Indicting former President Donald Trump could lead to the permanent destruction of the United States justice system

Indicting former President Donald Trump could lead to the permanent destruction of the United States justice system. By Matt Margolis, summarizing Tucker Carlson.

Although Carlson acknowledged that former presidents could be indicted if they have committed a crime, the undeniable fact is that Trump is the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, and the abuse of the justice system by partisan prosecutors to take out a political opponent would be unprecedented and dangerous.

In fact, as Carlson pointed out, Alvin Bragg ran for district attorney on the promise that he would indict Trump. He has spent years trying to find a way to pin several various crimes on him, and he’s landed on the so-called “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels — a payment the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has already said isn’t even a campaign finance violation.

“The whole thing doesn’t make any sense at all on a legal level,” Carlson observed. “On a political level, it does because Trump is running for president.”

So we have a partisan Soros-backed prosecutor who promised to indict Trump and is potentially going to indict him over something that has long been deemed not a crime.

“If the Democratic Party is allowed to do this, allowed to crush the presidential front-runner, the main threat to their power, with a bogus criminal case, where does that leave us? We’re done because that precedent will live forever and voters will never again determine the outcome of a presidential election. It’s remarkable when you think about it,” Carlson said. “What happens if they get away with this? No one seems to be thinking this through. Everyone’s all spun up, but what happens if they get away with this? ”

Carlson continued, “If they use the Justice Department in full view of everyone to settle a political score and to keep the White House, just to take a guy out of the race who seems to be doing fairly well, we’ll destroy the justice system and that’s not a small thing. A functioning justice system has kept this country peaceful for hundreds of years. The purpose of a justice system is to administer justice so that citizens don’t have to do it themselves. You outsource that duty to the government. But what happens when you take that away, when there is no justice system?”

“What happens when the Department of Justice decides that its goal is not justice but protecting the ruling class at all costs?” Carlson asked. “Think about that. People are still going to demand justice. The desire for justice is an inherent human desire. We are born with it. But if there’s no neutral place to do it, some people will decide they’re going to have to do it themselves. Now, we don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, but we can say for certain it’s going to be really ugly.”

The system of government in the US is on the verge of a major change, from which it will be hard to recover. The rest of the west may follow.

Former president is expected to be indicted Wednesday and Secret Service will make plans for his surrender and appearance in New York court next week

Former president is expected to be indicted Wednesday and Secret Service will make plans for his surrender and appearance in New York court next week. By Shawn Cohen for the Daily Mail.

Donald Trump will likely be indicted on Wednesday but won’t appear before a judge in New York until next week, DailyMail.com has learned.

‘There will be no arraignment this week,’ a source familiar with the proceedings told DailyMail.com exclusively on Tuesday.

The former president, who is currently in Florida, is expected to be formally charged tomorrow, after which the Manhattan District Attorney’s office will reach out to Trump and his Secret Service detail to make arrangements for his surrender, according to the insider.

He will then fly to New York where he will be arraigned, finger printed, and pose for his mug shot.

Donald Trump, Regime Foe

Donald Trump, Regime Foe. By Roger Kimball.

Almost everyone outside the most fetid fever swamps of anti-Trump mania thinks that the indictment, if it happens, is a patently political move and a gross violation of Trump’s due process rights. …

Section nine of Article I of the Constitution says that “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Bills of attainder were used and abused by the English crown to target specific people or groups of which it disapproved. If a person was “attainted,” his civil rights were forfeit. He became a pariah. His property could be seized, and he could face imprisonment or execution.

We don’t acknowledge that we promulgate bills of attainder in this country, but that is essentially the judgment that has been pronounced against Donald Trump. It was the aim of Robert Mueller’s darkly farcical investigation, the purpose of Trump’s two impeachments, and the aim of the kangaroo court known as the House’s January 6 Select Committee, Liz Cheney (D-Georgetown) presiding. Her work there, she said, was to make sure that Donald Trump never got near the Oval Office again. …

Donald Trump has been singled out, he has been attainted, by the ruling elites of this country.

As Michael Anton pointed out last summer, “The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again.”

What will the deep state do to prevent Trump from winning? Anton sketches several possibilities from having Trump declared ineligible because he allegedly sparked an “insurrection” on January 6, 2021 to simple cheating at the ballot box. Then there is Plan F.

What happens then? Well, in the words of the ‘Transition Integrity Project,’ a Soros-network-linked collection of regime hacks who in 2020 gamed out their strategy for preventing a Trump second term, the contest would become ‘a street fight, not a legal battle.’ Again, their words, not mine. But allow me to translate: The 2020 summer riots, but orders of magnitude larger, not to be called off until their people are secure in the White House.

I think that is eminently possible. And while I would rue the day it happened, I also believe that groveling and capitulating because you are intimidated by the possibility would be even worse.

Ruling class v. the people?

Is the medium term future for the West a relapse into a ruling class living high on the hog while the mass of deplorables are relatively poor and have limited prospects? Has democracy failed?

Biden’s Sinister Plan to Rig the 2024 Election for Democrats

Biden’s Sinister Plan to Rig the 2024 Election for Democrats. By Matt Margolis.

Roughly two years ago, President Biden issued an executive order that went relatively unnoticed and has been mostly forgotten by now, but which endangers the integrity of our elections.

Executive Order 14019 instructs federal agencies, some of which are unrelated to election administration, to collaborate with external private groups to “promote voter registration and voter participation.”

As innocuous as this sounds on its face, the White House is emulating billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to influence the 2020 election and turning it into a publicly-funded operation. That’s right: who needs Zuckerbucks when taxpayers like you can fund Democrat voter outreach? …

Naturally, the Biden administration has been deliberately vague about the specifics of how government agencies will collaborate with these private groups to engage voters. But the 2024 election is fast approaching, and the White House has quietly disclosed some of the details of how it will repurpose government agencies into a massive taxpayer-funded “get-out-the-vote” operation for the Democrats. …

  • U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will promote voter registration for new citizens;
  • the Department of Education will connect student loan recipients to voter registration services;
  • the Indian Health Service will boost voting access for patients;
  • the Treasury Department will do the same for federal benefit recipients; and
  • the DOJ will promote voting for those exiting the criminal justice system. …

There’s nothing preventing the White House and partisan bureaucrats in federal agencies from hand-picking groups that favor “get-out-the-vote” activities for Democrats, ensuring their electoral victories for years to come.

This fusion of state power and near-naked politicking is what happens when the ruling class stops computing amongst itself (Democrats vs Republicans), but sees itself as having common interests that are separate from the rest of the nation (elite vs deplorables).

Modern Urban Warfare: New and Different

Modern Urban Warfare: New and Different. By Jim Dunnigan. There is a lot more fighting in urban area now, and the urban areas have a lot more heavy concrete structures that act as bunkers. Training has become ever more necessary.

In Ukraine:

There was not a lot of bypassing cities and towns in Ukraine. Both sides found themselves forced to defend or fight for control of key towns that were essential to maintaining supply lines. Both sides never had enough artillery ammunition and aircraft bombs to simply level a contested urban area. …

When the Ukrainians go on the offensive they can surround towns and starve their less-motivated opponents into surrendering. When defending a town, the Ukrainians conduct a more effective defense that keeps Ukrainian casualties down and increases Russian losses. Experience so far shows that the Russians lost six or seven times more troops than the Ukrainians in these situations. …

NATO:

NATO is very familiar with urban warfare … NATO has long considered MOUT [Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain] a major issue even after the end of the Cold War and after the post-2001 fighting, especially in Iraq. In the future, it was expected that there would be more fighting in urban areas, which means lots of sturdy buildings and narrow streets. The importance of MOUT was noted back during the 1980s when it was realized that … West Germany was rapidly urbanizing and the construction was largely cement and steel, creating structures that made better bunkers for defenders. …

A few years before the Cold War ended, the U.S. Army Center for Lessons Learned (CALL) was established so U.S. commanders could use it to determine what works in combat and what doesn’t based on past (decades or last week) experience. This is more important than ever in the 21st century, where urban combat and counter-insurgency conflicts dominate, and new technologies appear at a rapid rate. In urban warfare and counter-insurgency, the potential for mistakes to be made is exponentially larger than in conventional, large-scale warfare.

Training:

Another major problem with urban warfare has been having a decent place to train for it. The West solved this problem but the Russians could not because of budget problems. The U.S. Army and Marines began building training areas for MOUT at great expense. What drives the cost up is the need to install equipment so you can video most of the action, the better to critique the troops after they win, lose or are “killed.” And special building materials are used to allow the use of low power training bullets and practice hand grenades. …

One solution to the cost and availability problem is portable urban combat trainers called “Mobile MOUT.” Shipping containers were converted to modules that can be endlessly reconfigured for training.

The containers … have movable walls that allow quick reconfiguration for whatever MOUT training is desired. The containers can also be joined side-by-side, or stacked to create multi-story buildings. There are also reconfigurable stairways (open or enclosed), allowing the troops to learn to deal with the tricky business of fighting up and down stairwells. …

You can do a lot of training with just one or two containers, or build your own little town with up to 30 or 40 buildings composed of 100 or more containers. All the containers come equipped with cameras, microphones, motion detectors, smoke and smell generators. Everything is recorded in a digital format, both video and audio, for the after-action critique. …

There were actually a lot of MOUT operations in Afghanistan, as Special Forces or infantry stage raids on compounds suspected of harboring Taliban or al Qaeda fighters. Each MOUT training container cost about $140,000 (if you bought a 15-container set).

As a result of all this realistic training, both the Army and Marines developed new tactics for MOUT battles, and needed the specialized training areas to teach the troops how it’s done, and to work on improving current tactics and maintaining skills. One thing learned in Afghanistan was that you can’t have too much practice when it comes to MOUT. It’s a tricky business, with ample opportunity for getting ambushed, and for friendly fire losses. You must have well thought out, combat proven, drills, and the troops must be well practiced in their use. …

It turns out that with the revived emphasis on fighting modern combat forces and using MOUT, combat experience is invaluable for defending as well as attacking. The American solution is not to fight in the city like the Germans and Russians did in Stalingrad. Even during World War II, the Americans realized they had the firepower (bombers and artillery) to level any city that refused to surrender.

Islamic State:

This was how ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) was driven out of Mosul and Raqqa. Even when forced into a MOUT situation, the Americans developed weapons, like tanks specially equipped for MOUT, and heavy use of smart bombs, guided missiles and GPS guided artillery shells. This last weapon was key to the 2017 defeat of ISIL in Raqqa, their capital in eastern Syria. The Kurds provided the ground forces but the U.S. supplied air support and, more importantly, a battery of 155mm howitzers firing GPS guided shells. There were several batteries (each with six towed howitzers) that were rotated into Syria for this support work. Some of those howitzers fired so many shells that the barrels wore out. The city fighting was most intense towards the end but all those precision weapons kept Kurd casualties down (about a thousand dead) while ISIL lost at least 3,000 dead and were forced out of the city.

Chechnya:

The Russians learned the same lesson in Chechnya. In the early 1990s, they attempted to take the capital city (Grozny, or “dread” in English) and failed because the Chechens went full MOUT on them. The Russians came back in 1999 and took Grozny after turning the city into a pile of rubble. That took months …

Georgia:

The eastern European NATO members noted this with great interest, as did Chechnya southern neighbor Georgia. While independent after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, Georgia got into a border dispute with Russia that resulted in a brief Russian incursion in 2008. The Russians were described as “overrunning the country in a few days”. The Russians did not. They occupied the bits of Georgia they wanted and did not advance on the Georgian capital which the Russians knew would be stubbornly defended by “crazy Georgians.” Josef Stalin was a Georgian and is still a national hero in Georgia, not because he ruled the Soviet Union for three decades but because he got so many Russians killed.

War is just politics taken to extremes. Two hundred years ago, prominent German military theorist Carl von Clausewitz proposed his famous definition of war as “the continuation of politics by other means.”

It’s On: NYPD and Capitol Police Putting Up Barricades, Expecting Riots When Trump Is Arrested

It’s On: NYPD and Capitol Police Putting Up Barricades, Expecting Riots When Trump Is Arrested. By Robert Spencer.

America’s descent to banana republic status, with the ruling regime having its principal opponent arrested on bogus charges, may not happen on Tuesday, but it very much looks as if it is going to happen this week.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) was busy on Monday setting up steel barriers outside the Manhattan Criminal Court as if it fully expects (and may even be hoping for) patriots to come out in force to protest against the destruction of our free republic and the weaponization of our justice system as a tool of partisan politics.

No one seems to be backing away from the brink. …

In Washington, the Capitol Police are gearing up for riots as well. …

The JTTF’s [FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force] involvement immediately calls to mind Old Joe Biden’s statement from his infamous red-and-black speech from last Sept. 1: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

That’s the closest an American president has ever come in the history of the United States to declaring that his primary opponent and his supporters were criminals who were outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse, and now the ruling elites seem ready to take the next step, not only of arresting Trump but of behaving as if his supporters were terrorists.

After all, Biden, Gestapo chief Merrick Garland, and the FBI have all told us that “white supremacists” constitute the greatest terror threat the nation faces today. The only thing lacking in their scenario is actual white supremacist terrorists.

That’s where Trump’s supporters come in; Leftists are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of protests against Trump’s arrest that they can weaponize the way they did Jan. 6, so as to continue their efforts to criminalize political dissent in the United States.

Let the day, or week, unfold.

Will Alvin Bragg Charge Donald Trump?

Will Alvin Bragg Charge Donald Trump? By the Editorial Board at the WSJ.

Alvin Bragg may actually do it. The Manhattan district attorney is by all media accounts preparing to indict Donald Trump for failing to account properly for hush money paid to his alleged mistress, unleashing who knows what political furies. …

History calls. You know you want to.

It’s impossible to overstate Mr. Bragg’s bad judgment here. Perhaps the local Democratic DA has discovered some new proof of criminal behavior. But based on the public evidence so far, he would be resurrecting a seven-year-old case that even federal prosecutors refused to bring to court.

As we wrote last week, the charge would appear to be falsifying business records to pay the mistress, Stormy Daniels. That is typically a misdemeanor in New York state, though Mr. Bragg might bump it up to a felony by claiming the falsification was to cover up an illegal campaign-finance donation to Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A key prosecution witness would be Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer who is an admitted felon. Mr. Trump might claim in his defense that his payments were made to shield the affair from his wife. He has publicly denied an affair with Ms. Daniels. Proving intent to break the law will not be easy.

So Mr. Bragg may indict a former President for the first time in American history based on the weakest of charges. He would subject the country to a trial that would be a media circus for the ages. And he would do so running the risk that a single juror could block a guilty verdict and validate Mr. Trump’s claim that this is a political prosecution. …

Mr. Bragg came into office vowing not to charge numerous non-violent crimes against public order. …

Why?

Mr. Bragg is acting here after being criticized for not bringing a case against Mr. Trump on charges related to the finances of the Trump Organization. Two prosecutors quit his office after Mr. Bragg made that decision. One of the prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, wrote a highly critical book that the media has celebrated. Is Mr. Bragg now wilting under that media and political pressure?

We also know that Democrats want to run against Mr. Trump in 2024. They think he is the easiest candidate to defeat, and so they want to keep Mr. Trump in the political spotlight. An indictment of Mr. Trump now would come as the 2024 presidential race begins in earnest and would put other Republican candidates on the spot. Trump supporters are already demanding that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely opponent, refuse to extradite Mr. Trump to New York in defiance of the law.

They want Trump supporters to riot:

Mr. Trump’s calls for protests are irresponsible, as well as against his self-interest. The smart play would be to follow the law while claiming his innocence. If there is violence amid protests, Mr. Trump will get much of the blame. But Mr. Bragg and his partisan cheerleaders will have touched off the whirlwind.

Now that the left control both the media and law enforcement, they can get up to a lot of mischief. But their partisan actions risk breaking the country apart in a storm of distrust and disgust.

Bragg won his election as DA by promising to indict Trump.

Elections Have Consequences; Stolen Elections Have Catastrophes

Elections Have Consequences; Stolen Elections Have Catastrophes. By J.B. Shruk.

“Donald Trump will break the world,” they lied.

Well, they manipulated election rules to certify suspicious vote totals that preposterously portrayed senile Joe Biden as the most popularly elected president in history; censored and locked up anyone who complained; and covered up their crimes with J6 show trials drenched in untruths meant to hide from history the Uniparty’s underhanded machinations in outright stealing a presidential election.

The whole mess was so banana-republic-yucky that Biden was inaugurated behind barbed wire and a show of military force befitting the small junta who attended the successful coup’s celebration. …

 

 

For over two years, the State-controlled press and the permanent political class have accused anyone who challenges the ruling regime’s legitimacy of being an “election denier” pushing the “big lie” that the 2020 race was rigged. That resort to low-minded name-calling always seems like the “big tell” that they know that the people know that they’re full of it. …

Here’s an idea: when more than half the country believes that “cheating likely affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election” and that future election outcomes cannot be trusted, then that crisis in confidence reflects catastrophic government failure. In functioning republics with reliable voting systems, allegations of electoral malfeasance are a “big deal.” When nothing less than the people’s faith in the democratic process is at stake, then representative government will not survive unless the people perceive that process to be fair, transparent, and above reproach. When they instead judge elections as corrupt, manipulated, and unverifiable, the blame for such disastrous public perception lies entirely with government officials. …

In 2020, when COVID’s ongoing “state of emergency” conveniently provided a pretext for making sweeping changes to the ways in which votes were cast and collected, irrespective of binding statutory law, mail-in ballots with scant security checks or signature verifications flooded battleground states in Democrat-controlled zones that tilted Trump victories to Biden victories days after the actual election.

During that days-long window, ballots were lost and found; election workers inexplicably stopped and started their work; and numerous allegations of improper collection, derelict verification, unlawful voting, mixed sorting (where suspect ballots were separated from mail-in envelopes before verification but nonetheless included with good ballots), and double counting were never resolved.

Still, pundits pretended everything was perfectly normal, despite the reality that, among global peers, America alone is incapable of tabulating its elections promptly or providing results that can be transparently verified and reproduced.

Rather than investigating any of these issues, Secretaries of State looked past clear violations of election law and testimonial evidence alleging various instances of fraud to certify vote counts; state and federal courts, deferring to those bureaucratic certifications despite deficiencies, refused to investigate the matters any further; and the Supreme Court ran like a frightened child when a “case or controversy” of the highest national concern finally reached its doors. So fearful, apparently, of replaying some version of the contentious judicial events that settled the 2000 election between Bush and Gore (or so terrified of the left’s certain campaign of terror arriving outside their own families’ homes), the courts threw up their hands and permitted perhaps the least trusted election in American history to be rubber-stamped as valid. …

When a majority of Americans see election fraud and a near unanimity of lawmakers see none, then America’s ruling Uniparty is willfully blind.

When Americans’ efforts to pursue all available legal remedies are unceremoniously quashed at every turn, then justice is no longer blind. When Congress decides to ignore all the evidence for 2020 vote fraud and instead pumps out years of propaganda about an “insurrection” that never happened, then more Americans have their eyes wide open and can finally see. …

Trust is a tricky thing to restore. Once it’s gone, systems just break.

If Trump is arrested on bogus charges, it will be one more step in a predictable downward path. Sad.

Tell a lie, and the consequences can snowball into more lies. Steal an election just once, and look what is happening.

Scratch the EV battery and you may have to junk your whole car

Scratch the EV battery and you may have to junk your whole car. By Nick Carey.

For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles — leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.

And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a “circular economy.”

“We’re buying electric cars for sustainability reasons,” said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. “But an EV isn’t very sustainable if you’ve got to throw the battery away after a minor collision.”

 

 

Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV’s price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them. …

The trend of low-mileage zero-emission cars being written off with minor damage is growing. …

EV battery production emits far more CO2 than fossil-fuel models, meaning EVs must be driven for thousands of miles before they offset those extra emissions. …

Allianz [an insurer] has seen scratched battery packs where the cells inside are likely undamaged, but without diagnostic data it has to write off those vehicles. …

It already costs more to insure most EVs than traditional cars. According to online brokerage Policygenius, the average U.S. monthly EV insurance payment in 2023 is $206, 27% more than for a combustion-engine model.

China’s lesson from the war in Ukraine

China’s lesson from the war in Ukraine. By Edward Luttwak.

For China, Russia’s failure to rapidly conquer Ukraine was only the start of a series of very unpleasant surprises.

First came the overnight transformation of Nato: from an obsolete Cold War pact into a forcefully expanding alliance. Finland and Sweden dispatched weapons even before applying for membership, while Japan sent financial aid as though it were a member state. …

Sanctions annoy Russia, but they would be near-fatal for China:

The next unpleasant surprise came from the G7 grouping of the US and its major allies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK. Instead of hesitating while each country tried to safeguard its own export interests, they all immediately agreed to impose sweeping economic sanctions on Russia.

It was instantly obvious in Beijing that while Russia would not be seriously harmed by the sanctions, because it is self-sufficient in both energy and food, China’s position was altogether more perilous: it is the world’s largest importer of animal feed and food, as well as of coal, oil and gas.

True, demand for the latter would collapse in the event of a war over Taiwan and the sanctions that would inevitably follow; seaborne exports would end, as would the energy demands of China’s vast export industries.

But China’s 1.4 billion people must still eat, and to feed them the country imports some 130 million metric tons of animal feed and food, including 95 million metric tons of soya beans alone. Under G7 sanctions, this vast traffic of thousands of bulk carriers would grind to a halt. …

So what does China do?

This may all seem improbable, but Xi has recognised China’s disadvantage. Just two days before his departure for Moscow, he issued a most urgent “Directive No. 1” focused exclusively on food security. It started with an old slogan —“We must ensure that the Chinese rice bowl [is] firmly in our own hands at all times, with that rice bowl being filled mainly with Chinese grain” — before recognising that China’s population needs much more than cereals: they require meat and milk, which can only be produced if the entire agricultural economy is drastically improved to achieve self-sufficiency in animal feed as well, an aim that he promised would be achieved in the “middle of the century”.

Not only does this suggest that any Taiwanese adventure will have to wait, but it confirmed that Xi finally understands his citizens are physiologically different from Mao’s, who survived on very little when I lived in Beijing in 1976: rice, wheat, sorghum, odd greens, bits of dried cabbage in winter, rare eggs, and, once a week, slivers of chicken or pork. No doubt this was brought to Xi’s attention during last year’s Shanghai lockdown protests, during which there were bitter complaints of starvation even though all had plenty of rice.

More than a year after the G7 sanctions were imposed, Russians continue to eat as they did before; had those same sanctions been imposed on China, they would have gravely endangered the survival of the regime.

Chinese brokered peace? Not likely.

Faced with such unhappy prospects, Xi now has an opportunity to leap on to the very centre of the global stage, if only he can persuade Zelenskyy and his government to negotiate an exit from the war by finally accepting that Crimea is lost, and that internationally supervised plebiscites (with refugees anywhere in the world all assured a vote) will be required in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Whatever their outcome, an end to fighting on these terms would take away nothing from Ukraine’s very successful war of independence, which has gifted its people that priceless possession: a national myth in good working order. …

Zelenskyy will not give Xi the opportunity. He does recognise that, after an end to the fighting, it is only with the help of the US and its allies that Ukraine can be reconstructed. …

The war will go on, because both sides still think they can win on the battlefield. The Russian spring offensive is now winding down with only marginal gains, and the Ukrainians will soon take the initiative.

It is very likely that his Moscow visit will result in nothing more than an under-the-table deal to quietly transfer 152mm howitzer ammunition and such, leaving Xi’s problem unsolved. At a time when the Chinese economy is slowing down, with unprecedented levels of youth unemployment, the US and Japan are sharply increasing their military spending, and consolidating an alliance that now fully includes India, as well as re-arming Australia. It was, of course, Xi’s own bellicosity that encircled China with enemies. It is too much to hope that visiting a beleaguered Putin in the Kremlin will induce him to change course.

A useful side-effect of the Ukraine war is that Xi now realizes how vulnerable China is to a food blockade. Taiwan breathes a little easier.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Making Trump a Martyr

Making Trump a Martyr. By Matt Margolis.

Are Democrats really so stupid to think that they can get away with such a blatantly partisan abuse of power? …

The goal here is to appeal to the left-wing base, which has wanted to indict Trump for anything from the moment he decided to run for president. They’ve been itching to see Trump in handcuffs for years …

It’s the kind of thing you might expect in a banana republic or a Third World dictatorship, not in what was once considered the shining example of freedom and democracy in the world.

Many predict that this move will backfire dramatically on the Democrats.

  • “If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Elon Musk tweeted …
  • “If they handcuff Trump, he is your next president,” Scott Adams predicts.
  • Trump Defense Lawyer Joe Tacopina agrees. “I believe this will catapult him into the White House.” …

Let’s not forget how the impeachments of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump backfired. Clinton’s impeachment proceedings were widely seen as a partisan attack, and he emerged from the ordeal with a higher approval rating than before.

US justice will take a major credibility hit if this goes ahead.

Hillary Clinton was never even charged over the flagrant bribery of the massive “donations” to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State, or the security breaches of doing official business on the email server she set up in her bathroom to avoid scrutiny. Her political ally, James Comey of the FBI, basically said she was guilty but wasn’t going to be charged.

Joe Biden accepted millions in bribes from China and others while VP, but the proof for that was suppressed by the FBI and then dismissed as Russian disinformation when it became public.

The Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens have amassed far more wealth than can be reasonably explained on government salaries. Trump, in contrast, is independently wealthy and took no bribes, yet is being charged over a ridiculous interpretation of campaign financing law that is never applied to anyone else?

Meanwhile protestors against Biden’s “election” rot in jail, many still untried.

Western leadership has never looked so tawdry.

The alleged Trump felony doesn’t even make sense

The alleged Trump felony doesn’t even make sense. By Stephen Miller.

The idea that a routine private settlement, unconnected to any campaign activity, is a criminal offense because the settlement should have been paid with official campaign funds is the most preposterous, ludicrous, idiotic, indefensible, fraudulent “legal theory” conceivable.

Under this “theory,” candidates must use federal campaign funds for private, personal or corporate matters — an exact inversion of federal law. Indeed, DOJ prosecutes those who use campaign funds for expressly non-campaign purposes. Of course, the “theory” is all bogus pretext.

No serious human believes that Manhattan DA’s office believes any of this. They understand this is a purely partisan exercise in vengefully prosecuting a political enemy precisely as is done is repressive third world nations, despotic regimes and marxist authoritarian states.

The “crime”:

The investigation, led by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, centres on $130,000 paid weeks before the 2016 polls to stop porn star Stormy Daniels from going public about an affair she says she had with Trump years earlier [2006]. …

The guy on the right was her lawyer, and was touted as a future Democrat president, but is now in prison for real crimes.

The payment to Daniels, if not properly accounted for, could result in a misdemeanour charge for falsifying business records. That might be raised to a felony if the false accounting was intended to cover up a second crime, such as a campaign finance violation, The New York Times has reported.