Charles Lipson:

“…The Democrats’ activist base considers Donald Trump fundamentally unfit to hold office. Their impeachment drive is really about this damning judgment, not about any specific act such as withholding Ukrainian aid or wanting to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They say Trump is erratic, narcissistic, self-serving, and unforgivably gauche. He cozies up to dictators and would like to become one himself. Every day, he tramples the presidency’s historic norms. Surely the voters who put him there made a catastrophic error, or, rather, the antiquated Electoral College did. In short, Trump is not just a bad president — the worst in modern history — he is an illegitimate and dangerous one, at home and abroad.

Their harsh view is no masquerade. It is sincere, deeply held, and shared by most elected Democrats. Many, perhaps most, career civil servants agree and consider the president only nominally their boss. That’s why they consider it their constitutional duty to hold him in check. That’s why former heads of the CIA openly praised the “Deep State,” why former FBI Director James Comey wanted his agents to monitor the president in the White House itself. If that means targeting Trump and his key aides for disguised FBI interviews or leaking classified phone calls, so be it. The fight over the Deep State is partly about this profound distrust of Trump (and his distrust of them) and partly about the president’s rising opposition to a century of progressive legislation, executive orders, and court decisions, which grant extensive power to government bureaucrats.

This revulsion is the backdrop to the Democrats’ impeachment effort and the earlier appointment of a special counsel. The crucial point is this: Democrats see the actions they have investigated for three years less as specific crimes and more as steadily accumulating evidence of Trump’s unfitness for office and his repeated violation of his oath, as they understand it. “Democrats of all stripes look at Donald Trump’s business and personal history and see a man who serially does not follow laws and therefore should not be president,” said one well-informed Democrat. For his party, “Ukraine is a big deal because it confirms this view.”…

…It’s not hard for Republicans to attack this whole process as fundamentally unfair. They say, rightly, that it violates the most basic tenets of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence:

• • Accusations must be specific and backed by clear evidence;
  • All evidence and accusations must be presented in open court;
  • Rules of procedure must be fixed and unbiased, not arbitrary and ad hoc;
  • The accused is presumed innocent and must be given full rights to see all the evidence, confront the accusers, and rebut all charges, including cross-examining witnesses, challenging documents, and presenting exculpatory evidence. None of these rules has applied to this impeachment inquiry, at least not yet…”

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Who would have guessed Vindman was a political animal?

Jim Hickman:

“…He was apologetic of American culture, laughed about Americans not being educated or worldly, & really talked up Obama & globalism to the point of (sic) uncomfortable.

He would speak w/the Russian Soldiers & laugh as if at the expense of the US personnel. It was so uncomfortable & unprofessional, one of the GS [civil service]employees came & told me everything above. I walked over & sat w/in earshot of Vindman, & sure enough, all was confirmed.

One comment truly struck me as odd, & it was w/respect to American’s falsely thinking they’re exceptional, when he said, “He [Obama] is working on that now.” And he said it w/a snide ‘I know a secret’ look on his face. I honestly don’t know what it meant, it just sounded like an odd thing to say.

Regardless, after hearing him bash America a few times in front of subordinates, Russians, & GS Employees, as well as, hearing an earful about globalization, Obama’s plan, etc., I’d had enough. I tapped him on the shoulder & asked him to step outside. At that point I verbally reprimanded him for his actions, & I’ll leave it at that, so as not to be unprofessional myself.

The bottom-line is LTC Vindman was a partisan Democrat at least as far back as [2013]. So much so, junior officers & soldiers felt uncomfortable around him. This is not your professional, field-grade officer, who has the character & integrity to do the right thing. Do not let the uniform fool you…he is a political activist in uniform. I pray our nation will drop this hate, vitriol & division, & unite as our founding fathers intended!…”

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Brian Stelter Investigates Trump’s Twitter Typos

STEPHEN KRUISER:

“…The Washington Nationals went to the White House on Monday to celebrate their World Series win with the President of the United States and in a sane world, a champion baseball team and the president hanging out on a sunny day would just make for a nice story.

For the sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome, it was a cause of great distress…

…Obviously, it was bad enough for these poor dears that the event happened at all. The Nationals players who did show up really spoiled things by enjoying themselves. Catcher Kurt Suzuki practically caused an international incident by wearing a Make America Great Again hat, a.k.a. the universal trigger for every American liberal whose daddy never said: “I love you.”…

…The Twitter hashtag #KurtSuzuki reveals an array of fragility, mental instability, and fundamental misunderstandings of just what a hat is capable of. If I were a better person I would feel bad for these people.

Instead, I spent a fair amount of time scrolling through and thoroughly enjoying their angst and online histrionics. They are suffering from toxic emotional weakness and it’s more entertaining than having cable for me.

To his credit, Suzuki didn’t back down and defended his ability to have a good time…”

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I don’t agree with much that Matt Taibbi says, and I don’t agree with all of this current piece. Some of it rings true to me; however.

Matt Taibbi:

“…The unnamed person at the center of this story sure didn’t sound like a whistleblower. Our intelligence community wouldn’t wipe its ass with a real whistleblower.

Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas, like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning, get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake, have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney, or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou. It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ballcarrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistleblower….

…Actual whistleblowers are alone. The Ukraine complaint seems to be the work of a group of people, supported by significant institutional power, not only in the intelligence community, but in the Democratic Party and the commercial press…

…In 2016 we saw a pair of electoral revolts, one on the right and one on the left, against the cratering popularity of our political elite. The rightist populist revolt succeeded, the Sanders movement did not. Ukrainegate to me looks like a continuation of Russiagate, which was a reaction of that defeated political elite to the rightists. I don’t feel solidarity with either group…”

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Steve Cortes:

“…“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins Charles Dickens’ classic novel “A Tale of Two Cities.” The political reality in America reflects a sort of Dickensian dichotomy at present.

On the one hand, the figurative “city” of America exemplifies the “age of wisdom” of a country emboldened and busy: eliminating terrorists, protecting our streets, and growing wealthy. On the other hand, the literal city of Washington embraces an “age of foolishness” as an insular cabal is transfixed with impeachment…”

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Nitwits in Iceland can’t figure out why a burger doesn’t decompose.

Iceland livestreams 10-year-old McDonald’s cheeseburger

Germany Readies Further Restrictions On Guns And Speech

Fight for your rights, vote!

I remember when she first became Speaker and I thought it was not possible for her to win because she was so far left.

Nancy Pelosi Worried 2020 Democrats Are Going Too Far Left

Media Scrambles To Fact-Check Image Of Trump Riding Hero Dog Into Massive Space Battle

I blame global warming, not Gavin Newsom

She’s a victim!

Days of terrifying darkness, cold and hunger amid PG&E’s sweeping power blackouts…

California has the world’s 11th largest economy, and one of the world’s worst political class and government. Mismanagement blamed on global warming. It is a joke.

I & I Editorial Board:

“…The mainstream press has been oddly incurious about the identity of the “whistleblower” who got the Trump impeachment train rolling. Now we know the reason why.

Real Clear Investigations on Wednesday published a bombshell account by investigative reporter Paul Sperry, who says that the identity of the so-called whistleblower “has been an open secret inside the Beltway.” There’s even a 40-page research dossier floating around on him compiled by former colleagues.

It turns out that the person who wrote the second-hand, factually inaccurate account of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t just some careerist, non-partisan CIA official, or even, as Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson put it, a person with “some indicia of an arguable political bias.”

Eric Ciaramella is, as Sperry reveals, “a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.”

What’s more, Ciaramella left his White House post in mid-2017 “amid concerns about negative leaks to the media.” Sperry reports that, according to that 40-page dossier, Ciaramella also helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative.

Oh, and he worked “on Ukrainian policy issues for (Joe) Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama’s ‘point man’ for Ukraine.”

As partisan icing on the cake, before filing his complaint against Trump, Ciaramella met with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff – who is running the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry – for “guidance.”

This sounds like a whole lot more than an “indicia” or an “arguable” bias. In fact, it smacks of the very kind of Deep State that Trump has been talking about.

The press reaction to Sperry’s story? Complete and utter silence.

The only Washington publication to cover his revelations was the Washington Examiner, which has a conservative-leaning editorial board.

But that story, from the headline down, reeks of liberal bias. The reporter, Steven Nelson, spends the second paragraph of the story attacking Sperry, calling him “a partisan pro-Trump figure who … critics accuse of trading in disinformation and conspiracy theories.”

Well, we know Paul Sperry. He worked for Investor’s Business Daily for years, where the Issues & Insights team was before striking out on its own. (He’s written for us, as well.) Paul is a diligent reporter who has broken more stories than Steve Nelson could dream of. To brazenly malign Sperry using leftist tropes is journalistic malpractice at its worst.

Even more bizarrely, Nelson claims to have found “at least one significant factual inaccuracy in the report,” but never reveals what it is. This is the sort of sloppy, biased journalism we expect from the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN.

That aside, there’s another reason the mainstream press won’t touch Sperry’s story. If it did, it would have to admit that it’s known the “whistleblower’s” identity all along. And that it knows his biases. And that it’s under no obligation to protect his identity. And, finally, that it covered up his identity to keep the impeachment train rolling.

So the blackout holds. The only interest the Washington Post has shown in Ciaramella’s identity is to blast Republicans for trying to “unmask” him. The New York Times laughably claimed that it didn’t know his politics or his name.

It’s no surprise to us that the mainstream press is carrying water for Democrats on the impeachment story. But even we are sometimes surprised and dismayed by its cravenness…”

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This has the same retched stink as the Kavanaugh lynching. When you think Democrats can’t go lower, they somehow find a way.

DANIEL J. FLYNN:

“…Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations wrote the name Eric Ciaramella on Wednesday. Not since a chained, old man uttered “Jehovah” in Life of Brian have so many people reacted with such hostility to hearing a name said.

Discovering that Eric Ciaramella tattled on the president does not rank with learning that Webster shot J. R. or finding D. B. Cooper in Al Capone’s vault. America merely lacked a name. We knew the type.

Ciaramella graduated from a high school that costs $30,000 a year to attend, received his undergraduate degree from Yale, and obtained a master’s from Harvard. A few years after graduation from that tony private high school, the youngster estimated to its alumni magazine of trips to 28 different countries (he admits he lost count).

When others provide you with the best education and pricey junkets to obscure parts of the globe, not getting the president you asked for might come as a terrible blow. So Ciaramella sought to rectify this injustice by anonymously peddling secondhand gossip — false in large part — designed to instigate another round of impeachment discussions. He did so by first going to Congressman Adam Schiff. When you seek to report a federal crime, go to the FBI. When you seek to gin up political trouble, go to Adam Schiff.

This came as the latest instance of the 33-year-old CIA employee using his government position for partisan, political ends.

Ciaramella absconded from the National Security Council after widespread suspicion arose that he leaked information for the purpose of damaging the president he ostensibly served. At that time, Mike Cernovich wrote in an article that Medium.com later removed that “Ciaramella helped draft Susan Rice’s anti-Trump talking points before the Inauguration.” Cernovich described him as “the main force pushing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.”

Paul Sperry notes that Ciaramella circumvented his chain of command in telling another agency of a meeting between Trump and Russians in the Oval Office a day after James Comey’s firing. This email, referenced in the Mueller report, effectively launched a “Putin fired Comey” narrative depicting the president of the United States as a marionette controlled by the Kremlin.

“And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Sperry reports, “inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. ‘He knows her. He had her in the White House,’ said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.”

Politico detailed the collusion between Ciaramella’s DNC operative pal and Ukraine in a lengthy report by Kenneth Vogel, now with the New York Times, and David Stern, who resides in Kiev. “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office,” they write. “They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”

Why did John Brennan assign Ciaramella to the National Security Council? What role, if any, did Ciaramella take in this particular collusion involving Chalupa and a foreign government to influence the outcome of a U.S. presidential election? Why did Sen. Rand Paul describe Ciaramella as Vice President Joe Biden’s point man on Ukraine?…”

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