this nation will not see the year 2000 in a way in which we now think it is composed." ...

“We hear time and again that we are uniquely a melting pot. Because we’re black, white, rich and poor, therefore we’re strong,” said Biden. “The fact that we are black and white, rich and poor drives us apart in America,” he said.

We have nothing to fear from Julian Castro given he put his exceptionally stupid brother in charge of his campaign for president

It's also pretty stupid that The Washington Examiner can't formulate the proper English phrase "to both him and his brother", but let's just focus on the fact that Joaquin is not now and never will be the phoenix rising from this clusterconflagration.

Mayor of Carbon Hill, AL, has the line of the week

“We live in a society where homosexuals lecture us on morals, transvestites lecture us on human biology, baby killers lecture us on human rights and socialists lecture us on economics.”

"If [Trump] gets distracted with irrelevant messages, he will fail"

No chance of that, right?

Trump is president, but we are being invaded: 1% of Guatemala and Honduras population has entered US since Sep 2018

WE LIVE IN A COUNTRY WITH NO ONE WILLING TO ENFORCE THE BORDER, SO IT'S NOT A REAL COUNTRY.

Shock: Over 1% of Guatemala, Honduras entered US since September:

[O]ver 1% of the populations of Guatemala and Honduras have entered the United States since September, according to the Homeland Security Department chief.

Trump capitulates on border closure (ONE YEAR!), Ann Coulter was right when she called him a wimp

Ann Coulter takes victory lap after Trump backs down from border closure:

Trump recently scaled back his threat to close the border, saying that Mexico now has a year to get illegal crossings under control before Trump takes drastic action.

 

John DeStefano, in charge of Trump's 4,000 personnel appointments in 2017, was John Boehner aide

White House personnel official described Trump GOP nomination as 'end of the world':

Fear about a bias toward establishment picks emerged in 2017, when Trump selected DeStefano to lead the PPO. He had worked as an aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, before leading Data Trust. Eyebrows raised with appointees with views at odds with some of Trump’s, such as former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former foreign policy adviser Dina Powell, and Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams. ...

A former White House official said DeStefano, 39, set the tone for the PPO with an “us versus them” mentality, often referring to Trump backers as “the MAGA people.” ...

Trump is said to have grown angry with DeStefano at times, including upon finding that a National Security Council official, Jordan Kelly, had not been dismissed from her role as a cyber expert more than a year after he requested it, according to a source.

Alexandria the Great complains of "dark money" in politics but has plenty of her own

AOC’s chief of staff ran $1M slush fund by diverting campaign cash to his own companies:

Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center's Government Integrity Project, said: "It appears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her associates ran an off-the-books operation to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, thus violating the foundation of all campaign finance laws: transparency." ...

Adav Noti, the senior director of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC lawyer, said the arrangement was highly unusual and seemed intended to obscure the destination of the funds. "None of that makes any sense," said Noti. "I can't even begin to disentangle that. They're either confused or they're trying to conceal something." ... "It does seem like there's something amiss. I can only think of really two likely possibilities for this sort of pattern of disbursements," said Noti. "One is the scam PAC possibility — they're really just paying themselves and they’re concealing it by using the LLC. The other is that there’s actually another recipient, that the money is going to the LLC and then being disbursed in some other way that they want to conceal."

Joe Biden Gaffe Machine: Tells Germany we're embarrassed by kids in cages, too bad it was under his watch

Yep, we're embarrassed alright, by Joe Biden. Not getting off to a good start there, Joe, if you really want to win the White House. Be yourself, not Obama. And please refrain from the skinny dipping, and no more groping, either. Sheesh.

Biden cages children:

Joe Biden 1975: Thanks to me anti-busing is no longer a racist position

Joe Biden once said Democrats needed 'a liberal George Wallace':

“The pro-busers and the civil rights lobby were dumbstruck … although I had put them on notice months earlier,” said Biden in the interview. “I think I’ve made it possible for liberals to come out of the closet … If [anti-busing] isn’t yet a respectable liberal position, it is no longer a racist one.”

A Friday twofer, first the Democrat Governor of Virginia and now Joe Biden outed as racist, all the way back to 1975

Man, that means the Democrat-controlled media have been burying this thing for 44 years. Gotta be a record or sumptin'.

The progressives have been saving up this stuff for this very moment.

Joe Biden embraced segregation in 1975, claiming it was a matter of 'black pride':

In September 1975, Biden supported an anti-busing amendment to a federal bill. It was proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a segregationist until at least the 1960s and regarded by most to be a racist. Delighted by Biden's shift, Helms welcomed him "to the ranks of the enlightened."

Biden believed social homogeneity would be to the detriment of black people, but we know what he really meant.