[American Thinker] Half a year after the failed attempt to impeach President Trump over his "pressure" on Ukraine, a topic of the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine will be yet again getting close attention and presumably making it hot and sweaty in the Delaware basement.
A reason for that is a political scandal that burst out in Kiev on May 19, when a member of Ukrainian Parliament Andrey Derkach called a press conference where he released audio records of the phone calls between "individuals whose voices sound like" those of ex-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Vice President Joseph Biden, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry who discussed the course of Ukrainian domestic policy in very precise detail. On that tapes, Joe Biden factually tells Poroshenko what to do, and Poroshenko seeking advice, cooperates his actions and frankly reassures Biden that all his orders will be executed. Mr. Derkach said that the contents of those records are sufficient to incriminate Poroshenko a treason. As for our side of the pond, the tables are rapidly turning against Biden, who, so far, "magically" shrugged off all corruption accusations.
#3
Not Joe Biden voters, no. But how many Bernie Sanders voters will stay away in disgust or vote Trump in revenge, and how many more Trump voters will ford flowing lava to get to the polls?
#4
It is hard to understand why in tha face of corruption, criminality and sedition, many average Democrats don't reject and want to move away from that.
[AspenBeat] Martha Stewart and Michael Flynn have something in common. Both were nearly ruined for lying to the cops.
In Flynn’s case, the FBI wanted to bring a case against the new president for criminal treason. Only one thing was missing: Evidence of treason.
The FBI figured that Flynn, the president’s new National Security Advisor, might have some dirt on the president. They just needed some leverage to get him to dish it.
#1
I agree. Why should it be illegal to lie to anyone if you haven't been sworn into a court? Yes, the wiser move is to shut up. But they can blackmail you with your silence as well (even if that is supposedly illegal).
When questioning any suspect, officials should not ask questions whose answers they already know, for the sole purpose of seeing whether the suspect will lie. If they do ask such questions, untruthful answers should not be deemed “material” to the investigation, because the FBI already knew the truth.
The FBI should not discourage the suspect from having his lawyer present during the questioning, if a false answer will subject him to criminal liability. Even noble ends do not justify ignoble means, and some of the means used by the special counsel have, indeed, been ignoble.
[BLUF]
[Strategic Culture Foundation] The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish "1984" in isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on himself all his life since leaving Burma.
The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell’s experiences in Spain, his passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the early 1940s.
#3
This is the kind of hyperbole that forms the basis for the fake news pandemic.
Every one writing these days seems to have an obsession with producing the most over the top, dire descriptions for any and every little conundrum. It really is tiring to wade through the swamp to look for rationality.
[Babylon Bee] ATLANTA, GA—Sitting at the governor's desk at the Georgia state capitol, Stacey Abrams told reporters she would step down from her governorship if asked to run for vice president.
"If Biden asks me to run, I'll need to focus on that full-time," she said. "As much as I love running this great state, if the country needs me, I'll be there."
A security guard patrolling the capitol building then entered the governor's office. "Come on, Stacey. Time to go. How many times do we have to have this talk?"
"Classic Greg," she said, laughing. "He's a real jokester. Anyway, yes, if Biden decides he is not a racist and wants me to run, I'll be there, giving my all to make sure we win the White House. It will be tough, but I know the people of Georgia will understand why I need to leave them for a while to save this country."
"But really, you can't be here," the security guard said uncomfortably. "Don't make me drag you out of here again."
[American Thinker] I want to report a robbery in progress. Be on the lookout for the governors of California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. They are attempting to steal from the federal treasury in order to make up for decades of unfunded liabilities. Known associates include Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. They should be considered manipulative and dangerous and likely to stab innocent Americans from behind. Caution is advised.
I only partially jest. Right now, most Americans think the biggest story in the country is a virus from Wuhan, China that has shut down their places of business and forced their families into house arrest. That's only part of the story. There's another part being actively gamed out by shady political operatives in the smoke-filled back rooms of every "dark blue" statehouse, city hall, and precinct captain pool hall around the country: how they can turn this once-in-multiple-generations "black swan" economic catastrophe into a goldmine that gets them out of hock with their many creditors. The Democratic Party is attempting to cash in on the nation's current pandemic fears so that they may finally dig themselves out from the mountains of debt they've created through vote-buying schemes and interest group bribes that have kept them in continuous power of their state and city governments while creating the most financially insolvent treasuries in the nation.
The truth is that our present pandemic nightmare has set in motion an event that has been fermenting for over fifty years. Corrupt Democrat politicos have been fraudulently using the tax-and-spend powers of their offices to keep their natural constituencies financially beholden to their electoral success for generations and generations with no immediate plan for solving their growing financial albatross except the ephemeral hope that one day, somehow, they'd be able to offload the cost of all that graft and corruption onto the federal government's tab for the national taxpayers from faraway states to pay. Great-granddaddy Democrats who paid off dock workers or butchers or ice vendors for their votes by robbing from the treasury taught the lesson from one generation of grifters to the next, who used the same neat trick with ethnic groups and public unions and anybody else who saw no problem with getting rich and powerful in the present day while leaving the bill for future generations to settle.
Along the way, those same "ballot-harvesters" let each generation in on a dirty little secret: the outrageously generous pension plans and health benefits and other financial perks they handed out over the years had grown so big that they could never be paid down without the federal government's help. Since Uncle Sam would never let them go bankrupt and destroy the financial health of American citizens trapped behind blue state lines, their state and city money pits were simply "too big to fail." Someday, some public emergency would set off a cascading economic calamity that would finally allow them to sweep up all the "debt for votes" Democratic Party deficits into one giant, inscrutable, and byzantine federal bailout. And young Democrats are today calling up their old corrupt grand-pappies or toasting the ones who have long since departed and saying, "Here at last, all our great sins will be washed away, so that we may begin buying votes again with a clean slate."
American Greatness via Instapundit
When the pandemic ends, future generations will say of us now living: Why did the United States chain itself to a slave state, so as to strengthen the bonds of the supply chain? Why did our political parties finalize trade agreements with the Chinese Communist Party? Why did so many do so little for so long, while the sick died and the living could not bury the dead?
These questions should cause us to question our beliefs about economics and our opinion of most economists, because no rational actor would risk his life by outsourcing the manufacture of life-saving drugs to a country with no respect for the dignity of human life. No person, except a lifeless corporation with the legal status of personhood, would call inefficiency evil but ignore calls to condemn the evildoers who run China with murderous efficiency.
No reasonable person would argue that the road to freedom runs through Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But no reasonable person would believe such things without first suspending disbelief, because for good people to accept the good intentions of Communists—that takes economics. It takes economists to ignore reality; it takes economics departments to teach history without studying geography, reducing the nature of the nation-state and life in a state of nature to a series of math problems; it takes a village of idiot savants to write like Lenin and sound like Lennon.
It takes gall to say economics is a science. How many MBAs ever heard of "external diseconomies"?
[IsraelTimes] New law bars cooperation with Zionists, including ’hardware and software,’ as crime against God. So, no computers, internet, cellphones; healthcare ravaged; and no BMW for Khamenei
Ahead of its annual al-Quds Day orgy of Israel-bashing on Friday, Iran’s parliament has unanimously passed legislation banning "any cooperation" with Israel — specifically including the use of Israeli computer hardware and software — as a crime against God.
In normal years, al-Quds day is marked across the Islamic Theocratic Republic by orchestrated anti-Israel marches and speeches, the trampling and burning of Israeli flags, and other displays of hatred rather at odds with the regime’s frequent assurances to the international community that its friendly and peace-loving leaders have no interest whatsoever in acquiring nuclear weapons.
Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[American Thinker] Half a year after the failed attempt to impeach President Trump over his "pressure" on Ukraine, a topic of the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine will be yet again getting close attention and presumably making it hot and sweaty in the Delaware basement.
[AspenBeat] Martha Stewart and Michael Flynn have something in common. Both were nearly ruined for lying to the cops.
[Babylon Bee] ATLANTA, GA—Sitting at the governor's desk at the Georgia state capitol, Stacey Abrams told reporters she would step down from her governorship if asked to run for vice president.
[American Thinker] I want to report a robbery in progress. Be on the lookout for the governors of California, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. They are attempting to steal from the federal treasury in order to make up for decades of unfunded liabilities. Known associates include Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. They should be considered manipulative and dangerous and likely to stab innocent Americans from behind. Caution is advised.
Why did the United States chain itself to a slave state, so as to strengthen the bonds of the supply chain? 
