Thursday, October 8, 2020

Report: Durham Using Grand Jury To Investigate Debunked Trump-Russia Allegation

 

Article by Chuck Ross for the Daily Caller
 

Report: Durham Using Grand Jury To Investigate Debunked Trump-Russia Allegation

The U.S. attorney investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe is seeking grand jury testimony from a group of computer scientists behind a since-debunked allegation that Donald Trump’s real estate company had covert computer contacts with a Russian bank, according to a report.

The New Yorker reports that John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, has contacted the scientists in recent weeks seeking their testimony.

According to the magazine, investigators have told potential witnesses they are investigating whether two pseudonymous computer experts gave false information to the U.S. government regarding a covert communications channel between the Russian bank, Alfa Bank, and the Trump Organization.

Hillary Clinton emphasized the allegation of a possible link between Trump and Alfa Bank when it appeared in the press days before the 2016 election.

Durham’s use of a grand jury to investigate the allegations about Alfa Bank indicates a new front in his sprawling probe.

Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham in March 2019 to investigate FBI, CIA and other agencies’ Trump-related intelligence gathering activities. Durham has focused heavily on the findings from a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation into the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign.

A report from the IG addressed an allegation about Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization that first appeared in Slate magazine on Oct. 31, 2016.

According to the Slate story, a computer scientist who went by the pseudonym Tea Leaves discovered suspicious computer traffic between email servers for Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

The Clinton campaign seized on the story at the time, saying that it indicated that Donald Trump was secretly conspiring with Russia.

 

The IG report discounted the allegation completely. It said the FBI investigated the computer traffic but determined by February 2017 that there were no links between Alfa Bank and Trump’s company.

According to the The New Yorker, computer scientists who spoke to Slate for its story in 2016 and to The New Yorker for a story in 2018 have been called to testify before Durham’s grand jury.

Alfa Bank has vehemently denied that its computers were used to communicate secretly with Trump’s company. They have alleged in several lawsuits that the computer traffic cited in the Slate story and provided to investigators was fabricated.

The origins of the Alfa Bank theory have been traced back to July 2016.

Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the firm Perkins Coie, which represented the Clinton campaign and DNC, briefed former British spy Christopher Steele on the Alfa Bank allegations on July 29, 2016.

Steele had been hired to work on behalf of the Democrats to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Steele investigated the founders of Alfa Bank after the meeting with Sussmann. He also told a State Department official about the alleged Alfa-Trump links during a meeting on Oct. 11, 2016, according to notes from that encounter.

Sussmann briefed James Baker, the FBI’s top lawyer through 2018, about the allegations on Sept. 14, 2016, Baker told Congress.

The New Yorker also reported that Durham is seeking the testimony of Daniel Jones, a former FBI agent and consultant who joined forces with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele in early 2017 to continue investigating Trump’s possible ties to Russia.

The New Yorker reported in its 2018 story that Jones provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with the Alfa Bank evidence in 2017.

Jones formed two non-profit groups, The Democracy Integrity Project and Advance Democracy Inc., that hired Fusion GPS and Steele as contractors.

Jones told the FBI in March 2017 that a group of 10 wealthy liberal donors funded his organization. Groups controlled by George Soros, the progressive billionaire activist, have given more than $1 million to Jones’ organizations.

A spokesman for Durham’s office declined comment.

 

https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/08/john-durham-alfa-bank-trump/ 

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President Trump: U.S. troops must come home to boost preparedness

 

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 12:20 PM PT – Thursday, October 8, 2020

President Trump has said he wants to bring American troops home from overseas so they can focus on countering threats from China and Russia. On Thursday, the President stated U.S. troops have been exhausted by endless foreign wars in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

 

He added America is facing far greater challenges today, including the military and economic threats posed by China, as well as transnational corruption by the Kremlin.

President Trump also highlighted massive investment in the U.S. military by his administration to restore its preparedness.

“We’ve spent $2.5 trillion over my term in office, that’s over 3 1/2 years,” he stated. “I took over a depleted military, old equipment, broken equipment, even in the Army, all brand new uniforms with a belt, everybody wanted the belt.”

The President reiterated U.S. troops must return home and be prepared to confront communist China or the Putin regime if necessary.

 


 

 

https://www.oann.com/president-trump-u-s-troops-must-come-home-to-boost-preparedness/ 

 

 

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‘I’m Worried He Will’: Trump Appears Poised To Win Obama Swing Counties North Of Detroit

In a state Trump won by a razor-thin margin in 2016, Michigan might be decided in a handful of counties just now emerging from months of pandemic lockdowns.



EASTERN MICHIGAN — The weather is changing in Michigan as Election Day draws near. Leaves are turning, the air is getting colder, and Michiganders are anxious to get back to work after a brutal seven months of pandemic lockdowns.

Last week the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who made a name for herself with some of the harshest lockdown restrictions in the country, was rebuked by the state supreme court. Her rolling and often arbitrary executive orders, which closed businesses across the state and left thousands jobless, violated the Michigan Constitution, the court ruled. 

The ruling was mostly a symbolic victory for critics of the governor, whose health and human services director circumvented the court by issuing his own emergency order Monday, relying on a different state statue. While many spoke of the feeling of relief the lockdown was nearing an end, others were less sure it would be the end of their troubles. If a winter spike in coronavirus cases triggers another indoor dining ban and forces patrons outside to sunny-but-chilly patios, bar owner Joe Mayernik wonders, “What kind of heat lamps would I use? When it’s 15 degrees?”

Joe’s Shamrock Irish Pub is in downtown Utica, a working-class suburb just north of Detroit. The pub sits on a street capped on one end by the UAW Local 2280 and on the other by USA Tire, a 45-year-old tire shop stuffed full of vintage gas pumps and highway Americana evoking the once unlimited freedom and prosperity of middle America.

Joe owns the building, and when COVID first hit he decided to use the closure to get to work on renovations he’d been planning. As with any restaurant construction project, timelines are worth the paper they’re written on, wrapping up late summer to reopen just a week ago Monday. 

Social distancing was in effect but the pub was buzzing with regulars happy to be back. John Pate, a 62-year-old retired automotive engineer in a Lacoste pullover, had made his second drive into town this week for the lunch special: a delicious prize-winning burger, half-basket of fries, and mug of LaBatt Blue or Killian’s. Pate is a Republican and planning to vote for Trump, but that doesn’t mean he’s thrilled: “Trump’s an asshole,” he tells us.

“Reagan was the last president I was excited about,” he says, which you’d expect here in Macomb County. After all, it’s the county where the term “Reagan Democrat” was coined 40 years ago when blue-collar Democrats tossed aside their party loyalty and voted for the Gipper. Macomb went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but four years ago November swung back to the GOP—one of a dozen counties Trump flipped, carrying the state by fewer than 11,000 votes.



Today, there’s not many signs of a strong Democratic ground game in Macomb County. One longtime local business owner who asked not to be named told us the Democratic office is three miles away but cautioned, “They’re usually not there.” 

In 2012, he volunteered for Obama’s re-election and even met Vice President Joe Biden at a nearby rally. He plans to vote for the Democratic vice president this round, too, but isn’t confident his neighbors share his politics. “I’m scared,” he tells us. “I’m worried he will [win again]. Every house has a Trump sign,” and among those not voting for the president, “There’s more Trump dislike than Biden support.”

While we’re all talking, two young men, one in a red MAGA hat and both dirty from a day’s work, walk in. “You’ll need masks,” the owner lets them know. A minute later they’re back from their car, masked up and ready for the lunch special.

North of Utica in Ray Township we stop at a roadside Trump shop run by Jo-Jo (with help from his ex-wife). Jo-Jo, a 68-year-old retiree, doesn’t want to share his last name, but he does like talking to reporters: Once he gets going, he doesn’t want to stop. He gets 10-30 honks of support from passing motorists for every driver who shouts some obscenity, he says, and over a 45-minute period we count eight happy honks to one indiscernible obscenity.



Business seems to be pretty good. A half-dozen customers stop by in the time we’re there, including an elderly woman who tells Jo-Jo, “I don’t want to be a communist, my dad fought in  WWII to keep me free!” Another old woman played hardball, haggling him down $10 for a pair of Trump masks.

The stand sells all the usual Trump stuff—MAGA hats, “No More Bullshit” signs, flags featuring Trump’s head photoshopped onto Rambo’s body, Trump 2020 tambourines, even Trump switchblades. But Jo-Jo and his ex also carry pandemic-era Trump merch, like yard signs that say “My Governor Is An Idiot” with a picture of Whitmer in a dunce cap, and of course Trump 2020 facemasks. Jo-Jo hates masks. He calls them “communist face-diapers,” and wears his Trump 2020 masks to stores that require face coverings just to raise hackles.

An hour to the northwest in Saginaw—one of the dozen counties Trump flipped four years ago after Obama won it by a dozen points in 2012—we see more of the same. Businesses are beginning to open, though business is slower than ever, and plenty of people go without facemasks.

Trump signs abound until we get downtown, where the Saginaw County Democrats have a field office chock full of Biden-Harris signs. Paul Purcell, a 71-year-old attorney and former county chairman of the Democratic Party, says requests for yard signs have been steady in recent weeks, which is good because local Democratic activists haven’t been doing any traditional campaigning or canvassing on account of the pandemic. “We’re pretty low-key this year,” he says. 

Asked about those critical swing voters in Saginaw County—which Trump only won by a single point—Purcell says he hopes “they’ve come to their senses,” and dismisses fears of another Trump win in Michigan. He notes two factors that augur well for his party: Democrats dominated statewide races in the 2018 midterms, and this election cycle the local Republican Party didn’t even field a candidate for a number of county-wide races. 

Steve Gerhardt, chairman of the Saginaw County Republican Party, tells a different story. He says enthusiasm for Trump here is more intense than it was in 2016. “People have come in here and they’re telling us that everybody that voted for the president in 2016 is voting for him again—and then some,” says Gerhardt, 59, surrounded by all manner of Trump signs in the county GOP office, many of them designed by his wife, a graphic designer.

Union workers especially, Gerhardt adds, are supporting Trump. “We can’t tell you to how many UAW members and others, you know, IBEW, we’ve had come in here and say, ‘The union tells us vote Democrat, vote Biden, but we’re voting Republican, we’re for Trump and everybody in my union feels the same way.’”

It’s not hard to understand why. This area, like Macomb County and other parts of Michigan, has been hit hard by globalization and free trade, two of Trump’s favorite punching bags. Plenty of people here have personal experience with industrial decline in the region. Tom Roy, 57, vice chairman of the Saginaw County Republican Party, says both of his parents worked for General Motors, both were union people, and he remembers what happened here after President Clinton signed NAFTA. 

“You go down to Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, Saginaw, you see the devastation,” he says. “And that was one of the reasons I liked Trump from the very beginning, when he mentioned that we needed to get rid of NAFTA. Because I remember all the days my parents were worried about getting laid off and not having a job and what was going to happen to our economy and what was going to happen to our house. It affects you.”


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EXCLUSIVE: FBI Is Stonewalling Congressional Oversight On Hunter Biden

 

Article by Tristan Justice in The Federalist

 

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Is Stonewalling Congressional Oversight On Hunter Biden

The FBI is refusing to provide answers to a congressional inquiry pertaining to Hunter Biden’s potentially criminal overseas business activity revealed in a Senate report last month that chronicles the Biden family’s conflicts of interest abroad.

Last week, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, demanded the federal law enforcement agency provide answers on what actions it took, if any, upon reports from the Justice Department in 2015 that the owner of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma paid a $7 million bribe to Ukraine officials to shut down an investigation. Hunter Biden is on Burisma’s board despite no prior experience in the industry.

The existence of such reports from the DOJ became public in the long-anticipated findings released by a three-year Senate investigation spearheaded by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who lead the Finance Committee and Homeland Security Committee, respectively.

“The report by Chairman Johnson and Chairman Grassley shows that the FBI has been aware of some alleged misconduct for years,” wrote Jordan upon the Senate probe’s conclusion.

Jordan also highlighted concerns raised within the Obama State Department regarding Biden’s lucrative board position with Burisma. He raked in upwards of $50,000 a month despite his lack of experience while his father, Joe Biden, served as the administration’s “public face” of White House policy towards the Eastern European ally.

“The report detailed widespread concern within the Obama-Biden Administration about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian company founded by Mykola Zlochevsky,” Jordan wrote. “The Chairmen noted that they had asked the FBI about its actions in response to these allegations, but have received no answer from you.”

According to an FBI letter written in response to Jordan’s inquiry and obtained exclusively by The Federalist, the law enforcement agency is refusing to acknowledge the existence of any investigation of Hunter Biden’s overseas conduct.

“Consistent with longstanding Department of Justice and FBI policy and practice, however, the FBI can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation or persons or entities under investigation,” the FBI wrote, adding that it gave the same response to Johnson and Grassley.

The FBI freely commented on the Russia hoax against President Trump, however, featuring former Director James Comey confirming that Trump was under investigation as a suspected Kremlin agent. Of course, after a two-year investigation run by a congressionally appointed special counsel with unlimited resources, the president and his campaign were exonerated. Comey’s FBI probe was shown to be nothing more than a deep-state coup perpetuating a conspiracy theory that has done irreparable harm to American institutions.

Meanwhile, CIA Director Gina Haspel has come under fire from congressional lawmakers for stonewalling requests critical to the institution’s duty of effective oversight. Senior U.S. intelligence officials told The Federalist this week that Haspel is deliberately blocking the release of key Russiagate documents in hopes that Trump loses in November.

Johnson and Grassley demanded in a Wednesday letter Haspel comply with their summer request for records after two months of no response.

“The American people have a right to know the full extent of official action taken by federal officials during the 2016 campaign, the presidential transition, and into the Trump administration,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “The information that has already been made public reveals what might be the most outrageous abuse of power in U.S. history against a presidential candidate and sitting president. Unfortunately, many of the puzzle pieces remain hidden, and some of that information rests within your agency.”

 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/08/exclusive-fbi-is-stonewalling-congressional-oversight-on-hunter-biden/ 


 

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BREAKING: Commission Says Next Presidential Debate Will Be Virtual. Trump Refuses

Article by Tim Pearce in The Daily Wire

 

BREAKING: Commission Says Next Presidential Debate Will Be Virtual. Trump Refuses

The second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden will take place virtually with both candidates in separate locations, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced on Thursday.

The commission announced the new form after Trump tested positive for the coronavirus last week. Trump responded to the news minutes later asserting he would not “do a virtual debate.

“The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which the candidates would participate from separate remote locations,” the commission said in a statement, according to CNN. “The town meeting participants and the moderator, Steve Scully, Senior Executive Producer & Political Editor, C-SPAN Networks, will be located at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami, Florida. The White House Pool will provide coverage of the second presidential debate.”

Trump responded to the news minutes on Fox Business minutes after the announcement, saying, “I’m not gonna do a virtual debate.”

A team of doctors, led by White House physician Dr. Sean Conley, cleared Trump for release on Monday. The president is at the White House recovering from COVID-19 after a stint at Walter Reed Medical Center.

“Over the past 24 hours, the president has continued to improve. He’s met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria,” Conley said on Monday before Trump returned to the White House later that evening. “He’ll receive another dose of Remdesivir here today, and then we plan to get him home. It’s been more than 72 hours since his last fever — oxygen levels, including ambulatory saturations and his … breathing are all normal. Though he may not entirely be out of the woods yet, the team and I agree that all our evaluations, and most importantly his clinical status, support the president’s safe return home, where he’ll be surrounded by world-class medical care 24/7.”

Trump and first lady Melania tested positive for the coronavirus on Oct. 2. The diagnosis raised questions over whether Trump, at 74 years old and overweight, would be well enough by Oct. 15 to debate Biden, who is 77. Biden said that if Trump still had the coronavirus at the time of the second debate, it should be canceled.

“Well, I think if he still has COVID, we shouldn’t have a debate,” Biden told reporters on Wednesday. “I think we’re gonna have to follow very strict guidelines. Too many people have been infected and it’s a very serious problem.”

“And so I’ll be guided by the guidelines of the Cleveland Clinic, and what the docs say is the right thing to do — if and when he shows up for debate,” he added.

High-ranking Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have urged Biden not to debate Trump at all. Pelosi said a debate with the president would be an “exercise in skullduggery.” Critics have said that such suggestions are more attempts by the Biden campaign to keep the former vice president out of the spotlight and a disservice to voters.

 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-commission-says-next-presidential-debate-will-be-virtual-trump-refuses 


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Biden has been wrong, or worse, for his entire, sorry career



Just for purposes of argument, let’s stipulate that President Trump is a bully, a liar, a racist, a sociopath, and a useful idiot for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

That still doesn’t absolve the media of its obligation to examine the equally powerful evidence that Joe Biden is a liar, a serial plagiarist, a foreign-policy numbskull, a political coward, and a useful idiot for the radical Left.

As for cowardice, it is beyond all reason that Biden doesn’t face repeated questions and harsh criticisms from every media outlet about his refusal to say whether he would sign a bill to pack the Supreme Court. It is one of the election’s most important issues, with momentous ramifications for the court’s independence and the nation’s future.

It is mind-boggling to see Biden change his position four different times on whether he, as president, can “implement nationwide mask mandates,” and maddening to see him skate on why he opposed Trump’s virus-restricting partial-ban on travel from China.

It defies all journalistic standards for editorial boards to not demand answers about why Biden ferried his troubled son Hunter on Air Force Two to China when Hunter was seeking lucrative business deals from entities controlled by the Communist Chinese government. More broadly, why isn’t Biden forced to answer for the entire family profiteering ring that even the decidedly non-conservative Politico dubbed “Biden, Inc.?” And if money isn’t to blame, why isn’t Biden asked why he has been so soft on China for so long?

Why isn’t it demanded that Biden renounce the Communist-terrorist-inspired Black Lives Matter organization (not the slogan) the way Trump is expected to denounce white supremacists — especially when his party’s whole convention passed without a concerted effort to distance itself from anarchic street violence?

The media hasn’t pressed Biden on his call to eliminate the individual “right to work” enjoyed by 166 million people. It hasn’t asked him to explain exactly how his campaign can say the prohibitively expensive "Green New Deal" is a “crucial framework” for policy while he says he himself isn’t for the Green New Deal. (That seems like an unsquareable circle.)

Biden certainly has skated on his role, second only to the late Ted Kennedy, in poisoning the judicial confirmation process. Was it right for him to help lead Democrats in filibustering Miguel Estrada? Why, other than blind ambition for the presidential nomination in 1988, did he completely reverse his earlier, specific statement that Robert Bork would be a perfectly acceptable Supreme Court pick? Does he countenance his Democratic colleagues’ repeated attacks on the faith of judicial nominees such as Bill Pryor and Amy Coney Barrett?

On foreign policy, it is now evident that Biden was wrong to oppose Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup, wrong to oppose almost every aspect of Reagan’s policy of rolling back Communism, wrong to oppose the 1991 Gulf War, wrong to advise against the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, wrong to lie about whether the American embassy in Benghazi had requested more security that was never provided, wrong to support President Barack Obama’s precipitous troop drawdown in Iraq and, in the words of former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

For his 36 years in the U.S. Senate, most of the media knew Biden as a blowhard and a bungler. Yet they won’t hold him to account. Maybe Wednesday night’s vice presidential debate moderator, Susan Page, will at least ask vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris to defend her running mate’s sorry record. If so, it will be the very first time.


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Gen. Flynn’s Attorney Makes a Motion to Disqualify Judge Sullivan from the Case



Before the uninitiated run off half-crazy over this development, I’ll need to pour a little cold water on this story in order to inject some legal reality into the bloodstream.

This is a motion Sidney Powell is making “for the record” in case this matter was ever to go up on a “straight appeal” to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.  Unless she raises the matter now and puts it in the “record” of the District Court case, an Appeals Court will not be willing to consider this matter in any later appeal as it will have been “forfeited” by “not having been raised below.”  In other words, a litigant needs to give the trial court judge the first chance to make the decision, and if you don’t like the trial court judge’s decision, then you get to appeal.

What she has written is mostly a “PR” piece.  The substance of her complaints — while accurate — as a legal matter won’t have any impact while the case remains in the District Court before Judge Sullivan.  He’s going to deny the motion, and then his denial would be subject to review by the Appeals Court if the case ever gets that far.

The reason for this reality is because the standard for “disqualifying” a judge is the same standard as for the judge “recusing” himself.  The statute that governs this question, by its terms, directs a district court judge to step out of the case on his own initiative when the judge concludes his conduct or words create an “appearance” of bias against one party or the other.  That means that if Judge Sullivan agreed with the points raised in the motion filed, he would have removed himself from the case already.  But he hasn’t — because he does not agree that his actions meet the definition of “bias” under the statute.

Further, General Flynn’s mandamus petition filed back in the summer sought the remedy of having Judge Sullivan removed from the case, and having it assigned to a different judge.  But DOJ did not support that effort when the government filed its brief in support of the petition.  The matter was pretty much dropped, and I don’t recall it being argued in the original oral argument before the first three-judge panel.  Judge Rao’s decision directed Judge Sullivan to dismiss the case, so taking the case away from Judge Sullivan was not necessary to her outcome.

But Judge Rao’s opinion was vacated by the en banc decision that came later.  The en banc decision could have ordered the case transferred to a different judge but did not.  If the en banc court thought Judge Sullivan’s actions to that point — including appointing a biased amicus counsel and filing the petition for en banc review as claimed in this motion — it would have been obligated to order the case transferred when it sent the case back to the district court.  The en banc court did not do that, so the only conclusion is the appeals court does not agree that Judge Sullivan’s actions and comments to date meet the statutory standard for “bias.”

The standard for disqualifying a federal district court judge is very high.  Simply disliking things he has said and done is not enough.  But most significantly, the fact that the judge has made statements or voiced opinions that show a preference for one side or the other in the dispute is not a basis for disqualification where those statements or opinions are based in the evidence of the case that the Judge has seen and/or heard.  It is expected that Judges will form opinions over time about a case when they are exposed to the evidence.  That is not proof of “bias.”  Proof of “bias” needs to be based on matters unrelated to the evidence in the case.

So, the “cold water” is that while this motion is entertaining to read, it is not likely to ever produce any substantive result.  I don’t see the case ever getting to an appeals court where Sullivan’s eventual denial of this motion will be taken up as being “correct” or “incorrect.”  I think he should recuse himself under the standards of the Rule, but he gets to decide the motion in the first instance and it’s clear he doesn’t see it the same way.

This is just my “hot take.” I’ll take some time and read through the filing and look more closely at the claims as Sidney Powell has framed them.  But this is one of those situations that defense lawyers are obligated to engage in to protect the client’s appellate rights, without really expecting a good outcome on the motion in the trial court.


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When Fear Rules

 

Article by J. Robert Smith in The American Thinker

When Fear Rules

When our 74-year-old president was released from Walter Reed Medical Center on Monday night, he made this commonsense declaration about COVID-19: “Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge.”

After President Trump triumphantly removed his mask upon his return to the White House, the mainstream media raged.  CNN, which always serves as a bellwether for the MSM’s reaction to anything, led with this drivel:

(CNN) - President Donald Trump staged a reckless departure from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday, telling his followers the virus that dangerously deprived him of oxygen and hospitalized him for 72 hours was nothing to fear before posing for a mask-less photo-op on the White House balcony.       

We know now that demeaning confidence and courage is fashionable among hacks -- two more American virtues to be ground under in a transformed America.  Of greater urgency, the November elections loom, so displays of courage are precisely what Democrats and their media enablers fear.  For courage in just one man can spread, serving as a remedy to fear in many others.  Voters who aren’t scared into masks aren’t as likely to vote for Democrats. 

Contrasting the president, Joe Biden wears a mask almost always -- well, when he’s on camera.  We suspect if cameras were present, addled old Joe would sport a waterproof version in the shower.  Be on the lookout for that pre-election stunt.    

Democrats champion masks because masks acknowledge the rule of fear.  They’re symbols of subordination and surrender -- yes, subordination to fear of a germ, and surrender of rights and freedoms.  In this scheme, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are to be scrapped in favor of contentment with security -- however illusory -- under the watchful eye and guiding hand of corporatist big government, which, of course, is to be led by the cabal that Biden fronts.      

You see, fear is a means.  It’s a weapon in the hands of Democrats.  The mainstream media are eager henchmen.  Power lust drives Democrats to use fear to gain what they covet.  A virus, like a crisis, isn’t to be wasted.  A contagion that helps manufacture a crisis is too tempting to pass up.  Exacerbating fears, and full-on exploitation of whatever may stress the human spirit, are practically trademarked by cynical Democrats.      

Fear has always been an ally to tyrants, whatever the stripe.  How dreary that fact, and how tragic the history of the last century, in particular.  Red terrors, pogroms, Kristallnacht, and Cultural Revolutions are the dramatic manifestations of weaponized fear.  But there are more mundane applications of fear.  With learning, experience, and advancements, tyrants are honing the means. 

Tyranny is showing a blander face nowadays.  Stalin’s stern look and Hitler’s glowering expression have given way to the corporate cool of Xi Jingping or the facelessness of U.S. corporate, sports, and education leaders who operate in a loose confederacy to impose “progressive” orthodoxy.  Or via the checked-out expression of the Democrats propped up standard-bearer.      

Submit and behave well, admonish today’s autocrats, or you won’t have a job, your reputation will be trashed, and your kids won’t have a future.  Sound familiar?  What other is cancel culture, now being practiced on these shores?  A kid with a MAGA cap, Nick Sandmann, can attest to news outlets eagerness to destroy his future.  How many Americans do their jobs in silence, dreading that one remark, one act of independence, can cost them their incomes? 

Cancel culture is no more than a stop on the road to a greater smothering of rights and liberty.  China’s evolving social credit system points the direction, where miscreants -- conspicuously, Hong Kong political dissidents and Falun Gong -- can be shunted to society’s margins.  Still, all Chinese daily live cowed. 

Reported Reuters in March 2018: “President’s Xi Jinping’s plan to construct a social credit system [is] based on the principle of ‘once untrustworthy, always restricted[.]’”   

In China, though, there’s still recourse to the old ways for the hardest cases.  The Epoch Times reported recently on the torture deaths of Falun Gong at Masanjia Labor Camp and Benxi Prison.  Uyghurs, who are Muslims, are dispensed with en masse, condemned to concentration camps and forced labor.       

With cancel culture active here, why would we believe that Xi’s subtler ways are too great a leap for the gray conglomerate and the left that wants to run our lives?  The technology exists and is being upgraded to move to the next phase of supremacy over us.

F.H. Buckley wrote about the prospect of a social credit system in America.  The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2019:

When you see your opponents as evil, such practices begin to look like fair game. Progressives today seem to lack the instinct to question their own judgment and have shed any skepticism about ideology. Given the left’s vicious self-righteousness, on display daily in the media, the question becomes whether it will accept any limits in its quest to impose its views on everyone -- especially if it gains control of the government’s coercive interests.

What do we know about tyrants?  We know that their appetites for power, for control over others, is never satisfied.  They’re the next world’s hungry ghosts. 

Antifa and BLM firebrands are identified threats, of course.  They’re provocateurs and herders.  Lawlessness, mayhem, and violence are used to intimidate, to make citizens cower… in time, to drive them to seek refuge.  How much are folk, frightened and wearied by disorder, willing to trade for order?  History says much, if people are pushed enough.  Democrats and the left seek a tipping point.    

Knowledge combats fear because it informs courage.  There’s no shortage of facts and data that countervail what’s commonly accepted about COVID: that a viral sword dangles over all our heads.  No such thing is true.  Trump was intrepid, not foolhardy, in his declaration and in stripping off his mask.  His was an act of defiance in the teeth of a formidable array of enemies… a challenge to the groupthink that promotes anxiety.  A critical aspect of leadership is daring defiance, when necessary. 

Defiance serves as a rallying cry.  The flag is planted.  The fight is here, now.  Think of colonists who signed the Declaration of Independence.  Imagine defying the most powerful empire on the planet, the mighty rulers of the American colonies?  Failure would have led these men to the gallows.  Yet, they acted.  It’s said that courage is best defined as action in the face of fear.  Fortune favors the courageous.    

Our history isn’t of a people buckling to fear -- not for very long, anyway.  We’ve been an intrepid people, willing to challenge our limits, willing to risk.  Our rewards have been great as a result.  Courage is requisite to freedom.    

A class has risen among us, full of conceits and impulses to dominate.  They want to take our freedom from us.  To do so, these toxic souls are manipulating us to live in fear.  If we fail to act with courage, we’ll surely lose our liberty.  If we act courageously, we’ll defeat this growing tyranny.  We’re presented with a stark choice: courage or cowardice.  The consequences of our choice are historic.  

 
 




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BLM Rioters Attack Businesses and Private Homes in Wisconsin



Those “peaceful protesters” who Michelle Obama was talking about were at it again tonight in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

The riots have been continuing elsewhere, while we’ve been covering the debates and the president getting ill. They haven’t stopped.

But they got another “spark” off today. Not that they really need any more, because truthfully facts don’t matter to these rioters. On Wednesday. we found out that an officer would not face charges in the death of 17 year old Alvin Cole because there was sufficient evidence to believe that the Wauwatosa officer, who was also black, Joseph Mensah, had reason for self-defense.

That kicked them off. As Julio Rosas reported for Townhall, a group then went on a smashing rampage throughout the town.

First, they smashed up the windows of businesses including Kumon Learning. Because apparently helping kids to learn is offensive to the BLM.




But then they went on from smashing the windows of storefront businesses onto smashing the windows of private homes.




This guy tells them to get off his property. But he tells them they’re targeting the wrong people, that most of the people on that particular block are probably supportive of the BLM.



This guy is under the mistaken impression that they even care, when they’ve shown they don’t. And if he still supports them after this, he’s a fool. Hopefully, this opened his eyes but I wouldn’t count on it.



They were upping it to attacks on private homes. Where are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris condemning this by name, condemning BLM/Antifa? Biden has even denied Antifa exists. Michelle Obama has said only a tiny fraction of the protests are violent. They need to answer in every debate why are they defending this? They need to explain to those business owners and the private home owners why they were being terrorized and why Democrats think it’s nothing?

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The Left's 'Mostly Peaceful' Revolution/Coup

 

Article by William L. Gensert in The American Thinker

The Left's 'Mostly Peaceful' Revolution/Coup

Since the advent of the Trump presidency, the left engaged their greatest minds in planning the “Russia Hoax Coup” and then the impeachment farce. Having failed miserably at both, they are now carrying out an information operation to sell maundering Joe Biden as inevitable in his attempt to win the coming Presidential Election.

They insist that Joseph Biden is leading Trump in the polls by an insurmountable 16%. Before the end of October, the New York Times and the Washington Post both will run articles using anonymous sources in the Trump Administration expounding on how they believe Biden will deservedly win in a landslide but fear the president is planning on stealing the election with the help of Vladimir Putin. CNN and MSNBC will have on ex-generals and other retired military officers expressing lugubrious concern for the future of the republic.

Or… something like that.

Joe Biden is not winning. It does not matter what the polls say. It is preposterous to believe that people would vote for someone in such obvious mental decline for the most important (and dangerous) job on the planet. The man almost never leaves his basement and when he meets with voters, he can barely fill a room, whereas Trump packs stadiums and their environs with many thousands of screaming, enthusiastic supporters. There is no enthusiasm for a revivified Biden who can scarcely finish a sentence or stop making borderline racial slurs by implying black women have best served his bid for the presidency by being good at stocking grocery shelves during his pandemic cellar dwelling.

Yet, when you have the media as a fully owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, it is easy to propagate the million little lies needed to sell the big lie. Examples of their prevarications are: Woodward’s “Trump hid COVID’s danger” revelation; the Atlantic’s “Trump insulted soldiers” expose; the New York Times release of Trump’s taxes and the supposedly shocking information they contained, and lastly, the coordinated accusations that Trump embraces white supremacists (fabled but despicable creatures rarely seen in the wild).

Oh, and Trump’s COVID diagnosis is fake.

The left believes that if they can convince people that “Aphasic” Joe is guaranteed to win in November, they will have an easier time selling the public on the notion that Trump’s subsequent landslide will be the result of him having stolen the election.

They can then release Antifa and the violent sections of BLM onto the streets to prosecute “will of the people” riots to exact punishment on the Americans who dared to support Trump. It would be a shame to allow Antifa, after having practiced violence and mayhem these last few months, to go unutilized when they can be most advantageous as the tip of the “resistance” spear. Nebulous left-wing organizations have been training these organic “protestors” for more than three years, it is about time they made a real difference.

In conjunction with the chaos in the streets, armed “mostly peaceful” protestors will be protesting in “mostly non-arson” related ways in front of every elected Republican’s home while others will accost them in “mostly non-brutal” physical ways when they are spotted anywhere in public. They intend to emasculate their political opposition by intimidating every adversary into terrified silence. They will do the same with the Supreme Court and its justices -- especially the new one, the Catholic who has the powerful dogma living within.

Google will skew search results to always paint President Trump as illegitimate. Twitter of course will suspend the president’s account because it would be undemocratic to allow him to speak directly to Americans. Facebook will do the same. All this will be done to prevent Trump from lying to the people about what is obviously a popular national uprising to award Joseph Biden the presidency he won fair and square, despite how the obviously “stolen” election pans out. At least that is how the media and Big Tech will paint it.

Having accomplished this feat, leaders of their “will of the people” syncretic revolution will implore Democrat governors to support the rebellion by threatening to secede while others on the left and in the media start to work on beseeching the armed forces to depose President Trump in a “mostly Democrat” coup should a pervicacious Trump refuses to leave voluntarily.

Their dream is to have the military intervene and hopefully, “frog march” the president out of the White House as a means of preserving the union. Wouldn’t that make a nice chapter for the history books?

After his coronation on January 20, 2021, the gormless Biden will unfortunately succumb to COVID due to Trump’s alleged criminal mishandling of the pandemic. Or he will be assassinated by Trump-supporting white supremacists (but only if the left feels the need to purge the populace of disbelievers and disobeyers).

In the perfervid fantasies of Schiff, Nadler, Pelosi, and Ocasio-Cortez, Trump will be charged with sedition.

In their vision of the future, as the nation mourns the fallen Biden, Madame President Kamala Harris, ready from day one, will go about the business of creating the “fundamental change” promised by an apotheosized Barack Obama.

All this, while the more than 200 million people in this country who own in excess of 400 million guns, including the 20 million sold this year alone, will clean their weapons and decide what to do next.

It does not have to be this way. It comes down to something Joe Biden begged his supporters to do in the debate. And that is to vote. What is written above is merely one possible scenario. Just as in all reality shows, Americans can vote them off the island, shattering their dreams. 

By now people realize that a “Harris/Biden” administration will come for people’s guns. If only half of the people who own firearms or bought them in 2020 vote for Trump, he would win by a landslide of such magnitude it will be impossible for any of this to work despite what the media says. In addition, if even a small fraction of Blacks and Hispanics abandon the Democrats, it would make all the difference.

And we need not cede the streets to Antifa. They may be better trained than they were a few years ago, but there has never been a better trained and armed populace in the history of humanity than the United States citizenry. Every hunter is something of a sniper and gun owners, many of them veterans, far outnumber any potential rebels even a combined Antifa and BLM could field.

It really all comes down to us. Most Americans love America and want nothing to do with the left’s transformation of the nation into a socialist hellhole run by leftist tyrants. We need to get out and vote in such numbers that their schemes cannot succeed.

We Americans control our own destiny. We can save our country and the world again.

Now that would make a fine chapter in the history books.






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