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August 2022

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI Twice Interfered in the 2020 Election to Sabotage Trump. Now What? The evidence is amassed and verified—the only unknown is what Republicans will do next. By Julie Kelly

By on August 2nd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/01/the-fbi-twice-interfered-in-the-2020-election-to-sabotage-trump-now-what/

It could be the whopper of the year.

“I can tell you that in every case we follow the facts and the evidence and the law and we do so without regard to politics or ideology,” Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, solemnly assured the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing last week.

Olsen was responding to a question by U.S. Representative Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) about the decision to arrest several men for supposedly conspiring to abduct and assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. “The alleged Whitmer plot was announced on October 7, 2020 within a month of the U.S. presidential election,” Bishop asked Olsen. “How come that [was the] timing for the FBI’s announcement of this plot?”

Olsen refused to explain why, opting instead to commit borderline perjury by insisting the Justice Department turns a blind eye to politics—all evidence accumulated over the past six years to the contrary.

But now that two men have been acquitted after defense attorneys convinced a Michigan jury in April that the FBI entrapped their clients—the jury deadlocked on two other defendants who face a new trial next week—Bishop’s question demands an answer. And it won’t come from a dangerously-weaponized Justice Department focused almost entirely on prosecuting Americans who protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6, 2021 and with its sights now trained on indicting Donald Trump.

Despite Olsen’s stonewalling, the answer to Bishop’s question is in plain sight. Just as it did with phony claims of Russian election collusion in 2016, the FBI fabricated a scandal in 2020 aimed at sabotaging Trump right before a national election.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Asia Times’ “China Center” newsletter: The Pelosi visit and the Chinese property market: David Goldman

By on August 2nd, 2022

https://asiatimes.com/

The Biden Administration’s policy signaling on China has been confused and contradictory from the inception of the Administration, and the confusion around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rumored visit to Taiwan suggests that Biden’s foreign policy team blundered its way into a prospective crisis. At China Center’s deadline, Pelosi was en route to Asia, without confirmation or denial of a stop in Taiwan.

The seriousness of the present situation cannot be emphasized enough. Remnin University Professor Jin Canrong, one of the Chinese analysts most closely followed by Biden’s national security team, said Aug. 1 in an interview with the “Observer” (guancha.cn) website: “It can be said that in our offshore waters, whether in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, our military has advantages. Our ballistic missiles can cover the entire South China Sea, the air force can basically cover the entire South China Sea, and the navy has certain advantages over several US fleets. In addition, we have obvious advantages given our geographic position in electronic countermeasures and reconnaissance systems. If the US really wants to create friction here, it won’t be cheap.”

In off-record discussions in Washington, several US former top foreign policy officials expressed doubt that Pelosi planned a trip to Taiwan without consulting the White House. How the visit was first mooted suggests an amateurish attempt at plausible deniability. Pelosi did not announce a visit to Taiwan, and no American media outlet has confirmed such plans. Instead, the first mention of a possible visit came from the London Financial Times July 18, citing six separate sources. That is not eavesdropping at a hotel lobby bar, but a deliberate leak. The newspaper also said that the Administration was divided over whether Pelosi should visit Taiwan.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Straits A Chinese military response to her visit will signal a dangerous new era.

By on August 2nd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-pelosis-taiwan-straits-taipei-visit-china-beijing-xi-jinping-white-house-joe-biden-11659391114?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Nancy Pelosi seems determined to visit Taiwan on her Asian trip this week, and Beijing is promising an unspecified military response if she does. We hope the White House is ready for all contingencies, but the best response to China’s growing threats would be at long last to take the defense of Taiwan seriously.

A largely symbolic visit by the Speaker of the House isn’t a good reason to trigger a U.S.-China showdown. But China has raised its threats even beyond its usual bluster, and President Biden didn’t help by saying in public recently that the Pentagon thinks it is the wrong time for her visit. This encouraged Beijing’s leaders to think they could stop Mrs. Pelosi if they were even more obstreperous, which is what they have become.

At this point Mrs. Pelosi almost has to visit lest the U.S. appear to be backing down amid China’s threats. That sign of weakness would encourage more Beijing brinkmanship, and it would echo throughout the region, especially with our allies in Japan and Taiwan.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

In Paul Krugman’s Upper West Side Bubble, All Is Well

By on August 2nd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/02/in-paul-krugmans-upper-west-side-bubble-all-is-well/

After Richard Nixon’s landslide victory over leftist George McGovern in 1972, New York Times movie critic Pauline Kael supposedly said: “How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him.”

This weekend, current New York Times columnist Paul Krugman outdid Kael in the utterly-clueless-liberal-bubble department.

On CNN Sunday, Krugman said that the big problem with the economy today is that media are unfairly writing negative stories about it. “I think that what’s happening now is that there’s been a kind of a negativity bias in coverage,” he said.

Then Krugman went full Kael, telling CNN’s Brian Stelter, “if you ask people, ‘How are you doing?’ they are pretty — they’re pretty upbeat … if you ask people, ‘How’s your financial situation?’ it’s pretty favorable.”

Really? What people?

The folks who attend dinner parties with Krugman in New York’s Upper West Side, for whom inflation is a petty annoyance, if they notice it at all? Are those the people Krugman’s been talking to?

If he talked to families struggling to make ends meet, or find baby formula, or pay their rent, he’d get a far different response than “pretty upbeat.” Because out here in the real world, they’ve watched things go from bad to worse.

If Krugman can’t bring himself to talk to the unwashed masses, at least he could look at recent poll data.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A DECLARATION OF DISSOLUTION: WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT FIRES THE STARTING SHOT

By on August 2nd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/01/a-declaration-of-dissolution-wisconsin-supreme-court-fires-the-starting-gun/

“If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful, and their results are illegitimate.” — Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, writing for the Wisconsin Supreme Court majority in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission

A court of law has finally confirmed it: The 2020 election was “illegitimate.” And all the demands for sufficient evidence of voter fraud to reverse the outcome were a red herring.

The truly dispositive factor, as stated by a Republican Wisconsin state legislator in a March hearing and affirmed in the opinion: “If a vote is cast in an illegal process, it’s an illegal vote!”

The reasons for legislatively enacted absentee ballot protections are clear. Justice Bradley quotes the Wisconsin Legislature’s rationale: “(P)revent the potential for fraud or abuse … overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election … undue influence on an absent elector … or other similar abuses.”

And that’s exactly what unlawfully relaxed provisions occasioned in Wisconsin:

Nearly 3,600 trips by 138 “mules” to drop boxes to traffic 137,551 votes. (Trump lost the state by about 20,000.)
Illegal assistance with absentee ballots by nursing home staff to residents, some with dementia.
“Zuckerbucks” exploiting these changes to “purchase Joe Biden an additional 65,222 votes, without which Donald Trump would have won the state by 44,540 votes.”

But again, per Wisconsin’s Supremes, Donald Trump didn’t have to prove the existence or extent of fraud, only deviation from legislative schemes. Because – nota bene! – the votes’ unlawful nature is the proof.

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