How the Economy Impacts Your Daily Life

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Whether you pay close attention to financial matters or you go through your life without concern for the value of the dollar, it is hard to deny the impact that the economy can have on a person’s life. What’s interesting is that most people don’t realize exactly how this fluctuating system of value holds sway over everyday tasks. By giving yourself the opportunity to learn more about how the economy changes the way you live, you stand to become more educated on important matters. Look over these points to see exactly how the economy influences your existence.

Luxury Purchases

Times of economic prosperity are defined by certain factors. For one, a nation doing well financially is likely to be in a period of job creation. This means that more people have money that can be put into other businesses, providing other individuals with extra income through the success of their companies. When a person has more money at his or her disposal, the quality of purchases made also tends to change. You are far more likely to invest in a luxury product or service when you have some additional funds to spend.

Of course, the opposite is also true. During an economic downturn, luxury and niche services are typically the first to go under. This is why it is always wise to keep luxury purchases under control so that you can save funds to cover your expenses during difficult economic times.

New Businesses

The economy also plays a vital part in the decisions you make when starting your own business. While it is obvious that you shouldn’t open a business in an oversaturated marketplace during a tumultuous economic period, there are even more interesting ways the economy dictates your decisions. When you are first creating a business, for example, the economy will determine whether you choose an LLC vs S Corp structure. Reviewing the details of each option can help illustrate your exact financial responsibilities and allow you to make the most sensible selection for the business you wish to build.

Financing Fluctuations

Another area impacted heavily by the economy is financing. The government and larger financial institutions like banks are  deeply connected to the ups and downs of the economy. What’s more, these organizations set interest rates on loans to individuals and businesses alike. When the economy is in bad shape, it is more likely that you will see high rates and strict terms on the money you are borrowing. In fact, most lenders are more likely to outright deny an application it would otherwise have accepted during a more prosperous period.

While you can’t always control the financing terms you’re offered during an economic downturn, there are definitely methods for improving the odds. An exceptional credit score will work to your advantage no matter what state the economy is in. The less debt you have attached to your name, the easier it becomes to secure a loan when lenders are skeptical. If you’ve paid your debts, a bank will view you as responsible enough to handle a loan in any circumstances.

Tax Troubles

Finally, the taxes you pay will change depending on how the economy is faring. When the government is concerned about the state of financial matters, it is more likely to increase taxes. Conversely, tax rates will typically drop a bit when an economy is in a healthy condition. This is true of everything from property to retail taxes. When this happens at the state level, it can cause more problems for local communities. Nearby regions with lower taxes will drive consumers to making purchases across state lines, preventing the economy from recovering at an expedited pace.

The economy plays a big part in what you are able to accomplish in your daily life. When finances are tight, it is less likely you will be able to invest in a home or open your own business without exhibiting exceptional financial responsibility. Educate yourself and do your best to stay out of debt in order to best handle whatever life has in store.

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PODCAST: Our Military Should Be Cultivating Masculinity, Not Denigrating It

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A recent review of U.S. special operations forces pointed to a leadership crisis in our military, concluding that leadership, discipline and accountability must be strengthened at all levels. West Point Military Academy, which is supposed to be the Army’s preeminent leader development institution, hasn’t been immune to this breakdown in leadership. Earlier this month, West Point cadets attended “Honorably Living Day,” a mandatory event dedicated to promoting diversity and feminist thought where facilitators discouraged what they called “toxic masculinity.”

The curriculum featured the documentary Miss Representation, which was produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, first lady of California and wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.). The documentary included commentary from left-wing commentators such as Katie Couric, Rosie O’Donnell, and Jane Fonda. What does any of this have to do with fighting and winning wars? That was the question Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William G. “Jerry” Boykin asked when he joined Washington Watch yesterday to discuss this new initiative. “In no way does this help enhance the readiness of our military,” he told me. “It is a reflection of what was forced on our military in the Obama administration. The disappointing thing is that it’s still there…”

Instead of developing leaders, West Point is taking time to attack masculinity. The program even questions the phrase “be a man.” Yet, by attacking masculinity, mandatory trainings such as Honorably Living Day undermines the very characteristics our military desperately needs. General Boykin quoted George Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and observed the hardships of battle first-hand: “Orwell said, ‘We rest well in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence against those who would threaten us.'”

General Boykin argues that the campaign against masculinity inflicts a great deal of damage on society beyond the military. “This whole idea of ‘hypermasculinity,’ which is one of the phrases that they’ve coined now… is absolute nonsense, has nothing to do with reality. It is about destroying men because they are the foundations of the family… The men are so important, and the men are walking out of their families today all over America. And this is a reflection of exactly what the crisis in masculinity is all about.” Indeed, a lack of male leadership has certainly taken its toll on American families. All the more, this highlights the importance of preserving strong and moral male leadership in the military, despite the Left’s effort to destroy it.

For centuries, men have largely been the ones fighting wars, protecting their countries, and defending their people. Instead of disparaging a perceived “toxic masculinity,” the U.S. military should be building the character of men and fostering their natural instinct to protect and defend. The strength of our military and the security of our nation depends on it.

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.

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Has The Hollywood Political Iceberg Started to Thaw?

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Ricky Gervais’ Golden Globe Comments Have Given Rise and Momentum to the Campaign of California Congressional Independent Candidate, Larry Thompson.

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Hollywood has been stunned and abuzz by recent Golden Globe Host, Ricky Gervais’ scathing, and humorist attack on their long-running, hypocritical, pontificating and liberal bias.

“If ISIS started a streaming service, you would call your agent, wouldn’t you?” he joked. “So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech, right? You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.”

Tom Hanks looked up quizzically. The room, in disbelief, was trying to discern exactly what Gervais was saying.  He added, “So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f…k off, OK?” That was pretty clear.

Now that the evening is over, the Globes have been taken home, and the limos are being washed and made ready for the next Awards Ceremony, something seems to have changed.  Gervais’ caustic humor has caused many Hollywood elites to dare question their tribal, liberal religion. Their political consensus has been shaken. Even Megan McArdle in her January 7, The Washington Post article observed this seminal moment, “… it was refreshing to see someone stand up at a Hollywood awards ceremony and actually speak truth to power…”

The real winners of this Tinsel Town earthquake are not only the “Best this” and “Best that,” but also the not-so-traditional Hollywood thinkers who, in the wings, have been trembling with fear and afraid for so long to express their thoughts and beliefs. They need a winner to follow.

Perhaps the biggest winner of the 2020 Golden Globes is California’s Independent Congressional Candidate, Larry Thompson, who is leading the wave of this political revolution in the making.  www.LarryThompsonForCongress.com

No stranger to Hollywood, Thompson, himself, is an acclaimed Hollywood film producer, talent  manager, lawyer, book packager, author, Broadway Producer, and motivational speaker. He is founder and President of the Larry A. Thompson Organization, where he has managed the careers of over 200 Stars and produced 20 Movies for Television, 5 Motion Pictures, 2 Television Series, and 12 Television Specials.

Tired of throwing pillows at his television set each night when the news was on, slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand at everything the two political parties were arguing about, Thompson finally threw his hat in the political ring as an Independent knowing that California and his 37th District are democratic stronghold.

“I had to stop complaining and start running,” says Thompson. “California needs an Independent Voice to bring to Washington some Common Sense with Common Civility to find Common Ground on our Common Issues.”

Hollywood Insiders, who initially thought Thompson’s candidacy was a Don Quixote fool’s errand, have quietly since the Golden Globe Awards started to sense a thaw in his Hollywood receptivity and the reasonability of his positions. Do we have another “Rocky” in the making?

“Keeping his stars “hot” and producing “pop culture” movies for over 40 years has kept Larry on the immediate pulse of the times,” says Emmy-Nominated, comedy producer, Michael Wilson, whose father, David Wilson, directed the pilot and first 25 years of “Saturday Night Live.” Just like comedy, it’s all about timing, and Larry truly has his finger on the political moment.”

With his lawn signs everywhere in Century City (which houses the new Disney/Fox) and Culver City  (home of Sony Studios), Thompson is encouraged by Hollywood’s evolving political attitudes and his internal polling that shows him advancing quickly with awareness and likability.

“Thompson doesn’t have a chance,” says an anonymous disbeliever, “And once we impeach Trump and get him out of office, we’re gonna impeach Gervais.”

“Larry Thompson has so much of his platform figured out,” says Michael Douglas Carlin, editor of the Century City News.  “Using his common sense approach he could emerge as an important national voice to break the gridlock in Congress.”

About Larry Thompson

Thompson has received the Industry’s prestigious Vision Award and his productions have won 2 Accolade Awards, 2 Imagen Awards, The Epiphany Prize, The Wilbur Award, The Christopher Award, and have received Nominations for 10 Emmys, 6 Imagen Awards, 2 Prism Awards, the Humanitas Prize, and a Golden Globe.

He serves on the Advisory Boards of The Delta Blues Museum, Paulist Productions, and Good News Communications. He is a Founding Member Enthusiast of the Museum of The Bible in Washington, D.C. and a Charter Member of the United States Capitol Historical Society. He is perennially listed in Who’s Who In America and Who’s Who In The World, and on August 1, 2018, Thompson was awarded the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who.

The National Conference of Personal Managers inducted Thompson into the Personal Managers Hall of Fame on May 12, 2016. Thompson was also honored on September 19, 2013, by the Talent Managers Association with the prestigious Seymour Heller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Talent Management.  These two entertainment industry awards are the highest honors a personal manager can receive for representing talent.

Thompson was Knighted in Rome, Italy on May 20, 2017. Grand Prior, Prince Lorenzo de‘ Medici, sponsored Thompson, an American of Italian Heritage, into the prestigious Order of Saint Martin of Mount of the Beatitudes as a Patron of the Arts and Protector of the Most Needy.

Thompson was born, raised, and educated in Mississippi.  After finishing law school at the University of Mississippi in 1968, he drove three days to the corner of Hollywood and Vine to start his dream career in show business. Also from 1968 to 1974, Thompson served in the United States Army Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps mostly in Torrance, California.

Thompson lives in the 37th District with his wife, Kelly, and their daughter, Taylor (17), and son, Trevor (15).

About the 37th District

California’s 37th Congressional District is based in Los Angeles County. It includes many neighborhoods West and Southwest of Downtown Los Angeles.

The District includes: Culver City, Inglewood, the City of Los Angeles neighborhoods of Mid City, West Los Angeles, Westwood, Century City, Rancho Park, Palms, Mar Vista, Sawtelle, Beverlywood, View Park-Windsor Hills, Cheviot Hills, Pico-Robertson, Miracle Mile, Exposition Park, University Park, Vermont Knolls, West Adams, South Los Angeles, Leimert Park, Jefferson Park, Vermont Square, Ladera Heights, Hyde Park, Crenshaw, and Baldwin Hills.

The District is highly diverse ethnically. Approximately 40% of the district’s residents are Latino, while 25% are African American, 25% are Caucasian, and 8% Asian.

The District has over 738,00 residents, 2 film studios (the new Fox/Disney in Century City and Sony Pictures in Culver City), the University of Southern California, many places of worship, museums such as The Museum of Tolerance, the Petersen Automotive Museum, and the California African American Museum, plus many points of cultural interest including some of Thompson’s favorites, The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center, The Apple Pan on W. Pico and Hansen’s Bakery on Fairfax.

About the Election

The Primary Election will be on March 3, 2020. The two candidates that receive the most votes in the Primary Election will advance to the General Election, which will be on November 3, 2020. California Elections have the Top-Two Candidates Open Election System, which means all registered voters, regardless of political affiliation, may vote for any candidate, regardless of political affiliation.

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When ‘Never Again’ Means Nothing

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This week, the world marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Allied forces during World War II. Politicians of all stripes dutifully tweeted, “#NeverAgain.”

Meanwhile, many of those same politicians continued to forward the worst sort of anti-Semitism, blithely ignoring the fact that anti-Semitism isn’t a relic of the past but a thriving part of the present.

Take, for example, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Omar has, in the past two years alone, sponsored an anti-Semitic resolution that likened boycotts of Israel to boycotts of Nazi Germany; rejected a Democratic-sponsored resolution backing a two-state solution in order to chide the Trump administration and Israel, because the solution wasn’t radical enough; and repeatedly suggested that Jewish money manipulates American foreign policy on Israel.

Her anti-Semitism was so palpable that the Democrats were forced to debate and then water down a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. Still, Omar tweeted, “Today and every day, we must redouble our efforts to confront anti-Semitism and all forms of religious discrimination and say #NeverAgain.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Or how about Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.? She tweeted a story about a Holocaust survivor visiting Auschwitz and added, “May we honor them by sharing stories like these, #NeverAgain allowing hate to flourish, and committing to speaking out against anti-Semitism and all other forms of hate.”

Just two days before that tweet, Tlaib put out a now-deleted retweet of anti-Semitic blood libel that accused “a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers” of kidnapping a 7-year-old boy and drowning him in a well. In reality, the boy was 8 years old and apparently had drowned after slipping into a pool of rainwater in the Beit Hanina neighborhood.

Tlaib, of course, is no stranger to Jew hatred: In the past two years, she has accused congressional lawmakers opposed to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement of dual loyalty and hobnobbed with open terror supporters, and she is the bedrock congressional supporter of BDS itself.

Both Tlaib and Omar have provided moral support for Hamas, the terror group in charge of the Gaza Strip.

Then there’s Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour Party leader who so disgraced his own party with his coddling of anti-Semites that he was rejected by many members of his upper echelon.

Corbyn glibly tweeted, “This is a time for us all to reflect on the horrors of the past, the evils of Nazism, genocide and antisemitism, and indeed all forms of racism, which we must always be determined to root out, wherever they appear.”

The truth is that #NeverAgain has become a virtue signal for many on the modern left, who are more than willing to greenlight the genocidal anti-Semitism of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Authority, and the Iranian regime, among others. Islamic anti-Semitism, in their view, is not true anti-Semitism; it’s just religious conflict, or territorial disagreement, or anti-Zionism.

When such ideological disagreements result in open calls for the murder of Jews … well, that’s going a bit too far, but it’s understandable. After all, modern Jews—particularly Zionists, who insist on a Jewish state to ensure the survival of their people—are rather bothersome in real life, unlike those dead Jews from World War II, who aren’t any more real than their old black-and-white photos, and whose survival is no longer at issue.

It’s easy for radical leftists and their Islamic allies to spout #NeverAgain while proclaiming that today’s Jews aren’t like yesterday’s Jews. All of which is why Israel’s continued existence provides both a thorn in the side of modern anti-Semites and why Israel’s continued existence is so necessary.

Vague expressions of upset over an event that took place 75 years ago are no substitute for the hard-nosed defense of Jewish survival that Israel represents. And Jews should remember that when they decide to blind themselves to the real and present anti-Semitism of the Omars, Tlaibs, and Corbyns.

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COMMENTARY BY

Ben Shapiro

Ben Shapiro is host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is The New York Times best-selling author of “Bullies.” He is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, and lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles. Twitter: .

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This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Palestinians Miss Opportunity by Rejecting Trump Peace Plan

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President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan on Tuesday at a White House ceremony attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump declared that the plan “presents a ‘win-win’ opportunity for both sides, a realistic two-state solution that resolves the risk of Palestinian statehood to Israel’s security.”

Netanyahu enthusiastically embraced Trump’s vision, proclaiming, “It’s a great plan for Israel. It’s a great plan for peace.” He then lauded Trump as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Indeed, Trump’s vision for peace is the most pro-Israeli peace initiative ever promoted by the United States. It accords a high priority to Israeli security needs, recognizes Israel’s vital interest in retaining control of the border with Jordan, and clears the way for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over many settlements and Jewish holy sites in the disputed territory of the West Bank.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Trump’s vision also includes important benefits for Palestinians, who were offered the opportunity to build a state of their own, supported by a $50 billion regional development plan for the Palestinian territories and nearby Arab states.

More than half of the $50 billion would be invested in infrastructure and business projects in the Palestinian territories in the first 10 years, with the remainder invested in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.

This economic program, which has been compared to the Marshall Plan through which the U.S. helped stabilize western Europe after World War II, would boost prosperity among Palestinians, free them from dependence on foreign handouts, and give their children hope for a much brighter future.

Despite the economic benefits and the diplomatic pathway to a Palestinian state offered by the initiative, Palestinian leaders immediately rejected the plan.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Trump’s “deal of the century” as the “slap of the century.”

Trump’s vision fell far short of the Palestinian Authority’s maximal demands for a sovereign state controlling all the territory in the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem, and recognition of the “right of return” for millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel.

But those demands were always unrealistic and posed unacceptable risks to Israeli security.

The Trump peace initiative envisions a smaller Palestinian state composed of Gaza, approximately 70% of the West Bank, and specified land swaps of Israeli territory along its borders with Egypt and the northern West Bank.

To mitigate the security risks to Israel of such a state, the Palestinians would be required to renounce terrorism, disarm Hamas and other terrorist groups, recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and halt payments to the families of Palestinians imprisoned or killed due to their participation in terrorist attacks.

Missed Opportunities for Peace

The “land for peace” paradigm enshrined in the 1993 Oslo Accords failed in large part because the Palestinian Authority failed to halt terrorism against Israel, particularly by Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas rejects peace negotiations with Israel and remains committed to Israel’s destruction.

After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas staged a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority, seized control of Gaza, and turned into a base for attacking Israel with rockets, tunnel infiltrations, and incendiary balloons.

Israelis have strong reasons to suspect that a total Israeli pullout from the West Bank also could result in a Hamas overthrow of the weak Palestinian Authority and the establishment of another terrorist front against Israel.

Palestinians made a bad situation worse by rejecting a series of peace plans proposed by the Carter administration in 1978, the Reagan administration in 1982, and the Clinton administration in 2000.

Since 2014, the Palestinians have rejected negotiations with Israel unless it froze its settlement program, a condition that was not included in the Oslo peace negotiations.

The Palestinian Authority broke off diplomatic contacts with Washington in December 2017 after the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv.

The Palestinians’ “all or nothing” negotiating stance has left them with nothing that gives hope for a better future. Now they are turning their backs on Trump’s vision, despite the potential economic benefits it offers.

Trump’s ‘Outside-In’ Strategy

Although the Palestinians swiftly rejected Trump’s peace initiative, other Arab states have supported the plan and told the Palestinians “not so fast.”

Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates sent their ambassadors to the White House rollout event and joined Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia in appealing to the Palestinians to consider the initiative as a framework for negotiations.

Getting the buy-in of these key Arab states is important for the Trump administration’s “outside-in” strategy, which seeks to enlist support from Arab states that already have made peace with Israel (Egypt and Jordan) as well as Arab Gulf oil states that fear Iran more than Israel (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait).

It is not clear how hard Arab leaders will pressure Palestinian leaders to accept the plan. Realistically, the plan is unlikely to advance peace talks unless the Palestinians engage on it, and that is not likely. It takes two to tango, but Palestinian leaders have refused multiple American invitations to attend the dance.

The Trump peace plan is therefore unlikely to jumpstart the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

But even if it produces no immediate results, Trump’s initiative will serve as a marker that could encourage Palestinian leaders to take a more realistic approach to negotiations in the future and improve the long-term prospects for peace.

COMMENTARY BY

James Phillips

James Phillips is the senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He has written extensively on Middle Eastern issues and international terrorism since 1978. Read his research.

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RELATED VIDEO: Powerful speech by Swedish woman on Muslim migration.

https://twitter.com/EM_KA_17/status/1222208946460594176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1222208946460594176&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fvladtepesblog.com%2F2020%2F01%2F31%2Fswedish-woman-lays-on-an-illegal-dose-of-truth%2F

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

7 Questions and Answers From Day 9 of Trump Impeachment Trial

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Chief Justice John Roberts declined to read a sensitive question from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in the Senate impeachment trial Thursday, as other senators asked about the withholding of U.S. aid to Ukraine and about Joe Biden and his son’s employment by a Ukrainian energy company.

The ninth day of the impeachment trial was the second straight day in which President Donald Trump’s defense team and House prosecutors took turns answering questions from senators.

Senators submitted 93 questions Wednesday and were on track to ask about as many Thursday.

The Senate is set to vote Friday on whether to call witnesses for the impeachment trial, which Democrats want.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Most reports of head counts say not enough Republican votes will be there to continue the trial with witnesses. That outcome would make this the shortest presidential impeachment trial in history, following an abbreviated House impeachment inquiry that lasted about 70 days.

Trump’s acquittal is a near certainty, as it takes 67 senators, or a two-thirds majority, to remove a president.

Here are seven key highlights of the proceedings Thursday, the ninth day of the Senate trial.

1. Roberts v. Paul

Reports surfaced Wednesday that Roberts, presiding over the Senate impeachment trial as chief justice, would not expose the anonymous whistleblower who first complained about a phone conversation July 25 between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump withheld $391 million in aid.

In opening the session Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, without being asked: “We’ve been respectful of the chief justice’s unique position in reading our questions, and I want to be able to continue to assure him that that level of consideration for him will continue.”

Early in the day, Roberts called on Paul.

“The senator from Kentucky,” the chief justice said.

“I have a question to present to the desk for House manager [Adam] Schiff and for the president’s counsel,” Paul said.

Schiff, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which led the impeachment inquiry targeting Trump. He is the leader of the seven House managers, or prosecutors, making the case for the Senate to remove Trump.

When the card with Paul’s question was brought to Roberts, he looked at it for 11 seconds, then said: “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.”

Paul reportedly was upset and at one point left the chamber and, talking to reporters, criticized Roberts for censoring questions.

The Kentucky Republican, an ally and former rival of Trump’s, sent out several tweets repeating the name of the person widely reported—without confirmation—to be the whistleblower. This first tweet, however, did not:

“My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings,” Paul tweeted, before naming someone widely reported to be the whistleblower.

Paul later tweeted:

My question is not about a ‘whistleblower’ as I have no independent information on his identity. My question is about the actions of known Obama partisans within the NSC [White House National Security Council] and House staff and how they are reported to have conspired before impeachment proceedings had even begun.

2. Schiff Won’t Answer About Coordinating With Whistleblower

Paul rephrased his question about Schiff later in the hearing, and Roberts was willing to read it this time:

Recent reporting described two NSC [National Security Council] staff holdovers from the Obama administration attending an all-hands meeting of NSC staff held about two weeks into the Trump administration, and talking loudly enough to be overheard saying, ‘We need to do everything we can to take out the president.’

On July 26, 2019, the House Intelligence Committee hired one of those individuals, Shawn Misko. The report further describes relationships between Misko, Lt. Col. [Alexander] Vindmand and the individual alleged as the whistleblower. Why did your committee hire Shawn Misko the day after the phone call between President Trump and Zelenskyy, and what role has he played throughout your committee’s investigation?

Vindmand, an Army officer, testified about his concerns with the Trump-Zelenskyy call during the House impeachment hearings.

Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which led the impeachment inquiry, took the microphone on the Senate floor to respond, looking and sounding indignant.

“First of all, there have been a lot of attacks on my staff. As I said when this issue came up earlier, I’m appalled at some of the smearing of some of the professional people that work for the Intelligence Committee,” Schiff said, adding:

Now, this question refers to allegations in a newspaper article, which are circulating smears on my staff and asks me to respond to those smears. I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever.

Nor will I share any information that I believe could or could not lead to the identification of the whistleblower.

3. Conflicting Stories From Bidens on Burisma

House Democrats voted Dec. 18, without a single Republican vote, to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The House based its two articles of impeachment on Trump’s July 25 phone call to Zelenskyy and the president’s refusal to allow certain executive branch witnesses or provide certain documents for House hearings.

According to a White House transcript of the Trump-Zelenskyy call, released by the president, the two leaders briefly talked about Trump’s interest in Ukraine’s investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s dealings there and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Trump also asked Zelenskyy to look into whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

Zelenskyy did not know at the time that Trump had put a hold on $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine to help it counter a Russian invasion. Trump would release the funds in September.

House Democrats allege that Trump withheld the military aid to pressure Zelenskyy into initiating politically motivated investigations.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, submitted a question on behalf of himself, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Roberts, saying the question was for both sides, read:

USA Today reported that when asked about it [his son’s employment by the Ukrainian company], Biden said quote, ‘He hadn’t spoken to his son about his overseas business.’ That account was contradicted by Hunter Biden, who told The New Yorker that he told his father about Burisma and ‘Dad said I hope you know what you’re doing, and I said I do.’ Why do Joe and Hunter Biden’s stories conflict? Did the House ask either one that question?

Trump lawyer Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida who days earlier had laid out the Biden-Burisma timeline, took the podium on the Senate floor to answer.

“It is very interesting he said he never spoke to his son about overseas dealings; his son said different things,” Bondi said. “Joe Biden was the [Obama administration’s] point man for Ukraine. At the time, Ukrainians were investigating a corrupt company, Burisma.”

In 2016, Biden has said publicly, he pressured the government of Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma, where Biden’s son had been on the board since 2014.

During on-camera remarks in 2018, Biden said he threatened Ukraine’s leaders that the country would not get $1 billion in U.S. assistance unless the government fired Shokin within hours.

Bondi noted that Burisma reportedly paid Biden $83,000 per month, although he had no qualifications in the energy sector. She said Burisma’s owner, oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, was known for being part of corruption in Ukraine.

“The entire time Joe Biden knows that this oligarch is corrupt. Everyone knows that. There are news reports everywhere. No one will dispute that,” Bondi said. “In fact, it raised eyebrows worldwide that the vice president, by his account, never once asked his son to leave the [Burisma] board. Instead, he started investigating the prosecutor who was going after Burisma and this corrupt oligarch, who they say was corrupt even by corrupt oligarch standards.”

“Then we hear the video of Joe Biden bragging about firing the prosecutor, linking it to aid,” Bondi added.

Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., one of the seven House impeachment managers, or prosecutors, steered away from a direct answer.

“I know you have asked about a conversation between a father and his son,” Demings said. “And what I can tell you is, probably like just about everyone in this chamber, there are probably some conversations that I can’t repeat about my conversations with my son. So I don’t know the answer to your question.”

She then said the Senate needed to hear from “fact witnesses,” and sought to pivot to familiar talking points of the prosecution team.

“We have no evidence to point to the fact that either Biden has anything at all to tell us about the president shaking down a foreign power to help him cheat in the next election, the precious election, trying to steal each individual’s vote,” Demings said.

4. Who Pays Rudy?

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., submitted a question that read: “It has been reported that President Trump has not paid Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, for his services. Can you explain who has paid for Rudy Giuliani’s legal fees, international travel, and other expenses in his capacity as President Trump’s attorney and representative?”

Schiff, D-Calif., the leader of the House prosecution team, stood  to answer the question.

“I don’t know who is paying Rudy Giuliani’s fees,” Schiff said, adding:

If he is not being paid by the president to conduct this domestic political errand, for which he has devoted so much time, if other clients are paying and subsidizing his work in that respect, it raises profound questions, questions we can’t answer at this point.

There are some answers that we do know. As [Giuliani] has acknowledged, he’s not there doing foreign policy. So, when counsel for the president says this is a policy dispute, [that] you can’t impeach a president over policy, what Rudy Giuliani was engaged in has nothing to do with policy.

Schiff gave a hypothetical:  What if Giuliani, a former New York mayor and federal prosecutor, brokered a quid pro quo with the Chinese? He argued that the president’s defense team would claim that would be OK.

“So, who is paying the freight for it?” Schiff asked. “I don’t know who is directly paying the freight for it, but I can tell you the whole country is paying the freight for it because there are leaders around the world who are watching this and saying the American presidency is open for business.”

With that comment, Schiff walked right into a rebuttal from Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow.

“What came out of the manager’s mouth: open for business,” Sekulow said, adding:

I’ll tell you who was open for business. You want to know who was open for business? When the vice president of the United States was charged by the then-president of the United States with developing policies to avoid and assist in removing corruption from Ukraine, and his son was on the board of a company that was under investigation … And you are concerned about what Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, was doing when he was over trying to determine what was going on in Ukraine?

Sekulow, however, did not say who was paying Giuliani.

5. White House Counsel: ‘Pelosi Was Right’

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., submitted a question on behalf of himself and several other Senate Republicans about something House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said.

Roberts read the question, which was directed only to the president’s counsel:

On March 6, 2019, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: ‘Impeachment is so divisive that unless there is something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country.’

Alexander Hamilton also warned in Federalist 65 against the ‘persecution of an intemperate or designing majority of the House of Representatives with respect to impeachment.’

In evaluating the case against the president, should the Senate take into account the partisan nature of the impeachment proceedings in the House?

White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who is leading Trump’s defense, responded: “Absolutely, you should take that into account.”

“Speaker Pelosi was right when she said that. Unfortunately, she didn’t follow her own advice,” Cipollone said. “We’ve never been in a situation where we have the impeachment of a president in an election year, with the goal of removing the president from the ballot. As I’ve said before, that is the most massive election interference we’ve ever witnessed. It’s domestic election interference. It’s political election interference. And it’s wrong.”

During a morning press conference, before the Senate convened, Pelosi suggested she would not accept the Senate’s verdict on the president if no witnesses are called.

“He will not be acquitted,” Pelosi said. “You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that. Does the president know right from wrong? I don’t think so.”

6. Obama and Bush Comparisons

Roberts read a question about abuse of power from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that brought up Trump’s two immediate predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

“Under the standard embraced by the House managers, would President Obama have been subject to impeachment charges based on his handling of the Benghazi attack, the Bergdahl swap, or DACA?” Roberts read. “Would President Bush have been subject to impeachment charges based on his handling of NSA surveillance, detention of combatants, or use of waterboarding?”

Cipollone, the White House counsel, answered the question, saying that the House managers are making an argument with “no standard.”

“Presidents would be subject to impeachment for exercising long-standing constitutional rights even when the House chose not to enforce their subpoenas,” Cipollone said, adding: “You might want to get a lock on that door, because they are going to be back a lot if that’s the standard.”

The White House counsel continued:

I try to seek areas of agreement. I think we all agree they don’t allege a crime. That’s why they spend all their time saying you don’t need one. … No crime is necessary.

That’s not what impeachment is all about. This is dangerous. It’s more dangerous because it’s an election year. So, yes, under the standardless impeachment, any president could be impeached for anything and that’s wrong.

By the way, they [the House prosecutors] should be held to their own articles of impeachment. A lot of what they are trying to sell here, their own House colleagues weren’t buying. They didn’t make it into the articles of impeachment.

7. Campaign Finance Violation

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., submitted a question citing two Federal Election Commission opinions that anything of value given by a foreign country to a political campaign would be an illegal campaign contribution.

“How valuable would a public announcement [by Ukraine] of an investigation into the Bidens be for President Trump’s reelection campaign?” she asked.

Stabenow directed her question to both sides.

“The idea that these investigations were something of value was specifically examined by the Department of Justice, as I explained the other day,” Cipollone said. “… They announced back in September that there was no election law violation, because it did not qualify as a thing of value.”

The White House counsel added: “There would be tremendous First Amendment implications if someone attempted to enforce the laws that way.”

Schiff strongly challenged this view.

“How valuable would it be for the president to get Ukraine to announce his investigations? The answer is immensely valuable,” Schiff said, adding:

If it wasn’t going to be immensely valuable, why would the president go to such lengths to make it happen? Why would he be willing to violate the law, the Impoundment Control Act? Why would he willing to ignore the advice of all his national security professionals? Why would he be willing to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars from an ally at war if he didn’t think it was going to really benefit his campaign? You have only to look at the president’s actions to determine just how valuable he believed it would be to him.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH. Ken McIntyre contributed to this report.

Other coverage of the impeachment trial for The Daily Signal by White House correspondent Fred Lucas includes:

6 Scenes From Day 8 of Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Big Points by Trump’s Lawyers as Defense Opens in Impeachment Trial

7 Big Moments in Democrats’ Final Arguments to Remove Trump

7 Highlights From Day 3 of the Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Flash Points From Impeachment Trial’s Opening Arguments

What to Know About Democrats’ 7 Impeachment Managers

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Lacking Faith in Political Polling

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TRANSCRIPT

As we enter another major electoral cycle, we begin to hear more from political polling organizations, most of which I do not trust. They were dead wrong in the 2016 presidential election. So much so, their credibility has yet to recover. I think it comes down to the methodology they use to conduct a poll. Some use general registered voters, some do not, some are strictly aimed at a particular political party, and others will take whoever has a pulse, be it a citizen or not.

All of the polls are aligned somehow with the news media and a political party. As such, they are there to make money to support their operations. They do not make money for predictable results, but rather by the unexpected, just like the sensational press. Consequently, they exist to create intrigue and controversy. This is helpful for their cause, but unfortunately it confuses voters who begin to question their favorite candidate’s viability as a contender. This is precisely what they want. In other words, it is not in the polling institution’s best interests to make accurate predictions, but to create voter anxiety in an attempt to create an addictive dependency on their service. This is why I no longer take political polling seriously as I have witnessed this drill so many times over the years.

Let’s be clear, like the main stream media, most support the Democrat agenda. However, even the Republican leaning polls are trying to cast doubt among the voters in order to improve ratings. It is all about money.

Even ardent Republicans have doubts about the president’s chances for re-election. It is one of those situations where if you tell people something enough times, they will eventually believe it (see “Political Branding”). Cooler heads know the president will easily win.

Over the years, I have studied the polls closely and reported on the progress of candidates. Personally, I rarely found the polls of the main stream media to be accurate. This includes those of: ABC/Washington Post, CBS, CNN, FOX, New York Times, Politico, and the Wall Street Journal/NBC. I cannot remember the last time a Fox poll ever got it right, nor NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. In 2016, night after night the news media quoted the polls to tell the public Donald Trump didn’t have a chance to win the nomination or the election. Remarkably, he won in spite of their predictions.

The remaining polls tend to be more independent but most still have some form of political connection. For example:

GALLUP

Founded in 1935 and headquartered in Washington, DC and Omaha, NE, Gallup is one of the oldest and most trusted polls. The CEO is Jim Clifton who is thought to lean Republican. Since its founder, George Gallup, passed away in 1984, the company was sold to Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI). Clifton may be a Republican (in name only), but his writings suggests he leans to the left.

PEW RESEARCH

Founded in 2004 and also headquartered in Washington, DC, Pew is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization and a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. The company was founded by the Times Mirror Company which was acquired by the Tribune Company in 2000. The Tribune Company owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Orlando Sentinel, (Central Florida) Sun-Sentinel, The Baltimore Sun, (Allentown, Pennsylvania) The Morning Call, Hartford Courant, and the San Diego Union-Tribune, as well as many radio and TV stations, including superstation WGN. The President is Michael Dimock whose roots are from academia.

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING (PPP)

Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Raleigh, NC, PPP’s CEO is Dean Debnam, an admitted Democrat.

RASMUSSEN REPORTS

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Asbury Park, NJ, the company was founded by Scott Rasmussen who is believed to lean Republican. However, he left the company in 2013 to pursue other interests. The company is now owned by Noson Lawen Partners (the majority investor), and there is no sign of the political inclinations of the company.

The three universities commonly quoted in polling are:

MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY

Their polling division was established in 2005, and is located in West Long Branch, NJ. The Director is Patrick Murray.

QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY

Their polling division was established in 1988, and located in Hamden, CT. The Director is Douglas Schwartz, PhD.

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY

Their polling division was established in 2002, and is located in Boston, MA. The Director is David Paleologos.

Interestingly, all of the directors are careful about not disclosing their political inclinations. Aside from residing in the New England area, which tends to lean to the Democrats, there appears to be nothing in writing suggesting their political bias.

Other polls worth noting are:

  • Investors Business Daily/TIPP – has been very accurate in their predictions.
  • ISideWith.com – I have found this little known site to be very accurate in the primaries. Although it is intended to be a political matchmaking site that gives insight into how voters think, it is updated daily and provides surprisingly accurate data.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

The “Big Kahuna” of political polling is RealClearPolitics, the source most quoted by the news media. Surprisingly, most people are unaware of how it works and naively accept their findings as gospel. Basically, the company doesn’t conduct polls itself, but analyzes the polling data of others. It lists any poll and calculates an average.

For example:

Clinton Trump
Poll-A 46% 43%
Poll-B 49% 45%
Poll-C 49% 46%
AVG 48% 44.6%

Here is the rub though; what if the polls are biased, such as those mentioned earlier by the main stream media? Mixing tainted data with legitimate polls is mixing apples with oranges and will inevitably produce erroneous results, something you definitely do not want to bet the ranch on.

So, is the system rigged? If the main stream media is either quoting their own poll, or the averages from RealClearPolitics, then Yes, their credibility is highly questionable. However, knowing the news media’s agenda, they will keep quoting these polling results over and over again until the public buys it.

Something to remember from the 2016 election; going into voting day, the polls said Mrs. Clinton had already clinched the election. Her supporters become too confident and failed to show up on election day, and we know the rest of the story. A similar phenomenon will likely occur again in the 2020 race where the polls and news media will claim a victory for the Democrats. What they fail to mention is how the Republicans distrust the media. Also, the impeachment hoax has energized the president’s base and will encourage more people to vote. In all likelihood, the 2020 election will be the largest voter turnout in our history, and I didn’t need a poll to figure this out.

So, is the system rigged? You betcha!

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also do not forget my books, “How to Run a Nonprofit” and “Tim’s Senior Moments”, both available in Printed and eBook form.

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

PLO calls for jihad terror against Trump’s peace plan: “Escalate the resistance and the jihad”

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A state and $50 billion won’t do it. Maybe a state and $100 billion? Two states? Three states?

Find out why no “Palestinian” peace plan will ever be acceptable to the “Palestinians” unless it helps pave the way for the total destruction of Israel in The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process.

“Escalate the resistance and the struggle” — jihad is “struggle” in Arabic.

“PLO calls for terror against Trump’s deal: ‘Escalate the resistance and the struggle… in all its forms,’” by Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, January 28, 2020:

In anticipation of the revelation of US President Trump’s Middle East peace plan – the so-called “deal of the century” – the PLO, the PA, and Fatah are emphasizing their rejection of the still unknown plan. They have also announced a “day of rage” on the day the plan is revealed, and called for “escalation of resistance” – a Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror.

Abbas’ Fatah Movement posted a photo of a Palestinian rock thrower in a call for violence accompanied by text implicitly encouraging Palestinians to seek death as martyrs for “Palestine”:

Posted text and text on image: “We will redeem you with our blood, #Palestine”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 26, 2020]

Similarly, the PLO urged Palestinians to “escalate the resistance and the struggle” against Israel “in all its forms and manners.” Terms like “all forms” and “all means” are ‎used by PA leaders to include the use of all types of violence, including deadly terror ‎against Israeli civilians such as stabbings and shootings, as well as throwing rocks and Molotov Cocktails:

“The [Palestinian] National Council (i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) again expressed its objection to every plan, project, deal, or attempt to harm the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights…  The National Council yesterday [Jan. 26, 2020] demanded that the PLO Executive Committee implement all of the National Council and [PLO] Central Council’s decisions – and foremost among them the decision determining that the transition period has ended with all of the political, security, and financial obligations in it towards the Israeli occupation – and also to take all the necessary steps to encourage and escalate the resistance and the struggle against the occupation in all its forms and manners.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2020]

Palestinian groups also declared the day Trump announces his peace plan a “day of mass rage.” Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA and Fatah leaders view “days of rage” as preludes to “intifadas” – campaigns of violence and terror.

“The [Palestinian] National and Islamic Forces of the Ramallah and El-Bireh district have declared the date of the announcement of ‘the deal of disgrace’ as a day of mass rage in response to the American-Israeli aggression, on which the Palestinian people will say its piece in one voice: the deal will not pass, and our people is capable of thwarting it.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2020]

The cartoon at the top above shows PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas holding his fingers up in a “V” for victory, but in place of his hand is the first word of the text: “No to the deal of the century.” [Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 23, 2020]

The PA presidency has also announced that “there is no discussion with the American administration, neither brief nor long,” and that its position is unwavering on “everything regarding the unacceptable deal of the century.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 25, 2020]

Another Fatah post showed a tiny Trump facing a giant Palestinian rock thrower:

Posted text: “#No_to_the_deal_of_the_century”
Text at center of image: “No to the deal of the century”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 26, 2020]

The following are additional posts against Trump’s peace plan posted by Fatah:

Posted text: “#No_to_the_deal_of_the_century”
Text at bottom of image: “No to the deal of the century”

At the top of the poster is the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of “Palestine” that presents all of Israel as “Palestine” together with the PA areas. Under the logo is written: “Palestinian National Liberation Movement ‘Fatah’ Mobilization and Organization Commission Information Office”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 26, 2020]

Posted text and text at bottom of image: “No to the deal of the century”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 23, 2020]

Posted text and text at bottom of image: “No to the deal of the century”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 23, 2020]

Posted text and text on image: “Thanks to our people’s determination and resolve, the deal of the century will fall”

[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 26, 2020]

The following are longer excerpts of the texts cited above:

“The [Palestinian] National Council (i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) again expressed its objection to every plan, project, deal, or attempt to harm the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights…
In a statement, the National Council yesterday [Jan. 26, 2020] demanded that the PLO Executive Committee implement all of the National Council and [PLO] Central Council’s decisions – and foremost among them the decision determining that the transition period has ended with all of the political, security, and financial obligations in it towards the Israeli occupation – and also to take all the necessary steps to encourage and escalate the resistance and the struggle against the occupation in all its forms and manners (i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror). This is in order to defend our people’s permanent rights, which [US President Donald] Trump’s administration and the occupation are attempting to eliminate through what is called ‘the deal of the century’ (i.e., refers to US President Donald Trump’s as yet unpublished Middle East peace plan, which he said he would reveal to Israeli leaders in late January 2020)…
The [Palestinian] National and Islamic Forces of the Ramallah and El-Bireh district have declared the date of the announcement of ‘the deal of disgrace’ as a day of mass rage in response to the American-Israeli aggression, on which the Palestinian people will say its piece in one voice: the deal will not pass, and our people is capable of thwarting it.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2020]

Palestinian National and Islamic Forces – an unaffiliated coordinating body comprised of representatives from factions in the PLO and outside the PLO. The Palestinian National and Islamic Forces were established in 2000 shortly after the start of the PA terror campaign (the second Intifada, 2000-2005), under the authorization of Yasser Arafat and the leadership of terrorist Marwan Barghouti. During the PA terror campaign it played an active role in coordinating political efforts and terror attacks against Israel, but since the end of the campaign it has been less significant and its activity is primarily centered in Gaza.

Headline: “The Democratic National Coalition called to intensify the popular resistance”
“The Palestinian Democratic National Coalition forces called to intensify the popular resistance (i.e., term used by Palestinians, which also refers to the use of violence and terror) in all of the Palestinian territories. The forces – which include the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF, a terror organization and PLO member; see note below –Ed.), the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestinian Arab Front, and the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (i.e., all PLO members) – discussed ways of intensifying the popular resistance against the settlement, after their meeting at the Popular Struggle Front’s headquarters in Ramallah…
The Democratic National Coalition forces called on the international community to pressure the extremist right-wing occupation government and [US President Donald] Trump’s administration, the occupation’s partner in its aggression against our people, to immediately stop the settlement and cease the attacks against the Palestinian national rights and sovereignty, in order to prevent pushing the region into a whirlpool of violence whose end will be bad and bitter.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 24, 2020]…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Iran’s Parliament speaker calls on counterparts in Islamic states to counter Trump peace plan

Islamic Jihad top dog says PA should withdraw its recognition of Israel over Trump peace plan

Islamic State: “Today we have begun a new phase in our struggle with you. Our eyes now look towards Jerusalem.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Deplatformed: How Big Tech Companies and Corporate America Subvert the First Amendment

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When the freedom of speech is entirely a dead letter, those who were supposed to be its guardians will congratulate themselves for never having been “racist.”

“Deplatformed: How Big Tech Companies & Corporate America Subvert the Second Amendment,” by Sam Jacobs, Ammo.com, January 26, 2020:

…Big Tech’s War on Free Speech

There is a war against free speech and Big Tech is the one waging it. Congress has looked into this, with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas leading the charge, not allowing Facebook and other Big Tech companies to weasel out of answering hard questions that the public has about censorship on the Internet.

It’s less true to say that Facebook, Google and other Big Tech platforms “lean left” than it is to say that they push a globalist, neoliberal, corporatist line that eschews any sort of values or ethics other than growth. Edward Abbey has said that the philosophy of growth for the sake of growth is also the philosophy of the cancer cell.

The Big Tech war against free speech is nothing new and there have been canaries in the coal mine for years. Everyone remembers MILO being shown the door on Twitter for a dubious accusation that he led a mob against actress Leslie Jones. But the real test case was not him, it was hacker and troll Andrew Auernheimer, commonly known by his handle “weev.”

weev (always lowercase) is difficult to defend because he has unpopular viewpoints. To wit, he has a large swastika tattooed on his chest. However, proponents of the First Amendment and free speech shouldn’t be concerned with what weev thinks or says, because what he thinks or says is irrelevant to whether or not he has the right to think it and say it. But Twitter and other Big Tech platforms were smart in choosing such an ideological pariah to test the waters.

There is a direct line to be drawn from the deplatforming of weev on Twitter to the unpersoning of Alex Jones to the shadow banning and outright deplatforming of conservative voices all across the web. Mainstream, establishment conservatives have done themselves a disservice by attempting to defend themselves against deplatforming on the basis that “I’m not a Nazi” for two reasons.

First, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Nazi or not. All legal speech should be allowed on social media, or else Big Tech is an editorial content curator, which makes it liable for anything that is posted on there. This means that your ex-spouse lying about how you missed Little Timmy’s baseball game on Facebook can be construed as defamation, for which Facebook is liable because they didn’t remove the status update. Facebook’s pretense that it is a content-neutral platform, a claim that is patently false, is what protects it from being sued every time someone lies about someone else on the platform or from being hauled into court every time that ISIS uses WhatsApp to coordinate an attack.

But the other reason is that for many on the left, there is not a tangible difference between weev, MILO, Alex Jones, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Wayne LaPierre, Ted Cruz, Ben Sharpiro or the President of the United States. Anyone to the right of John McCain is seen as either a literal fascist, a fascist apologist, or a gatekeeper who opens the door to fascist ideology.

Big Tech will not stop at deplatforming actual, self-avowed fascists, nor will it stop at conspiracy theorists, edgy conservatives, or even “respectable” centrist types like Dave Rubin. To throw the far right under the bus in the hopes of satisfying Big Tech’s blood lust is a strategic mistake – it legitimizes the entire process of deplatforming, which will eventually swallow up anyone who believes in the Constitution and the rule of law. Big Tech and the left either see no difference between you and a Nazi, or pretend not to because it’s politically expedient.

This is doubly important because of how many Big Tech companies are actively spying on their users. The EFF maintains an annual detailed list of who is telling the government about its users and their data, who informs users that the government is sniffing around about them, and who even bothers to disclose their data retention policies.

What this means is that if and when the federal government begins compiling a list of “potential right-wing terrorists” or “right-wing extremists” (to the extent that they do not already maintain such lists), they will have a ready-made mine of data from Big Tech, who have shown themselves to be more than willing to cooperate with the federal government, with minimal or no arm-twisting on the part of the feds. Take, for example, the Philadelphia synagogue shooter. Self-proclaimed “free speech” platform Gab was more than willing to hand over all the data they had about his account to the feds without even being asked.

Sure, no one wants to be in the position of defending a synagogue shooter. But the point is that these platforms, even the ones who allegedly have your back, have shown themselves willing to roll on their users provided enough of a fever is whipped up in the press.

Conservatives Censored on Social Media

It’s worth showing just how many mainstream, run-of-the-mill conservatives have been censored by Big Tech – it’s not just the MILOs and the weevs of the world who are being shown the door. Indeed, we believe that these types are censored not out of any actual desire to suppress so-called “hate speech,” but instead to act as a test case for setting the precedent for suppressing legal speech. Here are some examples that are worth considering:

  • Pastor Rich Penkoski: This pastor runs a popular Facebook page, “Warriors for Christ.” He was suspended mid-sermon for criticizing the rainbow flag. He was previously banned for calling an atheist a liar and sharing verses from the Quran that called for the killing of non-Muslims.
  • Over Two Dozen Catholic Pages: In July 2017, Facebook banned several Catholic pages with millions of followers. Most were based in Brazil. Facebook removed the pages without explanation.
  • Rep. Marsha Blackburn: Not even elected officials are immune from social media deplatforming. Facebook removed an ad for Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign that attacked pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood.
  • Alveda King: Facebook removed paid ads from Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King for her documentary on Roe v. Wade.
  • Ryan T. Anderson: Twitter refused to run several ads from Christian radio stations for an upcoming interview with Ryan T. Anderson. Anderson is a critic of transgenderism and radical gender ideology.
  • Robert Spencer: The head of JihadWatch.org, a website covering radical Islam, was removed from social media and even had his credit cards canceled. He also claims that Google buries him in results for searches about “jihad.”
  • Brian Fisher: The President of the Human Coalition notes that this anti-abortion group has had prayer apps removed from the Apple store and has had its content repeatedly removed from Twitter despite taking pains to ensure that all of it is within Twitter’s narrow, anti-First Amendment guidelines.
  • PragerU: PragerU is very much the picture of mainstream, run-of-the-mill, completely non-edgy conservatism on the Internet. Despite this, they repeatedly have their content removed from YouTube. Dennis Prager, head of PragerU, is suing YouTube. He notes that Delta Air Lines couldn’t say “conservatives can’t fly with us,” but YouTube, ostensibly a neutral platform, is effectively allowed to say that conservatives can’t use their services.
  • David Kyle Foster: David Kyle Foster is a leader in the “ex-gay” movement, a group of Christians who claim that their religion has “cured” their homosexuality. His Vimeo channel, featuring over 700 personal testimonials, was pulled from Vimeo for being “hateful.”

Even the Declaration of Independence has been removed from Facebook as “hate speech” due to their “filtering program.” Yes, really. Nor is it only conservative groups who have been targeted. Moderates and leftists who don’t toe the party line – like Andy Ngo, Tim Pool and Michael Tracey – have likewise been targeted by deplatforming and shadowbanning.

Deplatforming is not limited to social media. Chase Bank has been accused of depriving conservative voices of banking services. This returns us to the Mark of the Beast notion: What good is free speech if banks – banks – can keep you from receiving payments. And how far off are we from seeing conservative voices deprived of their ability to pay?

Imagine showing up at the grocery store and finding out that your money’s no good because you have a concealed carry permit. Sound far-fetched? So would have having your bank account closed for being a conservative activist….

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

6 Scenes From Day 8 of Trump Impeachment Trial

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Wednesday was question-and-answer day in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, and it included a thought exercise in which Barack Obama asks Russia to investigate election rival Mitt Romney.

Senators acting as jurors, and in some way judges, submitted questions in writing to Chief Justice John Roberts. He then read them out loud for answers from the president’s lawyers or from House Democrats’ impeachment managers led by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Here are highlights from the eighth day of the impeachment trial,  which is to be followed by another day of questioning Thursday.

1. Schiff’s Parody of a Romney Probe

In previous days, the president’s lawyers contrasted the charges against Trump with what they say was a much more questionable open-microphone incident in 2012, when President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” on Eastern Europe missile defense after the upcoming U.S. election.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Schiff picked up on the point, offering an imaginary scenario in which Obama asks for a Russian investigation of his 2012 election opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney,  who now is a Republican member of the Senate.

“Let’s use that analogy and make it more comparable to today and see how you feel about this scenario,” Schiff said, adding:

President Obama, on an open mic, says to Medvedev, ‘Hey, Medvedev, I know you don’t want me to send this military money to Ukraine because they are fighting and killing your people.’

‘I want you to do me a favor, though. I want you to do an investigation of Mitt Romney. And I want you to announce you found dirt on Mitt Romney. If you’re willing to do that, quid pro quo, I won’t give Ukraine the money they need to fight you on the front line.’

Do any of us have any question that Barack Obama would be impeached for that kind of misconduct? Are we really ready to say that that would be OK if Barack Obama asked Medvedev to investigate his opponent and withhold money from an ally that needed to defend itself to get an investigation of Mitt Romney? That’s the parallel here.

House Democrats voted Dec. 18 to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The two articles were based on Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which the two leaders briefly talked about Trump’s interest in Ukraine’s investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Unknown to Zelenskyy at the time, Trump had put a hold on $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine, which he would lift in September.

Joe Biden has boasted that in 2016, while serving as vice president overseeing the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine unless the government fired prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma, which reportedly paid Hunter Biden $83,000 per month.

Later in the hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, submitted a related question to the chief justice.

“In Mr. Schiff’s hypothetical, if President Obama had evidence that Mitt Romney’s son was being paid $1 million per year by a corrupt Russian company and Mitt Romney had acted to benefit that company, would Obama have authority to ask that that potential corruption be investigated?” Roberts read.

Schiff, responding to Cruz’s question, asserted that whether an investigation of Romney were justified or unjustified, it would still be impeachable for Obama to ask for it.

“The reality is [that] for a president to withhold aid from a military ally, or in the hypothetical to withhold it to benefit an adversary to target their political opponent, is wrong and corrupt,” Schiff said. “End of story. If you allow a president to rationalize that conduct, rationalize jeopardizing the nation’s security to benefit himself because he believes his opponent should be investigated by a foreign power, that is impeachable.”

The California Democrat added:

Now, if you have a legitimate reason to think any U.S. person has committed an offense, there are legitimate ways to have an investigation conducted. There are legitimate ways to have the Justice Department conduct an investigation. … But under no circumstances do you go outside of your own legitimate law enforcement process to ask a foreign power to investigate your rival.

2. A Question of Burden Sharing

Schiff asserted that Trump wasn’t concerned with burden sharing by other nations to help Ukraine, but only with benefiting his own reelection.

Consulting the official White House transcript of the call between Trump and Zelenskyy, Schiff read Trump’s words: “I need you to do us a favor, though.”

“Does that sound like burden sharing? Of course not,” Schiff said on the Senate floor.

However, deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin pointed to a June 24 email with the subject line “POTUS follow-up” and its contents on the Trump administration’s concerns that the United States provides Ukraine with 10% of its military budget and that other European countries are not doing enough.

Philbin also read from the transcript of the call between Trump and Zelenskyy.

Quoting Trump’s words in the transcript, he read:

We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time, much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than we are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about.

Philbin added: “He’s raising burden sharing, and President Zelenskyy agreed with him.”

3. Are All Quid Pro Quos Equal?

Another Trump lawyer, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, asserted that a quid pro quo in foriegn policy is not unusual.

“Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the rolling out of a peace plan by the president of the United States regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict,” Dershowitz said. “And I offered you a hypothetical the other day: What if a Democratic president were to be elected and Congress were to authorize much money to either Israel or the Palestinians, and the Democratic president were to say to Israel, ‘No, I’m going to withhold this money unless you stop all settlement growth.’ Or, to the Palestinians, ‘I will withhold the money Congress authorized to you unless you stop paying terrorists.’”

“And [what if] the president said quid pro quo. ‘If you don’t do it, you don’t get the money. If you do it, you get the money.’ There is no one who would regard that as unlawful.”

However, in talking about a hypothetical Romney investigation sought by Obama, Schiff argued that not all quid pro quos are the same:

We condition aid all the time for legitimate reasons, yes. For legitimate reasons, you might say to a governor of a state, ‘You should chip in more for your own disaster relief.’ But if the president’s real motive in depriving a state of disaster relief is because that governor won’t get his attorney general to investigate the president’s political rival, are we ready to say the president can sacrifice the interest of the people of that state—or in the case of Medvedev, the people of our country—because all quid pro quos are fine, it’s carte blanche?

Is that really what we are prepared to say, with respect to this president’s misconduct or the next? Because, if we are, then the next president of the United States can ask for an investigation of you.

4. Elected President, Unelected Bureaucrats

Philbin, one of Trump’s lawyers, pointed to criticism from Schiff and the House’s other six impeachment managers, or prosecutors, that Trump did not follow the suggestions of his advisers in his phone conversation with Zelenskyy.

“They say that the president defied and confounded every agency in the executive branch. That is a constitutionally incoherent statement,” Philbin said, adding:

The president cannot defy the agencies within the executive branch that are subordinate to him. It is only they who can defy the president’s determination of policy. What this all boils down to is that it shows this case is built on a policy difference, and a policy difference where the president is the one who gets to determine the policy, because he’s been elected by the people to do that.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., one of the House impeachment managers, argued that it wasn’t the point.

“The president surely does not need the permission of his staff about foreign policy. That information is offered to you as evidence of what he thought he was doing,” Lofgren said. “He did not appear to be pursuing a policy agenda. He appeared, with all of the evidence, to be pursuing a corruption, a corruption of our elections that’s upcoming, a high crime and misdemeanor that requires conviction and removal.”

5. Schiff as a Witness

Trump personal lawyer Jay Sekulow suggested that Schiff could be called as a witness, similar to how then-independent counsel Ken Starr was a House witness in 1998 to explain his investigation of President Bill Clinton. Starr is now one of Trump’s lawyers.

Sekulow was responding to Schiff’s suggestion that Roberts, presiding over the trial, should decide whether Trump may cite executive privilege to prevent witness testimony.

“In the Clinton [impeachment] proceeding, the witnesses that actually gave deposition testimony were witnesses that had either been interviewed by deposition in the House proceeding or grand jury proceedings,” Sekulow said.

“There was another statement from Chairman Schiff, Manager Schiff, that the chief justice make a determination on executive privilege,” he said, adding:

If we get to the point of witnesses, for instance, if one of the witnesses to be called by the president was Adam Schiff, in the role basically of Ken Starr. Ken Starr … made the presentation before the House of Representatives, had about 12 hours of questioning. If Rep. Schiff is called as a witness, would in fact issues of [constitutional] Speech and Debate Clause privilege be decided by the presiding officer? Would it go to court? Maybe they would waive it? Those would be the kind of issues that would be very, very significant.

6. ‘You’re Not a King’

Schiff said that Trump, by not providing documents to House investigators, is behaving as if he is the state:

I think if you look at the pattern of this president’s conduct and his words, what you see is a president who identifies the state as being himself. When the president talks about people that report his wrongdoing, for example, when he describes a whistleblower as a traitor or a spy, the only way you can conceive of someone who reports wrongdoing as committing a crime against the country is if you believe you are synonymous with the country, that any report of wrongdoing against the president, the person of the president is a treasonous act.

You have the argument that subpoenas aren’t valid before the resolution. Then, with respect to subpoenas issued after the House resolution, like to [acting White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney, well, those are no good either. You’ve heard the argument ‘We have absolute immunity.’ And the court that addresses this says, ‘No, you don’t. You’re not a king.’

Philbin responded that Schiff and the other House managers were having it both ways.

“If they think they can sue [to secure documents and testimony], they have to take that step. Because the Constitution, the courts have made clear, requires incrementalism in disputes between the executive and legislative branch,” Philbin said. “So, if they think the courts can resolve that dispute, that’s the next step, they should do that and have that litigated. Then things can proceed on to a higher level of confrontation. But, to jump straight to impeachment, to the ultimate constitutional confrontation, doesn’t make sense.”

Philbin added:

They’ve decided [that] in this impeachment, they don’t want to do litigation. It’s because they had a timetable. One of the House managers admitted on the floor they had to get the president impeached before the election, they had no time for the courts, for anyone telling them what the rules were, and they had to get it done by Christmas. And that’s what they did.

Then they waited around for a month before bringing it here. That shows you what’s really behind the claims of, ‘Oh, it’s urgent, but then it’s not urgent.’ It’s urgent when it’s our timetable to get it done by Christmas, but then it’s not when we can wait for a month because we want to tell the Senate how to run things.

It’s all a political charade. That’s part of the reason, a major reason, the Senate should reject these articles of impeachment.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

Other coverage of the impeachment trial for The Daily Signal by White House correspondent Fred Lucas includes:

5 Big Points by Trump’s Lawyers as Defense Opens in Impeachment Trial

7 Big Moments in Democrats’ Final Arguments to Remove Trump

7 Highlights From Day 3 of the Trump Impeachment Trial

5 Flash Points From Impeachment Trial’s Opening Arguments

What to Know About Democrats’ 7 Impeachment Managers

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

How the House’s Handling of Impeachment Hurts the American People

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Whether the American people yet realize it or not, the House’s handling of the impeachment of President Donald Trump has inflicted serious damage on America’s constitutional system of government and threatened the very safety of our nation.

The partisan nature of this particular impeachment will end up weakening not just Trump, but the office of the presidency. Every future president—Democrat and Republican—will be second-guessing his or her decisions to avoid crossing members of Congress and being threatened with impeachment based on the flimsiest of evidence.

The latest alleged revelations from former national security adviser John Bolton don’t change the fact that last week, both lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer admitted that the House voted to impeach the president without the evidence to prove he was guilty, demanding that the Senate call witnesses so they could do more evidence gathering.

When Congress uses impeachment as a political weapon, it has the potential of stripping an enormous amount of constitutional authority from the presidency and shifting it to Congress. The House has created a precedent where future executives will feel compelled to run major decisions by Congress before carrying them out—even decisions that are solely in the president’s purview.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

The delay created while a president attempts to seek consent from Congress could cost American lives when quick, decisive actions are needed. Just think of the kind of havoc that could be wrought when such permission-seeking ends up delaying military action necessary to stop an attack on an American embassy, when it prevents counterterrorism measures required to thwart an imminent terrorist threat at home, or when it delays federal help to respond to a natural disaster threatening the lives of thousands of citizens.

The office of the president has suffered additional long-term harm when one considers that when Trump chose to invoke executive privilege to prevent his staff from testifying in the impeachment hearings, the House charged him with “obstruction of Congress.”

The long-held legal tradition of executive privilege allows a president to receive the best and frankest advice with which to make critical governing decisions, giving him and his staff the freedom to fully explore all sides of an issue.

Throughout my career, I was blessed to work in senior positions in both state and federal government, and I will say that those deliberations can be very messy—but also very effective.

To function effectively, a president needs the ability to consult confidentially with his closest advisers. Taking that privilege away severely limits a president’s ability to serve citizens, as his advisers will be deterred from providing frank advice for fear their communications will be shared with millions—including foreign powers and political adversaries—on the evening news.

If executive privilege is abused, Congress has the ability to take the president to court to challenge his claims. Yet the House failed to do that, perhaps surmising that, based on past precedent, the courts might disagree with it.

Instead, the House decided to charge the president with obstruction of Congress, despite the fact that executive privilege is a tool that many presidents have used and that the Supreme Court repeatedly has affirmed. Impeaching a president for invoking executive privilege essentially guts this important tool.

The Constitution’s Framers were very concerned that impeachment would be used as a political weapon, as is happening today. They never meant it to be the “no-confidence vote” of parliamentary systems that create turmoil by changing leadership anytime such a vote is called. Impeachment was meant for presidents who engaged in crimes so grievous that removing them from office couldn’t wait until the next election.

With this impeachment, the House has threatened our very constitutional system, effectively turning presidents into mere puppets of Congress, rejecting the idea of a separate and co-equal branch of government. In doing so, the House has damaged the unique system of checks and balances the Framers crafted to prevent any one branch of government from becoming too powerful.

The House also has made the American people the casualties in the process. The mere threat of impeachment may be all that is needed to stop future presidents from implementing policies that they know are popular with the people but unpopular with the opposition party in the House.

In the worst-case scenarios, presidents who become paralyzed in their decision-making about national security and natural disasters could end up putting Americans in harm’s way.

Only time will tell the extent of the damage that has been done.

COMMENTARY BY

Kay C. James

Kay C. James is president of The Heritage Foundation. James formerly served as director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and as Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources. She is also the founder and president of The Gloucester Institute. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

6 Scenes From Day 8 of Trump Impeachment Trial

Warrants to Spy on Trump Campaign Lacked Probable Cause, DOJ Admits

Amid Impeachment Trial, Trump Signs Major Trade Deal With Canada, Mexico

Problematic Women: Trump, the Impeachment Trial, and Teen Vogue (Again)

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

A Socialist for President?

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How is it that a communist, for all practical purposes, is winning in the Iowa caucuses at present? If there is anything that history shows repeatedly, it is that socialism, including its more violent form, communism, is an utter failure by every criterion imaginable.

And yet, as of this writing, Bernie Sanders, Democrat presidential candidate and an out-of-the-closet socialist, is leading in Iowa.

As The New York Times (1/26/20) notes: “Senator Bernie Sanders has opened up a lead in Iowa just over a week before the Democratic caucuses, consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among more moderate presidential candidates who are clustered behind him, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers.”

Bernie Sanders is what you could call a limousine liberal or a sofa socialist. One writer uses the phrase, “champagne socialist.”

That writer is Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor of history and political science at Grove City College, and a best-selling author. Many of his books focus on communism. After the Soviet Union imploded in the early 1990s, they eventually released their formerly-classified documents.

Kengor took the time to study those documents and has produced books from those studies. One of those books, Dupes, shows how liberals in the West, including America, fell for the Communists’ lies.

Recently, I interviewed Kengor (again) on my radio show to discuss an article he wrote in the American Spectator, called “Bernie’s Billionaires.” He notes that Fidel Castro was one of Sander’s models.

Bernie Sanders famously spent his honeymoon in Russia—during the heyday of the Soviet Union. Bernie claims that we have no need for billionaires. He says, “Billionaires should not exist.”

Kengor told me, if you see a bumper sticker declaring “No Billionaires,” it comes from the Bernie Sanders for President campaign.

In his article on Bernie and billionaires, Kengor wrote of one of Bernie’s heroes, “[Fidel] Castro, for the record, was much more than a millionaire. In 2006, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at $900 million and rising….And yet, all Cuban workers—from doctors to teachers, baseball players, dentists, farmers, janitors—subsisted at a mandated ‘living wage’ of $1,200 per year, while the Castro brothers and a close-knit band of apparatchiks literally owned the island.”

And Kengor adds, “Yes, American progressives and Occupy Wall Street maniacs, if you want to see a society of true 1-percenters, with an income gap that would make you cry into your Starbucks cup, go to a Marxist country. There, 99 percent of the masses make the same poverty wage, while 1 percent confiscate wealth and property. But hey, at least the serfs have ‘free’ education and health care! That’s the ridiculous retort of the American Left, including Bernie Sanders.”

Kengor notes that Sanders is no pauper—owning at least $2 million dollars’ worth of real estate in a Vermont beachfront home on the Champlain Islands (which Kengor calls “Bernie’s dacha on the Black Sea”)  and a colonial home in Burlington, Vermont and a half-million dollar row house in D. C.: “Stumping for socialism seems a pretty lucrative deal.”

And yet, many in our society like his type of message (and that of Elizabeth Warren). A Harris Poll last year found that among young people born after 1980:

  • 73 % believe that government should provide universal health care,
  • 67% believe that government should provide tuition-free college,
  • And 49 % prefer living in a socialist country.

Yipes.

Some people argue the Bible teaches socialism. It does not. It teaches charity, which is voluntary (not coercive). Socialism is a form of theft—theft by the government. Socialism stokes the flames of envy and covetousness. Socialism violates at least two of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not covet.

Gary Bauer, the head of American Values, told me in an interview for Christian television that it gets back to our education system, “The majority of students that are saying that socialism is a good thing, have not been educated in any way shape or form about what socialism is; and the reverse of that coin is they don’t know what free markets and free enterprise are, they think that it’s exploitative, that it causes poverty. When, in fact, all over the world and throughout history, if young people were just being taught reality, they would know that socialism never works.”

Historians Eugene Genovese and his wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese once published the Marxist Perspectives magazine, but then became disillusioned by Communism.  They told the National Review (2/24/1997) after the Soviet Union went kaput: “When it all collapsed, the question was, after seventy years, what do we have to show for it? . . . . tens of millions of corpses.”

I hope more Americans will learn from history and not fall for the pied pipers of socialism.

THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY: Peace to Prosperity — A Vision to Improve The Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People

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“The Trump administration’s approach to the issue of peace in the Middle East differs from that of previous US administrations in that it is based on facts on the ground as they have evolved over time. The US peace team appears to have jettisoned both the historical “blame game” and the contradictory narratives of the Palestinians and the Israelis, which have combined to frustrate all prior peace initiatives.” – The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

On January 28, 2020 President Donald J. Trump released Peace to Prosperity — A Vision to Improve The Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People. The Peace to Prosperity contains two components:

  1. A Political Framework.
  2. An Economic Framework.

According to WhiteHouse.gov/PeaceToProsperity:

This Vision is the most realistic solution to a problem that has plagued the region for far too long.

It creates a path to prosperity, security, and dignity for all involved. If the parties can agree on this framework as a basis for negotiations, the potential for both the Israelis and the Palestinians and the region is unlimited.

The Political Framework

Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve a future of peace and prosperity. A realistic two-state solution will protect Israel’s security, fulfill the aspirations of self-determination for the Palestinian people, and ensure universal and respectful access to the holy sites of Jerusalem.

This Vision would achieve mutual recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people—each with equal civil rights for all its citizens. The plan designates defensible borders for the State of Israel and does not ask Israel to compromise on the safety of its people, affording them overriding security responsibility for land west of the Jordan River. For Palestinians, the Vision delivers significant territorial expansion, allocating land roughly comparable in size to the West Bank and Gaza for establishing a Palestinian State. Transportation links would allow efficient movement between Gaza and the West Bank, as well as throughout Palestine. The plan does not call for uprooting any people, Arab or Jew, from their homes.

The Economic Framework contains 3 Parts:

  1. Unleashing Economic Potential. Peace to Prosperity will establish a new foundation for the Palestinian economy, generating rapid economic growth and job creation. This part of the plan will create a business environment that provides investors with confidence that their assets will be secure by improving property rights, the rule of law, fiscal sustainability, capital markets, and anti-corruption policies.
  2. Empowering the Palestinian People. Peace to Prosperity will unlock the vast potential of the Palestinian people by empowering them to pursue their goals and ambitions. This part of the vision will support the Palestinian people through education, workforce development,  and an improved quality of life.
  3. Enhancing Palestinian Governance. While implementing Peace to Prosperity will require significant international support, no vision for the Palestinians can be realized without the full support of the Palestinian people and their leadership.

Here is our take on President Trumps initiative:

  • Peace to Prosperity (The Plan) is historic in its breath and depth of detail.
  • The Plan provides for a Palestinian state within the state of Israel.
  • The Plan is subject to mutual negotiation on the details.
  • The Plan puts pressure on the Palestinians because the Israelis have already agreed to the plan.
  • The Plan requires the Palestinians to reject terrorism in all of its forms.
  • The Plan provides for a Jewish capital (Jerusalem) and a Palestinian capital (East Jerusalem).
  • The Plan is embraced by multiple Arab nation states.
  • The Plan provides incentives for both sides to win.
  • The Plan ends the false narrative that there is any “occupied territories” in Israel.
  • The Plan must be implement in 4 years. This would mean that on January 28, 2024 the agreement must be finalized.

The unanswered questions are:

  • Will the Palestinian leadership negotiate in good faith or will they continue down a path that has lead to death and destruction?
  • Will key Arab nations support the plan?
  • Will the European Union support the plan?
  • Will Russia and China support the plan?
  • What will happen if agreement is not reached in 4 years?

One of the keys to this plan is getting the details to the Palestinian people. It is imperative to bypass the PLO, HAMAS and the state run media to address the Palestinian people directly.

CLICK HERE TO READ: Peace to Prosperity — A Vision to Improve The Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People

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Why Trump Says Give Middle East Peace a Chance

Trump Offers Middle East Peace Deal: ‘We Have an Obligation to Humanity to Get It Done’

Abbas refuses Trump’s call, says US President is “a dog, son of a b**ch, a violent man”

Trump peace plan offers “Palestinians” a state with increased territory and $50 billion

Former Israeli Ambassador to US: Every time “Palestinians” are offered peace, they say “No”

Trump Peace Plan Gives Israel Settlements, Jordan Valley and Jerusalem

RELATED VIDEO: “Palestinians,” enraged at Trump’s peace plan, burn photo of Trump and Netanyahu.

https://twitter.com/Farberyanki/status/1222223063179235329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1222223063179235329&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jihadwatch.org%2F2020%2F01%2Fvideo-palestinians-enraged-at-trumps-peace-plan-burn-photo-of-trump-and-netanyahu

Inequality, Real and Imagined

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Alessandra Nucci: The Vatican’s response to poverty fails to acknowledge real-world examples of what has worked and, quite clearly, does not work.

Pope Francis’s headline-grabbing words last year – “inequality is disastrous for the future of humanity” – reflected the long doctrinal dialectic following Vatican Council II.  At the Council, the focus of social justice increasingly shifted from the tenets of Rerum Novarum – which recognized “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses,” but opposed State control of wealth. Pope Leo’s earlier encyclical specified that to give to the indigent “is a duty not of justice (except in extreme cases) but of Christian charity.” The Council, by contrast, focused on guaranteeing equality and, therefore, emphasizing wealth distribution over wealth creation.

Yet there is little correlation between poverty rates and inequality. Experience has shown that reducing economic inequality does not of itself lead to reducing poverty. On the contrary, since 2008 the worldwide recession has reduced inequality by reducing the wealth in the hands of the rich, without benefiting the poor.

This was confirmed in 2018 by a study conducted in the UK (“Living standards, poverty, and inequality”), which showed that inequalities were few in the poorer areas of Britain, while in places where the poor are better off there are also greater inequalities.

In the past fifty years, with the conviction that some sort of panacea lies in a sagacious redistribution of “resources,” about $1.1 trillion in development aid has been transferred from wealthy countries to Africa. Has this bettered the life of Africans? No, say many, among whom author Dambisa Moyo, who in her book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, points to the well-being achieved by African countries which have refused the aid. Meanwhile, the ones that have become addicted to aid have remained trapped in the vicious circle of debt, corruption, market manipulation, continued poverty, and the need for more aid.

That poverty is not an incurable malady is demonstrated by a counterexample: the development of formerly poor countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and parts of India – to say nothing of the transformation of Ireland and of Poland.

The success of Nobel Prize recipient Mohammed Yunus’s microcredit programs was born of his refusal to take the easy way out by distributing the tiny sums of money required to help the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. His method of not giving, but lending out the needed pennies and requiring prompt repayment of micro-interest, is geared to training the bank’s clients – mostly women – to run small businesses.  The virtues involved are straight out of the Parable of the Talents (Mt. 25:14-30): not coercion but self-reliance, thrift, honesty, cooperation, working to meet the needs of others.

As to the capitalist society par excellence, in 2018 the United States stood accused before the U.N. Human Rights Commission of doing “very little about the fact that 40 million of its citizens live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty and 5.3 million in third-world conditions of absolute poverty” despite being “the world’s wealthiest nation.”

Yet U.S. poverty thresholds are much higher than in most of the rest of the world: in 2019, a family of four was considered poor with an income of $25,750 (the individual threshold is $12,140). And this does not take into account non-monetary income, such as public housing, Medicaid or food stamps; nor does it consider people’s savings or property.

Research shows that 42 percent of “the poor” own the house they live in, with an average of three bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, and a garage. Eighty percent have air conditioning and cable or satellite television; three-fourths own at least one car or pick-up. Even families ranked “extremely poor” typically own a computer, a DVD, and a mobile phone. Over half of poor families with children have videogame consoles such as Xbox or PlayStation.

Moreover, the consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is practically the same for the children of poor families as for those belonging to middle-class families. On average, even children of “poor” U.S. families grow to be taller and sturdier than the GIs who landed in Normandy.  Despite whatever social, educational, and spiritual problems that may exist in a developed nation like the United States, inequality is hardly the outrage bodies like the U.N. Human Rights Commission apparently would like them to be.

And by comparison, China today, while having converted to capitalism (despite everything under the strict control of the Communist Party), is celebrated for its enormous macroeconomic growth. There are, however, no consistent estimates of the extent to which people have benefited from this (I quote the celebrated and far from conservative French economist Thomas Piketty). Hence, attempts at tracing inequalities in China are highly unreliable.

What we know is that there exists a level of non-income in China relating to the reportedly millions of slave laborers in the Laogai (i.e., work camps) and Uighur labor camps scattered across the country. Since its admission to the WTO in 2000, little has been done to force China to close down these camps. On the contrary, it has actually begun to propagandize its “re-education” programs at the U.N.

In a globalized world, the existence of slave labor anywhere is not only a moral disgrace for the global bodies that do nothing to stop it, it is also a major factor depressing working-class salaries across the rest of the world.

And this is to say nothing of recent revelations about the brainwashing, “re-education,” and outright repression of religious groups – Muslim, Christians, and even traditional Chinese Buddhists and Hindus.

Pope Francis, like the international organizations dedicated to responding to such things, is right to want to remedy poverty, inequality, and even outright exploitation wherever they may exist. But to solve a problem means, first of all, to understand it properly – and to look to the real-world examples of what has worked and what, quite clearly, does not.

COLUMN BY

Alessandra Nucci

Alessandra Nucci is an Italian-American writer and freelance journalist. She won the Golden Florin Award in Florence, Italy, for her book on antagonistic feminism, La donna a una dimensione: Femminismo antagonista ed egemonia culturale.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Gallop Poll: American’s View of America Improves under Trump

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Gallop released a new poll that shows the views of Americans is improving. The poll states:

Average satisfaction across 27 issues is higher than when Trump took office

Gallop found:

President Donald Trump’s upbeat view of the nation’s economy, military strength, economic opportunity and overall quality of life will likely resonate with Americans when he delivers his State of the Union address to Congress next week. Most Americans say they are satisfied with each of these aspects of the country as 2020 begins. The majority also feel positively about the positions of women and gays in society.

Issues on Which Americans Are Broadly Satisfied at the Start of 2020

Ranked by “Net satisfied” (% satisfied minus % dissatisfied)
Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfied
% % pct. pts.
The overall quality of life 84 16 68
The nation’s military strength and preparedness 81 13 68
The opportunity for a person to get ahead by working hard 72 27 45
The nation’s security from terrorism 68 27 41
The state of the nation’s economy 68 29 39
The position of women in the nation 63 36 27
The influence of organized religion 59 38 21
The acceptance of gays and lesbians in the nation 56 40 16
GALLUP, JAN. 2-15, 2020

Issues where Americans are dissatisfied include:

  • The level of immigration into the country today
  • The amount Americans pay in federal taxes
  • The size and power of the federal government
  • The nation’s policies regarding the abortion issue
  • The quality of public education in the nation
  • The moral and ethical climate

Gallop reports:

Changes Since Trump Took Office

As Trump enters his re-election year, Americans are more positive on eight key issues than they were just before he took office in January 2017.

  • Gallup records double-digit increases in public satisfaction with the nation’s economy, security from terrorism, military strength and the state of race relations.
  • Satisfaction is also up by between six and nine points on crime, the position of blacks and other racial minorities, the distribution of income and wealth, and the opportunity for a person to get ahead through hard work.

Over the same period, Americans have grown slightly less satisfied on three issues: abortion (down 7 points), the level of immigration (-6) and the environment (-6).

Read the full Gallop report here.

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