Archive for 2019

RICHARD FERNANDEZ:

Well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer would-be sultan — a shame about Europe, but with a few exceptions it’s been too long since they took seriously their own defense.

INTO THE POCKETS OF POLITICIANS WHO WERE CALLING TRUMP A CALLOUS MURDERER, IT SEEMS: Sharyl Attkisson: Where Did The $91 Billion For Hurricane Recovery In Puerto Rico Go? “Fueling discontent in Puerto Rico is news that the FBI is investigating a number of government officials and contractors are under fbi investigation over allegations of misuse of all the taxpayer money sent in after Hurricane Maria. The FBI has arrested six top Puerto Rican government officials and consultants. Also charged— FEMA official Ahsha Tribble – once an Obama homeland security adviser. Tribble took the lead on getting Puerto Rico’s electric grid fixed. Now she is accused of taking bribes to steer a $1.8 billion dollar contract to a company called Cobra. Cobra’s CEO at the time and a FEMA friend of Tribble’s who went to work for COBRA were also arrested.”

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Here Are the Giuliani-Ukraine Notes Few Have Seen.

Notes of Rudolph Giuliani’s interviews with two former Ukrainian prosecutors include one’s allegation that then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned him against investigating energy firm Burisma Holdings “as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden.”

The prosecutor was later fired, under what President Trump says was pressure from Vice President Biden. His son Hunter had a lucrative role on the Burisma board. . . .

In addition to the fired Shokin’s claim that President Poroshenko warned him not to investigate Burisma because it was not in the Bidens’ interest, the notes say, the prosecutor also said he “was warned to stop” by the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt.

The State Department declined to explain this assertion about Pyatt, who was ambassador to Ukraine from 2013 to 2016 and now is Ambassador to Greece. The Biden presidential campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Read it all.

Related: Document reveals Ukraine had already reopened probe of Hunter Biden-linked firm months before Trump phone call.

THIS INSANITY HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR A LONG TIME. IT’S NOT GETTING ANY SANER:  Farewell, Tomahawk Chop!

THEY THINK THEY’RE NATURALLY ENTITLED TO RULE AND HAVE POWER OVER EVERYONE AND WE PRODUCE WAY TOO MANY OF THEM:  Brahmandarins.

ESPN BOWS TO COMMUNIST CHINA, POSTS ILLEGITIMATE PROPAGANDA MAP OF CHINA:

ESPN’s “SportsCenter” aired an illegitimate map of China on Wednesday morning that featured Chinese propaganda claiming that the communist nation owns the disputed South China Sea, Taiwan, part of the Philippines, and Arunachal Pradesh.

The map is known as China’s “10-dash line” map which “features 10 dash lines instead of nine dash lines to mark a huge swath of the South China Sea in a tongue-shaped encirclement as Chinese territory,” GMA Network, a major national commercial broadcast television and radio network in the Philippines, reported in 2013. “Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have been contesting China’s massive claim of the territory. Nine dashes in the new Chinese map are in the South China Sea and a tenth dash has been placed near Taiwan, purportedly to signify that territory’s status as a Chinese province.”

Ankit Panda, Senior Editor of The Diplomat, noticed that the map also purportedly included Arunachal Pradesh — which is a state of India — in the map of China.

As PBS noted in an article last week headlined, “In China’s film industry, the Communist Party is in the director’s chair,” Disney, parent company to ESPN and ABC, “is not going to offend China — they’ve had so much invested there, with theme parks, etc., and their films,” quoting Stanley Rosen, “a professor of political science specializing in Chinese studies at the University of Southern California.”

SASSE, CRUZ, AOC, OTHERS IN CONGRESS SEND BIPARTISAN LETTER TO NBA: Stop Kissing China’s Ass And Suspend Your Operations There For Now. “You have to screw up awfully badly in America 2019 to forge a coalition of critics that includes Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, Ron Wyden, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, especially at a moment when Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats over impeachment. Congrats to the NBA for pulling it off with their fulsome Chinese bootlicking.”

OPEN THREAD: Take it and run.