…and horrified Brits discover he’s actually Donald Trump.
And it’s not even April Fools Day yet.
France’s rampant anti-Semitism
I sometimes reflect on the fact that Hitler nearly succeeded in making Europe Judenfrei. He certainly succeeded in reducing the number of Jews there almost to the vanishing point.
But for the ones that remain, the present-day governments in Western Europe appear to be coming close to driving the remaining Jews away:
French political leaders often declare that fighting against anti-Semitism is of utmost importance; they say it every time a Jew is murdered in the country. The only anti-Semitism they seem ready to fight, however, is right-wing anti-Semitism. They seemingly refuse to see that all the Jews killed or assaulted in France since 2006 were victims of Muslim anti-Semites — and French political leaders never utter a word about it. They appear to hide Islamic anti-Semitism — embedded in the Qur’an and Hadiths and reinforced in the 1930s by the Nazis’ friendship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini — under a Muslim hatred of the Jews based on a supposedly “legitimate” Muslim hatred of ‘Zionist crimes'”.
French political leaders also seemingly refuse to see another form of anti-Semitism that is on the rise: leftist anti-Semitism. It is precisely this leftist anti-Semitism that uses the mask of anti-Zionism to spread anti-Jewish hatred.
French political leaders also never speak about the way the French mainstream media talk about Israel, or about the consequences of those articles and reports. They constantly — and falsely — describe Israel as an evil country whose soldiers cavalierly kill Arabs on a daily basis and whose citizens “illegally occupy” territories (despite having been there for more than 3,000 years) that might belong to another people whom they cruelly deprive of everything.
French political leaders do not criticize anti-Israel articles and reports: the way most of them talk about Israel is just as anti-Israel as the worst anti-Israel articles. The government itself does no better…
The demographic transformation happening in France is also spreading throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere. Political parties opposed to Islamization are pushed to the margins. Some Central European leaders – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in Poland and President Miloš Zeman in the Czech Republic — are the only ones explicitly to reject the Islamization of their countries and take measures to curb Muslim immigration. They are often condemned by Western European leaders who want to force them to welcome immigrants by the thousands.
Reports show, not surprisingly, that the rise in the number of Muslim immigrants has led to an even broader rise in anti-Semitism.
Here is what is meant by the “demographic transformation happening in France”:
Jews have become a shrinking part of the population — 0.6 % — and carry no political weight. The French Muslim population is quickly growing — to more than 12% of the total. It has become virtually impossible to win an election in France without now counting on the Muslim vote.
And it has become virtually impossible to discuss these things without being accused of the dread “Islamophobia.”
There was a Democratic candidates’ debate last night
If you watched it and want to talk about it, here’s your chance.
Hey, you can talk about it even if you didn’t watch it. But if you did watch it, you have more intestinal fortitude than I.
Brexit: elections have consequences
With his brand new Parliament, Boris Johnson gets his Brexit vote.
Some Democrats apparently think that the impeachment vote means that Trump is out of office
It might be difficult to believe after weeks of talk about impeachment that there are people who still don’t understand the process, but on Twitter last night, “#ByeTrump” was trending because many believed that the House vote on impeachment meant that President Donald Trump was now removed.
Some had to be schooled then today when they found out to their surprise that lo and behold, Trump was still president and that no, being impeached is not the same thing as removal.
Although shocking, it’s not surprising. We’ve known for quite some time that the teaching of civics is nothing like what it used to be, and that many people schooled in the US grow up ignorant of even the basics of the way our government works. So, many people who seem to be politically active and involved – involved enough to tweet about politics on Twitter, anyway – appear to have thought that impeachment itself would remove Trump from office.
This isn’t just about Trump. Apparently, these people are so ignorant of the entire picture of how our government is designed that they think the Founders set things up so that one body of our legislature can remove a president by a simple majority vote. Poof, you’re gone!
I’ve seen analogies saying that idea about impeachment resembles what happens in the UK with a parliamentary vote of “no confidence.” But I beg to differ. Not only is it different because in the UK the executive is meant to serve only at the will of the legislature, but also because a “no confidence” vote occurs at the hands of the prime minister’s own party. The PM is always of the same party as the dominant party in Parliament (or a parliamentary coalition of relatively simpatico parties, with the PM’s own party having a plurality). So any “no confidence” vote is the result of a majority of MPs in the PM’s own party [ADDED NOTE, and see ADDENDUM below: and/or the coalition parties] turning against him/her.
That is night and day from what happened during the House impeachment vote, which represented the opposition party trying to throw the president out. His own party, the GOP, supported him 100%. The American system gives the House, when controlled by an opposition party, a perfect opportunity to try to weaken any president of the other party. Most Houses have resisted the temptation because they understand the danger of setting such a precedent (danger to them when the tables are turned) as well as the futility of it if they lack the votes of 2/3 of the Senate to convict. That’s why the Senate gets the last word, and it takes far more than a simple majority to get rid of a president.
[ADDENDUM: Here’s some further elucidation on no confidence votes in the UK and how they have worked in modern times, from a commenter named “London Trader”:
That’s not really how a no confidence vote works in the UK. First there are very rarely coalitions in the UK parliament. The only one in my lifetime was Cameron’s first term. There are occasionally minority governments but again not that frequently. The last parliament had a minority but the previous minority government was in the mid 1970’s I think. The only successful no confidence vote that I remember was in 1979 when Thatcher toppled the Labour government of James Callaghan. From memory he had a minority by that point because he’d lost his majority in successive bye elections from 1976 onward.
Here’s a description of a case in Israel in which a coalition partner of the PM’s own party forced a successful no confidence vote there against Shamir.
It is also clear that no confidence votes are extremely rare in those countries that have parliamentary systems and allow them.]
McConnell gives Pelosi some advice on the word “leverage”
Yesterday I wrote, concerning Nancy Pelosi’s decision to hold back on sending articles of impeahment to the Senate: “This is the Democrats’ idea of “leverage”? Why would the Republicans care if Democrats never send the articles to the Senate?”
Now Mitch McConnell weighs in:
McConnell said Schumer wanted “a special pretrial guarantee” that “House Democrats themselves did not bother to pursue as they assembled their case.”
McConnell also criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for taking the “highly unusual step” of waiting to transmit the approved House articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate.
McConnell said he didn’t understand the move by Pelosi and said, while cracking a smile, that he didn’t agree with the idea that delaying the transmission might give her leverage in dictating the rules of the Senate trial.
“I admit, I’m not sure what leverage there is from refraining from sending us something we do not want,” McConnell said. “But alas, if they can figure that out, they can explain it.”
Impeachment has jumped the shark.
Pelosi now turns impeachment lite into impeachment weightless
So Nancy Pelosi has decided to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and her fellow Democrats are supporting her in that – or at least pretending to support her:
House Democrats on Thursday are rallying behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) after she said she’ll delay the delivery of impeachment articles to the Senate in an effort to ensure a fair trial.
President Trump has urged a speedy trial in the upper chamber, and Pelosi’s allies argue that delaying the delivery of the articles will put pressure on Senate GOP leaders to call witnesses and seek more evidence surrounding the president’s dealings with Ukraine — steps Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he’ll not take.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Pelosi’s delay strategy made for “a very wise decision on her part.”
“I think it gives her leverage; it gives the House leverage in terms of making sure that it’s not going to be a kangaroo court over there,” she told reporters in the Capitol. “If, in fact, they intend to not be an impartial reviewer of the facts, then it becomes a joke. And we’re not party to a joke.”
This is just bizarre. I’ve heard analogies to the dog that chases the car and finally catches it but doesn’t know what to do with it. This is the Democrats’ idea of “leverage”? Why would the Republicans care if Democrats never send the articles to the Senate? Is this an admission on the Democrats’ part that a trial in the Senate would make Trump and the Republicans look good and the Democrats even worse than they look now? Or does it represent Democrats’ hope that they (and their buddies in the MSM) can spin this to suggest “The meany Republicans are so unfair!” after the US public has had a chance to see how unfair the Democrat-led proceedings were in the House?
As Ted Cruz says:
Or maybe it’s the Schrodinger’s Cat impeachment:
So I guess it's like Schrodinger's Cathttps://t.co/ctEe5tlSCM
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 19, 2019
Comey: What did I know? I was just the FBI director [Part 2]
[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]
In the following, I’m discussing the Chris Wallace interview of James Comey that occurred last Sunday. Here’s the transcript, and here’s the video.]
During the video, Wallace confronts Comey with the fact that IG Horowitz testified that the Steele dossier was the main element that drove the FISA applications, despite Comey having claimed otherwise for ages. Although Wallace does a good job of pointing out the enormous contradiction there (and shows patience by explaining it to Comey again and again, in several different ways), Comey just plays dumb:
“…I agree with [Horowitz’s] characterization. I’m just confused — I no — I don’t see the disconnect between the two of us. And I’m sorry that I’m missing it.”
This is a top lawyer? It’s an absurdity to think he doesn’t understand. Wallace tries again, and Comey’s answer is waffley and confusing:
“Chris Wallace: I guess the question is, it seemed that you were minimizing the role of the Steele Dossier, and he’s saying it’s a lot more important than you let on.
James Comey: Okay. If I was, then I’m sorry that I did that. But I meant it was one part of the presentation to the court. It was not a huge part of the presentation to the court, but it was the fact, according to his report, that convinced the lawyers to go forward.”
Note the “if” in the apology, which is a classic tell of an apology that is actually a non-apology and an acknowledgement that is actually a non-acknowledgement. The rest of Comey’s answer barely makes sense, but Wallace finally gives up pursuing that line of inquiry after that and goes on to the next point. In this case, one can hardly blame him – except perhaps to suggest that he might have added, “Excuse me, but you’re just not making sense. The Steele dossier was the basis of the presentation to the court.”
And the following should earn an award for Comey for buck-passing:
“Chris Wallace: But this isn’t some investigation, sir. This is an investigation of the campaign of the man who is the president of the United States. You had just been through a firestorm investigating Hillary Clinton. I would think, if I were in your position, I would have been on that, you know, like a junkyard dog. I would have wanted to know everything they were doing in investigating the Trump campaign.
James Comey: Yeah. That’s not the way it works, though. As a director sitting on top of an organization of 38,000 people, you can’t run an investigation that’s seven layers below you. You have to leave it to the career professionals to do, to the special agents who do this for their lives. And if a director tires to run an investigation, it’ll get mucked up in all different kinds of ways, given his or her responsibilities and the impossibility of reaching the work that’s being done at the lower level.
Wallace’s question was a good one. Comey’s answer was unacceptable. This was a very special investigation that required his special attention. And it was not conducted “seven layers below” him. In fact, many of the people involved in the “sloppiness” were the higher-ups. For example, Clinesmith – the person who deceptively changed the meaning of an email about Page having worked as an agent for US intelligence – is often painted is a lower level lawyer at the FBI, but this was his actual role:
The reality is that [Clinesmith] was a member of the Hillary Clinton email investigation team (Midyear Exam). According to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ June 2018 Report (on various actions by the FBI and DOJ in advance of the 2016 election)…he played a far larger role in the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign (Crossfire Hurricane). The report states Clinesmith was the “the primary FBI attorney assigned to that investigation beginning in early 2017.” He then joined Robert Mueller’s investigation team and was dismissed in February 2018 after his anti-Trump text messages had been revealed.
Perhaps the most cryptic and disturbing thing Comey said, though, was something Wallace failed to follow up on at all:
“There are mistakes I consider more consequential than this during my tenure.”
I’m sorry that Wallace didn’t ask him what they might be. Now, I imagine Comey would have shimmied out of that one, too, but his statement cried out for clarification.
I’m going to stop fisking Comey’s answers at this point; I think you get the idea. But I want to mention one other all-important question that Wallace never asked Comey: “If all of these are ‘sloppy’ errors, why did they all hurt Trump? If they were random errors there shouldn’t be a pattern like that, should there? How do you explain the sameness of the anti-Trump effect of every single ‘error’?”
Another Horowitz hearing, overshadowed by impeachment theater
Yesterday Horowitz testified again, and said much the same thing as before:
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., was blunt in trying to get to the bottom of what happened during Wednesday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing.
“Were they [the FBI] just all incompetent?” he asked. Hawley then noted that due to the complexities involved, “it doesn’t sound like they’re very stupid to me.”
Hawley ultimately asked why the members of the FBI would commit such failures to mislead a court multiple times.
“That was precisely the concern we had,” Horowitz said. The inspector general made clear that he did not reach any conclusions regarding intent, but he did not necessarily accept the reasons people gave him during his investigation.
“There are so many errors, we couldn’t reach a conclusion or make a determination on what motivated those failures other than we did not credit what we lay out here were the explanations we got,” Horowitz said.
This echoed what Horowitz said in his opening statement, where he made clear that “although we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct, we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or the missing information and the failures that occurred.”…
“We could not prove [FBI bias]. We lay out here what we can,” Horowitz [said].
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz clarified Wednesday that his investigation into the FBI’s FISA abuses “did not reach” the conclusion that the bureau was unaffected by political bias during its 2016 Russia investigation.
Following the release of the report, Democrats and former FBI officials were quick to point to Horowitz’s statement that he “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence” of political bias in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, arguing that the statement proved President Trump’s claims of a politically-motivated “witch hunt” were false.
The Democrats know better, especially the lawyers among them. They know exactly what Horowitz was saying, and they know that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. They just hope you don’t know better, and that you will swallow the swill they dish out.
The inspector general also said during testimony that his team was looking further into whether the FBI’s “basic errors” in the case were potentially systemic.
When the errors all go in one direction, how could they not be?
Perhaps “systemic” means “present in investigations that don’t concern Donald Trump and his aides and advisors.” I suppose it’s possible that the FBI is riddled with such “errors,” and that the incompetence level there is so very high that they really are errors. I also think it’s possible these “errors” only affected Crossfire Hurricane. But there’s still a third possibility, which is that there are many cases with such “errors,” and that they all represent purposeful actions on the part of agents with the intent of framing targets, some for political reasons and some for other reasons.
Who is more disgraced, Trump or the Democrats in the House?
I know my answer: the Democrats in the House are completely disgraced.
The Democrats and the MSM would of course say: Trump. But they feel that Trump is continually disgracing himself.
Or, at least they’d like you to think that. What do they really feel, in their heart of hearts? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt they’re feeling as great right now as they expected to. Now the Senate stands in their way.
Pelosi’s ploy to control the Senate as well as her caucus in the House (by delaying sending the impeachment articles to the Senate) seems to be falling on deaf ears, and Mitch McConnell appears to actually be having some fun with it and getting in some rather pointed barbs:
McConnell will say those articles are “fundamentally unlike any articles that any prior House of Representatives has ever passed” and the idea Democrats will withhold the articles suggests “House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.”
Trump himself is getting in his digs:
I got Impeached last night without one Republican vote being cast with the Do Nothing Dems on their continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. Now the Do Nothing Party want to Do Nothing with the Articles & not deliver them to the Senate, but it’s Senate’s call!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Now, you might say this is all play-acting, and that the Republicans are actually devastated. But I don’t think so. For now at least, impeachment seems to be acting like a boomerang that’s on its way back towards the Democrats’ themselves.
Watch Nancy Pelosi’s facial expression…
…as she announces adoption of the first article of impeachment.
First there’s a secret smile of glee, like the cat that swallowed the canary. It’s very fleeting, though; she suppresses it almost instantaneously. Then immediately, after putting on a stern face, she “shushes” the Democrats in schoolmarmy fashion in order to make sure they can’t be accused of celebrating.
The rapid change of Pelosi’s expressions occurs over a period of about three seconds, between 3:33:54 and 3:33:57 (NOTE: they changed the video after I posted that, so now it’s at 11:34:07 to 11:34:10). I’ve cued it up to show the passage (it helps to change the settings to slow down the speed and also to make it full screen):
And now Pelosi says that she’s thinking about not sending the approved articles to the Senate at this point. Fascinating. Does she really think US voters will be impressed by the theatrical production she’s been directing?:
Voicing concern about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s willingness to hold a fair trial, Pelosi announced for the first time that she might not, in fact, be in a rush to send the articles of impeachment over to the Senate. She said instead she wanted to hear more about how the Senate planned to conduct the trial first.
I think she’s already heard, though. McConnell has already said that he’ll be okay with doing it the way it was done – with bipartisan approval – during Bill Clinton’s trial:
“Back in 1999, all 100 senators agreed on a simple pre-trial resolution that set up a briefing, opening arguments, senators questions, and a vote on a motion to dismiss,” McConnell described.
“I’ve hoped and still hope that the Democratic Leader and I can sit down and reproduce that unanimous bipartisan agreement this time,” McConnell said. “His decision to try to angrily negotiate through the press is unfortunate.”
“But no amount of bluster will change the simple fact that we already have a unanimous bipartisan precedent. If 100 senators thought this approach is good enough for President Clinton, it ought to be good enough for President Trump,” McConnell said.
“I hope House Democrats see reason and pull back from the precipice, but if they proceed, I hope the Democratic Leader and I can sit down soon and honor the template that was unanimously agreed to the last time,” he added.
[NOTE: I didn’t want to ignore today’s Horowitz hearing, but as I said earlier there was a lot of news happening. I hope to take it up tomorrow.]
The impeachment vote: the only news was the numbers
As predicted, the House voted “aye” on its two articles of impeachment.
I was a bit surprised at the totals for one reason only: I thought the perhaps Pelosi would allow more of the Democrats in Trump districts to vote “nay.” I guess she decided it was more important to present a somewhat united front than to protect those seats.
So here were the totals – and as predicted, the only bipartisanship was against impeachment:
The vote total on the abuse-of-power count was 230-197, with Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard voting present. The obstruction vote total was 229-198, with Gabbard also voting present on that count too. In a statement, Gabbard called for a censure resolution instead of impeachment, saying, “My vote today is a vote for much needed reconciliation and hope that together we can heal our country.”
“I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country,” Gabbard said. “When I cast my vote in support of the impeachment inquiry nearly three months ago, I said that in order to maintain the integrity of this solemn undertaking, it must not be a partisan endeavor. Tragically, that’s what it has been.”…
Democratic Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota opposed the abuse-of-power count, and also opposed the obstruction charge. Peterson represents a district that Trump carried in 2016 by an eye-popping 31 points.
First-term Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who flipped a GOP seat in 2018, voted yea on abuse of power count, but voted no on the obstruction-of-Congress count. Trump also carried Golden’s district in 2016.
Jeff van Drew is counted as a Democrat but is supposedly becoming a Republican. The Independent who voted “aye” is Justin Amash, who used to be a Republican.
A sad day for America, but probably not a bad one for Trump.
And I continue to wonder who the Democrats think their simulated regret is going to convince.