Thursday, November 21, 2019
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
NYT Nov 5, 2019: Sondland text message in early September to Taylor said president was clear there was no quid pro quo
A crucial witness in the impeachment inquiry reversed himself this week ...
That admission, included in a four-page sworn statement released on Tuesday, directly contradicted his testimony to investigators last month, when he said he “never” thought there was any precondition on the aid. ...
Mr. Sondland had said in a text message exchange in early September with William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, that the president had been clear there was no quid pro quo between the aid and investigations of the Bidens. But Mr. Sondland testified last month that he was only repeating what Mr. Trump had told him, leaving open the question of whether he believed the president. ...
“I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anticorruption statement,” Mr. Sondland said.
In his closed-door interview last month, Mr. Sondland portrayed himself as a well-meaning and at times unwitting player who was trying to conduct American foreign policy with Ukraine with the full backing of the State Department while Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeatedly inserted himself at the behest of the president. He also said repeatedly that he could not remember things, including details about the Sept. 1 meeting, according to the 375-page transcript of his testimony.
“And you had never thought there was a precondition to the aid?” one of the Republican investigators asked Mr. Sondland. “Is that correct?”
“Never,” Mr. Sondland said, adding that he “was dismayed when it was held up, but I didn’t know why.”
More here.
Marie Yovanovitch, Obama's US Ambassador to Ukraine, blocked visas for Ukrainian law enforcement in 2018 before Trump fired her in 2019
Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have evidence of
wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from
2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes. But, they
say, they’ve been thwarted in trying to get the Trump Justice Department
to act.
Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s
International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior
law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get
visas from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to
Washington.
“We
were supposed to share this information during a working trip to the
United States,” Kulyk told me in a wide-ranging interview. “However, the
[U.S.] ambassador blocked us from obtaining a visa. She didn’t
explicitly deny our visa, but also didn’t give it to us.”
One
focus of Ukrainian investigators, Kulyk said, has been money spirited
unlawfully out of Ukraine and moved to the United States by businessmen
friendly to the prior, pro-Russia regime of Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukrainian
businessmen “authorized payments for lobbying efforts directed at the
U.S. government,” he told me. “In addition, these payments were made
from funds that were acquired during the money-laundering operation. We
have information that a U.S. company was involved in these payments.”
That company is tied to one or more prominent Democrats, Ukrainian
officials insist.
In another instance, he said, Ukrainian
authorities gathered evidence that money paid to an American Democrat
allegedly was hidden by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau
(NABU) during the 2016 election under pressure from U.S. officials. “In
the course of this investigation, we found that there was a situation
during which influence was exerted on the NABU, so that the name of [the
American] would not be mentioned,” he said.
More here.
Ukraine Foreign Minister denied a week ago that Sondland linked aid to opening an investigation of Biden
“Ambassador Sondland did not tell us, and certainly did not tell me,
about a connection between the assistance and the investigations. You
should ask him,” Prystaiko said about Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to
the European Union. ... “I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and
security assistance,” Prystaiko was quoted as saying by Interfax. “Yes,
the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the
presidents. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
More here.
Still my favorite illustration of quid pro quo comes from Ann Coulter's observation about Hillary
Hillary's main claim to fame is that she was married to the horny hick,
and then stood by him when he was impeached for the most embarrassing
sex scandal in history. By feminist logic, that meant Hillary was owed the presidency. Quid pro 'ho.
April 22, 2015, here.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Queen of Bribery: Donors to Clinton Foundation got special, expedited access
Still selling the Lincoln bedroom:
Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of
State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an
appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal
channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened,
however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours.
More here.
Anal cancer cases and deaths explode in USA 16 years after Supreme Court overturns anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas
The United States is experiencing a “dramatic and concerning” rise in the rate of new anal cancer cases and deaths from the disease . . . The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the anus — the most common type of anal cancer — rose 2.7 percent PER YEAR over a recent 15-year period, while anal cancer mortality rates increased 3.1 percent PER YEAR during that time [emphasis added]. At this rate, the disease can be considered as one of the fastest accelerating causes of cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S. ... “It’s really hard to understand what might be causing the rise in incidence and mortality,” [the study’s lead author Ashish Deshmukh] added.
Political correctness kills, as does Nemesis. They might actually be the same thing.
More here.
LGBT activist pissed off Census Bureau finds same sex households are only 1 percent of total in USA
“It’s significant progress and we are excited about it, but we’re really missing quite a lot of community data,” said Meghan Maury, policy director for the National LGBTQ Task Force. ... [C]ensus officials raised concerns that mistakes stemming from people who did correctly identify their gender may have inflated the number of same-sex couples in the country.
More here.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Vindman lied again: Said his boss Morrison was not available to report his concerns, but Morrison says he got edits to the Ukraine call from Vindman the very same day
That means Vindman by-passed his boss. Looks like following chain of command is only aspirational with Vindman.
Vindman is so important in his own mind that he's testified Ukraine asked him three times in 2019 to be THEIR Defense Minister
Ukraine must think Vindman is more Ukrainian than American.
Now why would they think that?
Now why would they think that?
Vindman does Fredo like Dr. Jill Biden: I'm IMPORRRRRTANT see, that's Lt. Col. Vindman
Just call him "the witness".
Monday, November 18, 2019
Michelle Malkin should be judged by her enemies: Libertarian kook Cathy Young for instance
"In Defense of Internment" does make a convincing case that some
Japanese aliens and even Japanese-Americans had pro-Japan sympathies,
and that the Japanese military was working to recruit agents in their
ranks. ... [T]he profiling measures Malkin advocates today, such as selective
monitoring of aliens and visitors from countries with terrorist links,
are moderate and fairly sensible. She is right that it's ludicrous to
invoke Japanese internment as a parallel.
Yet somehow Malkin's still an "extremist".
Only in your fevered mind of "awfulness".
Jonah Goldberg bows to the tyranny of the Legislative
When there is actual evidence of crimes, Grand Juries are summoned. When there isn't, the politicians bluff, bluster and fulminate, beguiling the simple.
Kausfiles: John McCain and Victoria Nuland helped throw out Ukraine's president in 2014, Never Trump and Democrats doing the same to Trump in 2019
The parallels are almost eerie. In both cases the elected president
(Yanukovych in Ukraine, Trump here) is regarded by the foreign policy
establishment as corrupt. In both cases the president's original
election was regarded as tainted--in Yanukovych's case by suspicions of
vote rigging, in Trump's case by charges of foreign meddling. In both
cases the villain is Russia. In both cases there is a big underlying
policy dispute that calls forth intense passions: In Ukraine, it was
whether the country would look West or East. In the US it's how
vigorously to resist aggressive Russian attempts to restore the former
Soviet empire in Ukraine and elsewhere.
And in both cases, victory means tossing aside the results of a
national vote. Ukraine’s "Revolution of Dignity" might not have been
legal under Ukraine’s constitution — but hey, that's why they call it a
revolution. Convulsions in foreign countries that bring better,
pro-Western rulers to power are rightly applauded by Americans.
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.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Elise Stefanik is an immigration squish, signed discharge petition in 2018 to force Republicans in Congress to compromise
Congresswoman Stefanik was one of the earliest signers
of the discharge petition to force Congress to act on immigration. She
previously announced that she will also support standalone legislation
that addresses the separation of children and parents at our borders.
More here.
Goodwin: Nancy Pelosi has gone full coup coup
The speaker, who often sounds and acts as if she is cuckoo, has gone full coup coup. ... I’ve written before how her friends distinguish the speaker from her party’s far-left crazies, but that’s no longer possible. She’s one of them.
With her actions and ridiculous comparison to Nixon, she seals her fate as a rank partisan heedless of the national interest. Pelosi had another, better option.
Recall that after Dems took the House in 2018, Trump complimented her, saying, “I give her a lot of credit . . . She’s worked long and hard.”
He added: “Hopefully, we can all work together next year to continue delivering for the American people, including on economic growth, infrastructure, trade, lowering the cost of prescription drugs. These are some of things that the Democrats do want to work on, and I really believe we’ll be able to do that.”
None of that happened. Pelosi aligned her power with the resistance and rejected Trump’s offer of bipartisanship, especially on immigration, where she refused even to negotiate.
Worse, she made the fateful decision to join Schiff and others in pushing Russia, Russia, Russia. When Robert Mueller gave them nothing to work with, they instantly seized on Ukraine, which GOP Rep. Devin Nunes rightly called a “low-rent sequel.”
Yet to this day, Pelosi continues to accuse Trump of being a Russian agent, repeatedly saying recently that with him, “all roads lead to Putin.”
More here.
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Then most Federalist Society folks are kooky: Senators and Representatives and Judges keep chairs warm for decades while POTUS becomes a lame duck immediately upon re-election
We live under the spendthrift tyranny of the legislative feared by Madison, with its access to the pockets of the people, augmented by a renegade judiciary before which the other two branches remain supine because of Marbury.
The amazing Donald Trump turns the defeated Beto back into a furry and an enthusiast for the border at the same time
It's magic.
Take that, Marianne.
Never Trump National Review Online is still at it: Can't imagine the US has any interest in learning how corrupt Democrats in 2016 colluded with corrupt Ukraine in 2016 to stop the election of the current president
All because his name is Donald Fucking Trump.
Glad I shitcanned National Review in 2008.
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