Tag Archives: political parties

An Intelligence Strike

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A second putative whistleblower is claimed to be coming forward with commentary on President Donald Trump’s telecon with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.  This one claims to have firsthand knowledge of the call.  This one also is claimed by others to be from the intelligence community.

I’ll ask the obvious question, knowing the NLMSM will refuse to answer: who’s leaking these things?  The whistleblower’s claims haven’t even been evaluated by the Intelligence Community Inspector General as such things are supposed to be before anything is done with that kind of complaint.

The other obvious thing is this warning by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) about a President daring to dispute with the intelligence community.

Let me tell you: you take on the intelligence community—they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you[.]

This is against the backdrop of the drumbeat of smears and false accusations by ex-CIA Director John Brennan and the more sub rosa false claims made by the more genteel ex-DIA Director James Clapper, also known for his “not deliberately” done misstatements during a House hearing.

This “complaint” is the second intelligence community strike of which Schumer warned, coming after the first “whistleblower” strike was shown to have been coordinated with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) (who lied about that coordination) and shown further to be foolish at best, consisting as it does of nothing but second- and third-hand rumors.

Having sent out that stalking horse and learned something of the nature of the counters, this on may well be of better manufacture.

Unfortunately, though, it’s no longer possible to take intel’s “whistleblowers” seriously, even were a complaint to turn out to coincide with truth, because of this history of dishonesty.  And especially since these are being rolled out serially, keeping the matter in the newspapers and talk shows, rather than coming out together as a package, so the matter could be addressed with some finality.

Look for a third strike, if this one plops, also.

Raise the Price

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…of a product, and with that, lower demand for it.  This is the sort of thing taught in high school introductory economics courses.  One way to raise the price is to raise taxes related to it, and to reduce tax deductions related to it.

The Manhattan real estate market [a generally hgh-end market] stumbled in the third quarter of 2019, new reports show, as prices plunged and fewer buyers were willing to purchase higher-priced properties in the wake of two recent tax increases.
The median sales price for properties fell 17% from the same quarter last year…. The average sales price dropped 12%….
Condo sales fell 8%….

Maybe this had something to do with it:

In July, New York City increased its mansion tax—a progressive tax that applies to home sales of more than $1 million—to a maximum of 3.9%, up from a flat-rate of 1%. The tax rates vary from 1.25% for $2 million sales, to 3.9% for sales of $25 million and higher. The city also increased a one-time charge on properties worth more than $2 million—known as the transfer tax.

And maybe the $10,000 cap on state and local tax (SALT) imposed by the 2017 tax reform bill is having an impact.

Yes, Trump Did Commit an Impeachable Offense

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Notwithstanding lawyer and Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett’s hysterical musings to the contrary.

As Jarrett correctly quoted, but mischaracterized, then-House Minority Leader Gerald Ford’s (R, MI) remark on impeachment,

An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.

Jarrett is right that this isn’t what the Constitution’s authors intended, but it’s what they wrote, and it’s what our Constitution has said ever since.  High Crimes and Misdemeanors were completely undefined by them and by any ratification since.

The Progressive-Democrat caucus in the House is bound and determined to get rid of a President whom they consider to have stolen their personal property—the 2016 Presidential election—and so to prevent him from continuing to squat on their property after the 2020 Presidential election.  In the course of their effort, they are, indeed, denigrating the meaning of every word in that phrase, including the “and.”

They’re after charging President Donald Trump with the heinous behavior of asking the President of a foreign nation to look into the possibility of corruption in his own nation and the possibility of a role that corruption may have played in our 2016 election.  The impeachers insist that President Donald Trump demanded a quid pro quo, withholding military aid funding, against that President complying with the request.  Never mind that the Ukrainian President, Volodomyr Zelenskiy, has said on multiple occasions that he was not pressured at all, or that Ukraine’s Foreign Minister has said Ukraine didn’t even know any funds for military aid had been held up until a month after that telecon.

They’re after, also, charging Trump with the heinous crime of asking the same foreign nation to look into the possibility that a Progressive-Democrat, in his capacity as Vice President, might have extorted that same nation into stopping a corruption investigation into a business on whose board of directors that Vice President’s son sat and firing the Prosecutor General leading it.  That look-into involved a request for help from that nation because the activity occurred in that nation.  Never mind, here, that the impeachers insist that the subject of this requested look must be above investigation because he is a Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for President, not because he might be innocent.

An impeachment is nothing more than a grand jury indictment, and as is well known across a broad range of venues, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich if he sees fit.  The foolishness of this impeachment effort; the dishonesty underlying it; the plain, naked politics of the Progressive-Democrats’ effort to preempt the upcoming Presidential election with it—all are palpable and lay bare the nature of it.

Yes, Trump did commit impeachable offenses, as Progressive-Democrats in the House define the terms, and when they do get their impeachment done, they will be exposed for the irrational politicians they are, and for persons bent on their own political gain at the expense of their constituents’ interests and instructions.

Unfortunately, Jarrett’s name-calling and snark-ridden op-ed lends neither the Conservative cause in general nor the Trump matter in particular any credibility at all.

More on Free Speech

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Here’s another example of Progressive-Democrats and Party’s Presidential candidates objecting to free speech.

Senator [and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate] Kamala Harris said on Monday night that President Trump should have his Twitter account suspended over his tweets about the whistleblower whose complaint has helped launch an official House inquiry into his potential impeachment.

Trump’s terrible crime here? He expressed his desire to meet his accuser, a right all Americans have when accused of wrong-doing.

She went on, paraphrased by Fox News:

Harris said Trump’s latest tweets, in which he called the whistleblower “close to a spy,” is evidence that he is “irresponsible with his words in a way that could result in harm to other people.”
“The privilege of using those words in that way should probably be taken from him,” she added.

Of course, no harm can result “to other people” from such remarks.  Except in the fetid imaginations of the Left.

A President talking directly to ordinary Americans, bypassing the NLMSM Gateway and Party-approved mechanisms—how terrible.

Free Speech

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We’re beginning to see more of the value system that the most progressive candidate of them all, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ex-Vice President Joe Biden, wants to impose on all of us.  His campaign team, led by Anita Dunn (one of ex-President Barack Obama’s early White House Communications Directors) and Kate Bedingfield (Biden’s 2015 Communications Director) of Biden for President, have written to

executives and top political anchors at ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, including star interviewers like Jake Tapper, Chuck Todd, and Chris Wallace

to demand all of them cut Rudy Giuliani out of his ability to speak to us ordinary Americans via those widely disseminated and watched programs.

We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump.
Giving Rudy Giuliani valuable time on your air to push these lies in the first place is a disservice to your audience and a disservice to journalism

This is as clear an expression of the contempt in which members of the Progressive-Democratic Party hold us ordinary Americans.  Plainly, they think us just too grindingly stupid to decide for ourselves what we’ll listen to or how to think about what we hear, including whether Giuliani’s comments really are false, debunked conspiracy theories.  Or whether it might be Biden, et al., who are distorting the facts.  Biden, with this letter that The New York Times go hold of, has made that contempt explicit.  Again.

Much worse, though, is that this is a demonstration of the overall nature of free speech that the Biden the Presidential candidate is pushing.  Think about the breadth and depth of his assault on our freedom of speech that a Biden administration would inflict on our nation.

NYT provided these images of the Biden team’s letter.