Sunday, November 24, 2019

Uh Oh: Lefty Media Realizing Impeachment May Be Bad for Democrats

 Article by Richard Stocking in "Townhall":

Democrats were on cloud nine when the closed-door impeachment inquiry began. Back then, Rep. Adam Schiff was lying to the American people about what the president said on his July 25 phone call to the president of Ukraine. House Democrats selectively called witnesses, selectively leaked testimony, and continued to fool independent voters into thinking the Democrats were actually hysterical for a good reason. 

The Soviet show trial really wasn't a good look for the Democrats, so the House voted on a bill that gave the process the false appearance of fairness while keeping the Democrats in full control of the narrative and substance of the impeachment inquiry. Two Democrats joined every Republican in voting against the bill, but Speaker Pelosi managed to ram it through.

But what little sunlight the Democrats allowed into the process was enough to start turning the American people away. Despite calling their best witnesses forward – most of whom, like the whistleblower, didn't actually hear Trump's July 25 phone call – support for impeaching the president fell as soon as the public hearings began. A recent poll finds support for impeachment has fallen five percent since October, and Trump's approval rating has shot up five percent during the same period. It seems the more Americans learn about Trump's handling of foreign aid to Ukraine, the more Americans approve of the president's job performance and want Trump to remain in office. 

Worse for Democrats, it's largely the highly-prized independent voters who are souring on impeachment. Vanity Fair's recent headline, "'It Is Hard To Read This As Anything But A Warning': New Polling Suggests Democrats' Impeachment Push Could Alienate Key Voters," encapsulates the predicament Democrats now find themselves. 
(Via Vanity Fair)

"Alas, for the Democrats, the promising numbers of late October and early November rapidly dissipated, and polling numbers have reverted to a level more consistent with long-term opinions on President Trump. In the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll, released on November 19, Independents opposed impeachment and removal from office 46% to 39%, a number close to the rolling averages of the last few weeks. It is notable that the poll was fielded after the first public impeachment hearings. Even the compelling testimony of witnesses like Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, failed to move the needle on public opinion. That doesn’t mean further hearings won’t energize greater opposition to Trump, but it’s a little hard to imagine more effective testimony than that offered by Yovanovitch and some of her Foreign Service colleagues."

In Yanovitch's so-called "effective" testimony, the former Ukraine ambassador appears to have perjured herself and admits having no first-hand knowledge about Trump's phone call to Zelensky or any delay in foreign aid. If these are the star witnesses – of what exactly, I'm not sure – the Democrats have found to make their case, then it should come as no surprise that the Democrats' case has fallen flat in the court of public opinion. And just imagine if Republicans had been allowed to call witnesses of their own. 

Vanity Fair determined three issues driving independents away from supporting the Democratic-led impeachment effort. First, many independents say the impeachment is a distraction from the issues they really care about. You're kidding? Secondly, independents view the impeachment as part of the political establishment and the media's agenda. Now, where would they get an idea like that? And finally, independents are now suffering from "scandal fatigue and overall confusion," just like everyone else. 

It's hard to keep up with what exactly the Democrats and the media want everyone to be so hysterical about. One day it's Trump's July 25 phone call. Another day it's a different phone call that somebody managed to overhear at a restaurant, despite not having the call on speaker phone. One day it's the president's tweet


So it's no surprise independents are now questioning the agenda of the impeachment inquiry, wondering what the hell it's all about, and wishing our national leaders would get on with something more important. 

There's no positive spin on this for the Democrats, and they are beginning to realize it. On Sunday, Rep. Adam Schiff told CNN's Jake Tapper that he would now like the opportunity to discuss the idea of impeaching the president with his constituents and his colleagues. Also on CNN, Washington Post Congressional Reporter Rachael Bade had to admit that many Democrats are beginning to have cold feet about the impeachment.

And if the impeachment moves to the Senate, the president will be empowered by the Republican majority to make a much more robust defense against the Democrats' ever-changing accusations against him. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham has already requested documents related to Hunter Biden and Burisma, and Sen. Rand Paul has stated that Hunter Biden and the alleged whistleblower should be compelled to testify. 

So if the Democrats are worried about the polls now, just give it time.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bronsonstocking/2019/11/24/even-vanity-fair-knows-n2556996

Vulnerable Democrats Begin to Panic as a Tsunami of Trump Anti-Impeachment Ads Bears Down


No matter how you tart up the current “impeachment inquiry” it is the embodiment of the maxim of Soviet NKVD chief and pedophile Lavrentiy Beria: You show me the man and I’ll show you the crime. It has been obvious since November 2016 that the Democrats would pursue impeachment of President Trump and it was really obvious in the prelude to the 2018 election that should the Democrats win the House that impeachment was inevitable. (See my post from May 2018 on this subject.) Now that the Democrats have their impeachment, they are finding that it may not play out as well as they thought it would. 

Impeachment is not popular with the public. A couple of days ago I posted on an Emerson poll which showed a seismic shift in how independents view impeachment (see New Emerson Poll Has More Bad News for Democrats and Impeachment Fans). This poll merely repeated a trend appearing in all polls. This, via Vanity Fair, is really the killer:

The Trump campaign is raising a lot of money from impeachment and they are using it in a way that is causing panic among the Democrat House members who were responsible for flipping it from American to Democrat control.

Vulnerable Democrats are watching in horror as GOP impeachment attacks deluge their districts back home. And they want a much stronger counteroffensive from their own party and its allies.
Some of those Democrats raised their concerns with party leaders this week as they prepared to leave for Thanksgiving recess, fearing that voters will be bombarded by anti-impeachment ads as families gather around the TV for parades and football, according to multiple lawmakers and aides.
GOP-aligned outside groups have spent roughly $8 million on TV spots this cycle in battleground districts, such as Rep. Anthony Brindisi’s central New York seat. The vast majority of those ads specifically hammer Democrats over impeachment.
Meanwhile, swing-district Democrats are receiving little reinforcement from their own party or even other liberal coalitions. Democratic and pro-impeachment groups have spent about $2.7 million in TV ads, according to an analysis of spending by the ad tracking firm Advertising Analytics. And more than $600,000 of that total went to ads targeting Republican incumbents, not helping vulnerable Democratic members.
And there are more: A pro-Trump group called Presidential Coalition, backed by conservative force Citizens United, announced this week that it’s spending more than $1 million on TV ads in the districts of Brindisi, Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.), Ben McAdams (D-Utah), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.).
Then there’s the big spending by Trump’s reelection team, which announced $10 million in spending on television and digital ads just days after House Democrats formally declared their impeachment inquiry in September.

But the story is not $8 million vs $2.7 million. It is how and where the money is targeted. The Democrat spending is going after GOP incumbents. The GOP spending is going after vulnerable freshmen. The GOP advertising is on impeachment while the Democrat spending is on a variety of issues.

Democratic-aligned groups, however, have begun spending on ads. Last week, the liberal coalition Protect Our Care launched a $2 million digital ad campaign to promote a Democratic drug-pricing bill. But GOP groups are devoting far more cash, including a roughly $5 million buy on anti-impeachment TV ads across 18 Democratic districts by American Action Network, a nonprofit tied to House GOP leadership.

Don’t know how to break this to you, Democrats, but drug pricing is NOT going to be a issue in any campaign this year so it is money wasted.
Democrat leadership is whistling past the graveyard on this.

Some say Democrats are already earning free media from the wall-to-wall coverage of this month’s impeachment hearings, which they believe has been largely good for their party and hurtful for Republicans.
And they say any TV ads so early in the cycle would do little to sway voters. Instead, they argue GOP spending is more of an attempt to get Democrats to spend big with almost a year left to go.
“It’s not about changing voters’ minds. It’s about pressuring Democrats,” one Democratic national strategist said.

If roughly 2/3 of voters say impeachment is not important to them, the earned media you get isn’t necessarily a good thing. If a majority of voters are against removing Trump from office and the number is declining week by week, reminding voters that you are the one leading the charge probably isn’t going to go over big.

It is a long time until November but the Democrats are lagging in fundraising, none of their signature policies are supported by Americans, and impeachment has transformed from a silver bullet to a millstone about the neck…and the Democrat consultants are cashing their checks and singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

How Liberals Defend Theft


How Liberals Defend Theft

How Liberals Defend Theft
Imagine two thieves about to rob a bank. Before they consummate the act, they discuss the ethics of what they are about to do. Is there some moral argument in favor of it? Is there a case against it?

It’s hard to imagine such a conversation. Then again, there aren’t very many bank robbers around these days.

There are, however, millions of people who believe in a different kind of theft. They think it’s OK for the government to steal your money and mine for their benefit. They think that’s more than OK. They refuse to vote for politicians who don’t promise thievery on a massive scale.

Where would we find a justification for doing what the Bible clearly says is wrong?

You won’t find it at progressive campaign rallies, which are beginning to resemble gladiatorial arenas in ancient Rome. I can just picture Emperor Sanders yelling to the crowd, “Should we spare the billionaire?” “No,” roar the toga-clad listeners, who in unison point their thumbs down.

But far away from the rabble rousers, is there a reasoned defense of what risks becoming a modern-day Hobbesian jungle?

For defending the indefensible, I find that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman can usually be counted on. The other day, he rose to the task and didn’t disappoint. I read Krugman to say there are five reasons why we should rob the rich.

They were just lucky. Wealth creation is often like a casino in Krugman’s view. Most people lose the money. But once in a while someone pulls the right slot machine lever and voilà! He’s got a bundle. But does he really deserve it?

When I look around the world at rich people, though, I don’t notice a lot of luck. Bill Gates built Microsoft. Steve Jobs built Apple. Sam Walton built Wal-Mart. Ross Perot built EDS. I could go on.

I suspect that all these people worked round the clock – at nights and on weekends – to achieve what they achieved; and they worked much harder than just about anyone you know.

The only gamble involved was taking the risk that they could meet our needs. And remember, if they don’t meet our needs they don’t get a dime. Luck doesn’t make people rich. You and I make people rich when we buy their products.

They probably stole it. Krugman dismisses fortunes in high tech by suggesting they “are modern versions of the monopoly spoils grabbed by old-fashioned robber barons.”

Hmmm. Last time I looked, Bill Gates wasn’t forcing anyone to use Microsoft Word. Jeff Bezos isn’t forcing me to buy from Amazon. Peter Thiel doesn’t point a gun at my head and demand that I use PayPal. Mark Zuckerman isn’t demanding that I use Facebook.

If these products have come to dominate their markets, it’s because they meet our needs better than any rivals do.

They aren’t real people. Krugman was once asked why it’s OK to take money away from LeBron James. He replied that he doesn’t like to talk about specific individuals. Of course not. Once the victim has a name, he or she becomes a real person. Did LeBron James ever do anything to harm you? Did he borrow money from you and refuse to pay it back? Did he steal from you? No? Then why do you want to rob him of money he rightfully earned?

Many successful people in professional sports and in the entertainment world started out in life with virtually nothing. They worked hard and deserve what they have. These people would have no income at all unless you and I are willing to pay to see them perform.

Rags-to-riches stories are common among the very rich. J. K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books) appears to be the richest woman in the world. She started out on welfare. 

The rich should be treated like slaves. Most readers of this column probably know nothing about the economics of slavery. But economists have studied the subject a lot. You have to spend a lot of money on slaves in order for them to be productive. You have to feed them, house them, clothe them and tend to their medical needs. 

How does the slave owner maximize his profit? Economists tell us he will exploit his slaves until the last dollar spent on their upkeep is equal to the last dollar of income their work produces.

Hard to believe, but this is exactly what Paul Krugman would like to do to rich people – at least as far as the tax system is concerned.

What tax rate should rich people pay? According to Krugman it should be the rate that maximizes what they fork over for the rest of us. If the tax rate were 100%, the rich wouldn’t work at all. So, Krugman acknowledges you have to give them some of what they produce. He guesses the ideal rate is 90%.

In order for a highly successful person to earn a dime, he would have to produce 90 cents for everybody else. 

They shouldn’t even exist. Krugman at times suggests that rich people could be a cash cow for the rest of us. At other times, he seems to agree with Bernie Sanders: we would be better off if they didn’t exist at all. Elizabeth Warren’s own economic advisors say that if her wealth tax had been in effect starting in 1982, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Warren Buffett would have lost most of their fortunes by now. 

I suppose things could be worse. Prometheus, who made civilization possible by capturing fire, was chained to a stone and eaten by vultures. But keep that to yourself. We don’t want to give the progressives any more ideas.

Ukraine Officials: Dems Impeachment Inquiry and Hunter Biden Ties Impeding Probe Into Burisma


Democrats are so intent on finding anyway to get rid of President Donald Trump, they don’t seem to care much about the consequences of their actions, not just for our country but for our relationships with other countries. 

It’s not clear how much they’ve impaired our relationships when other country’s leaders may now have to fear speaking in confidence to the president on the phone because they don’t know if someone will try to leak it or Democrats will try to make it public.

Specifically in the case of Ukraine, the Ukrainians have said that the Democrats’ efforts have impaired the relationship which had been improving under Trump. 

Officials in the Ukraine have also made it clear that the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has hampered their ability to investigate corruption involving Burisma and that it was also hampered because of the ties of Hunter Biden. 

From NY Post: 
Current and former officials in Ukraine told Time magazine that the government felt hamstrung because of Burisma’s ties to Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden.
The younger Biden – who’s embroiled in a paternity scandal – sat on the Burisma board from April 2014 until earlier this year, for which he was reportedly paid as much as $50,000 a month.
“It’s too sensitive a topic,” one Ukrainian official told Time.

According to the report, the Ukrainian official familiar with President Zelensky says he believes that the investigation needs to proceed on Burisma, not because of Trump or Biden, but because they feel there’s corruption. 

But the impeachment process has now made it political and impeded their efforts. “And this is bad,” the official said.

Bohdan Yaramenko, a senior lawmaker in Zelensky’s ruling party, told Time that officials were concerned how “major players in the United States” would respond to any Ukrainian statements regarding graft in the country’s notoriously crooked gas industry.

It’s not hard to see how they might be concerned. Imagine if they find corruption by Hunter Biden? How do they pull the trigger on pursuing or announcing that with the possibility that Biden might become president? And Biden already threatened to pull aid in the past if they didn’t do what he wanted. 

Despite that, they do seem to be pursuing the head of Burisma, as the prosecutor General Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka announced this week. They are looking into him for embezzling state funds, money laundering, tax violations and licenses which were given to Burisma. 

Lawmakers held a separate press conference were they also linked the money allegedly taken from the state and said they believed that millions paid to Hunter Biden may not have been earned from the business but may have been money taken from Ukraine. The Prosecutor General did not make any allegations against Biden during his remarks. 
Nice job, Democrats. Not only being divisive here, but inhibiting the ability to get to the bottom of corruption in Ukraine as well.

Eat Mor Capitulation..

Eat Mor Capitulation: 

The Chick-fil-A Betrayal



Chick-fil-A has alienated the staunchest cultural supporters but has not even remotely appeased the belligerent passions and cultural bloodlust of its detractors.

After years of standing by its founding principles in the face of unjust, ugly, and unrelenting criticism from the Jacobin Left, Chick-fil-A abandoned those principles. After years of steadfast support from the cultural Right, Chick-fil-A has betrayed that support. Chick-fil-A on Monday raised the white flag in a battle it was winning by announcing it would no longer support the Salvation Army and Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA); two faith-based organizations whose religious tenets, aligning with those of Chick-fil-A, guided them in support of traditional marriage, but whose actual philanthropic activities never discriminated against anyone.

Of course, Chick-fil-A used some anodyne language about ”a more focused giving approach to provide additional clarity and impact with the causes it supports,” and noted that they had fulfilled their giving obligations in 2018 and would instead pivot to focus on “education, homelessness and hunger.” (Donations to the Salvation Army and FCA weren’t general fund donations, but were instead earmarked specifically for programs to assist in the education and feeding of children in need.)

Honestly, I am not sure why Chick-fil-A made the decision it did. Business was booming. While it’s PR issues due to leftist opposition were significant, it did not seem to affect their bottom line.

Quite the contrary. Chick-fil-A’s brand was one of the fastest-growing in the market space. By June of this year, Chick-fil-A grew from the seventh largest restaurant chain in the United States to the third-largest, behind McDonald’s and Starbucks. Its sales in 2018 topped $10.46 billion, a 16.7 percent increase over the year prior. It remains the most profitable fast-food chain in America on a per-location basis, outperforming second-ranked McDonalds by an average of $1 million per location. In fact, Chick-ilf-A’s per-store income in 2017 was greater than that of McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway combined.

I can only think that a desire to expand into Europe and the international market as well as in areas around college campuses coupled with a changing corporate culture focused more on PR concerns than foundational principles.

It’s also possible that once Chick-fil-A grew large enough, its culture organically became an administrative, HR and PR focused one instead of an ethical Christian based one. Things like this tend to happen as organizations grow—timid and mercenary bureaucracies and bureaucrats replace bold visions and visionaries. Maybe though, the answer is much more petty. Maybe the executives were tired of being yelled at by the mob, or given hostile stares by their peers. I really don’t know.

From Earnest to Saccharine

Whatever the cause, the decision signals a sea change in the culture of the company away from the Christian values that previously had informed the entire franchise. Away they now move from the ethical vision that translated into a consumer experience which was superlative, positive, and earnest, filled with joyful and genuine enthusiasm for the good; with employees’ smiles never failing to reach their eyes with kindness, a joy that imbued the full experience of enjoying their food with a positivity unique to Chick-Fil-A.

Expect all of that to change. Expect the earnestness to be replaced with saccharine halfheartedness as corporate culture informs the culture canaille. But beyond that, expect Chick-Fil-A, in due time, to become a full-throated supporter of the causes that once screamed loudest to shut it down.

In the wake of the announcement, conservatives lamented what they saw as a betrayal:
While the Left, never satisfied with mere capitulation, argued that simply removing donations wasn’t enough. Chick-Fil-A, in the Left’s view, still stained by sin, needed to further show public penance by “becoming more transparent” about its relationships with other organizations deemed adversarial, organizations such as Focus on the Family:
GLAAD’s director of campaigns and rapid response, Drew Anderson, further elaborated to CNN:
In addition to refraining from financially supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-fil-A still lacks policies to ensure safe workplaces for LGBTQ employees and should unequivocally speak out against the anti-LGBTQ reputation that their brand represents.
Chick-fil-A sought to appease the sharks, but all they really did was pour blood in the water. There have already been cries on major news outlets suggesting that unless Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy disavows his previous statements and beliefs about gay marriage, the company’s sins will remain unabsolved.

Cathy, it should be remembered, sparked the initial controversy while he was the COO of the company in 2012 by stating:
We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.
“We operate as a family business . . . our restaurants are typically led by families—some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that.

Self-Abnegnation, Oblivion, Or Both

When Chick-fil-A tried to suggest, that despite changing its giving for the current year, it wasn’t ruling anyone out in the future for philanthropic donations, the Left became apoplectic. They saw this as proof that Chick-fil-A’s about-face wasn’t genuine and went on to imply that unless Chick-fil-A actively commits to never again giving to the Salvation Army and FCA their announcement is a false one and they have not actually changed course.

Chick-fil-A is discovering, a bit too late, that just as its critics do not subscribe to Christian definitions of marriage, neither do they hold to Christian notions of forgiveness and penance. Instead, it is the spirit of revolution, unbridled by reason and compassion that moves Chick-fil-A’s critics as they embrace the zealotry that fuels their destructive passion; crimes against the revolution are only expiated through a very public self-abnegation or oblivion (oftentimes both).

History proves time and again that leftist revolutions are less about destroying traditional institutions and power structures than they are about capturing and co-opting them. While some structures and symbols are utterly destroyed, like the Bastille and the monarchy, the real power they represented is left standing and captured, appropriated in service of revolutionary goals.

The Russian Revolution saw to it that the czar and his family were killed while the Kremlin was left standing to become the seat of power for the Communists. The Cuban revolution repurposed Batista’s former presidential palace as a Museo Revolucion. During the French Revolution, the Cathedral of Notre Dame became the declared property of the state and, in addition to being literally defaced (as the heads of its statues were removed), was repurposed to serve as a “Temple of Reason,” for the new state religion, the “Cult of Reason.” In 1793, the cathedral was made to serve as the location for the “Festival of Reason,” an anti-religious bacchanal where:
[A] seductively dressed actress portraying the Goddess of Reason was worshiped atop a mountain. Enlightenment philosophers’ busts and statues of the Liberty replaced religious statues, and seductively dressed women danced and sang songs extolling the revolution.

This appropriation is not limited to physical structures. It extends to any powerful symbol. The King and Queen couldn’t be allowed to live, but the Royal Executioner, Charles-Henri Sanson and his family, symbols of the power of the royals became the High Revolutionary Executioners of the royals. They would pull the lever and display the head of Louis XVI and 10 months later extend the same courtesy to Marie Antoinette. Capturing, inverting, manipulating and co-opting the power of past symbols and structures is more central to the revolutionary endeavor than mere destruction.

Why ‘Condensed Symbols’ Matter

So too, must Chick-fil-A be captured, manipulated, and co-opted. Mere change of philanthropic strategy on the company’s part will not be enough for the Left.

Rod Dreher, in a piece for the American Conservative, noted that Chick-fil-A has become a “Condensed Symbol” for the Right, of a way of life. That its principled stance in support of its values and its success in a fight it didn’t ask for became symbolic of the ability to fight a mob calling for spiritual concessions. Chick-fil-A and its success became emblematic to cultural conservatives of the possibility they might thrive while remaining true to the faith. It became, as Slate’s Ruth Graham put it, “a kind of avatar for conservative American Christianity as a whole.”

Because of this, Chick-fil-A, conversely, has become a condensed symbol for the Left of everything hated. Such a symbol either must be destroyed like the Bastille, or repurposed like Notre Dame and Sanson; the Left’s thirst for redress and desire to co-opt the strongest symbols of its opposition can only be slaked thus.

No. Unless Chick-fil-A becomes an active and strident supporter for those things it once opposed, it will continue to be pilloried. Until Chick-fil-A repudiates all its ties to its faith, it will be denounced. Until Chick-fil-A runs an advertisement, extolling gay marriage while failing to pitch its actual product, it will remain in the crosshairs, and even then it probably won’t be enough.

Appeasement Is Impossible

Chick-fil-A is to serve as an ongoing reminder to any entity of faith that wishes to venture into the world at large. It will continue to be attacked. But the difference is that now Chick-fil-A has alienated most of its values supporters, those who stood as a counterbalance against said attacks, and it will stand alone.

Further, with its faith thrown aside in favor of other concerns, whether monetary, organizational, or personal it will have no absolute values to put the brakes on its inevitable snowballing concessions as it moves to become a full-throated supporter of those things against which it once stood.

Chick-fil-A is learning very quickly, that abandoning core values, in an attempt to avoid being criticized for those values isn’t merely a betrayal of oneself, but a betrayal of all those who valued you; a slap in the face to those who stood by you because of your strength and added to your strength.

Now that Chick-fil-A has alienated the staunchest cultural supporters but has not even remotely appeased the belligerent passions and cultural bloodlust of its detractors, it is left alone, defenseless against the attacks it hoped to ameliorate through capitulation, attacks which will not abate until Chick-fil-A either joins the revolution or is destroyed by it.

Trump’s Disruptive Energy vs. the Deep State


With just about any other president, the deep state’s victory would be all-but-assured. With Trump, hedge your bets.

For the last 56 years, this time in November has been an occasion—at first pious and lachrymose, latterly perfunctory—to commemorate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That event was certainly a cultural cataclysm. America was a changed place after November 22, 1963.

But for all the reams of commentary that event elicited, there is one irony that has not perhaps been sufficiently appreciated. Although the president’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a rabid Communist, the murder was almost instantly reframed as an expression of right-wing hatred.

I say that this irony has not been sufficiently appreciated. I do not mean that it hasn’t been pointed out. It lies at the center of James Piereson’s fine book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, for example. But somehow in the texture of public sentiment, in the semi-articulated tissues of popular understanding, the notion that Kennedy was really, deep down killed by the equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” shows us how malleable, how susceptible to political manipulation is the Narrative, the assumed horizon of understanding.

There are contemporary lessons to be drawn from the metamorphosis of Kennedy’s assassination at the hands of a pro-Soviet Communist into an object lesson in the perils of right-wing animus.

The only Russian collusion on offer in 2016 was between the Hillary Clinton campaign and various Russian and Ukrainian operatives, but somehow we all got saddled with a nearly three-year, multimillion-dollar investigation into Donald Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia.


Get Ready for Media Obfuscation Like Never Before

We can see the same dynamic at work in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) efforts to build a case for impeaching Donald Trump out of secretly wrought hearsay and tendentious interpretations of summarized telephone calls between Trump and the president of Ukraine. If you only paid attention to what Schiff said, or what the megaphones of the mainstream media said in slavish support of the narrative he is endeavoring to construct, you might conclude that Trump had done something wrong in the ordinary conduct of his duties.

Narratives do have inflection points, however, and the imminent release of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on December 9 may well mark such a pivot. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has already announced that he intends to open hearings on the report on December 11. Since that report will go into detail about alleged abuses by the FBI in obtaining FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and hence on the entire Trump campaign, the possibilities for a narrative revision are prodigious.

The Democrats know this, of course, and they and their media enablers have not been remiss in attempting to meet this potential challenge.

One reason that it has taken so long for the Horowitz report to see the light of day is that key figures who are named in the report are given a chance to review a draft and to request redactions. Since many of the figures who are central to this story are part of the anti-Trump fraternity in government, we can expect to see, over the next few weeks, numerous leaks and other efforts to spin the contents of the report.

An early entry into the leak-and-lather sweepstakes is a bijou from CNN attempting to package the news that an FBI lawyer was under criminal investigation for altering a document in the Trump-Russia witch hunt—I mean probe. Note the rhetorical strategy.
The moral, of course, is that they—the experts, the beautiful people who populate the administrative state and their public relations outlets—they know better than us, us deplorables, us “bitter enders,” us voters.
First comes the acknowledgment: “The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign.”

Yep, CNN got that right. But then comes the massage of the message: “American intelligence agencies and the Justice Department have not swayed from their finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election by hacking the Democrats and spreading pro-Trump propaganda online.” OK, but what about the pro-Hillary activities of Russian social media, which are also documented? The Russians have been interfering in U.S. elections since the 1920s. The 2016 election was nothing new, but CNN would have you believe it was.

More massaging, or rather obfuscation: “Even former top Trump campaign officials have corroborated special counsel Robert Mueller’s finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in 2016.” I’d like to see the evidence for this claim. It isn’t in the copy of the Mueller report that I read.

But that dubious contention is just a throat clearing for this: “A finding of alleged wrongdoing from Horowitz could further fuel Republican criticism and conspiracies about previous investigators’ targeting of Trump associates.” Ah—“alleged wrongdoing,” you see, which will fuel not only Republican criticisms (which it surely should do) but also Republican “conspiracies” about “targeting of Trump associates.”


Just “a Conspiracy Theory”

Here’s the thing about conspiracies, though. Sometimes there really are conspiracies. And in such cases, those who take the trouble to point them out are not purveyors of “conspiracy theories” (a bad thing) but rather the exposers of a threat (a good thing).
Just ask Cicero what Cataline was up to in 63 B.C. That episode had had a happy result for the Roman Republic (not so happy for Cataline or his collaborators). But CNN hopes that by describing as “conspiracies” efforts—they should be bipartisan, but they aren’t—to get to the bottom of what I and others have called the biggest political scandal in U.S. history they can somehow discredit those efforts. “Oh, the idea Jim Comey and John Brennan and Andrew McCabe and all the rest were out to get Trump is just a conspiracy.” Ergo it is not worth taking seriously.

Except that it is very much worth being taken seriously and, as a matter of fact, it is being taken seriously, as anyone who can utter the names William Barr and John Durham knows.

I think it is time to open a book on which media outlets are going to leak and then try to repurpose the many tidbits we’ll be seeing from the IG report on the run-up to December 9. I predict that those reliable anti-Trump organs,  the New York Times and the Washington Post, will lead the pack, but let’s see.

In the meantime, it is worth keeping an observation from the political philosopher John Marini in mind. Michael Anton quotes from a recent speech of Marini’s in his own superlative essay on impeachment for the Claremont Review of Books:
Many great scandals arise not as a means of exposing corruption, but as a means of attacking political foes while obscuring the political differences that are at issue. This is especially likely to occur in the aftermath of elections that threaten the authority of an established order. In such circumstances, scandal provides a way for defenders of the status quo to undermine the legitimacy of those who have been elected on a platform of challenging the status quo—diluting, as a consequence, the authority of the electorate.
It would be hard to find a better description of the Trump-Russian scandal or the Ukrainian “scandal” now playing at the Adam Schiff Theater.

Anton zeroes in on the “playbook,” the strategy: “selectively leak to create a fog, a miasma of vaguely negative-sounding ‘facts’ or allegations that seem ominous but also too complex and in-the-weeds for ordinary folk to follow. Then publicly ‘confirm’ those leaks as the authoritative account of the ‘scandal.’”

As it was with the Russia hoax, so it is now with the Adam Schiff Impeachment Follies: “None of the actual facts adds up to any actual wrongdoing, but the hope is that regular people won’t notice and won’t listen to those who do.”

The moral, of course, is that they—the experts, the beautiful people who populate the administrative state and their public relations outlets—they know better than us, us deplorables, us “bitter enders,” us voters.

Will it work? It has, pretty much, until now. I have to admit that. But in this as in so much else, Donald Trump has insinuated a new and disruptive energy into the narrative. With just about any other president, I would have said that the deep state’s victory was all-but-assured. With Trump, I am hedging my bets.

It Was Originally Called The Administrative State...


The Foundations of the ‘Administrative/Deep State’


Reversing the administrative state will take a major effort. Recognizing that it exists and that it is not merely unconstitutional but in fact anti-constitutional is at least a beginning.

We hear a great deal these days about the “deep state,” especially as it applies to the Trump Administration. The president’s supporters use the term to describe the entrenched federal bureaucracy and what they believe to be its efforts to derail the president’s policies. Until recently, the president’s critics have dismissed the idea of a deep state as a crazy right-wing conspiracy.

But, in fact, the deep state is a particularly virulent form of the “administrative state,” which has been described by such scholars as John MariniRonald Prestritto, and Paul Moreno as a perversion of constitutional self-government. Essentially a “state within a state,” it substitutes rulemaking by unelected bureaucrats for legislation passed according to the constitutional process.

The administrative state is far more than the permanent bureaucracy about which many Americans complain: a realm of wastefulness, inefficiency, and red-tape. It is a “fourth branch of government” that fits nowhere within the scheme of the Constitution as understood by its authors. It is enabled by Congress’s unconstitutional delegation of its legislative powers to the executive, leading to the creation of the pestilent “alphabet agencies” that plague American life.


The Very Definition of Tyranny

Embracing the idea that the only legitimate government is one based on the consent of the governed, the Founders believed that a law could obligate citizens only if a constitutionally established legislature elected by the people passed it, and that a judicial decision could obligate citizens only if a constitutionally appointed judge exercising independent judgment rendered it. But entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) make their own rules, enforce them, and then adjudicate disputes.

In Federalist 47, James Madison wrote that the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” It was to avoid this dangerous accumulation of power in a single branch that the Founders embedded separation of powers in the Constitution. But by exercising executive, legislative and judicial powers, these administrative agencies are constitutional anomalies that violate the separation of powers.



The administrative state is the legacy of Progressives such as Woodrow Wilson, who rejected the Declaration of Independence as the cornerstone of American Republican government and the Founders’ view that the only purpose of government is to protect the natural rights of its citizens. Instead, the Progressives embraced the idea that the purpose of government is to ameliorate the human condition; they saw the Founders’ Constitution as a hindrance to this enterprise.

In pursuit of their goal, the Progressives sought to separate “politics,” the realm of ends, from “administration,” the realm of means. But in doing so, they replaced the Founders’ limited conception of politics with an essentially unlimited one.

Government By the Experts, For the Experts

Meanwhile, the actual administration of governmental affairs was to be entrusted to scientifically trained and disinterested experts, insulated from political pressure. Of course, in practice, the “neutral” and “disinterested” experts within the “independent” bureaucratic agencies soon became active agents for particular interests and ideological impulses, mainly client groups of the Democratic Party.

Ironically, as Philip Hamburger has shown in his remarkable book, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, the Progressives’ view was in fact reactionary, reaching backward rather than forward. He shows that the institutions of the administrative state essentially are the equivalent of royal prerogative commissions and tribunals such as the Star Chamber and High Commission established by King James I.

Although the most complete description of the administrative state is to be found in the work of such political philosophers as Marini, Prestritto, and Moreno, the workings of the administrative state can be discerned in the disciplines of economics and public policy. In the former, the standard narrative held that while individuals in the private sector were motivated by the incentive of profit, those in the public sector were motivated by altruism and selfless service to the common good. Thus, during the recent impeachment hearings, a caravan of government officials, whose job it is to advise the president and then implement his policies, were portrayed as disinterested heroes, who see it as their duty to save the republic from the president in the name of the “policy community.”

But the public choice school of economics, especially James Buchanan, upended this notion half a century ago, illustrating that individuals in the public sector also respond to incentives, albeit bureaucratic ones that differ from those in the private sector. Promotions, honors, the victory of one’s agency over another are major sources of individual motivation in the public sector.

Acute Danger to Republican Government

In the realm of public policy, the spawn of the Progressives’ political science, we see how bureaucratic decision-making leads to suboptimal outcomes, even if the bureaucrats do not purposely set out to undercut the president’s policies. Graham Allison provided the classic treatment of government decision-making in Essence of Decision, his study of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Why did the United States and the Soviet Union behave the way they did? Especially in the case of the United States, why did certain elements of the government act in ways that seemed to undercut the policy preferences of President Kennedy and his close advisors?

Here Allison showed how the dominant decision-making model, the “rational actor” model—which treats the government as a unitary actor that examines a set of goals, evaluates them according to their utility, then chooses the one that has the highest “payoff”—didn’t explain the actual behavior of the players. He then offered two alternatives that disaggregated decision-making: the “organizational process” model; and the “governmental politics” model.

In the former, decision-makers break down a problem and assign its parts to subordinate decision-makers according to pre-established organizational lines. Then, rather than evaluating all possible courses of action to see which one is most likely to work, leaders settle on the first proposal that adequately addresses the issue from the standpoint of the various government agencies and organizations. Thus, decisions tend to focus on the short term and result in a sub-optimal result.

In the latter model, leaders, even if they share a goal, differ among themselves as to how best to achieve it because of such factors as personal interests and background. In other words, “where one stands is based on where one sits.” As a result, even the president must gain a consensus with his underlings or risk having his order misunderstood or, in some cases, ignored.

Thus both economics and public policy reinforce the idea that parts of the government act in their bureaucratic interest rather than in the general interest, which is the essence of the administrative state. The danger that the administrative state poses to republican self-government is acute. It is more suited to a government of unlimited powers and tyranny than to a government of limited powers and freedom.

What accounts for the rise of the administrative state? There is plenty of blame to go around. Citizens have been willing to exchange their liberty and independence for entitlements, the “soft despotism” that Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw in Democracy in America. Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority to legislate. The courts no longer distinguish between the administration of a law clearly written by Congress and the wholesale delegation of lawmaking powers to the alphabet agencies.

Reversing the administrative state will take a major effort. Recognizing that it exists and that it is not merely unconstitutional but in fact anti-constitutional is at least a beginning.


Democrats May Regret This Dance When Republicans Call the Tune



Democrats have run the impeachment theater of the absurd in the House. But Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are in the driver’s seat in the Senate. Imagine the chaos of a trial in the midst of the Democratic primary.

As the Democrat impeachment farce concluded its meltdown in the House Intelligence Committee this week, it’s clear Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and company think we’re idiots.

Schiff claims he doesn’t know the identity of the political-operative-masquerading-as-a-“whistleblower” while other Democrats insist that hearsay is sometimes more relevant than first-hand accounts. (Ponder that one in the context of proposed red-flag gun laws. Who in his right mind would ever give these people the power over their natural rights?)

All the while, witness after witness made it clear there was no quid pro quo, no bribery, no nothing of anything at all. Just a lot of discomfort with President Trump’s departure from the “interagency consensus.”

The mind-blowing stupidity of all of this is difficult to swallow, especially when one realizes—as some of us have been saying for quite some time—that Trump’s approach with Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression is a complete reversal of President Obama’s.

Recall how Obama sought to appease Russia (don’t forget he pulled missile defense systems from Poland and the Czech Republic to appease Vladimir Putin) by turning a blind eye and sending blankets to the Ukrainians. Trump? He sells them anti-tank Javelin missiles. But somehow this makes him Putin’s puppet?

As this Stalinist theater of the absurd continues, it has become very hard to use the word “impeachment” when describing anything the Democrats are doing currently. That term implies some actual constitutional process and order. What we are seeing, and have been seeing over the past three years, has precisely nothing to do with the Constitution.

Democrats and administrative state actors have defied the Constitution by refusing to accept the constitutional will of the American people in electing Donald Trump. They have abused and denied such constitutional rights as due process, abused the Fourth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment . . . hell, pick any amendment from the Bill of Rights and you could make an argument they’ve abused that as well.

The Constitution, as the Framers intended, has been a deep frustration to the Left for over a century. They have masqueraded for decades behind calls for respecting “norms,” imitating constitutional vocabulary, but working to undermine its foundation pretty much every single day. The beauty of what is unfolding now is the clarity it provides: the masquerade is over, the pretenses are done. We can now see them for who they truly are, the statists they have always been.


Doing the District Math

What works in our favor right now is that Democrats like Schiff are functioning idiots who didn’t game out where all of this is likely to end up.

First, by highlighting Ukraine and the Biden family, much of the story has become about Burisma and Hunter Biden. According to some reports, that story is even uglier than we initially thought.

It now looks as though $7.5 billion was laundered in the process of working Hunter Biden through Franklin Templeton to the Obama Administration’s hand-picked Ukrainian ex-president (election meddle much?) and that the $3 million or so that Hunter supposedly received was, in fact, closer to $16.5 million. To make matters worse, that money may not have been the funds channeled from a corrupt energy company but may have been funds obtained by even more “criminal means.”

Beyond that, what do people think is going to happen when the clown-show hearings end? The “impeachment” inquiry then goes to the House floor and members argue over articles of “impeachment.” Let’s say that after watching the “hearings,” the three-dozen or so Democrats in swing districts Trump won in 2016 actually vote against their own best interests in favor of articles of impeachment. Fine. Some might survive in 2020, but what if only a dozen survive? The GOP is likely to retake the House.

For the sake of argument, let’s say articles of “impeachment” pass the House and go on to the Senate for trial. What do you think “Cocaine Mitch” will do?

Think about it: Mitch McConnell has two real priorities in life. He wants to be the longest-serving Senate majority leader in history (meaning he needs to win next fall and keep the majority) and he wants to reshape the federal judiciary—which if you haven’t noticed, is moving right along. By the end of the year, another 40 federal judges will join the bench.


What a Senate Trial Would Look Like

McConnell and the Republicans are in the driver’s seat in the Senate. While I never underestimate the ability of Republicans to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, let’s say McConnell plays it right and messes with the Democrats. Let’s face it, they picked the dance, but McConnell now gets to call the tune.

What if McConnell, unlike Schiff, allows the Trump team to call any and all witnesses in their defense? According to Senate rules, that’s entirely possible. Among the potential names on the list: James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Glenn Simpson, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, the “whistleblower,” members of the media who were complicit in advancing the Russia-collusion conspiracy fairytale, and dozens of others. Heck, Trump should see if President Zelensky will come and testify. Swear every last one in, put them on national television and let’s dance.

McConnell could stretch the trial out for six weeks, eight weeks, or even longer. Then, after maximum pain has been inflicted, he would hold the vote acquitting Trump. The 2020 Democratic presidential primary will be thrown into chaos. Fundraising would be disrupted. Campaign events would need to be rescheduled to accommodate the trial. Any real contender in the 2020 primaries—including material witness Joe Biden—would, of course, have to be in the Senate. It would be must-see television.

While there is some angst about how Pierre Delecto would vote in the trial, have no fear: Pierre and Mitt Romney only get one vote between them. While there might be a few others who prove to be gutless wonders, do you really think Thom Tillis is going to vote against Trump? No Republican Senator in his or her right mind who’s up for re-election—and there are nearly two-dozen in 2020—is going to vote against a president with a 95 percent approval rating in the Republican Party, especially those senators running in battleground states like Tillis.

So to Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and the rest of the clowns in the Democratic caucus: by all means, throw us in the briar patch of a Senate trial. Let’s make that magic happen. When it’s all said and done, I’m pretty sure you will deeply regret it in November 2020.