Predicting the Future: More Bad or Good at Last

I am not particularly good at predicting the future. But here we are at the beginning of a new year. So why not?

It seems to me things could go either of two ways: more bad, or good at last. Of course I would prefer good at last. And we know the good will come at last (read Revelation). But timing isn’t up to me.

my favorite New Year quote

More Bad

It’s a presidential election year, and it’s a strange one. The leading Republican candidate—by overwhelming percentage points, such that no one else really needs to bother—is former President Donald Trump. Maybe the challengers are hanging on in hopes of something untoward happening to Donald Trump, or because they think their “next in line” status might boost them to the VP slot, which is not going to be offered to Mike Pence ever again. Or maybe they are simply oblivious to reality, blinded by their own glaring narcissism.

That means the upcoming primary election for the Republicans will be fairly simple. It’s only two months away (with some variation by state). It should go smoothly, if polling is even in the ballpark of accurate.

And yet, the desperation of the Democrat (and anti-Trump Republican) efforts to prevent the obvious and inevitable is startling. I lose count, but I think there are five lawsuits against Trump underway right now, timed to interfere with the primary season and the rest of the election year. (Read more here.) You would think that, in even a single unprecedented lawsuit against a former president—who is currently a candidate—evidence would have to be so overwhelming that no one would even question the verdict. And yet, every single case is a ticky-tack, invented “crime.”

For example, Trump supposedly committed fraud—according to New York State—by overestimating the value of his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, which he used to secure business loans. The court’s estimate of that property is preposterously low. The banks who loaned money based on Trump’s estimate were satisfied with the estimate, might have estimated the value even higher, and regardless were willing to make the loans—which were repaid with interest. So there is a disagreement about the value of a property; there was no fraud. There was no one harmed or injured monetarily or otherwise. There is no crime. And it certainly was no business of a New York state court to invent one just so they could prosecute the former President and current presidential candidate during the critical election year.

Another one, the classified documents case, is a disagreement about whether the former President can possess his own documents, or whether the National Archives should hold them. And they used a SWAT team at the former President’s residence, attempting to make it look like he was in the act of selling America’s secrets to enemy nations. (I wrote more here.)

The FBI spread out materials on the floor and implied President Trump
was mishandling classified materials, during the Mar-a-Lago raid, August 2022,
image from Wikipedia

Meanwhile, multiple stashes of classified documents were found in the possession of Biden—from when he was VP and a US Senator—both positions that did not entitle him to take any classified documents away from a secure location. And there is evidence, particularly in the University of Pennsylvania stash, that China paid for Biden to have a position there, where he never taught a class or did anything to merit millions of dollars, but coincidentally staffers paid for by Chinese donations just happened to get hired on by the Biden administration. Did the Chinese get access to those documents in exchange for their payments? Or did they just get influence?

I’m not an investigative reporter. If I know about these things, then they are known by other reporters (read more here; also, John Sullivan did good reporting on the University of Pennsylvania/China connection), and by government officials.

What I’m saying is, those who do the wrongdoing are desperately trying to retain their power, and greatly fear a return of President Trump—now that he knows their secrets, because of their conspiring so obviously against him and against the American people.

So, how far will they go? Every time they indict Trump, his poll numbers go up. The American people—and especially conservatives—are law-abiding. So the assumption had been, if he’s indicted, and especially if he’s convicted of something—anything—then his base will abandon him. And that hasn’t happened. People who care about the rule of law aren’t fooled by people who use lawfare as a weapon against them.

If the lawsuits won’t work, there’s taking him off the ballot. But that can’t stand, because it disenfranchises hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of voters in each of those states—for no legal reason. We have had presidential candidates on the ballot when they were in prison. We have had presidential candidates who have been accused of crimes. That is not a constitutionally disqualifying factor. This will probably be decided by the Supreme Court. Although it’s always worrisome when the preservation of our Constitution depends on the opinions of nine unelected judges, at least we have more somewhat-conservatives on the Court—because of Donald Trump.

The attempt to invoke the 14^th Amendment—which was intended to prevent leaders of the Confederacy from running for US President right after the Civil War—requires convincing the country that President Trump committed insurrection—while he was President (thus insurrecting against himself), engaging in investigations into the legality of the election, which it is his duty to protect. They have to label an event that wasn’t an insurrection, just to stir people up, and they have to convince people that asking for peaceful assembly—and later “go home in peace”—was really telling people, by dog-whistle message, to attack the government and stage a coup. Except, there isn’t even an accusation of insurrection in any of the court cases or impeachments against him—because there wasn’t an insurrection.

Meanwhile, there was this insurrection in the US Capitol, which included a US Congresswoman. And this one in the California State Capitol. Don’t expect to see consequences for the participants in these unlawful acts. 

So, if taking him off the ballot fails, what else will they try? If they truly believe Trump is Hitler—and their rhetoric certainly portrays him that way (despite the lack of millions of deaths, or authoritarian rule, as they are attempting)—would they try to assassinate him? Tucker Carlson has mentioned it. Others probably as well. But would the Deep Staters dare do that, when it is so obvious that they are conspiring against him?

They aren’t clear, logical thinkers. So I wouldn’t put it past them. But I hope not.

They might try stealing the election again. But usually that only works when the margin of error is small, and when it can be turned by a limited number of places—as in 2020. With 10-point leads, any election tampering—especially when we’re watching, because we saw what they did before—is going to be clumsy and obvious.

So what else will they try? Another pandemic, so serious that they have to “call off the election for the sake of our safety”? I don’t think we’ll buy that, after all the COVID lies. Will they come up with some other disaster?

I don’t know what to picture. But if more bad continues, I can’t envision an election actually happening in November.

My Patriot Supply, among others, is predicting a "black swan event" in 2024,
image from here

I’m not the only one wondering these things. People are starting to use the term “black swan event,” meaning something unforeseen and unpredictable will happen. (There was this mention by Catherine Herridge a little over a week ago. This came up on social media group today; the interviewee suggests it might take the form of a major cyber attack in October.) The thing is, you shouldn’t be able to expect a black swan event, but we’re using the term in predictions—because it’s so likely they’ll try to come up with something, since for them another Trump presidency would end life as they know it (they term this “ending democracy,” in hopes that will fool people).

Meanwhile, we need to keep calm and carry on, as the saying goes.

Good at Last

What if good at last actually happens. What might that look like?

In our country, maybe Biden will become too nonfunctional for them to trot out “Weekend at Bernie’s” style. This seems a likely possibility between now and November. The other possibility is that the growing evidence of his influence peddling as a family business will be seen for the treason that it is, and he will be thrown out. Then what? By law, his VP would be required to step in for the remainder of the term. But that is such a distasteful possibility, I think those now covering for and propping Biden up are assuming they can do that endlessly.

Or maybe his failure will come right about at the time of the Democrat convention, and they’ll just throw out all the Dem Primary votes in the country and come out of the convention with whomever the Deep Staters want—an absolute failure such as Gavin Newsome (note his debate with Ron DeSantis) or the never-run-anything-in-her-life-but-is-a-perfect-shill-for-Barack, Michelle Obama. With only two months in front of the people, maybe they could hide how ineffectual, Marxist, and America-hating she is.

OK, none of that looks like good at last yet.

What if the Deep State got completely uncovered—all the names, all the information? And they all had to leave in disgrace? Every last conspirator against the Constitution! Sweet justice! That would be nice.

Do I picture it happening? It is happening.

This week a list of Epstein names came up. This wasn’t the “black book”; according to Kash Patel, that’s being held by the FBI—for, um, security purposes. This was just the Ghislaine Maxwell trial transcripts with names no longer redacted (except names of victims, which are still redacted). There may be a few new names, but so far nothing earthshaking. Headlines declared that Trump was on the list, but that was for the ignorant. If you read, you find out he is exonerated. He never went to the island. He expelled Epstein from Mar-a-Lago years before Epstein’s first trial. Trump cooperated with investigators into Epstein. And testimony from witnesses in the trial, after being asking repeatedly if they had seen Trump at any of Epstein’s places, was that they had never seen him.

screenshot of X post of summary of massive
election fraud in the 2020 election

Another news item today is the disclosure of election fraud evidence—by Trump. An X account of KanekoaTheGreat was forwarded to me.  This very long thread starts with an overall summary of the import of this information. Then it goes into a more detailed summary of problems in Georgia. There’s so much wrong with that election that it should never have been certified. That’s as far as I’ve read so far. But next come Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan. I’ve been following election fraud details all along (read here, here, here, here, here, and here), but these include things I hadn’t been aware of.

The evidence has been there, and accumulating, all along. It has never been allowed to be shown in court—where the American people could see it. So it appears Trump is doing what he does: taking it directly to the people. Expect mainstream media to ignore it.

At some point, though, things have to be made right. The description in Revelation is that Babylon falls in an hour (Revelation 18). And the Savior fights His own battles—actually, it looks like, despite any actual battles being carried out in Armageddon, in the end, His power is so great that the battles are simply ended. Possibly His glory “burns” the wicked (symbolically or literally, or maybe both).

And then the survivors (the decent, upright people of the earth) will establish order according His righteous rule.

That will happen. This year? I don’t know. But, with our world in the mess it’s in, this would be a good time for rescue. And there are some reasons to consider the possibility. For one, there’s a war going on in Israel; that seems like it could escalate any moment into Armageddon.

There’s an eclipse coming up in April—the third in a series over the US, the combined paths of totality forming an aleph, the first letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet. The first was September 2017, the second October 2023. The April 8, 2024, eclipse falls on the eve of Nissan 1, the beginning of the Jewish new calendar year. Maybe that’s a significant sign in the heavens. It’s not too far into the future for us to wait and see.

Three eclipses over the US form a Hebrew letter aleph,
image is a screenshot from here

We did that for the 1290 days mentioned in Daniel 12, counting from the closing of the temples worldwide in March 2020 until October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israel. Counting the 1335 days mentioned in the next verse of Daniel—guessing that was a concurrent count, rather than sequential—took us to November 21, 2023, when there was a temporary ceasefire to return many of those who had been kidnapped. Was that a big enough thing for Daniel to have mentioned all those centuries ago? I don’t know. I’m continuing to watch and wait.

Incidentally, five months from November 21 takes us to the eve of Passover, April 21, 2024, which seems significant. What could happen in five months? Revelation 9 mentions a time of torment for five months: “and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.” It’s going to sting. But not to fear if you’re among the righteous, described as “grass of the earth,” “any green thing”, or “any tree,” along with those who have covenanted their allegiance to God, “have the seal of God in their foreheads.”

So there’s going to be something that stings the unrighteous. They’ll want to die and be unable to. I don’t know how to picture this. Descriptions of the “sting” include locusts shaped like horses prepared for battle (armored swarms), with crowns (royalty or government power), hair of women, teeth of lions. I don’t know what that all means. But these scary stinging locust plagues, as John the Revelator saw them, “had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months.”

We’re a month and a half into this particular five months, since November 21^st, and I don’t see this plague stinging the unrighteous. But maybe it is happening in a way I don’t see or understand. Or (more likely) maybe that five-month plague will happen some other time.

Still, things are happening. There are earthquakes, floods, lightning strikes, solar flares, volcanic eruptions. More than usual? You have to know what’s usual. YouTuber Christian Homestead puts all kinds of things into a spreadsheet—including various natural disasters. It’s accessible in the description of each of his videos. It looks to me like these sorts of disasters are becoming more frequent, and maybe more intense.

One point Jared of Christian Homestead makes is that, however things happen, they’re likely to look natural, such that people who don’t want to believe can ascribe some other explanation—like climate change, for example.

Mr. Spherical Model has pointed out that, if the Second Coming is to “come as a thief in the night,” then looking for really obvious events that everyone can see is probably not going to work.

It may be more like the wise men who looked for the Star of Bethlehem. They knew what to look for, and approximately when to expect it. Other people who were not looking probably shrugged and thought, “Huh, that star is kind of bright. I don’t remember that one being there,” and then going back to their oblivious lives instead of celebrating the Savior’s birth.

What we should expect is that the Second Coming will come in a time of great evil (check). When evil is called good and good is called evil (check). When there are “beasts,” one representing collusions of power spreading across the globe, supported by a second, lying beast that makes the first beast seem powerful. I’d say the Deep State and its corollaries around the world, supported by a combination of media and academia that lie to support the other “beast” is about as clear as any of the symbolic descriptions in Revelation (so, check).

That means the world not going to get better on its own. It’s not likely to get better just because many of us are working in our communities—and working with governments at all levels—to make things better. We need to do those things. But it’s more to declare our allegiance to God than it is to personally win the war against evil.

So, predicting this year: either more bad will keep happening—and we’ve grown accustomed to things not being made right. Or good at last will happen, and all things will be made right, which I think will only happen if this is the year the Savior returns. That would be the brightest outlook for a year that otherwise looks to be both frustrating and scary.

As a line from one of our hymns says, “There is hope smiling brightly before us, and we know that deliverance is nigh.”

May this be the year that we witness good at last.

Misdirection from the Larger Story, Part II

This is the second part of Misdirection from the Larger Story. Part I is here.

The impeachment hearings are purportedly about our president’s interest in corruption by Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine from when Joe Biden was the Vice President—interest that is supposedly off limits, regardless of accuracy, because Joe Biden is a presidential candidate.

But that corruption story is only a small piece of the larger Ukraine picture—which, in turn, is a small piece in a larger worldwide picture, which we'll get to today.

Focus on that small piece is not only fruitless, because there was no wrongdoing by President Trump, but also because it misdirects us from the larger stories. So I don’t want to get too distracted, but since former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch testified on Friday, I want to add just a bit of her part.

If we recall what we know about her, upon her appointment as Ambassador to Ukraine by the Obama administration, she held a meeting with the new prosecutor general, Lutsenko. Despite her denial that she “handed him a list,” multiple sources verify that she listed for Lutsenko those entities his investigations should not touch—including anything related to a George Soros NGO or Burisma. He pulled out a piece of paper to write the list, and she said, no, he misunderstood. And he answered that, yes, he understood very clearly. It was how Ukraine, in all its corruption, had always worked, but now he could see that the US worked this way as well.

That’s the former ambassador Yovanovich, who testified for five hours on Friday. She was removed from her ambassador post (but remains a State Department employee) months earlier and had no knowledge of the July phonecall at the center of the impeachment inquiry. When asked directly whether she knew anything about the President making a bribe, she had to answer no. When then asked whether she was aware of any illegal act by the President, she again had to answer no.

She not only had no firsthand knowledge surrounding the question, she knew nothing secondhand. But for five hours she was allowed to make the case that the President was interfering with State Department ongoing programs.

That’s pertinent to what we want to talk about. Not her opinions on these things, but that the State Department thinks its duty is to disregard the President’s policies and to enact its own program—and he’s interfering! How dare he! He must be stopped!

The bigger picture in Ukraine goes back some years, to when the then-President of Ukraine decided to side with Russia rather than the European Union. There has always been, and continues to be, a separation between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians within Ukraine. This moment was a catalyst for revolution. And such a moment was what the Obama administration’s State Department was looking for.

It was their policy to support the revolutionaries. Any revolutionaries. Glenn Beck lays it out in four steps:

·         Step One: US State Department identifies, trains, and funds “Civil Society” groups to mobilize.

·         Step Two: When opportunity emerges US trained activists go into action.

·         Step Three: The State Department, and their proxies, actively support the opposition.

·         Step Four: Infiltrate the new government with hand-picked “Civil Society” leaders.

So the revolution—at Step Two in the plan—was the ousting of the previous president Victor Yanukovych. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, traveled to Ukraine three separate times during that uprising. Glenn Beck shows a photo of her from December 2013 handing out cookies to the revolutionary activists in the streets.

Glenn Beck lays out what he can prove about what he calls the Democrats' Hydra.
screenshot from here

In his Part III of the Ukrainian corruption series, called "The Democrats' Hydra," Glenn Beck mentions a leaked phone conversation, which he has in his possession, in which Nuland was

discussing how to manipulate who would become the next Ukrainian prime minister. And, surprise! Surprise! That man ended up getting the job.

There’s more:

But even though they’d been publicly outed, manipulating the affairs of a sovereign nation, they didn’t stop. They doubled down.

If you’ll recall, from November 2014, the Obama administration and State Department colluded—probably the right word—to form, connect with, and protect a George Soros-funded NGO inaccurately named the Anti-Corruption Action Center. And Glenn Beck’s researchers found further coordination:

Newly released emails obtained by Freedom of Information Act request, shows near weekly communication between Nuland and Soros. This [he’s showing] is an email chain from June 1, 2016, and it shows Soros setting up a call with Nuland for one of their scheduled updates.

Another email chain, between Nuland and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation happens to include the whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella. Interesting the many places he shows up.

If you look at the four steps, you can see that the plan was to disrupt, foment chaos, and then overthrow an existing regime and put in a replacement government with hand-picked leaders. Done and done.

What is the evidence? Glenn Beck holds up documentation—which he has shared online to make sure it doesn’t disappear, written by George Soros personally and signed by him. Glenn Beck explains:

He actually says “a self-appointed advocate of the new Ukraine.” This is his comprehensive strategy for the new Ukraine. In this paper, Soros identifies the institutions that need to be either set up or targeted by his group and the US State Department.

The first one is the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, that needed to be established. Well, they got this one done right away. Right away. They got that done in the beginning. It’s also relevant to point out that this relationship bore fruit for the Obama administration as they pressured the bureau to investigate Manafort. They later hit a home run when they illegally released information implicating Manafort in the Black Ledger. It doesn’t mean Manafort isn’t guilty of something; it just means illegally released that information, which kicks the Russian investigation into overdrive. 

Now why did I say illegally release the information? Because a Ukrainian court convicted the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau—you know, the first thing that Soros said they had to do. They were convicted for doing it, and interfering in the US 2016 election. 

It’s interesting that the establishment of the bureau was part of Soros’s plan, and they were directly coordinating with the Obama administration. It is the head of this organization that is caught on tape bragging about how he worked to discredit Trump on behalf of Hillary Clinton. [In Episode I of this series, called "Ukraine Scandal Explained."]

By the way, convicted in a court of law for interfering in a US election. But our media has absolutely no interest.

This looks like it’s about Ukraine. But it’s bigger than that. George Soros has a long history of creating chaos, often economic collapse, in order to take out a regime and start anew. He’s done that pattern.

Why was Obama, along with the Clinton-run State Department, and currently the embedded Deep State plan not only supporting Soros’s plans, but taking them on as their own?

Power.

Alec Ross, an appointee to the State Department as a senior advisor on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, spoke to embassy insiders at the Ukrainian Embassy, revealing some truths they wouldn’t normally say openly—at least not to the rest of us. He has three things on the screen behind him showing "infrastructure, mass media, and communication," with the word "INTERNET" underneath. He says,

Ross: And the force and effect of all three of these paradigm shifts taking place at once creates a moment of remarkably disruptive change. And, for those of us that work in foreign policy, the change that I would argue is actually most significant goes to this issue: power.

Alec Ross at the Ukrainian Embassy in 2011.
screenshot from here

People like George Soros have money enough, and experience enough. What he has left to crave is power, which he relishes. There’s a clip Glenn Beck shows from a piece he did on Fox, called “The Puppetmaster.” This is Soros in his own words:

Soros: When you try to, say, improve society, you affect different people and their different interests differently. And they’re not actually commensurate. So you very often have all kinds of unintended adverse consequences. So I had to experiment. And it was a learning process. The first part was this subversive activity, disrupting an oppressive regime. That was a lot of fun, and that’s what actually got me hooked on this whole enterprise.

George Soros clip from "The Puppetmaster" on Fox News
screenshot from here

Collapsing entire countries is fun for him. Compare this to a time, during the Arab Spring, when Gaddafi was beaten and dragged to death in the streets, and Hillary Clinton says, “We came. We saw. He died.” Followed by raucous laughter. Oh what fun it is to wield power! She’s practically giddy.

Did the State Department have a hand in causing the Arab Spring?

We said things were bigger than Ukraine; Ukraine was just an example story of the larger global picture.

Here’s what Alec Ross said about their efforts—in that four-step plan we mentioned above:

Ross: Some of the things that I spoke about when I came to the department—things like leaderless revolution or virtual organizations—might have been really edgy or a little off-center, but after Tunisia and Egypt, nobody is questioning the abstraction of leaderless revolutions, and after Wikileaks, certainly everybody understands the power of virtual, globally distributed organizations.

And which step was taking place when the Ambassador to Libya was in Benghazi in 2012, probably arranging arm sales to Syria? Was it really an "spontaneous, indigenous, popular uprising," or was it yet another trained-by-us, timed-by-us fomented uprising for the purpose of power mongering?

Let me remind you of one more thing: power mongers use chaos as an opportunity to gain power. I wrote this on the Spherical Model website in the article “The Political World is Round”:

People tend to be afraid of the chaos of anarchy. Lenin saw this. One way to gain totalitarian power is to create chaos and then promise to solve the problems of chaos (crime, poverty, lack of safety on all levels) by offering government solutions, until the revolutionaries have managed to get themselves installed as dictators. This was the purpose of Trotsky’s idea of perpetual revolution: Place power in our hands, and we will see that you are fed and housed and protected—that is, if the dictator was so minded once the power was achieved. Everywhere that communism has been tried, it took hold because people gave in to this desire for government to provide protection and food and shelter. It works on a people who do not trust their own ability to provide, and it works especially well when chaos reigns to make it difficult for people to provide for themselves. Revolutionaries therefore cause anarchy so that they can implement their own totalitarian tyranny.

Anywhere that you see revolutionaries using terrorism, they are creating chaos for the purpose of seeking their own power—always. Their claim of doing it for the people and their rights is always a lie—even to themselves.

Here’s one more quote from Alec Ross, so that you see how this relates to Yovanovitch’s testimony on Friday:

Alec Ross quote
screenshot from here

Ross: Instead of trying to create a new bureau, what we wanted to do was build a long-term institutional capacity. I leave feeling that the work has been fully institutionalized and that the programs will live on.”

The proof is long, detailed, and complex. But the trail is there. We’re seeing what was hidden, because that July 25^th phonecall set off alarms among the entrenched Deep State; they had to stop investigations, because they would be discovered. And then, because of their explosive reaction, we’re actually seeing what they planned to keep hidden.

That’s a good thing. But only if we Americans take action to root out the corruption.

Let me use a phrase a few of you will recognize: secret combinations. [See Ether 8:18-25.] These are what bring the downfall of any civilization that does not root them out.

Our former president and secretary of state were in a secret combination with George Soros. There are others with them: Alec Ross, Victoria Nuland, Marie Yovanovitch, Eric Ciaramella, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi—and many names we don’t know. They are imbedded in our State Department, our CIA, our National Security. They will not give up power easily, because power is what they crave most. And once they get it, they wield it tyrannically.

How do we root them out? As a single citizen here, typing at my computer, I don’t know. But I know it’s important for me to know what’s going on, and let that inform my vote, and my voice as I speak with others. 

If there are enough of us who do that, God will make up for our limitations and help us save this, the greatest experiment in freedom, prosperity, and civilization the world has ever known.

No One Has the Right to Rule Over Us

I don’t know if it’s obvious, but I don’t spend a lot of time covering the top news stories of the week here. This is more about the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization—which come under the category of political philosophy, rather than actual politics.

One of the principles of freedom is that the people grant government its powers, not the other way around. And we should always beware of power mongers—tyrants, who feel an inherent right to rule over other human beings.

So, this week’s news has been distracting me, as it probably has most people. But the underlying point is to understand and prevent tyranny.

To sum up,

·         The Democrats put announced there was a whistleblower’s report that a phonecall between the newly elected President of Ukraine and President Trump was a quid pro quo, pressuring Ukraine to investigate corruption that could be a political advantage to Trump. The call was simultaneously transcribed by several workers, whose words are then aligned to create as accurate record as possible. The whistleblower was not one of those transcribers, but apparently heard a leak that came, presumably, from one of them, each of whom would have had a security clearance that such a leak would violate. (Why is no one talking about the illegality of such a leak, and finding out who leaked?)

·         President Trump, with permission from the Ukrainian president, within a day put out the full unredacted transcript of the 30-minute phonecall, about 10 minutes of which was under question. Obviously, what was claimed about the phonecall was not actually spoken or done. No pressure. No quid pro quo.

·         Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, announced, the day after the whistleblower’s claim came out, that there would be an “official” Impeachment inquiry—a re-labeling of six committees already involved in a search for misconduct of the president. That is, not investigations into actual wrongdoing, but various searches for wrongdoing. Calling these already existing investigations officially an impeachment inquiry changes nothing about what they were doing, but it puts the word “impeachment” front and center. By the time she made this pronouncement, the transcript of the phonecall in question was already public, but she’d already set her plan in motion.

·         When it was clear the phonecall itself was not what they’d claimed, they then said the President was blocking the actual whistleblower report. So he had that released, with mild redactions (for national security and protection of names in the intelligence community). The additional claims were that there was a delay in giving certain aid, or selling certain arms, to Ukraine—with a claim that there was an implied quid pro quo of withholding those things until Ukraine followed through on the corruption investigation Trump advised in the phonecall.

In order to believe the claim that there was an impeachable offense, one must attribute motives and thoughts to the President that were not spoken and mostly do not coincide with records and timelines.

The “whistleblower,” who had no direct knowledge, observed some things that, if they were connected, might be construed to be pressure on a foreign government. But the whistleblower account reads much more like analysis than factual reporting.

Such analysis happens all the time. Think back to Jack Ryan, the analyst in Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. He sees some facts, and, based on his background understanding of one of the people involved, comes up with the theory that the Russian submarine Red October isn’t intending a renegade attack; it’s attempting to defect. It’s a wild speculation. In the meeting in which Jack Ryan presents it, his superior is concerned at how foolish such a wild speculation makes them look. But, because it’s fiction, the analysis gets traction, and the rest of the movie ensues.

An analysis isn’t a whistleblower report; it’s one person’s speculation about the meaning surrounding facts based on the analyst’s experience and biases. If it isn’t convincing to his superiors, it’s just another data point, set aside unless and until something more comes along to make it worth a second look. This “whistleblower,” reportedly someone in intelligence with an anti-Trump bias, wasn’t satisfied with his/her theory/speculation not being taken as fact, so he/she put it out as if it were a stifled whistleblower report (something that required a change in rules concerning whistleblowers in order to qualify).

People read the phonecall transcript differently, depending on how much they hate having Trump as our president. That doesn’t make it a fair reading.

I think it’s a fair assessment that the whole situation is evidence that there is indeed a Deep State—officials within government working toward wielding their own power, regardless of who the people elect—and that’s power mongering, which is antithetical to our constitutional republic.

Today on Andrew Klavan’s show [partial video on Facebook, entire audio podcast at The Daily Wire], he talks about this pretty accurately. Here’s the transcript from his Big Idea segment:

Andrew Klavan, September 30, 2019, screenshot from here

In a world of fake news, it’s important sometimes to remember the real news, the story that’s not being covered. And that story is this: The heads of the intelligence community, under Barak Obama, used Russian disinformation, bought and paid for by the Democrat Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, to launch a spying operation on an opposition candidate, namely Donald Trump. They then engineered and launched a two-and-a-half-year investigation into a Russia collusion hoax in order to distract from their incredible act of American subversion.

Today, as the Department of Justice Inspector General prepares his report on these doings and his DOJ Prosecutor John Durham leads a separate investigation, a completely meaningless story about Trump and the Ukrainian president, has replaced the collusion hoax as the tool of distraction, and is being covered by the press with the same breathless and reckless hysteria as the Russian hoax—and for the same reasons.

It’s as if the Russian hoax had never been exposed, but it has.

Now, why do I say the Ukraine story is meaningless? I say it because no one cares. Zero percent of the population of the United States cares if our loudmouth president said stupid stuff to the president of Ukraine. To put that in numerical terms, no people care. None.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are people who care very deeply about hobbling Trump and getting him out of office. And they care very deeply about what they hope to get out of the Ukraine story. And there are people who care very deeply about defending Trump from the Deep State, and they care about disproving the story. But no one cares about the substance. It makes absolutely no difference to anyone if Trump was nudging the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden’s obviously nepostistic sinecure with their stupid gas company, and Joe Biden’s likewise obviously compromised integrity because of it.

At the very worst—and I don’t believe this at all, by the way—but at the very worst, Trump was organizing a jerry-rigged, tape-entwined version of what Obama did to him using the full power of the government. It’s the exact story that the press, not only won’t cover, but is covering up what Obama did to Trump. And now Trump—if the worst of this is true—is sort of, kind of, maybe a little trying to do that to Joe Biden—which is absurd, because he would have much rather run against Joe Biden than Elizabeth Warren.

Now, you may say, well this could still be serious if it leads to impeachment. And we know that would be serious, because people keep saying that it’s serious. Reporters, politicians, commentators. Just listen to them. They all keep saying impeachment is a serious business. But, in fact, nothing is serious if it’s not done seriously. An impeachment show about something no one cares about, that will not result in the president leaving office, is only serious in the sense that it disgraces a legislature that no longer actually legislates, but spends all it’s time in politically motivated investigations and show trials when it’s not raising the debt ceiling to pay for the politically motivated investigations and show trials.

Want to know the news? Follow the Obama story—Obamagate. It’s a big scandal, and a dangerous scandal. And if anyone actually covers it and investigates it, it may begin to root out a Deep State that is willing to do and say anything to cover up the fact that it has gotten way, way out of control.

A bit later in the podcast, Klavan shares a couple of montages. First is one minute of a five-minute montage of the press fawning over Obama. Next is the media dishing up the “impeachment” idea, starting in November 2016, before Trump had taken office, on up through this past week.

from the montage included in the Klavan podcast
screenshot from here

What we have is a segment of society—and media, politicians, and other elites fit in here—that refuses to accept the results of an election. It was an election Hillary Clinton, with the help of a sitting president, attempted to secure through illegal means, and yet she lost. My guess is that Nancy Pelosi’s giving in to talking about impeachment now, after three years, when an election will come up before an actual impeachment could take place, is a desperation move intended to taint the president, because, based on the state of the economy and the increase in personal freedoms after Obama, the Democrats greatly fear Trump will be reelected, despite all their efforts.

As Klavan says later, this isn’t about any of the things they claim it is about:

The target is you. The target is to teach you a lesson: "Do not vote for whom we do not want you to vote for."

Those who feel they have the right to rule over us are tyrants, who should be kept as far away as possible from any of the reins of government.

If there is anything good that can come out of this, I hope it’s that truth will reveal the nefarious works of those trying to undermine the best and most important experiment in self-government in the history of the world.

Trump is not the enemy of our freedom. Maybe, as unpleasant as he is in the Twitter world, he’s exactly the tough leader we need to stand up to the tyranny. I hope he wins this particularly uncivil war against him, against us, and against our constitutional republic.