Biden Selling out the U.S.

posted by Clarice Feldman at American Thinker 

The Biden impeachment investigation began this week. If your source of news is CNN,MSNBC, and the Big Four TV networks, you didn’t know about this, the fourth such inquiry in U.S. history, because they blacked it out. Here’s a handy source to the workings of the House Oversight Committee which you might want to keep for reference.

It apparently wasn’t very significant to the press. Not like the round-the-clock coverage of the lie that Trump was colluding with Russia, a lie generated by Hillary Clinton and megaphoned by them. Have they noted that the FBI agent who helped launch the probe into this alleged collusion was ironically on the payroll of a Russian and an Albanian? He has admitted he was on the payroll of a rich Russian and is set to admit being the recipient of an Albanian payoff.

Former high-ranking FBI agent Charles McGonigal, who last month copped to New York charges of conspiring to violate US sanctions while working with a Russian oligarch [Oleg Deripaska] is set to plead guilty Friday for accepting secret payments from an ex-foreign intelligence agent.

Texas judge rules against age verification and health warnings for porn

McGonigal, 55, will appear before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, DC, to enter his plea on nine counts of falsifying records, concealing material facts and making false statements, court filings show.

The former FBI special agent in charge served as counterintelligence chief in New York from 2016 to 2018 — and helped launch a probe into the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia to get “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election.

McGonigal allegedly took $225,000 from an ex-Albanian intelligence operative, identified in European media as Agron Neza, and met with the nation’s prime minister, Edi Rama, while working for the bureau.

He initiated the lucrative arrangement in August 2017 — and it continued beyond his retirement from the FBI in September 2018, according to his January indictment.

He was not the only one in D.C. on the payroll of foreign governments. 

Professor Jonathan Turley has set out ten reasons why the impeachment inquiry is justified and in this list, you can see the multiple ways President Biden sold out our interests to Ukrainians and Chinese.

• Hunter Biden and his associates were running a classic influence peddling operation using Joe Biden as what Devon Archer called “the Brand.”…millions were generated for the Bidens from some of the most corrupt figures in the world.
• Some of the Biden clients pushed for changes impacting United States foreign policy and relations, including help in dealing with Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin investigating corruption.
• President Biden has made false claims about his knowledge of these dealings repeatedly in the past, including insisting that he had no knowledge of Hunter’s foreign dealings which Archer has declared “patently false…”
• The President had been aware for years that Hunter Biden and his uncle James were accused of influence peddling…
• President Biden was repeatedly called into meetings with these foreign clients and was put on speakerphone. He also met these clients and foreign figures at dinners and meetings.
• Emails and other communications show Hunter repeatedly invoking his father to secure payments from foreign sources…
• A trusted FBI source recounted a direct claim of a corrupt Ukrainian businessman that he paid a “bribe” to Joe Biden through intermediaries.
• Hunter Biden reportedly claimed that he had to give half of his earnings to his father and other emails state that intermingled accounts were used to pay bills for both men…
• At least two transfers of funds to Hunter Biden in 2019 from a Chinese source listed the President’s home in Delaware…
• Some of the deals negotiated by Hunter involved potential benefits for his father, including office space in Washington. At least nine Biden family members reportedly received money from these foreign transfers… 

I don’t imagine for a minute that these payments are unrelated to Biden’s secreting of classified documents in unsecured locations at his home and in the Penn Biden Center. Paul Sperry reports this week that these documents “include national defense information related to China.”

And then there’s evidence that the government of Iran, the most serious threat to our interests in the Middle East, has placed those promoting its interests in key places in the Biden Administration. Earlier we learned that Biden’s Iran envoy Robert Malley is under investigation, his security clearance revoked, and he has been suspended from the State Department for mishandling classified information, the suggestion being that he shared this information with the Iranian Government. This week, Semafor and Iran National report that some of Malley’s acolytes are “linked to a pro-Iranian echo chamber” and have actively been promoting Iranian interests since at least 2015.

Emails that the outlets obtained show that Iranian government officials internally claimed credit for cultivating a network of Western scholars whom the country’s foreign ministry leaned on to promote its message internationally during its nuclear negotiations with the Obama administration. The program was called the Iran Experts Initiative.

The IEI members allegedly laundered the regime’s talking points, publishing op-eds, giving interviews with news outlets, and seeking the input of regime officials on their public engagements.

Two of the scholars involved in the program, Ali Vaez and Ariane Tabatabai, have close ties to Malley. He hired Tabatabai to join his office at the start of the Biden administration; she subsequently moved to a role within the Pentagon.

Vaez, meanwhile, is a longtime expert on Iran policy at the International Crisis Group think tank. Malley, who worked with him at ICG, tried to bring him on board at State -- but was blocked from doing so when Vaez failed to obtain a security clearance for the role, according to Iran International. Yet even after he was denied clearance, Vaez continued to write Malley’s tweets from his perch outside of government.

Why that’s a problem should be self-evident… Throughout the talks surrounding the 2015 accord, Tabatabai and Vaez were in constant contact with officials on the Iranian foreign ministry’s payroll, not only asking them their views on potential speaking opportunities, but also giving them the chance to review and suggest changes to their writing on the Iran negotiations…

Even if, for the sake of argument, there is some innocent interpretation of these interactions, the views expressed in the messages were disqualifying on their own merits.

The Iran International report described one email exchange between Vaez and Zarif in 2014, after the foreign minister had expressed disapproval of a report that Vaez’s organization had published regarding Iran. Vaez responded to Zarif, saying that he was eager to assist Iran…

Washington’s pro-Iran engagement machinery has already cranked into overdrive, calling the reports wrong or, as one of its members put it, a “depressing, McCarthyistic campaign.” But none of the reporting has been refuted, even by its targets….

The State Department and the Pentagon, meanwhile, defended Tabatabai and said the clearance process had been properly conducted….

During a press briefing yesterday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller went on the offensive, implying that the reporting was irrelevant because the events described took place nearly a decade ago. He also declined to give an update on Malley’s status….

The State Department needs to give Congress a full accounting of Malley’s rocky tenure in the administration. 

Hussein-Abdul Hussein explains how serious this is.

My take on this Semafor and IranIntl stories is that either Malley, ICG, and his coterie of assistants are too naive, or they think that Americans are too dumb and will buy their cover story. In dictatorships like Iran, there are no think tanks, scholars, journalists or independent opinion or thinkers. Every word that is said or printed is approved by the intelligence agencies, and often "leaked" by them. You know how Fareed Zakaria and/or Christian Amanpour interview Iran's president every year? That'd never happen if the Iranian intel agencies thought, for a second, that these CNN anchors would ask hard questions that might make the Iranian president look bad. Writers in dictatorships (and fans of dictatorships in the West) are often given leeway, and they internalize censorship and start self-censoring, becoming aware of what the rulers like and what they dislike. When I was a journalist in Lebanon, every time I interacted with the Iraqi Embassy staff (I was a dual national back then) I assumed each one of them was an intel operative, and that every word I said was being recorded and documented, and whatever they shared with me was instructions, not suggestions. The day after Saddam fell on April 9, 2003, I published an op-ed in NYT (when it was still pro-democracy and liberty) called it My First Day of Freedom. I said it was the first article with my name on it and without fear that whatever I say would be, one day, held against me. That a bunch of Americans thought that they were freely exchanging ideas with Islamist #Iran regime apparatchiks is a horrible cover story. If it is not a cover story, then those who've been running our U.S. policy on Iran are clueless about how autocracies work. 

Is there a single foe compromising our national interest not welcomed by this corrupt administration?

X22, And we Know, and more- Oct 2nd

 

The journey to bringing Hetty back in some way began today with the reopening of the writers rooms. Just hope something comes of it. Other then that, today has been very busy for me.

Biden Emerges From Hiding, Has Brain Freeze, Trips Over MAGA Insult

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Joe Biden finally emerged from his basement on Sunday, now that a government shutdown was averted. 

On Friday, when it looked like there would likely be a shutdown, Biden took an early lid. He had nothing on his schedule for the weekend. Reporters asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if he would be involved in the discussions, but she said he had no meetings planned with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). She said that it wasn't up to Biden to resolve the issues. They basically absolved themselves of any responsibility and claimed he wasn't involved in the process. 

Now that a shutdown has been averted, here he is trotting out, looking very old, and acting like he got people to agree, trying to appear consequential. 

All he had to do was read from the teleprompter, but he couldn't even do that without issue. He gave up halfway through and temporized. 

What do "transformational investments" mean? Spending like there's no tomorrow. 

Biden continued glitching. When asked about the potential fight over leadership in the lower chamber, Biden seemed not even to know who votes for the Speaker of the House.  

Biden said it was up to the "leadership in the House and the Senate" to decide. How long was he in the Senate? Most of his life? And he's so far gone, he doesn't remember they don't pick the Speaker of the House? 

Here he appeared to be trying to say something about or to McCarthy, but his brain freezes out midway through the thought, and he just gives up. 

The alleged leader of the free world, kids, with a brain that doesn't work. This is the guy allegedly with the nuclear codes. This is worrying stuff. How could anyone vote for this? 

"Are you concerned about America's reputation on the world stage, given the level of brinksmanship we've seen this year?" a reporter asked. 

Joe Biden can't even get his insults right, that's how far gone he is. "Based on the mega Republicans are for, yes. Based on what my administration's doing, no," Biden said. It's MAGA, Joe. MAGA, not MEGA. When you say MEGA, you make yourself sillier and Republicans bigger, and, well, MEGA. 

Biden can't try to blame the MEGA/MAGA Republicans for his failures—the American people know who's to blame and they've been giving Biden horrible poll numbers. The world knows his reputation as well. That's why under Biden, bad actors have become emboldened.

Unfortunately for Biden and for us, his issues are constantly on display for the whole world to see, and it's not a comforting look.

Trump Dominates the GOP, Whether You Like It or Not

posted by Bob Hoge at RedStateVIP 

To summarize, the devotion in that room to 45 was so powerful that even DeSantis’ strong performance swayed almost none of those in attendance to turn to his side.

I admit, as a political observer, the Sunshine State’s governor’s inability to attract more supporters has taken me by surprise. I am by no means endorsing him (or Trump) here, but I think it’s incontrovertible that DeSantis has delivered strong results for the conservative agenda and was one of the most effective leaders in fighting back against the Orwellian government overreach during the autocracy of the COVID era. As someone whose family was deeply (and extremely negatively) affected by the draconian, lawless clampdown of Governor Gavin Newsom’s California regime, I can tell you that was no mean feat.

But to a majority of conservatives and Republicans, DeSantis is still no Trump. To them, the man the tabloids used to refer to as The Donald was the original, the OG, the one who brought us back from the darkness which looked like it was going to descend permanently upon us with eight years of Hillary Clinton. (Back then, we didn’t know that an octogenarian train-obsessed hair-sniffer with a limited IQ would actually turn out to be far more dangerous to our republic than Hillary probably could ever have been.)

These passionate devotees don’t care about Trump’s flaws, they don’t care about his endless legal woes (in fact they see them as proof that the Deep State is out of control and needs to be neutered), and they don’t care that DeSantis has been killing it in ads, legislation, and results.

They just can’t quit Donald J. Trump.

A relative of mine who’s on Team R just isn't moved by what DeSantis does – she simply will never turn her back on Trump. It’s not that she doesn’t like Ron and his achievements—she does—it’s just that she feels an almost familial loyalty to the former president. 

She is far from alone, as virtually every survey shows.

Often people get mad when I report these facts and accuse writers like me who point them out of being Trump bootlickers and sycophants, but what they miss is that I’m not celebrating or decrying the reality—I’m just bringing it to you. And the facts are indeed facts. 

POLL: Trump Maintains Commanding Lead After Second Debate

This is shown in poll after poll after poll after poll. In the one cited above, Trump holds an almost unheard-of 56 percent edge, while DeSantis came in at 11 and everyone else in single digits. Find your favorite study, it will assuredly show similar results. Even if you don’t believe in the accuracy of polls, when the spread is this wide, it’s impossible to ignore.

Nothing seems to dent Trump’s armor among the GOP base, and nothing DeSantis has done or said seems to have gained him any significant progress in turning these numbers around.

Now I’m not saying that it’s a done deal, or that Donald Trump is 100 percent guaranteed to be the GOP nominee, or that it’s game over. There’s still a long way to go, and if the Democrats get their way, Trump could very well end up in prison—and that would certainly change the dynamic. Trump could have a health scare or say something so outlandish that even his most ardent supporters could balk, or a meteor could hit, or who knows what.

But as it stands now, he holds a massive lead and therefore is effectively the leader of the GOP. Many on the Republican side are thrilled by this fact—but some are not. Whichever side you’re on, the truth is the truth. One could think DeSantis would be the best conservative president the country has ever seen, but they’d be misguided if they were unable to admit that his odds are long at best at this point in the contest. I don’t like the fact that flash mobs recently attacked my local mall recently, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

People can attack the messengers all they want, but the facts remain: at this point in time, Donald Trump is in an exceptionably favorable position to capture the Republican nomination. If I told you otherwise, just to please those out there who wish it weren’t so, I’d simply be another clone of CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, and others – a journalistic fraud.

Unearthed Strategic Plan Unveils Army Corps of Engineers’ Goal to Force DEI Onto Service Members

The 27-page document obtained by The Federalist outlines how the Army Corps of Engineers plans to inject DEIA into the branch over the next three years.

Shawn Fleetwood reporting for The Federalist

A strategic plan produced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) reveals how the branch intends to force neo-Marxism onto its members over the next three fiscal years.

Titled “USACE Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility (DEIA) Strategic Plan,” the 27-page document obtained by The Federalist outlines how USACE plans to inject DEIA into the branch over the next three years (2023-2026). According to Lt. Gen. Scott Spellmon, USACE’s commanding general, the plan was crafted to comply with Executive Order 14035, a directive issued by President Joe Biden in June 2021 mandating federal agencies adopt DEI throughout their respective workforces.

For context, DEIA, or DEI, is a divisive ideology that dismisses merit and discriminates based on features such as skin color and sexual orientation. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet institutionally preferred identitarian standards.

“One of my top priorities is ensuring that USACE serves as a model for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, where all employees are treated with dignity and respect,” Spellmon wrote in the plan’s opening pages. Integrating DEIA “into our daily activities … allows USACE to retain its focus on our greatest asset — THE PEOPLE.”

The strategic plan provides insight into how USACE intends to implement these concepts throughout its ranks over the next several years. Without offering specifics, the branch claims under a section labeled “DEIA Governance” that it will “build and sustain” a so-called “diverse and talented workforce” beginning with USACE’s leadership “and cascading down to all levels across the enterprise.” The branch also aims to “cultivate” and “nurture” an allegedly “inclusive culture,” according to the plan.

The 27-page document also includes a “DEIA Maturity Model,” which USACE will use to “map its DEIA actions” and determine the most effective “standards of measurement” and “performance indicators” to use in gauging the branch’s “progress in advancing DEIA.” In order to acquire “the right data” to achieve this goal, USACE lists a series of questions it aims to answer over the next three years to advance DEIA throughout the service. Among the listed questions are “Does equity apply the same for all groups across the board? If not, why might that be?” and “Does everyone feel included and a sense of belonging?”

Also enclosed in the plan are a series of “DEIA Goals and Objectives” guiding USACE’s three-year mission. In a subsection titled “USACE Workforce,” the branch lists as a goal its desire to identify so-called “underrepresented groups” and collaborate with agency offices to “develop staffing plans to ensure diversity is addressed in their staffing plans.”

“A higher proportion of female, racial, and ethnic minorities in leadership positions has a significant influence on the opportunities available to diverse talent, which has implications for the talent pipeline,” the plan reads. “DEIA efforts partially because there are fewer role models and mentors to encourage younger generations of women and minority talent to pursue employment opportunities with their organizations, especially leadership positions.”

Another subsection, titled “Expansion of Equity,” takes USACE’s adoption of neo-Marxist ideology a step further. In an apparent effort to “mitigate barriers” for so-called “underserved populations,” the branch says it is expanding its definition of “underserved” beyond characteristics such as race and sex to include identifiers like sexual orientation and whether an individual identifies as “transgender” or any other “gender identities” covered by the LGBT alphabet.

The USACE strategic plan is hardly the only example showcasing Marxism’s infiltration into the U.S. military. In the lead up to and during June, the Pentagon went all out to host “pride month” activities on military installations across the country, with branches such as the Air Force authorizing the use of U.S. taxpayer money to fly service members to these “rainbow” parties.

In addition to promoting DEI-pushing officials to the highest ranks of the service, Biden has also sought to make abortion a major focal point of the military’s overall mission. Nearly a year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized Pentagon funds to be used to pay for female service members’ travel expenses to kill their unborn child across state lines. To protest this illegal policy, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville began using his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year to slow-walk military personnel moves requiring Senate confirmation.

Despite possessing the power to bring these nominations to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has spent months attacking Tuberville and pushing baseless claims the Republican senator’s protest was placing “American security in jeopardy.” Schumer ultimately caved last week, bringing several of Biden’s nominees to the floor for confirmation votes.

Meanwhile, Tuberville has indicated he will continue his protest until the Pentagon revokes its abortion policy.

USACE’s public affairs office did not respond to The Federalist’s request at the time of publication.

USACE DEIA Strategic Plan 2... by The Federalist

Mary Katharine Ham Demolishes the Biden Double Standard on Bill Maher

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

Mary Katharine Ham appeared on Bill Maher's show Saturday evening, and she took the opportunity to say what most conservatives are thinking.

While sparring with Sam Harris (and Maher at some points), Ham laid out the double standard surrounding the Biden family and its various scandals. 

HAM: The standard of evidence used for the Russia thing for three, four years vs. the standard of evidence used now in media for Biden and Hunter Biden's shenanigans and fairly obvious influence peddling is worlds apart, worlds apart, and voters deserve fairness in how these two people are treated. They do not get it, and they sometimes don't get it from law enforcement. 

HARRIS: Yes, there's a lot to untangle here, but I'll completely grant you that if Hunter Biden had been Don Jr., if it had been Don Jr.'s laptop everything would change in terms of the reception, and that seems like an unfair asymmetry, but the background reality is that we have never had a person like Trump in our politics, certainly not in the lifetime of anyone in this studio, and he has violated, he has shattered every norm. We didn't even know how much we relied on norms. We are a nation of laws, but more important than the laws are the norms. Like committing to a peaceful transfer of power. I mean, that was the most shocking violation of normal democratic principles I think in our history.

HAM: I agree with you about the norms, and here's the problem. A bunch of people, including in the justice system, looked at Trump and said, "He's going to bust all the norms, and you know what we need to do? Bust all the norms to stop him!" And that was a very unhealthy decision. 

HARRIS: It's unhealthy, I'll grant you that.

MAHER: Alright, time to stop. 

That response to Ham may be the dumbest, most self-serving explanation of the noted double standard I've ever heard. According to Harris, it's fine for the press to pass over blatant corruption involving the Bidens because of Donald Trump. That's an argument completely devoid of any logic or principle.

Either influence peddling and enriching one's self via political power (perhaps criminally) is bad or it's not. The fact that Trump was a disrupter doesn't mean that special rules should apply to him whereby no burden of evidence is needed to make salacious charges while the Bidens must have a signed check with "bribe" in the memo to be criticized. 

It's incredible. Even after conceding Ham's point, Harris falls back on the "muh norms" line as if that somehow justified the targeting of political opponents by the federal government. Never mind that the "norms" were first busted in pursuit of Trump, not by Trump himself. The Russia hoax tracks back to 2015 before he was even president. 

Harris is a tyrant even though he pretends to be all about protecting democracy. He is fine with the government being weaponized to take down those he disagrees with. Worse, he admits that he values "norms" over the rule of law as an excuse to accomplish that end.

What an insane thing to say. The norms are "more important" than laws? Really? Because I'm pretty sure that laws are tangible while "norms" are just whatever some far-left hack is feeling that day. After all, Harris has had nothing to say about the norm-busting going on with Democrat attacks on the Supreme Court.

What's frustrating is that it was conservatives who helped raise Harris' profile some years back by touting him as a member of the "intellectual dark web." How many times do we have to do this before the right learns to stop elevating rabid left-wingers for short-term clout? 

Returning to Ham, she didn't get much applause because Maher's audience is overwhelmingly liberal, but she was spot on. There is a double standard and normal Americans see it. Whether anything will ever be done about it is another question.

Part II – Something Necessary to Understand About Washington DC

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

The first element of the discussion was here {REVIEW}.  A short follow up is prudent.

The word “normal” is no longer politically correct to say.  The cultural Marxists have manipulated language to fit their needs; however, there is a need to stop pretending, therefore it becomes necessary to stop playing by their stupid rules and talk to each other in ordinary terms.

You are likely a person of normal disposition.  You go about your affairs with an outlook of decency and general respect toward the goals and aspirations of others.  You have the ability to remain emotionally stable, ignore the swirling nonsense of idiots, boil down the issues to their most common attributes and go about finding the best optimal solution for the events in your life.

The people in Washington DC are not normal. Not like that. If they perceive an event to have negative impact upon them, they cannot independently remain stable and deal with the issue on a level of solution they can independently create.  When they encounter a negative situation, they need to pull other people into the quicksand of their gibberish and stupidity in order to avoid accepting that they are less capable.  At a cognitive or psychological level, this is a defense mechanism.

DC operates like a school of fish stupid fish, a tribe that swarms together looking for consensus which allows them to not hold responsibility for their own shortcomings.  They view systems as solutions in order to avoid responsibility.  They are not emotionally stable, cogent, capable or independent thinkers.  They require tribalism to avoid what they lack.  These are not stable people.

This is not a blanket statement that would be considered hyperbolic.  Every entity, every individual person within the bubble of DC, cannot fathom self-reliance.  It is a concept as foreign to them as the distinction between a ‘constitutional republic’ and a ‘democracy.’  This is not a mistake or flaw in their perception and mindset, this is the reality of how their brain synapses fire.  This is who they are.

Within this dependency, those who assemble the silos of information find great reception.  Each sheeple tribe paying attention only to their immediate surroundings without the capacity to stand back and see the entire world around them.  They do not have this skillset.  They do not possess this ability.  This applies to all of them; every single one.

Within this system of dependency, they are like the crowd in the story of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes.’  The political representatives and the staff that support them, literally are manifestations of weird minds, brought together by a career that rewards and attracts esoteric thinking devoid of pragmatic common sense.  They care about the opinion of others. They only care about the opinion of others; however, the “others” only apply to their tribe.  Again, tribalism is how they define themselves.  These are not emotionally stable people.

The outcome of their decision-making only flows through the prism of self-interest, where the ‘interest’ is about the preservation of the bubble that provides them a walled-off life of affluence inside the petri dish of toxic identity.  In a general world, the population of advanced and diagnosed narcissists is around 10%.  Inside the DC bubble, far more than half of the residents carry this narcissistic trait.   This is the origin of the abusive relationship that exists between “them” and “us.”

This applies to all of them.

All of them.

If you say the emperor is naked, from their perspective you are the stupid one.  Worse still, if you keep saying it, they view you as dangerous.

They are assembling systems to keep track of the dangerous people.

This is the disconnect that must be understood.

These are not normal people.

Cue the visual aid: