Once again, Democrats have fallen in a trap created by their own bias and incompetence. Everyone knows that the only reason Nancy Pelosi called for a vote to approve an “impeachment inquiry” is that Lindsey Graham got 50 Republicans to call the current process a sham. What that means is that any articles of impeachment forwarded to the Senate would have been instantly rejected. Democrats were intimidated into providing a fairer process.

They should have done that, but they didn’t. Instead, they are apparently going to vote on the same process, with pretty much the same rules. The only difference is that Devin Nunes can now submit requests for subpoenas, but he must do this in writing and Adam Schiff must approve. Based on past performance, there is zero chance that Adam Schiff will handle this with anything approaching fairness.

Democrats have locked themselves into a lose-lose scenario.

There are rumors of a delay in scheduling the vote. That would be a real clue that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the votes. Even a delay would be a devastating rebuke for both Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.

If there is a vote, and it fails, it is even worse. In addition to the obvious rebuke of both Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, this would infuriate a large portion of the Democratic base. It would also embarrass every current candidate for the DNC nomination, assuming they are capable of feeling shame. Adam Schiff would have a very difficult time continuing with the current process.

But even if it wins Democrats have a huge problem. This is an admission that the current process is fatally flawed. Whether Adam Schiff realizes it, or not, it will be a public rebuke of him. To make this worse, the proposed rules are so obviously tilted toward Democrats that it will be still be difficult to defend the process. It is even more difficult to justify letting Adam Schiff handle this.

To make things worse, at best this is still not a vote for impeachment; it is not even a vote for an impeachment inquiry. It is only a vote to continue with the current process and at some point, turn it over to the House Judiciary Committee, which can then start an actual impeachment inquiry. This will satisfy no one other than the usual left wing pundits on the MSM who view anything and everything as evidence the noose is tightening on Donald Trump. Take comfort in the knowledge that these people have a well-earned reputation for being wrong about everything.

This is the ultimate lose-lose scenario. The IG report will be released shortly. Odds are high that John Durham is going to start indicting people. There is a very real possibility that a report will conclude that the Hillary Clinton campaign colluded with Ukraine in a failed attempt to influence the 2016 election.

While Democrats are hyperventilated over the very thought of colluding with a foreign government to influence an election, while they are screaming this is grounds for impeachment, they missed something. They could be confronted with actual evidence that the Obama administration did this and more.

Perhaps, somehow, somewhere, Adam Schiff has real evidence that will save the day, but I doubt it. It is pretty clear that if Democrats had anything, we would already know all about it.

Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field by Walter Scott, published in 1808.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise(sp) to deceive!”

By the way, the Battle of Flodden Field is very interesting. King James IV, of Scotland invaded England in defiance of his advisers. At first it looked like he was winning, but the Battle of Flodden Field was a disaster and he was killed along with most of his nobles.

TDM

The MSM, including Fox News, is totally incapable of reporting objectively on this “impeachment” inquiry. This is astonishing, because many of the critical facts are well documented. They are just ignored. I don’t know if this is because of ignorance, incompetence or mere wishful thinking. It is just really obvious. Here are the undisputed facts.

There was an investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. This has been admitted, under oath, by James Comey and others. It was named “Crossfire Hurricane.”

This investigation continued after Trump was inaugurated and was deliberately designed to circumvent normal channels in the DOJ. It started with James Comey, then transferred to Andrew McCabe and then to Robert Mueller.

That means the real questions are: When this this start? Why did it start? Who was involved? Who authorized this? Virtually every honest person agrees that a counter-intelligence investigation into a political campaign, during a Presidential Election is unprecedented. It is the worst form of abuse of power.

William Barr has said there was spying on the Trump campaign. He has never backtracked on that statement. The question was whether or not that was appropriate. Both the IG and John Durham are investigating how this happened.

John Durham’s investigation was recently changed to a criminal investigation. He was not investigating the possibility of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia. Mueller had already handled that. He also was not investigating potential obstruction of justice by Trump. William Barr and Rod Rosenstein advised there was no obstruction of justice. This means he was investigating why the investigation was started in the first place, who was involved and who authorized it.

If Durham found that this investigation was started in error, this would not be a criminal investigation. This means that Durham has already found that this was intentional. It is significant that at least some of this information came from overseas. That seems to imply involvement of the CIA. That may also involve the FBI, because the FBI also has overseas counter intelligence operations.

Some democratic pundits are trying to spin this away as if the worst possible charge here is perjury. That is absurd. These charges are far more serious than that. Andrew McCabe has already admitted, under oath, that they continued after Trump was inaugurated.

John Durham is also looking into Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election. No one has even suggested that Trump had asked the Ukraine for help in 2016. The country administrative court of Kyiv released a statement admitting Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election. You can read this statement for yourself:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/14/ukraine-admitted-to-interfering-in-the-2016-us-election-on-clintons-side/

Admit unlawful acts of the director of the NABU A. Sytnyk and the Ukrainian MP S. Leshchenko concerning the disclosure and distribution of the information about D. Trump’s campaign chairman P. Manafort and the presence of P.Manafort’s name and signatures in the lists of “The Party of Regions’ black ledgers” in the materials of the pre-trial investigation, which was the result of interference in the electoral processes of the United States of America in 2016 and harmed the interests of Ukraine.

Now compare that with the potential charges against Donald Trump. According to Democrats, he illegally asked the Ukraine to dig up dirt regarding a political opponent. He did this by telling the President of the Ukraine that Joe Biden bragged about forcing Ukraine to fire a prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in aid. That happens to be undeniably true. There is even a video of this. In a remarkable coincidence, Hunter Biden, who had just been kicked out of the Navy for drug abuse, was hired by Burisma. No one, including Hunter Biden, can give a good reason for this miracle. This, of course, is not enough evidence to impress the MSM who consider this claim to be discredited.

There is a lot of huffing and puffing about a Quid Pro Quo. The theory is that if Trump demanded something from the Ukraine that would benefit himself, that would be an impeachable offense. A Quid Pro Quo means: “a favor or advantage granted in return for something.” Mulvaney pointed out, correctly that the U.S. does this all the time. It is one way of getting foreign governments to assist us in our foreign policy. It is called diplomacy.

The only real argument that Democrats have is that asking Ukraine to check out Joe Biden was nothing more than Trump asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent. That, when you think about it, is absurd. One strong counter argument would be: “Do you think Joe Biden is above the law?”

They are also forgetting that the Hillary Clinton campaign did ask Ukraine to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, possibly with the support of the CIA, NSA, DNI, FBI and the Obama Administration. The louder they scream about the seriousness of this crime, the more justification for John Durham to indict people.

The old saying about people in glass houses has never been truer. Literally everything being used as grounds to impeach Trump appears to have been done in by his accusers on steroids.

Republicans have figured this out and they have lured Democrats into a huge trap. Lindsey Graham got 50 out of the 53 Republicans in the Senate to demand that the house stop holding mock impeachment hearings in secret, with no hint of due process. Nancy Pelosi is apparently going to call for a vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry. This is a desperate politically motivated attempt to retroactively justify what they are already doing. This is so obvious that even CNN might eventually notice.

It is not certain this will even pass. If it does pass, it does not mean a vote to impeach. It only means a vote to investigate whether to impeach. But the vote itself is significant because it is an admission that the current process is unfair.  Democrats are giving the power to handle this impeachment inquiry to Adam Schiff, but with different guidelines. Unless Adam Schiff has a major, unseen rabbit to pull out of his hat, this is likely to go down as one of the worst political blunders in American history. So far Adam Schiff has seen a lot of rabbits not visible to anyone else. It is hard to believe that Democrats are really willing allow someone like Adam Schiff take the lead on this.

Apparently Democrats cannot read a calendar. We are less than 30 days away from Thanksgiving and the House won’t even be in session for much of this time. Nothing in congress ever moves quickly and this is unlikely to be an exception. What are they going to do, impeach Trump for Christmas? Iowa Caucus, February 3, 2020 here we come.

I know there are pundits claiming the noose is tightening around Donald Trump. These are the same people who made the same prediction on a regular basis during the Mueller investigation. It wasn’t true then, it isn’t true now. But this time, there is a critical difference. Mueller totally ignored the real collusion by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The IG, John Durham and William Barr are not repeating that mistake. It is hard to imagine an end game that does not leave Democrats standing naked on a field of total destruction with no one to blame but themselves.

TDM

There are a lot of very significant things happening. Even the MSM has noticed. They are trying to spin this as an unethical investigation by William Barr at the direction of Donald Trump. That is an idiotic argument, because all of the people being investigated either work or did work in departments that report directly to the President of the United States. If Donald Trump cannot order the Attorney General to investigate this, who could do such an investigation? Adam Schiff? Like I said, idiotic.

It is important to focus on known facts. The best way to do that is to pay attention to exactly what William Barr said back in April:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-watchdog-fbi-informant-in-russia-probe

“I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated. … I think it’s my obligation. Congress is usually very concerned with intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane, spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”

This article also points out that the DOJ IG is scrutinizing the role of FBI information who contacted members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

Horowitz was also investigating wrongdoing related to the FISA warrants authorizing surveillance of Carter Page during the election.

Barr also said the following during testimony to the House Appropriations committee:

“More generally, I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all of the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016,”

It is undisputed that the FBI and the CIA were spying on the Trump campaign and later on the Trump administration. Democrats do not like the word, but whatever you call it; the FBI and the CIA were both investigating a political campaign during a Presidential election. William Barr is on record as saying if this was not justified; it is a very big deal. He also said this went on after Trump became President.

He appointed John Durham, a highly respected U.S Attorney to conduct that investigation. We know that both Barr and Durham traveled overseas as part of this investigation.

Horowitz has announced that his review is soon to be published. Sources familiar with his report say it will explain everything. It should be noted that Horowitz previously made a criminal referral with regard to the actions of James Comey. The DOJ declined to prosecute Comey for leaking documents to the press. Perhaps they have more serious charges in mind.

William Barr just announced that John Durham’s investigation has been changed from a review into a criminal investigation. That authorizes him to issue subpoenas and impanel a Grand Jury. It also authorizes him to indict people and arrest them.

While the MSM is trying to downplay the significance of this, they are doomed to failure. When you combine this with Democrats in the House, led by Adam Schiff, trying to impeach the President for asking the Ukraine to investigate interference in our 2016 election you have a perfect storm.

This is about to explode and unless there is a lot of factual information not yet disclosed, this is going to be a devastating rebuke of the CIA, the FBI and the Obama administration. That is particularly true when at least some of this continued after Trump had been elected.

When Barr said this is a big deal, he is not talking politics; he is talking about abuse of power, sedition and treason. We can expect Democrats to launch a vicious personal attack on Barr. The New York Bar Association has already asked him to recuse himself from investigating interference in our 2016 election by Ukraine. This was so absurd that even Andrew Napolitano, who has routinely trashed Trump lately, admitted there was no basis for this.

We are about to see a real flee market. This is where people caught up in this are going to desperately look for ways to distance themselves. It is similar to ways prominent Nazis tried to avoid punishment by claiming they were just following orders. Adolph Eichmann tried that. He was executed by hanging.

There is an old saying: “If you take a shot at a king, don’t miss.” The reason is that the price for such failure is beyond severe. A lot of people tried and failed to take down Donald Trump. There is another old saying: “time to pay the piper.” That means it is time to accept the consequences of bad decisions. It probably refers to a serious hangover after a night of partying. While investigating Trump was great fun, this fun may come at a great price. By the way, William Barr is a piper.

TDM

Some people have questioned whether the Deep State even exists. The reality is that the deep state has existed for a long time. When Lincoln was elected, his cabinet intended to ignore him and rule themselves. They just underestimated him. Our intelligence agencies have always considered themselves above the law. Anyone who ever watched Tora, Tora, Tora saw an example of this. In the movie, there is a separate room in the Pentagon where Japanese diplomatic codes are being captured and decoded. The Type B Cipher Machine, code named Purple, was used by the Japanese foreign office from February 1939 to the end of World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_B_Cipher_Machine

There is one scene in the move where there is a list of people authorized to see the actual decoded messages. At one point, President Roosevelt was crossed off the list. Someone in the military or intelligence community decided at least some White House staff members could not be trusted. They were actually right about that, because Alger Hiss was definitely a Soviet agent and some people believe Harry Hopkins may also have been compromised.

But the point is that intelligence official decided, on their own, when and what they would tell the President of the United States. The United States was also capturing and decoding messages transmitted by the NKVD, KGB and the GRU from 1943 through 1980. This was called the Venona project. It was not declassified until 1995. Following is the NSA website regarding Venona.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/

Once again the intelligence agencies decided on their own not to give Harry Truman access to the actual decoded documents and they may not have even told him the source of the information. Instead Truman was given executive summaries by J.Edgar Hoover. Truman, unaware of the actual source, and justifiably suspicious of J.Edgar Hoover thought these were exaggerated for political purposes. As a result, he failed to take very necessary action.

While Joseph McCarthy had his faults, he was right about the Soviet influence in our government. Most of the people identified by McCarthy were not on the Venona files, but there clearly was a problem.

If you watch the recent British mini-series “Traitors” the same scenario shows up. This is a fictional account, but based on some things that really did happen. It accurately shows that the intelligence community, from the start, felt they were the true protectors of democracy. Actually, the real power in the movie was a group of unidentified industry tycoons. They considered both the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain to be temporary occupants of their respective offices. They considered themselves to be the legitimate government.

Colonel Ralph Peters admitted this in one of his attempts to criticize Trump.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/ralph-peters-accuses-bloated-charlatan-trump-of-sedition-inciting-violence-against-the-legitimate-government/

“Trump is engaged in ‘sedition’ inciting violence against the legitimate government of the United States.”

This explains a lot. Far too many people in our military and our intelligence agencies have forgotten something very important. The President of the United States is elected by the people and they report to him, not vice versa. At various times other Presidents have had the same problem. Most famously was Truman vs McArthur. This does not mean the president is always right, it does mean that there is a reason our commander in chief is a civilian.

President Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex. He was right. There have always been highly successful business men, military commanders, intelligence agency personal and long term congressional leaders who really believe they and they alone are the legitimate government. That is one reason there are so many RINO republicans who are never-Trumpers.

What is different is that Trump, for the first time, has been willing to take them on. Even Senator Schumer warned him:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/312605-schumer-trump-being-really-dumb-by-going-after-intelligence-community

New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities.

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.

“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

Trump has taken on the deep state and he is winning. Most recently he made the decision to charge our strategy in the Middle East. The military and our intelligence agencies consider this to be a major error. So do a lot of RINO Republicans.

But, the American people prefer someone like Donald Trump. When he spoke at a rally about how painful it was for him to write letters to grieving relatives of people killed in military conflict, the crowd went deadly silent. Then when he talked about watching the families meet the aircraft carrying their loved one’s body, the crowd didn’t even breathe. He has repeatedly said, he will do what is necessary to protect our country, but he will not continue endless wars with no real goals and no end in sight.

We are already witnessing a civil war in this country. It not between Democrats and Republicans, it is between the deep state and the President of the United States. As incredible as it may seem, Trump just may pull this off. We will know soon.

TDM

Rand Raul and Rush Limbaugh slammed Lindsey Graham for not holding hearings regarding the FISA abuse scandal or any of the other related issues. They have a point, because Graham promised to do exactly that. . Rush says it is because Graham is afraid of implicating John McCain. Rand Paul wrote this off as empty promises.

This caused me to ask a couple of questions. One is, “when was the last time a congressional hearing resulted in someone getting convicted of a crime?” Most of these hearings are a joke. Both sides do a lot of showboating and nothing actually changes. Sometimes a committee will make a criminal referral, but that just turns it over to the DOJ to start over. I really can’t remember any congressional hearing that accomplishing anything more than embarrassing someone.

It seems obvious that it would benefit Graham personally to hold these hearings. He would be a star and it would be great political theater. He certainly loves a microphone. Although Rush thinks Graham wants to protect his friend John McCain, it would seem that Graham is smart enough to hold the hearings and avoid that problem. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have much interest in dumping on John McCain. But what if there was another motive for not holding hearings?

John Durham and William Barr are obviously investigating something and it appears to be very serious. One of the core principles when conducting an investigation is to separate witnesses. They don’t want one witness to know what questions were asked of another witness. They also don’t want one witness to know what another witness said. That reduces the risk of witnesses cooperating on a false narrative. A congressional hearing, particularly a public hearing, destroys this principle.

It is far more dangerous for people like John Brennan and James Clapper to be interviewed by John Durham, behind closed doors, than it is for Brennan and Clapper to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, even when the chairman is Lindsey Graham. Perhaps, just perhaps, Graham did something remarkable and put the country ahead of his own self-interest. Perhaps he didn’t hold hearings because he knows that Durham and Barr are far more capable of conducting an investigation and absolutely more likely to hold people accountable.

It also appears that Lindsey Graham, who knows things you do not know, is confident that Durham and Barr will take decisive action. If he did not believe that, he would definitely be holding hearings. These things are impossible to predict, but actions speak louder than words. Sometimes, inaction may speak volumes.

NBC just issued a report verifying that AG Barr has approved expansion of the Durham probe to include scrutiny of both John Brennan and Thomas Clapper.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/ag-barr-expands-controversial-review-origin-russia-investigation-n1068971

Naturally, NBC tried to spin this down.

“If Durham is conducting a criminal investigation, it’s not clear what allegations of wrongdoing are being examined. The Justice Department has not detailed any, and a spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.”

Seriously! NBC can’t imagine any potential wrong doing. Media outlets like NBC can never imagine any criminal acts done by anyone other than Donald Trump.

However, even the Peacock shows signs of waking up:

“Justice Department officials have said that Durham has found something significant, and that critics should be careful.”

NBC called Mulvaney’s comments about the DNC server possibly being in Ukraine and about alleged interference in the 2016 election to be a wild conspiracy theory.

They quote the following from Tom Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security adviser:

“It’s not only a conspiracy, it is completely debunked,” Bossert said. “And at this point I am deeply frustrated with what he and the legal team is doing and repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again and for clarity here … let me just again repeat that it has no validity.”

He continued: “United States government reached its conclusion on attributing to Russia the DNC hack in 2016 before it even communicated it to the FBI, long before the FBI ever knocked on the door at the DNC. So a server inside the DNC was not relevant to our determination to the attribution. It was made up front and beforehand.”

It must take really brilliant analysis to determine that Russia was hacking the DNC server before it was even hacked. Bossert admitted that this was the conclusion before anyone bothered to tell the FBI and before notifying anyone at the DNC. It was certainly before anyone analyzed that server. If anything, this seems to indicate fear that finding that DNC server will destroy the narrative. Otherwise, why pretend it didn’t matter?

These kinds of mistakes are easily ignored by people like Adam Schiff and the fawning MSM. They will not be ignored by people like John Durham and William Barr. At some point, if there is even an attempt to impeach Trump, his lawyers will at least get a chance to cross examine people. If there was a plot to interfere in the 2016 election and then try to overthrow a sitting U.S. President, then it is time for those involved to be afraid, very afraid.

The clock is running out on Democrats. Next Monday there will be only 30 days before Thanksgiving. That will be followed shortly by Christmas and New Year’s. Odds are high that it will be difficult if not impossible to even get an impeachment vote before January. It is also increasingly difficult for someone else to enter the race for the DNC nomination. Any new candidate has about two weeks to even get their name on the ballot.

In the meantime, some people are showing slight signs of actually waking up. When the Peacock crows like this don’t be surprised if other members of the MSM start to wake up too.

TDM

There are few things more fun that watching self-righteous and arrogant people self-destruct. This is the time when Democrats should be zeroing in on the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. But they are rapidly running out of time and odds are they will choose the worst candidate in the worst possible way.

It used to be that the National Conventions chose the candidate for President. That is why Hubert Humphrey, who had never won a single primary on his own, was the nominee in 1968. There was massive outrage and a commission led by George McGovern proposed changes to the rules. The next candidate would be influenced more by the primary elections. It was a brilliant strategy, for George McGovern. But, while he won the nomination in 1972, he left most of the DNC establishment behind and he got hosed by Richard Nixon.

Democrats were even more outraged when Jimmy Carter beat the anointed one, Ted Kennedy. That is when Democrats went all in on super delegates. These were all establishment people who were not heavily influenced by primaries. Bill Clinton only won in 1992 because no one thought George H.W. Bush could be defeated. By the time the Democratic establishment realized this was wrong, it was too late.

When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016, the system was rigged so that she was destined to be the nominee unless someone else ran the tables during the primary elections. Bernie Sanders came perilously close to doing that, but Hillary still coasted to a win. The Democratic establishment rejoiced, until she got hosed by Donald Trump in the general election.

Bernie was pissed and he got DNC rule changes that now require more states to support the winner of their primary with less influence by super delegates. I am sure he planned on running the table, with Hillary safely sitting on the sideline. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. Joe Biden has a well-earned reputation as a horrible candidate but when he decided to run, he became the front runner because everyone else was so blatantly awful. Bernie slid to third, behind Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren. There are numerous other people who still pretend they are candidates, but their total support would fit in William Ayer’s living room. The last debate had 12 participants. Since Joe Biden is self-destructing and Bernie literally had a heart attack, that left 10. It was the world against Elizabeth Warren. She is the clear leader of the pack, primarily because by picking on her, all the others just proved that she is the one in front.

In the meantime, all of the news is about impeachment. The result is that by the time Democrats get serious about this, it will be January and the Iowa Caucus is scheduled for February 3. By March 8^th, it will probably be all over but the shouting. This means, barring an act of God, Elizabeth Warren, will become the candidate by default. There is no chance of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama or anyone else getting the nomination unless they start their campaign now and are prepared to compete in Iowa. In the meantime all the wanna be candidates are already in Iowa. Kamala Harris said she is moving there. If either Hillary or Michelle parachutes in at the last minute, as a moderate candidate, and steals the nomination, there will be a Democratic civil war. Democrats will have succeeded in alienating the most vocal portion of their base.

In other words, we have little to fear from those who propose idiotic ideas guaranteed to destroy the country, because they used the same brilliance to design a system for choosing a candidate for president. None of the candidates are remotely qualified to be President of the United States. The only one with close to the right experience is Joe Biden, and he is self-destructing. The thought of any of the others actually being the Commander in Chief is mind-blowing. All of them have also embraced ideas that are far left of the American main stream. Then, to create the perfect storm, none of them can get ten seconds of air time, because that is all swallowed up by Donald Trump and people like Adam Schiff trying, and failing, to remove him from office.

Go ahead. Smile. While CNN still believes, the truth is obvious to anyone actually paying attention.

TDM

When Donald Trump was running for election, the MSM, prompted by Hillary Clinton demanded that he agree to accept the results of the election. That, of course, was when they thought they were certain to win. Then, they were shocked into dismay when Trump won. They immediately went into a state of denial and convinced themselves that Trump was not the legitimate president of the United States. Even before he was elected, there was a concerted effort to remove him from office and failing that to resist him in every way possible from governing.

Sadly, it appears that at least some of this was done with the approval if not at the direction of President Barack Obama. It is increasingly clear that the Director of the FBI and his top assistants were on a mission to remove Trump from power. That may or may not have included Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General. The Deputy Attorney General is the person who really runs the DOJ, the Attorney General is often more of a figure head.

Now we learn that this wasn’t limited to the DOJ, the CIA and the NSA. It also included the Department of State. Just this week we had the U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine admit that in testifying before congress. She felt “pressured” to follow the direction of Donald Trump. She was oblivious to the fact that she reported to Donald Trump, he is the Head of State and her opinion is irrelevant. Even if she was right, she was wrong.  If she did not feel should could accept the direction from the President of the United States, she should have resigned. The one thing she should not have done was just ignore him and try to block him.

Sadly, not one single Democrat in congress is aware of the significance of this. They are so full of hatred for Donald Trump and so convinced of their own self-righteousness that they don’t even recognize that they are a clear and present danger to our democracy.

To put this in perspective, reflect on the election of Barack Obama. If there was ever a President where one could question his personal loyalty to the United States, it was Barack Obama. He literally began his political career in the living room of William Ayers, a man who admittedly committed terrorist acts intended to overthrow the government of the United States. He was a member of a church with a pastor who said God D#mn America. None of his personal history has been documented, to this day. We do not have his college transcripts. We don’t even know if he registered for selective service. We cannot verify whether he enrolled in college as a foreign student. Although I do believe he was born in Hawaii, no one has ever produced a certified copy of his birth certificate. He went around the world criticizing his own country. I could go on, but ultimately it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that Republicans and the members of congress, who knew all this, accepted the results of the election and let him govern. They did not conspire to remove him from office. They did not launch endless investigations all aimed at impeachment. While they acted like any opposition party, they did not prevent him from passing any legislation. They just fumed and waited for the next election. In fact, Obama himself told them what to do if they didn’t like what he was doing. He challenged them to go out and win an election. Then, when they did exactly that, he, along with far too many Democrats in congress, refused to accept the results of that election.

We must stop this. Not just to protect Donald Trump, but to protect our democracy. Regardless of whether one agrees with them or not, the legitimate government of the United States is not the establishment in the military, or the CIA, or the DOJ, or the NSA, or the DNI, or the State Department, or the Treasury or any other department. They work for us; we don’t work for them. If we want laws passed, that is the responsibility of congress, not an activist judge who considers his or her personal wisdom superior to the law and the constitution. When we elect a President of the United States it is to give him or her executive authority over all the above departments. They all report to the President, not the opposite. There have been good presidents, bad presidents, mediocre presidents and great presidents. Every president has made mistakes but even a bad president is better than a government run by an unelected self-righteous and often ignorant committee.

The only good news here, is that for all his flaws, Donald Trump is the right man to fix this. He just found a bigger swamp than he imagined and draining it is going to be far more painful than anyone expected. Most men confronted with the daily assaults against him by the liberal left and the MSM would have folded. Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California with a vision to fix things, but he lost faith and folded. He lacked the strength to change things, so he compromised and went along. Ultimately, he ended his term with little support from anyone.

But Donald Trump will not fold, instead he is fighting back. Believe him when he says he is not doing this for himself, he doesn’t need any of this. Trump could resign tomorrow, go back to running his business, and experience a lifestyle far superior to that of a President of the United States. But he is doing this for the country, and he is doing this for the next President of the United States. He is doing that for you, and he is doing that for me and our children and our grandchildren.  We better pray he wins, because if he doesn’t this country will become unrecognizable. If we allow the establishment to push him out of office, no future election will even matter.

TDM

A lot of people are hyperventilating about Trump’s apparent decision to withdraw troops from Syria. One thing is certain; there are a lot of people in the establishment who have very strong feelings about this. But, we have learned, the hard way, that the establishment is not necessarily very good at handling these kinds of things.

I really don’t have an opinion on this, either way, because I don’t know the facts. I do know that this is much more complicated than what is being reported and sometimes it looks like we create more problems than we solve.

In order to understand this, it is important to look back at history. To make a long story short, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Empire until World War I. The British and the French won World War I, so they punished the Ottoman Empire for siding with Germany. Then Britain and France developed a plan to fix the Middle East. They literally created countries by just drawing lines on the map with little or no regard to the wishes or desires of the people living there. Actually, many of the people living there were nomads with little if any loyalty to a physical location at all.

The easiest way to understand this is to look at a map of the Middle East in 1914, before World War I.

When Turkey, France and Britain developed their plans to make sense of this, they came up with this map. One could argue that if there were countries at all, this is what they would have looked like.

This map shows the Turkey, French and British Mandates for the period 1920 to 1935.

Now we look at the plan developed by the French and British in 1920

As you can clearly see, countries were created out of whole cloth with little regard to actual political alliances. Most of the affiliations were tribal and those relationships date back hundreds of years. Drawing some lines on a map doesn’t change that.

And finally a map showing current borders as of 2002.

So, when Trump says we need to stop sending troops into the Middle East to fight unnecessary wars, he has a point. To a large extent, a lot of the problems in the Middle East are the result of the Western World trying to reshape things in their own image. Now, we are faced with serious threats from places like Iraq and Iran. As far as I can tell the Kurds and the Turks haven’t got along for centuries. But this is a lot more complicated than that. I doubt that anyone in the UN or anywhere else really understands the reality of the Middle East. This explains why every country there, with the exception of Israel, is run by a dictatorship.That may be the only option to maintain control when dealing with so many people who feel little, if any loyalty to the artificial borders created by Britain and France.

Sometimes I fear we have done nothing more than take a region that was chaotic but of no real threat to us and created an out of control monster. While I am sure this area was always one of considerable violence and unrest, it probably was not a threat to world peace. ISIS was a threat, largely because we created an environment where they could thrive and allowed them access to modern weapons. The same could be said for Iraq, although Syria and Iran did actually exist, to some extent, for a long time.

The Kurds have been our allies in the fight against ISIS. They were also allies in the first Gulf War. They have also been engaged in an insurgency in Turkey for years and are listed by both Turkey and the United States as a terrorist organization. That dates back to at least 2007, long before Trump became President.

The following quote is from an article written by Greg Bruno, Council On Foreign Relations in 2007:

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/inside-kurdistan-workers-party-pkk

“Some observers blame the United States for emboldening the separatists. “The de facto autonomy enjoyed by Iraqi Kurds [following the fall of Saddam Hussein] has encouraged the PKK,” notes the Economist. “The Turks have held back from retaliation, largely because they hoped that America would deal with the PKK itself.” So far, that hasn’t happened.”   

The point is that, once again, the MSM has chimed in with loud arrogance without any attempt to actually put this in perspective. Both Republicans and Democrats have seized the day to slam Trump. Yet, I doubt that any of them has anything close to a real solution. They say the best definition of insanity is doing the same thing, in the same way and expecting different results. Perhaps just asking: “what are we trying to accomplish here,” is actually a very good question.

I do not know the right solution here. I just know it is a lot more complicated than what is reported in the press. My only thought is we should all pray that God grants Trump the wisdom to make these kind of very difficult decisions.Unfortunately, more people will choose to just slam him while offering little is the way of a realistic alternative.

TDM

PG&E cut the power to about a million homes. There was a forecast of high wind, so they just pulled the plug. We are not personally affected by this because our electricity comes from SMUD. However, people who live very near us were definitely affected.

In some ways this bordered on hysterical. The horrific winds that caused this crisis were sometimes as high as 10 mph in these neighborhoods. However, the powerlines for the people who were in the high risk areas ran though these neighborhoods, so they lost power too.

It should be obvious that even PG&E which has a well-earned reputation for self-inflicted losses would not do something this drastic on their own. We have sources telling us that it was ISO and the PG&E Bankruptcy judge that were demanding this. We can also assume that there was a lot of pressure from the Governor’s office.

To make this worse, this didn’t actually solve the problem, because we still have a massive wild fire north of Los Angeles. It should be obvious to most people that not all wild-fires are caused by downed power lines. Wild fires in California are not exactly new. One of my first jobs in the insurance industry, decades ago, was as a California wild-fire underwriter. There have always been wild fires here, the only thing different is that now the places that burn have lots of buildings there.

Naturally, our esteemed and brilliant Governor is already working on solving the real problem: climate change. Here are the things we can do that will fix this for everyone. Let’s legalize marijuana. Let’s ban plastic straws. Let’s make it legal for people to poop on the sidewalk.  Let’s develop a plan to require all electricity to be provided by renewable resources. That actually means solar and wind. We must avoid fossil fuels, at all cost, to save the planet. Don’t even consider building a power plant powered by natural gas. In fact, let’s ban new homes from getting connected to natural gas too. (This is already the law in some locations.)

We can’t build new dams. We can’t build nuclear power plants. We can’t use coal. We sure can’t use gas or oil. We can’t use natural gas. We can’t cut down dead trees. We can’t allow anyone to build roads in wilderness areas. If people want to drive cars, they must be electric cars recharged only be electricity generated by wind or solar.

This is beyond brilliant. Imagine you buy a new home in California. You pay about 50% more than the same house in most other states. Your property taxes are through the roof. You have sky high utility bills. You have among the highest personal income taxes in the country. There are homeless camps all along the bike paths. You are afraid to go there. Soon, they are replaced by nice new apartments, providing affordable housing, in your neighborhood, paid by you. By the way, this does nothing to solve the problem with the homeless camps, because other people, lured by the siren call of free housing, are moving here everyday.

But, the weather’s great and you love the environment, so you just suck it up and do your part to save the planet. You have solar, but the PG&E rules require you to have an automatic switch that will disconnect the solar power if there is a loss of power to the grid. You are required to hook into the grid, and pay a fee for not using it. You consider buying a backup generator, but you learn that this won’t work either, because you can’t have natural gas connected to your home. If you buy a gas powered generator, it doesn’t run either because the gas station doesn’t have power.

So you sit in your beautiful home, without electricity, without air conditioning, without TV, without fans and without lights. You can’t cook anything because natural gas has been banned and the electric stove doesn’t work. Even the microwave doesn’t work.

So, in desperation, you decide to get in your environmentally safe electric car and take a ride. But the car won’t run, because it is out of power. You can’t recharge it, because you don’t have electricity. You decide to drive your old gas guzzler, and risk the damage to the environment. But when you get to the gas station you can’t fill up because they don’t have power either. So, in total frustration, you drop by your favorite restaurant to at least get some cool air and a good meal. Oops, the restaurant is closed too and based on the note on the door, may never re-open.

Welcome to the left coast. Welcome to California. Welcome to paradise.

TDM