Adam Mill:

“…In October 1944, the situation for the Japanese looked desperate, enough for them to use the most desperate of all weapons, the kamikaze. The Japanese welded bombs to planes the kamikaze pilots flew into the superior U.S. Navy. The pilot typically died in the attack, along with whatever sailors he managed to kill in the crash.

Kamikaze attacks sank 34 ships during the war. At Okinawa, an island Japan considered part of the homeland, they inflicted the greatest losses ever sustained by the Navy in a single battle.

David Marcus:

“…Republicans unveiled a four-point defense of President Trump that is stunning in its simplicity and blows massive holes in the Democrats allegations of abuse of power. Essentially the Democrats are accusing Trump of shaking down Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky by withholding aid and demanding announcement of investigations, including one involving Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

To this, the central charge in the articles of impeachment, Rep. Jim Jordan and others presented four specific facts. First, both Trump and Zelensky say there was no pressure applied. Second, the transcript does not indicate Trump making any demands or setting any conditions. Third, Ukraine was not aware that the aid was delayed. And fourth, aid flowed without any announcement of investigations. Taken together, these four defenses have more than enough weight to crush the Democrats’ case…”

Original

I disagree with Glenn Greenwald on most political matters, but he calls it straight, and when he is right, he is right.

Glenn Greenwald:

“…Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.

Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.

If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is?…no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled…

…the revelations of the IG Report are not merely a massive FBI scandal. They are also a massive media scandal, because they reveal that so much of what the U.S. media has authoritatively claimed about all of these matters for more than two years is completely false…

…It’s long been the case that CIA, FBI and NSA operatives tried to infiltrate and shape domestic news, but they at least had the decency to do it clandestinely. In 2008, the New York Times’ David Barstow won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing a secret Pentagon program in which retired Generals and other security state agents would get hired as commentators and analysts and then – unbeknownst to their networks – coordinate their messaging to ensure that domestic news was being shaped by the propaganda of the military and intelligence communities.

But now it’s all out in the open. It’s virtually impossible to turn on MSNBC or CNN without being bombarded with former Generals, CIA operatives, FBI agents and NSA officials who now work for those networks as commentators and, increasingly, as reporters.

The past three years of “Russiagate” reporting – for which U.S. journalists have lavished themselves with Pulitzers and other prizes despite a multitude of embarrassing and dangerous errors about the Grave Russian Threat – has relied almost exclusively on anonymous, uncorroborated claims from Deep State operatives (and yes, that’s a term that fully applies to the U.S.). The few exceptions are when these networks feature former high-level security state operatives on camera to spread their false propaganda…

…That the Page warrant was based on the Steele Dossier was something that the media servants of the FBI and CIA rushed to deny. Did they have any evidence for those denials? That would be hard to believe, given that the FISA warrant applications are highly classified. It seems far more likely that – as usual – they were just repeating what the FBI and CIA (and the pathologically dishonest Rep. Adam Schiff) told them to say, like the good and loyal puppets that they are. But either way, what they kept telling the public – in highly definitive tones – was completely false, as we now know from the IG Report…

…Just compare the pompous denials from so many U.S. national security reporters at the nation’s leading news outlets – that the Page warrant was not based on the Steele Dossier – to the actual truth that we now know…

…The narrative manufactured by the security state agencies and laundered by their reliable media servants about these critical matters was a sham, a fraud, a lie. Yet again, U.S. discourse was subsumed by propaganda because the U.S. media and key parts of the security state have decided that subverting the Trump presidency is of such a high priority – that their political judgment outweighs the results of the election – that everything, including outright lying even to courts let alone the public, is justified because the ends are so noble…”

Original

“…Surely one incredibly important lesson the political class will learn from this is that if you disrespect people’s democratic votes — as Labour did with its promise to cancel Brexit and hold a second referendum — then people will punish you. Denigrate democracy and democracy will have its payback…”

Brendan O’Neill:

“…The ‘red wall’ has fallen. Brick by brick. Almost every bit of it. Seats held by Labour for decades have been seized by the Tories. To me, this is the most exciting thing in this extraordinary election. It feels almost revolutionary. Working people have smashed years and years of tradition and laid to waste the nauseating, paternalistic idea that they would vote for a donkey so long as it was wearing a red rosette.

The ‘red wall’ results are staggering. In Bolsover, held by Dennis Skinner since 1970, the Tories now have a 5,000+ majority. Former mining towns like Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield — Tony Blair’s old seat — fell to the Tories.

Caroline Flint lost Don Valley — a shame, given Flint was one of very few Labour MPs who sensed that the party’s betrayal of its working-class, Brexit-voting communities would cost it dear.

Blyth Valley has a Tory MP for the first time in its 69-year history. Dehenna Davison, a Sheffield-born, Hull-educated 25-year-old, is Bishop Auckland’s first Tory MP in its 134-year history. She has a majority of nearly 8,000.

And on it goes…”

Original

Based on exit polls. The results are just coming in. If this result holds, the libs in this country should be worried.

Trump Ends Liberal Domination of 9th Circuit Appeals Court as Senate Confirms Lawrence VanDyke

Trump’s Popularity Surges After Nation Learns He May Have Obstructed Congress

STEPHEN GREEN: (from September 2019)

“…The Swedish teenager is not some science prodigy who graduated young from an Ivy League school with an advanced agree in physics or anything like that. Rather, the daughter (and granddaughter) of famous actors and opera singers suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and selective mutism. I’m no medical professional, but these things might have been brought on when (according to public sources), starting at the age of eight, Thunberg was subjected to such a barrage of climate panic that she eventually became depressed and lethargic, and also developed an eating disorder.

Now Thunberg is paraded around the globe as the voice of sanity on climate change…”

Original

Good News: Agents Who Doctored FISA Evidence and Abused Their Power Are Still Working at the FBI

Washington Examiner Editorial:

“…The FBI sought a warrant to wiretap a U.S. citizen and, in effect, a U.S. presidential campaign, based on a shoddy Democrat-funded pile of conspiracy theories known as the Steele dossier. The dossier’s allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump were based on “multiple layers of hearsay upon hearsay,” and the document also took seriously comments made in jest.

In other words, the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was exactly as partisan and shoddy as Republicans said it was, according to the information released by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The inspector general released a report detailing a shocking account of rampant misconduct at the FBI. Agents there misled and lied to the FISA court to authorize and reauthorize their spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It doesn’t matter what you think about Trump, the precedent these crooked agents set with their misconduct is horrifying…”

Original

ALAN DERSHOWITZ:

“…House Democrats have announced the grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on which they plan to seek the impeachment of President Trump. Neither of these proposed articles satisfy the express constitutional criteria for an impeachment, which are limited to “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Neither are high or low crimes or misdemeanors. Neither are mentioned within the Constitution.

Both are so vague and open ended that they could be applied in partisan fashion by a majority of the House against almost any president from the opposing party. Both are precisely what the Framers had rejected at their Constitutional Convention. Both raise the “greatest danger,” in the words of Alexander Hamilton, that the decision to impeach will be based on the “comparative strength of parties,” rather than on “innocence or guilt.”

That danger is now coming to pass, as House Democrats seek for the first time in American history to impeach a president without having at least some bipartisan support in Congress. Nor can they find any support in the words of the Constitution, or in the history of its adoption. A majority of the House is simply making it up as they go along in the process, thus placing themselves not only above the law but above the Constitution.

In doing this, they follow the view of Representative Maxine Waters who infamously declared that, when it comes to impeachment, “there is no law.” From her view, shared by some others, the criteria for impeaching a president is whatever a majority of the House says it is, regardless of what the Constitution mandates. This reductionistic and lawless view confuses what a majority of the House could get away with, if there is no judicial review, and what the mandated duty of all House members is, which is to support, defend, and apply the Constitution as written, not as it can be stretched to fit the actions of an opposition or controversial president…”

Original

Byron York:

“…The proof is in the details of the report. In addition to the much-discussed wiretap of Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Horowitz discussed the bureau’s use of what is called a CHS — a confidential human source, or, in more common terms, an informant, and a UCE — an undercover employee, or a secret agent, to gather information from at least three targets in the Trump campaign. One was Page, another was George Papadopoulos, also a member of the advisory team, and the third was an unnamed “high-level Trump campaign official who was not a subject of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

Horowitz described “multiple CHS operations undertaken by the Crossfire Hurricane team.” There were “numerous CHS interactions with Page and Papadopoulos.” There was the CHS contact with the high-level campaign official. And then there were “additional CHSs” who attempted to contact Papadopoulos but did not succeed.

All the meetings and conversations were secretly recorded by the FBI. Some were also monitored live, as they happened, by agents and supervisors. The Horowitz report quoted liberally from transcripts of the recordings…

…In short, the FBI, acting under false pretenses, spied on Trump and Flynn in plain sight.

The Horowitz report noted the potentially corrosive effect of what the FBI did. “We concluded that the FBI’s use of this briefing for investigative reasons could potentially interfere with the expectation of trust and good faith among participants in strategic intelligence briefings, thereby frustrating their purpose,” the report said.

Put it all together, and there was a lot of spying on the Trump campaign — by confidential informants, in a wiretap, even in a supposed intelligence briefing. Yet defenders of the Trump-Russia probe still maintain that no spying took place and that the FBI followed proper procedures. After Horowitz, that’s a difficult case to make. The fact is, the FBI not only spied on the Trump campaign, it did it in the worst way…”

Original

Miranda Devine:

“…It took five hours of questioning about the FBI’s motivations but Horowitz, prudent and impartial as he is, finally delivered the money shot.

Asked by Republican Sen. Mike Crapo if the 17 “significant errors or omissions” he found in the FBI’s surveillance operation could possibly be “accidental,” Horowitz said: “I would be skeptical.”

He went on to explain “the answers we got were not satisfactory [so] we’re left trying to understand how could all these errors have occurred over a nine-month period on three teams hand-picked, on . . . the highest-profile case of the FBI, going to the very top of the organization, involving a presidential campaign.”

Horowitz described the conduct of the FBI as “inexplicable” when its operatives bent the rules to try to prove Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia.

But sadly the FBI’s conduct is all too explicable. It can be explained by the proven anti-Trump bias of its personnel, hand-picked to run Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI operation to spy on the Trump campaign using salacious opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Horowitz’s testimony confirms suspicions that the Russia-collusion hoax amounted to an attempted coup against Trump and laid the groundwork for impeachment…”

Original

The Person Of The Year Is Not Greta Thunberg. It’s The Hong Kong Protester