Category: Senate

Wealthy Celebrities Flock to Georgia to Help Elect Two Left-Wing Democrats

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If you believe the polls, it’s neck-and-neck in the two Senate runoff elections next week in Georgia. Republican Sen. David Perdue appears to be holding his own against Joel Osoff while we are told that Raphael Warnock (D-Racist) is edging ahead of Kelly Loeffler. Of course, the polls are garbage and nobody trusts them, and Democrats are probably going to steal the thing with truckloads of phony mail-in ballots anyway.

Meanwhile, Hollywood is going all-in to turn Georgia blue:

Georgia is ground zero in the battle for the balance of power in Washington, DC, as control of the U.S. Senate now hinges on the outcome of the two Senate runoff races in the Peach State. With the Senate majority leadership within his reach, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently declared, “Now we take Georgia, and then we change America.”
More than 50 Hollywood celebrities have tried to make that a reality for Schumer, mobilizing to raise money and pump up enthusiasm for Democrat challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Using their star power to attract donor dollars, they have put their Hollywood imprint on the Georgia races in the hopes of flipping the Senate on January 5.
The vast majority of these celebrities have never lived in Georgia and have no personal connection to the state — except for the TV or movie roles that require them to occasionally film there. As Breitbart News recently reported, Ossoff raised nearly six times more in California than he did in Georgia. . . .

Call me crazy, but I’m not sure Amy Schumer’s endorsement is going to move the needle much with swing voters in Georgia.




 

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

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What has happened to my native state? Last night on The Other Podcast with John Hoge, I discussed some of the numbers from the presidential vote in Georgia where, we are told, Joe Biden won by about 14,000 votes. How could this happen? Well, you can start by comparing this year’s election to 2016, when Trump beat Clinton in Georgia 50.4% to 45.4% with a margin of 211,141 votes. Trump increased his vote total from about 2.1 million votes in 2016 to nearly 2.5 million in 2020, an almost 18% increase. However, Biden’s total in 2020 was nearly 32% more than Hillary got four years ago. The Democratic gain was concentrated in a handful of counties; in Fulton County (Atlanta) for example, Biden got about 84,000 votes more than Clinton. Biden’s margin of nearly a quarter-million votes in Fulton County — 381,144 to Trump’s 137,240 — was sufficient to account entirely for his victory; that is to say, Trump won the state except for Atlanta. We shall see if that result withstands a recount, but meanwhile there’s this . . .

Georgia Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler unleashed an onslaught this week against Rev. Raphael Warnock, trying to portray her Democratic opponent and the 15-year leader of Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic church in Atlanta as an anti-police Marxist who will destroy America.
Warnock has described the arc of his life from the Savannah projects to Dr. King’s pulpit in Atlanta, and recently preempted personal attacks in an ad poking fun at negative campaigning. But the Loeffler campaign hopes to undercut the Democratic candidate’s image before the runoff election on January 5, one of two that are expected to determine which party controls the Senate.
Loeffler said on Wednesday that if she and Georgia Republican Sen. David Perdue win, they will “save the country.”
Loeffler and Perdue have labeled their campaigns against Warnock and Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff as a grand fight between the United States and socialism . . .

The fact that both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats are up for election, and that both are headed to a runoff, needs to be explained. Last December, former Sen. Johnny Isaacson resigned because of his health, and Gov. Brian Kemp appointed Loeffler to finish Isaacson’s term, with a special election this year to fill the seat. For some reason that I don’t understand, this special election took the form of a “jungle primary,” with multiple candidates from every party running on the same ballot. Of course, the issue quickly boiled down to (a) whether Loeffler could fend off Republican rival Rep. Doug Collins, and (b) which of several candidates would become the Democratic opponent. Loeffler beat Collins 26%-20% — that is to say, the two leading Republicans got a combined 46% of the “jungle primary” vote — and Warnock became the Democratic nominee with 32.9%, which is nearly two-thirds of the total Democratic vote.

Meanwhile, in the regular Senate election, incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue seemed to be cruising to victory on Election Night against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff until — with the addition of the same suspicious late votes that allegedly tipped the state to Biden — Perdue’s total was reduced to a few thousand less than the majority needed to avoid a runoff. As with the Biden vote, this was entirely explained by the results in Fulton County, where Ossoff ran up a 220,000-vote margin. That is why both Senate races are now headed to a runoff, with Republicans needing to win both seats if Mitch McConnell is to retain GOP control in the Senate. Almost certainly, the two Georgia seats will go the same way; it is unlikely that voters would split tickets, especially with millions of out-of-state dollars flooding in to “nationalize” this election. And so if one of the Democrats loses, probably both of them will lose.

This is why Raphael Warnock has a target on his back:

Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democrat candidate for Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff race, said in a speech in 2016 that “America needs to repent for its worship of whiteness.”
“If it is true that a man who has dominated the news and poisoned the discussion for months needs to repent, then it is doubly true that a nation that can produce such a man and make his vitriol go viral needs to repent,” Warnock said in an address at Atlanta’s Candler School of Theology right before the 2016 presidential election.
“No matter what happens next month, more than a third of the nation that would go along with this is reason to be afraid,” Warnock emphasized. “America needs to repent for its worship of whiteness on full display.” . . .
Warnock’s mentor, Dr. James Cone, fought against “satanic whiteness” and called for the “destruction of everything white” in society.

Read all of that, and when you’re done, next read about Warnock’s radical mentor, a proponent of Marxist “black liberation theology.”



 

Nancy Pelosi Blocks $1.8 Trillion #Coronavirus Bill. Why? Abortion!

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This is absolutely stunning: An emergency stimulus bill, intended to prevent mass bankruptcies caused by quarantine measures necessary to fight the Chinese virus, has been blocked by House Democrats, because it does not include a bailout for Planned Parenthood. Quite understandably, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is livid:

“The American people are watching this spectacle,” McConnell said. “I’m told the futures market is down 5%. I’m also told that that’s when trading stops. So the notion that we have time to play games here with the American economy and the American people is utterly absurd.”

Read the whole thing, or watch the video:




 

Trump Acquitted, Romney Guilty

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Why the hell did any Republican ever vote for Mitt Romney? He is to the GOP what Carlo Rizzi was to the Corleone family. And after the Mormon rat sold out on the impeachment vote, I find myself feeling like Don Vito: “I never knew, until this day, that it was Barzini all along.”

Trump got acquitted on both counts in the Senate, an outcome that was never really in doubt, so that Nancy Pelosi and her House Democrat colleagues have wasted all this time for exactly nothing. Trump emerges triumphant — more popular than ever — and as for Mitt Romney . . .

According to web archives, top Mitt Romney adviser Joseph Cofer Black, who publicly goes by “Cofer Black,” joined Burisma’s board of directors while Hunter Biden was also serving on the board.
According to The New Yorker, Hunter joined Burisma’s board in April of 2014 and remained on it until he declined to renew his position this past May. Meanwhile, according to Burisma’s website, Black was appointed in February of 2017 and continues to serve on its board. The timelines would indicate that Black and Biden worked together at Burisma, and indeed, web archives from late 2017 show Black and Biden listed simultaneously on the board.
Black joined the CIA in 1974 and eventually climbed the ranks to become director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, President George W. Bush appointed him ambassador at large and coordinator for counterterrorism. He later worked at Blackwater as a vice chairman before joining Romney’s campaign as a “special adviser” on Romney’s Foreign Policy and National Security Advisory Team in October of 2011. In 2017, Black joined the board of Burisma. . . .

Up to his eyeballs in the Deep State coup machine, you see.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

Senate Votes 51-49 Against Witnesses; Impeachment Circus Will End Wednesday

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Our long national nightmare will soon be over:

Senators defeated a last-ditch effort by Democrats to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump Friday evening, then approved a final schedule that will force a vote Wednesday on Mr. Trump’s fate.
That means the president will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday while still under the cloud of impeachment, but will almost certainly be acquitted the next day.
In a series of votes, Republicans blocked Sen. Charles E. Schumer’s attempt to get former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton to testify. The GOP also shot down an attempt by Democrats to outsource all witness decisions to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has been presiding over the trial but not playing an active role in decision.
After defeating those motions, the Senate adopted its final schedule on a 53-47 vote.
Under the new rules, the chamber has adjourned until Monday, when it will return to hear final arguments from the House Democrats prosecuting the case, and from the president’s defense team.
The trial will then take a break Tuesday, giving Mr. Trump space to deliver his speech from the House chamber that night. Then the trial will reconvene Wednesday at 4 p.m., when a final vote on both articles of impeachment will occur.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.) There was never really any chance that Trump would be removed from office, which would take 67 senators voting to convict. Nancy Pelosi knew that when she gave Adam Schiff the green light to commence this partisan witch-hunt in September. From the beginning, Schiff’s investigation was compromised by the fact alleged “whistleblower,” Eric Ciaramella, had no direct knowledge of the July 25 phone call at the center of the Ukraine (non-)scandal. Ciaramella is a Deep State protégé of John Brennan, and a known Biden supporter, while Ciaramella’s former NSC colleague Sean Misko, “joined Schiff’s committee staff in August, the same month the whistleblower submitted his complaint.” Whatever your opinion of Trump’s Ukraine policy, the Schiff investigation looked like a subversive plot against the president organized by a cabal of Democrat operatives.

Republican senators recognized this; the real question was whether such deliberate sabotage of the administration was acceptable. And thanks to “Cocaine Mitch,” the answer is, hell no. Exit quote:

“You know what I believe about all of this? It was a bunch of partisan bullshit in the House. It continued in the Senate. It’s gonna end Wednesday, the president’s gonna get acquitted, this is all gonna blow up in their face.”

You tell ’em, Lindsey.




 

Collins Announces ‘Yes,’ Alexander ‘No’ on Calling Impeachment Witnesses: TIE?

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Last night, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced that she would vote to open the impeachment trial to more witnesses and documents, while Sen Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said he would vote against more witnesses. Mitt Romney, worthless backstabber that he is, says he wants John Bolton to testify. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is probably a “yes.” If the known whip count stays the same — that is, if there are no surprise “yes” votes — then the result would be a 50-50 tie, and the motion for new witnesses would fail, unless Chief Justice John Roberts intervened to cast a “yes” vote, which would be controversial.

This is Alexander’s explanation for his “no” vote:

“I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense. …The Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.
“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did. I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”

Alexander cedes two points: First that the House Democrats have proven their case, and second that Trump’s conduct was “inappropriate,” while at the same time asserting that what has been proven falls short of the “high bar for an impeachable offense.” This is shrewd, and probably reflects what a lot of independent voters think about the case, that the attempt to influence Ukraine was “inappropriate” (i.e., it doesn’t look good), but the Democrats went too far with their rush to impeachment.

In other words, you can disapprove of what Trump did without believing that he needs to be immediately removed from office for it. With the election barely nine months away, let the people decide. The fact that the Democrats rushed to impeach was essentially a vote of “no confidence” in their field of presidential candidates. Meanwhile . . .

Trump’s approval ratings have gone up since the impeachment began, and this despite (or perhaps because of) liberal media bias:

Jake Tapper doesn’t want you to know the name of the so-called “whistleblower” who caused the impeachment drama. Of course, the identity of Eric Ciaramella was never much of a secret — lots of people in D.C. knew that the former National Security Council staffer was the reputed source for California Rep. Adam Schiff’s investigation of President Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ciaramella’s name has been in many news stories in recent months: “Report: Anti-Trump Complainant Eric Ciaramella Worked With Brennan, Biden, and DNC Operative Chalupa” (American Greatness, Oct. 30, 2019) and “Open Society Emails Show Anti-Trump CIA ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Was Updated on George Soros’s Personal Ukraine Activities” (Gateway Pundit, Nov. 17, 2019), to cite just a couple. But CNN viewers have never heard Ciaramella identified, and Jake Tapper evidently wants to prevent anyone else from reporting this fact, either.
Wednesday afternoon, Tapper tweeted, “A Trump campaign official just RTed a tweet containing the name of the alleged whistleblower.” Tapper’s third-grade tattletale behavior was in response to Trump campaign deputy communications director Matt Wolking retweeting investigative journalist Paul Sperry, with a photo showing Ciaramella meeting with Ukrainian officials in 2015.
Why doesn’t Tapper want anyone to see that photo? . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Report: Impeachment Could End Friday

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The long, sad circus is coming to its inevitable conclusion:

A Democratic push to force Republicans to accept witnesses at Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate appeared to be flagging on Wednesday, raising the possibility the president could be acquitted as early as Friday.
As senators spent the day posing questions to both the Trump legal team and the Democratic managers of the trial, the White House objected to the planned publication of a book by former national security adviser John Bolton in which he is said to have depicted Trump as playing a central role in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden.
U.S. Senator John Barrasso, the No. 3 Republican in seniority, said it was possible the trial could end on Friday without Democrats achieving their goal of having witnesses called to testify.
“The momentum is clearly in the direction of moving to final judgment on Friday. That vote will be Friday. We still have a couple members who said they want to listen to the answers to questions, but that’s where the momentum is,” Barrasso said.
Asked when on Friday the vote might take place to settle the debate over witnesses and move to either acquit or convict Trump, Barrasso said probably Friday afternoon or late that day.
Other Republican senators were predicting a similar outcome in conversations with reporters during breaks in the trial on Wednesday.

Last week, Democrats endlessly repeated what we had already heard in House hearings last year. The president’s defense team took over this week, and utterly destroyed the Democrats’ case. If this were a court trial, the judge would order a directed verdict of acquittal. As it is, Republican senators have no incentive to defect, and it’s likely that some Democrats will join the vote for acquittal, whenever that may actually occur.

Meanwhile, the idea that having John Bolton as a witness would be valuable took a big hit Wednesday, when video surfaced of House impeachment manager Adam Schiff twice — on MSNBC in 2018 and on CNN in 2005 — casting aspersions on Bolton’s integrity and honesty:

 

 

Fox News has identified clips of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., now the lead House impeachment manager, in which he says Bolton had a distinct “lack of credibility” and was prone to “conspiracy theories.” This week, Schiff said Bolton needed to testify in the impeachment trial as an important and believable witness.
“This is someone who’s likely to exaggerate the dangerous impulses of the president toward belligerence, his proclivity to act without thinking, and his love of conspiracy theories,” Schiff told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on March 22, 2018, when Trump named Bolton national security adviser.
“And I’ll, you know, just add one data point to what you were talking about earlier, John Bolton once suggested on Fox News that the Russian hack of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] was a false flag operation that had been conducted by the Obama administration,” he said. “So, you add that kind of thinking to [former U.S. attorney] Joe diGenova and you have another big dose of unreality in the White House.”
Schiff made similar arguments back in May 2005, saying in an interview with CNN’s “Crossfire” that Bolton was “more focused on the next job than doing well at the last job” when he was up for nomination as ambassador to the United Nations under then-President George W. Bush.
“And particularly given the history, where we’ve had the politicizing of intelligence over WMD [weapons of mass destruction], why we would pick someone who the very same issue has been raised repeatedly, and that is John Bolton’s politicization of the intelligence he got on Cuba and other issues, why we would want someone with that lack of credibility, I can’t understand,” Schiff had said.

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.)


 

Impeachment Circus Update

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The Trial of the Century began Tuesday with the House Democrats arguing for subpoenas and whatnot, arguments that mainly rehashed the weeks of testimony in Adam Schiff’s House committee. Nothing new was learned, no “bombshells” were dropped, and I don’t think anyone who nodded off for a nap (as I did) missed much.

There is only so much tedium we can tolerate. Politics junkies and the D.C. press corps may enjoy The Trial of the Century, but the bottom line has not changed: Trump committed no high crimes or misdemeanors, and Mitch McConnell will bring this farce to conclusion with an acquittal.

What we are watching is the Democrats engaging in a performance staged to provide sound bites for their propagandists in the media. Like the phony “debate” staged on CNN last week, this cable-TV charade is simply part of the Democrats’ 2020 presidential campaign. Insofar as anything important happened Tuesday, Tyler O’Neill suggests it was in Jay Sekulow’s opening argument in defense of Trump:

During his opening remarks in the Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow quoted Democrats’ own words against them. He condemned the House Democrats’ rush to impeach Trump, adding an article of impeachment for “Obstruction of Congress” rather than litigating a matter of executive privilege in court. He quoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), each of whom defended Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder when he was held in contempt of Congress in 2012.
“Mr. Schiff did say the courts don’t really have a role in this. Executive privilege? Why would that matter? It matters because it’s based in the Constitution of the United States,” Sekulow said. “The president’s opponents in their rush to impeach have refused to wait for judicial review.”

Speaking of Tyler O’Neill, he’s just published a book entitled Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which deserves widespread attention. Years ago, when I was smeared by the SPLC, few conservatives understood how dangerous and dishonest the SPLC had become, but as the scope of their smears widened — targeting traditional-values organizations like the Family Research Council as “hate groups” — public awareness of the SPLC’s malice began to spread. The problem is not that there are no genuinely dangerous hate-mongers out there, but rather that the SPLC’s political agenda (and their endless fundraising drives) required them to expand the definition of “hate group” until it meant simply: People who disagree with liberals.

If you think about it, that’s basically the Democrats’ argument for impeachment: Disagreeing with liberals is a crime, and Trump is guilty!