quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
I don’t know if Adam Schiff has Asperger’s, but whether he does or he doesn’t, he has a much bigger problem: he’s fucking nuts. Like nuttier than squirrel shit in a forest of oak trees. Having Asperger’s doesn’t make you nuts, but having Asperger’s and being nuts to boot can get you an Adam Schiff.

Also, while you got some of the key concepts right, you’ve drawn some seriously erroneous conclusions, there, fpuhan.

My exposure to Asperger's has been in mostly clinical situations. I concede (and thought I made the point) that there are high-functioning Asperger's diagnosed persons. Let me try to put this another way: I know people who have a problem with alcohol. There are three types, in my opinion:

• Those who drink to excess. Their alcoholism has the best of them
  
• Those who don't drink, and are in recovery
  
• Those who don't drink and are not in recovery
  

I am not required to associate with anyone. I choose to not associate with people with an alcohol problem who have not taken steps to address it.

My late wife was alcoholic and disordered. She was in recovery when I met and married her. But the problems took over and she became someone I never wanted to see again. And I never did. Experiences like that affect one for the rest of their life.

I make no apologies for my shuddering reaction to the likes of Adam Schiff, and if you're nuts and have Asperger's I don't want to have anything to do with you, either.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

The biggest mistake in his amateur psychoanalysis: Asperger's Syndrome is almost invariably accompanied by a constitutional inability to lie. Even little white lies do not come naturally to such people. This is part and parcel of the social awkwardness that accompanies the condition. Ask somebody with Asperger's what they think of your new <this> or <that>, or what they think of what you're wearing, your new haircut/hairstyle, etc. and odds are they'll tell you. Usually without a shred of diplomacy.

You've met my wife?!

quote:

Originally posted by MRMATT:

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Democrat Bull Shit of the day.

Trumps Rally is this Tuesday in Wildwood NJ. Wildwood is a small tourist island located on the very bottom tip on NJ. (Jeff Van Drew’s district)

Over 100,000 ticket requests according to Trump’s campaign for a venue that only holds 7,000.

Anyway, there’s 3 roads that lead to bridges onto the island.

NJ Dept of transportation released a statement that they are limiting access to 2 of those roads for construction...set to start just before the rally.

Getting onto the island and back is going to be a nightmare.

These people are truly evil assholes.

Wasn't Chris Christie fried by the MSM for something similar? I believe two of his associates were tried in NY for closing lanes on a bridge to purposefully cause traffic chaos.

He sure was, that was a major shit storm.

These assholes are just doing this to fuck with Trump supporters. There's no reason this construction and blockages can be held off for another week.

Yet they out of the blue decide to start this stuff to coincide with the rally. NJDOT sent out an official statement just the other day to kindly let everyone know about this sudden and important road construction at major arteries leading to the rally location (which is an island, so routes are obviously limited). The timing of this just so happens to coincide with the rally.

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Democrat Bull Shit of the day.

Trumps Rally is this Tuesday in Wildwood NJ. Wildwood is a small tourist island located on the very bottom tip on NJ. (Jeff Van Drew’s district)

Over 100,000 ticket requests according to Trump’s campaign for a venue that only holds 7,000.

Anyway, there’s 3 roads that lead to bridges onto the island.

NJ Dept of transportation released a statement that they are limiting access to 2 of those roads for construction...set to start just before the rally.

Getting onto the island and back is going to be a nightmare.

These people are truly evil assholes.

I posted about this on page 2.

Whoops, in my rage, I must have missed it.

You gonna come back to NJ for the rally, Balze?

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Whoops, in my rage, I must have missed it.

You gonna come back to NJ for the rally, Balze?

It's easy to miss. With the thread stickied at the top, it's harder to keep track when there is a new post.

I just got home last night after over three weeks away so no, unfortunately I won't be coming back for the rally. I'll be busy in any case on the ski slopes.

My sister and brother-in-law will be there though. I warned them about the road closures. Bastard NJ Dems.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
The biggest mistake in his amateur psychoanalysis: Asperger's Syndrome is almost invariably accompanied by a constitutional inability to lie. Even little white lies do not come naturally to such people. This is part and parcel of the social awkwardness that accompanies the condition. Ask somebody with Asperger's what they think of your new <this> or <that>, or what they think of what you're wearing, your new haircut/hairstyle, etc. and odds are they'll tell you. Usually without a shred of diplomacy.

I did ask for professional opinions. No one has yet stepped forward to reply. Thus, everyone so far is as amateur as I am. I am assuming ensigmatic, that you are not a clinical professional, either. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

I am not at liberty to disclose in what capacity I dealt with such (thanks, HIPAA, etc.) people. And those with Aspergers were not the only people with whom I had dealings.

Ensigmatic is correct in his premise, but I will submit that it is possible for a person with Asperger's to believe a lie is the truth. It is in this regard that I had to interject myself between caretakers and patient. That was my role.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
WTF is this BS? The Democrats are even more desperate than I thought.

Unless I've lost count this would be the third time a Democrat has publicly admitted that the only way they can beat Trump is to impeach him.

Al Green has stated it on live television at least once as well.

I quite enjoyed President Trump’s comments at Davos, speaking to the point of trying to work from a mindset of optimism instead of pessimism, and obliquely mentioning the climate change doomers. Extra delicious since Greta Thunberg was in the crowd. Skip ahead to about 2:30 for that.




https://youtu.be/dMCYMT-K6bI

"This is not a time for pessimism, this is a time for optimism. Fear and doubt is not a good thought process, because this is a time for tremendous hope, and joy, and optimism, and action. But to embrace the possibilities of tomorrow, we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse." - Donald Trump

Words to live by, honestly.


Fpuhan, don’t make the mistake of thinking that anything I said at all was a defense of Adam Schiff. That cocksucker has no excuse. You can call it Asperger’s or whatever you want. I just think he’s fucking batshit crazy. I won’t comment further on this matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Whoops, in my rage, I must have missed it.

You gonna come back to NJ for the rally, Balze?

It's easy to miss. With the thread stickied at the top, it's harder to keep track when there is a new post.

I just got home last night after over three weeks away so no, unfortunately I won't be coming back for the rally. I'll be busy in any case on the ski slopes.

My sister and brother-in-law will be there though. I warned them about the road closures. Bastard NJ Dems.

Yeah, not a fan of the sticky thread.

If they end up going out to eat when in town, tell them not to go to Dogtooth, Poppies, Kona, or Mudhen. Those restaurants are owned by the local Dem Chairman who is organizing and catering the planned protests.

It's a shame, they were my favorite places to eat, but now this assclown has gone all in against Trump. You'd think a successful NJ business owner would be smarter than that, I guess he enjoys being taxed up the ass. He also hosted an event for the governor recently.

There's a TON of hotels, bars, and restaurants that are closed for the off season and opening just for the rally. Many are having Trump rally events, especially the bars.

The owner/dem chair, Brendan Sciarra has a ton of illegal immigrants working for him in his restaurant, and one was briefly shutdown last year because of this.

Bonus Salacious news: Brendan is married with kids, but it's widely known he's in the closet, and was caught in a compromising position with a male employee last year.

quote:

“The President's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won".
-Adam Schiff

He's right about there being voting fraud, but he's wrong about who has been guilty of it--the Democrats have been cheating for decades.

flashguy

Trump Campaign Trolls Adam Schiff With "Road Runner" Cartoon Showing Schiff As Wile E. Coyote

Dan Scavino, the Social Media Director at the White House, tweeted this "Looney Tunes" parody video Wednesday mocking House impeachment manager Adam Schiff.



https://www.realclearpolitics....ferrer=recirculation

https://hotair.com/archives/ed...ing-trial-analogies/

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, launched Wednesday what Democrats see as their last, best shot to convince a handful of Republican senators to join their push for witnesses and documents.

The House impeachment managers’ opening arguments, which could stretch for up to three days, are as much a pitch to the American public as to the small but powerful group of Republicans — including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — who could determine whether the Senate will hear from witnesses Democrats believe are central to their case. …

Schiff repeatedly emphasized aspects of the case that would be enhanced with testimony from key witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

“The complete story is within your power to request,” Schiff said as senators looked on.

But he also insisted that the House’s case was already “overwhelming” and in many ways uncontested.

And here we have the basic contradiction of the House Democrats’ case for more witnesses. If it’s “overwhelming” as is, then there is no need for more witnesses . If it’s “uncontested,” which it most certainly is not, then there’s no need for a trial. Schiff likes to throw these words around as though uttering them out loud turns them from argument into fact, but that’s not how argument works, outside of court and especially inside of court. The problem for Schiff is that the House impeachment consists entirely of argument, and entirely lacks direct evidence and direct testimony. That is why Democrats are so desperate to get a handful of Senate Republicans to do the work that Schiff and Jerrold Nadler refused to do, simply because the timing didn’t suit their tastes.

Olsen also rips Schiff for presenting two new elements to his case for calling them “evidence.” The Lev Parnas transcripts, Olsen notes, has already been publicly mischaracterized by Schiff, or as Olsen puts it “wildly misconstrued,” all but eliminating their evidentiary value.

The GAO report on the Impoundment Control Act wouldn’t even be admissible in federal court for any reason, as it is a non-expert opinion on legal matters, which is not in GAO’s purview. (One obvious corroboration of that fact is that they cited a violation of the ICA when in fact the money in question got spent within the budget year, which means no violation actually occurred at all.)

Olsen doesn’t mention this, but the ICA is a civil issue, and the explicit remedy for a violation is within the statute — a lawsuit from the Comptroller General to release the funds. It’s not a “high crime or misdemeanor,” and in fact it’s not even a crime at all.

If this is the Democrats’ best hope for getting witnesses called, their desperation must be rising by the hour. All Schiff and his fellow managers offered yesterday was speculation and hearsay without any specific crime alleged, all the while begging the Senate to provide them the missing pieces of their case.

xxxxxxxxxxx


Romney, Collins, Murkowski what will they do ?

this is Russia Russia Russia all over again. DEMs say we just need to keep looking, keep looking.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/...-made-it-up-n2559983

Joe Lockhart, who is a CNN political analyst and former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, tweeted on Wednesday that he overheard two Republican senators who were shocked to hear the evidence impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was presenting in the Senate trial of President Trump.

"Overheard convo between two Republican Senators who only watch Fox News. 'is this stuff real? I haven't heard any of this before. I thought it was all about a server. If half the stuff Schiff is saying is true, we're up sh*t's creek. Hope the White House has exculpatory evidence,'" Lockhart tweeted.



Shortly after sending the tweet, Lockhart, who is also host of the "Words Matter Podcast," then sent a follow up tweet saying that he " maybe...made up the convo, but you know that's exactly what they're thinking ."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


CNN doing what it does best - fabrication divorced from reality

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
The biggest mistake in his amateur psychoanalysis: Asperger's Syndrome is almost invariably accompanied by a constitutional inability to lie. Even little white lies do not come naturally to such people. This is part and parcel of the social awkwardness that accompanies the condition. Ask somebody with Asperger's what they think of your new <this> or <that>, or what they think of what you're wearing, your new haircut/hairstyle, etc. and odds are they'll tell you. Usually without a shred of diplomacy.

I did ask for professional opinions. No one has yet stepped forward to reply. Thus, everyone so far is as amateur as I am. I am assuming ensigmatic, that you are not a clinical professional, either. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

I am not at liberty to disclose in what capacity I dealt with such (thanks, HIPAA, etc.) people. And those with Aspergers were not the only people with whom I had dealings.

Ensigmatic is correct in his premise, but I will submit that it is possible for a person with Asperger's to believe a lie is the truth. It is in this regard that I had to interject myself between caretakers and patient. That was my role.

HIPAA doesn't prevent you from disclosing in what capacity you deal with individuals. It does prevent you from naming them or giving out information that could be used to identify them or their treatment status. Simply saying "I treat Asperger's patients as a counselor" does not violate HIPAA.

Hell, if that was the case, I couldn't tell people what I did for a living!!

^^^ Trump thread.

Holy thread drift, Batman.

Putting this up so you can see what the enemy is saying. Not that I agree in any way.(My disclaimer)

Soros Speaks Live From Davos, Slams "Conman, Narcisist" Trump

https://www.zerohedge.com/econ...nman-narcisist-trump

To say that it is virtually impossible to understand what the almost 90-year-old George Soros is saying during his traditionally anticipated speech in Davos, is an understatement, so we will leave it to Bloomberg to summarize the key points from the speech so far, which as one can expect, emphasize Soros' less than warm feelings vis-a-vis Donald Trump:

*SOROS SAYS PRESIDENT TRUMP IS A `CON MAN'
*SOROS SAYS PRESIDENT TRUMP IS THE `ULTIMATE NARCISSIST'

After spending the bulk of his 2019 speech slamming China, Soros has reverted to this topic, fusing it with the "other" one:

*SOROS SAYS XI JINGPING IS SEEKING TO EXPLOIT TRUMP'S WEAKNESSES
*SOROS SAYS U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS `DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND'

Soros also commented on the key geopolitical event of 2020 to date: the assassination of Soleymani:

*SOROS SAYS TRUMP HAD NO STRATEGIC PLAN WITH IRAN ACTIONS

Then, the billionaire democrat turned his attention to the "overheating" US economy, warning that it is only a matter of time before the economy boils over:

*SOROS SAYS TRUMP TEAM HAS OVERHEATED ALREADY BUOYANT ECONOMY
*SOROS: U.S. OVERHEATED ECONOMY `CAN'T BE KEPT BOILING TOO LONG'

Follow the rest of Soros' speech courtesy of Bloomberg TV:


Bloomberg TV
✔
@BloombergTV

WATCH: George Soros speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Watch live ▶️ https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1vOxwadPPZNGB …

Soros' full speech is below (link):

Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum

We live at a transformational moment in history. The survival of open societies is endangered and we face an even greater crisis: climate change. It is threatening the survival of our civilization. These twin challenges have inspired me to announce the most important project of my life here tonight.

As I argue in my recent book, In Defense of Open Society, in a revolutionary moment the range of possibilities is far wider than in normal times. It has become easier to influence events than to understand what is going on. As a consequence, outcomes are unlikely to correspond to people’s expectations. This has already caused widespread disappointment that populist politicians have exploited for their own purposes.

Open Society has not always needed defending as it does today. Some forty years ago, when I got engaged in what I call my political philanthropy, the wind was at our back and carried us forward. International cooperation was the prevailing creed. In some ways it prevailed even in the crumbling and ideologically bankrupt Soviet Union – remember the marxist’s slogan “workers of the world unite”? In contrast, the European Union was in the ascendant and I considered it the embodiment of the open society.

But the tide turned against open societies after the crash of 2008 because it constituted a failure of international cooperation. This in turn led to the rise of nationalism, the great enemy of open society.

***

In the middle of last year I still cherished some hopes that there would be another reversal towards international cooperation. The European parliamentary elections produced surprisingly favorable results. Participation increased by 8%—the first uptick since the Parliament was established. More importantly, the silent majority spoke up in favor of greater European cooperation.

But by the end of the year my hopes were dashed. The strongest powers, the US, China and Russia remained in the hands of would-be or actual dictators and the ranks of authoritarian rulers continued to grow.

The fight to prevent Brexit—harmful both to Britain and to the EU—ended in a crushing defeat.

Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback occurred in India where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.

In Latin America a humanitarian catastrophe continues to unfold. By the beginning of this year almost 5 million Venezuelans had emigrated, causing tremendous disruption in neighboring countries. At the same time, Bolsonaro has failed to prevent the destruction of the rain forests in Brazil in order to open it up for cattle ranching. In a further blow, the UN climate conference in Madrid broke up without reaching any meaningful agreement.

To top it all off, Kim Jong-un threatened the United States with its nuclear capabilities in his New Year’s speech and Trump’s impetuous actions heightened the risk of a conflagration in the Middle East.

Let me now turn to another vexing topic, the relationship between the United States and China. It has become incredibly complicated and difficult to understand. The interaction between the two presidents, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, provides a useful clue. Both face internal constraints and various enemies. Both try to extend the powers of their office to its limit and beyond. While they have found some mutually beneficial reasons to cooperate, their motivations are completely different.

President Trump is a con man and the ultimate narcissist who wants the world to revolve around him. When his fantasy of becoming president came true, his narcissism developed a pathological dimension. Indeed, he has transgressed the limits imposed on the presidency by the Constitution and has been impeached for it. At the same time, he has managed to gather a large number of followers who have bought into his alternative reality. This has turned his narcissism into a malignant disease. He came to believe that he could impose his alternative reality not only on his followers but on reality itself.

Trump’s counterpart, Xi Jinping, suffered a traumatic experience in his early youth. His father had been one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party. He was expelled, and his son, Xi Jinping, grew up in rural exile. Since that time, the goal of Xi’s leadership became to reassert the Communist Party’s dominance over Chinese life. He called it the “Chinese dream” of a “rejuvenated” China capable of projecting its power and influence throughout the world. Xi Jinping has abolished a carefully developed system of collective leadership and became a dictator as soon as he gained sufficient strength to do so.

When it comes to their motivations, they are totally different, Trump is willing to sacrifice the national interests for his personal interests and he will do practically anything to win re-election. By contrast, Xi Jinping is eager to exploit Trump’s weaknesses and use artificial intelligence to achieve total control over his people.

Xi’s success is far from assured. One of China’s vulnerabilities is that it still depends on the United States to supply it with the microprocessors it needs to dominate the 5G market and to fully implement the social credit system that is a threat to open societies.

Xi Jinping also faces some impersonal forces like demographics working against him. The one child policy, in effect until 2015, created a shortage of both young workers and child-bearing women and a surfeit of old people. These trends are bound to get worse. The decline in the working age population is now relentless.

The Belt and Road Initiative has required giving large loans, some of which will never be repaid. China can ill-afford this because its budget deficit has increased and its trade surplus has diminished. Since Xi Jinping has centralized power in his hands, China’s economic policy has also lost its flexibility and inventiveness.

To make matters worse for Xi, the Trump Administration has developed a comprehensive and bipartisan policy towards China, which has declared that China is a strategic rival. This is the only bipartisan policy that the Trump Administration has been able to produce and there is only one man who can violate it with impunity: President Trump himself.

Unfortunately from an open society point of view, he is capable of doing so, as he has demonstrated by putting Huawei on the bargaining table with Xi Jinping.

***

With this background, let me put the tumultuous events since the beginning of this year into the proper perspective.

President Trump didn’t have a strategic plan when he authorized the launching of a missile that killed the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Suleimani, and an Iraqi pro-Iranian militia commander; but he has an unfailing instinct that tells him how his faithful followers would respond to his actions. They are jubilant. This made the task of the Democrats, who impeached him, extremely difficult. The trial in the Senate is shaping up to be a strictly pro forma affair because the Republican majority in the Senate is united behind Trump—although Chief Justice Roberts, who is presiding, may surprise us.

At the same time, Trump’s economic team has managed to overheat an already buoyant economy. The stock market, already celebrating Trump’s military success, is breaking out to reach new heights. But an overheated economy can’t be kept boiling for too long.

If all this had happened closer to the elections, it would have assured his reelection. His problem is that the elections are still 10 months away and in a revolutionary situation, that is a lifetime.

From an open society point of view, the situation is quite grim. It would be easy to give in to despair, but that would be a mistake. The public is beginning to be aware of the dangers of climate change. It has certainly become the top priority of the European Union – but we can’t count on the United States while Trump is in power because he is a climate denier.

There are also grounds to hope for the survival of open societies. They have their weaknesses, but so do repressive regimes. The greatest shortcoming of dictatorships is that when they are successful, they don’t know when or how to stop being repressive. They lack the checks and balances that give democracies a degree of stability. As a result, the oppressed revolt.

We see this happening today all around the world. The most successful rebellion so far has been in Hong Kong, but it comes at a great cost: it may well destroy the city’s economic prosperity. There are so many revolts going on in the world that it would take too long to examine each case individually.

Observing this torrent of rebellions, I can venture a generalization about the ones that are likely to succeed. They are typified by Hong Kong. It has no visibly identifiable leadership and yet it has the overwhelming support of the population.

I began to form this conclusion when I learnt about a spontaneous movement of young people turning up at rallies held by Matteo Salvini, the would-be dictator of Italy. They held up cut-out signs of sardines proclaiming “sardines against Salvini,” and explaining that there are many more sardines than sharks like Salvini, so the sardines are bound to prevail.

Sardines are the Italian variant of a worldwide trend led by young people. This leads me to conclude that today’s youth may have found a way to confront nationalist dictatorships.

I see another constructive force emerging worldwide: the mayors of major cities are organizing around important issues. In Europe, climate change and internal migration are high on their agenda. This coincides with the main concerns of today’s youth. Uniting around these issues could create a powerful pro-European, pro-open society movement. But it’s an open question whether these aspirations will succeed.

***

Taking into account the climate emergency and worldwide unrest, it’s not an exaggeration to say that 2020 and the next few years will determine not only the fate of Xi and Trump, but also the fate of the world.

If we survive the near-term, we still need a long-term strategy. If Xi Jinping succeeds in fully implementing his social credit system, he will bring into existence a new type of authoritarian system and a new type of human being who is willing to surrender his personal autonomy in order to stay out of trouble. Once lost, personal autonomy will be difficult to recover. An open society would have no place in such a world.

I believe that as a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasizing academic freedom.

30 years ago I set up an educational institution that does exactly that. It is called the Central European University (CEU) and its mission is to advance the values of the open society.

During these 30 years, CEU emerged as one of the hundred best graduate universities in the world in the social sciences. It has also become one of the most international universities, with students from 120 countries and a faculty coming from more than 50 countries. In recent years CEU gained a global reputation for defending academic freedom against Victor Orban, Hungary’s ruler, who is hell bent on destroying it.

CEU brings together students and faculty representing very different cultures and traditions who listen to each other and debate with each other. CEU has demonstrated that active civic engagement can be combined with academic excellence.

Yet, CEU is not strong enough by itself to become the educational institution the world needs. That requires a new kind of global educational network.

Fortunately, we also have the building blocks for creating such a network: CEU and Bard College in the US are already long-term partners. CEU is a graduate institution, and Bard an innovative, mainly undergraduate liberal arts college. Both have been supported by the Open Society Foundations and encouraged to offer a helping hand to other universities and colleges worldwide. Bard and CEU have developed an array of successful relationships in the less developed parts of the world.

The time has come for OSF to embark on an ambitious plan to build on this foundation a new and innovative educational network that the world really needs. It will be called the Open Society University Network or OSUN for short.

OSUN will be unique. It will offer an international platform for teaching and research. In the first phase it will connect closer together an existing network. In the second phase, we shall open up this network to other institutions who want to join and are eager and qualified to do so.

To demonstrate that the idea is practical, we have already implemented the first phase. We are holding common classes for students from several universities located in different parts of the world, sharing faculty and conducting joint research projects in which people from many universities collaborate.

OSUN will continue in the footsteps of CEU and Bard in seeking to reach places in need of high quality education and in serving neglected populations, such as refugees, incarcerated people, the Roma and other displaced peoples like the Rohingya. OSUN, is ready to start a massive “scholars at risk” program, connecting a large number of academically excellent but politically endangered scholars with this new global network and each other.

CEU is already part of a network of European universities of the social sciences called CIVICA, which is led by Sciences Po in Paris and includes the London School of Economics. CIVICA has won a competition sponsored by the European Union requiring members of the consortium to cooperate not only in education but also in civic and international outreach. OSUN through CEU and Bard has already pioneered in these fields and we hope that members of CIVICA will become interested in joining OSUN – creating a truly global network.

To demonstrate our commitment to OSUN, we are contributing one billion dollars to it. But we can’t build a global network on our own; we will need partner institutions and supporters from all around the world to join us in this enterprise.

We are looking for farsighted partners who feel a responsibility for the future of our civilization, people who are inspired by the goals of OSUN and want to participate in its design and realization.

I consider OSUN the most important and enduring project of my life and I should like to see it implemented while I am still around. I hope that those who share this vision will join us in making it a reality.

Thank you.

WaPo columnist: Who does Schiff think he’s kidding on trial analogies?

Democrats see Adam Schiff’s presentation in the Senate, Politico reports, as “their last, best shot” to flip enough Senate Republicans to get them to finish their case for them. It’s their last shot, most definitely, as they will have to take a seat for the defense rebuttal from Donald Trump’s legal team. Whether or not it was a “best shot” remains to be seen, but it didn’t impress Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen, despite the lavish praise from some other quarters of the media.

First, however, Politico sums up the presentment from House Democrats:

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, launched Wednesday what Democrats see as their last, best shot to convince a handful of Republican senators to join their push for witnesses and documents.

The House impeachment managers’ opening arguments, which could stretch for up to three days, are as much a pitch to the American public as to the small but powerful group of Republicans — including Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — who could determine whether the Senate will hear from witnesses Democrats believe are central to their case. ...

Schiff repeatedly emphasized aspects of the case that would be enhanced with testimony from key witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.

“The complete story is within your power to request,” Schiff said as senators looked on.

But he also insisted that the House’s case was already “overwhelming” and in many ways uncontested.

And here we have the basic contradiction of the House Democrats’ case for more witnesses. If it’s “overwhelming” as is, then there is no need for more witnesses. If it’s “uncontested,” which it most certainly is not, then there’s no need for a trial. Schiff likes to throw these words around as though uttering them out loud turns them from argument into fact, but that’s not how argument works, outside of court and especially inside of court. The problem for Schiff is that the House impeachment consists entirely of argument, and entirely lacks direct evidence and direct testimony. That is why Democrats are so desperate to get a handful of Senate Republicans to do the work that Schiff and Jerrold Nadler refused to do, simply because the timing didn’t suit their tastes.

This is just one of the many ways in which Schiff’s pose as a trial prosecutor fails to work, and Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen laid out several more last night. After Schiff tried to analogize the House impeachment to a federal prosecution, Olsen rebuked Schiff’s “disingenuous” argument and proceeded to demolish it:

Federal criminal trials are governed by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. One might argue that the entire analogy falls at the outset, as the House Democrats’ articles of impeachment do not claim that President Trump committed a crime. But overlooking that minor point, the House’s procedure failed every test those rules establish.

The House’s articles have been analogized to an indictment, but indictments can only be brought if they are sanctioned by a neutral, disinterested party. A prosecutor must persuade either a judge or a grand jury that there is probable cause a defendant committed a crime to initiate a case. No serious person can call the House Democratic caucus a neutral, disinterested party.

Nor can a prosecutor obtain evidence under subpoena on their whim. Anyone with a subpoena to provide testimony or written evidence can challenge that in court, as many recipients of such subpoenas in investigations supervised by the office of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did. That is exactly what the president has tried to do in many instances with respect to subpoenas issued by committees controlled by House Democrats. But Schiff and his colleagues not only chose not to permit the judicial process to play out with respect to those subpoenas; they chose to call the president’s attempt to avail himself of his rights “obstruction of Congress” and an impeachable offense itself. How Orwellian.

The list goes on. A defendant can file a motion to suppress any evidence obtained during an investigation that she believes was illegally obtained. That motion is heard by a disinterested party — a federal judge — and that judge’s opinion can be appealed to an appellate court before the trial ever begins. Again, the House procedure denied the president that basic right by making the prosecutor, Schiff, the judge.

Olsen also rips Schiff for presenting two new elements to his case for calling them “evidence.” The Lev Parnas transcripts, Olsen notes, has already been publicly mischaracterized by Schiff, or as Olsen puts it “wildly misconstrued,” all but eliminating their evidentiary value. The GAO report on the Impoundment Control Act wouldn’t even be admissible in federal court for any reason, as it is a non-expert opinion on legal matters, which is not in GAO’s purview. (One obvious corroboration of that fact is that they cited a violation of the ICA when in fact the money in question got spent within the budget year, which means no violation actually occurred at all.) Olsen doesn’t mention this, but the ICA is a civil issue, and the explicit remedy for a violation is within the statute — a lawsuit from the Comptroller General to release the funds. It’s not a “high crime or misdemeanor,” and in fact it’s not even a crime at all.

If this is the Democrats’ best hope for getting witnesses called, their desperation must be rising by the hour. All Schiff and his fellow managers offered yesterday was speculation and hearsay without any specific crime alleged, all the while begging the Senate to provide them the missing pieces of their case.

https://hotair.com/archives/ed...ing-trial-analogies/

About time this travesty was rolled back.The Government was harassing land owners over mud puddles under Obama.


Trump administration rolls back Obama clean water rule

https://www.washingtonexaminer...vw4u5YbB7Xmn4XdsEjLI



The Trump administration unveiled a rewrite of an Obama-era clean water rule Thursday, setting a narrower definition for which waters are covered under federal protections.

The new rule, which will replace the Obama administration waters of the U.S., or WOTUS, rule, is meant to fulfill one of President Trump’s major energy and environmental priorities. Trump, in recent remarks to the American Farm Bureau, called the WOTUS rule “one of the most ridiculous regulations of all,” saying it “gave bureaucrats virtually unlimited authority to regulate stock tanks, drainage ditches, and isolated ponds as navigable waterways and navigable water.”

Under the Trump administration’s regulation, issued Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, four types of waters are covered by federal protections: traditional navigable waters, such as seas and rivers; streams that flow into traditional navigable waters; wetlands right next to covered waters; and certain lakes, ponds, and impoundments.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the new rule — which they've dubbed the "Navigable Waters Protection Rule" — offers clarity to farmers, ranchers, developers, manufacturers, and other land owners, so they don’t have to spend “tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and consultants to determine whether waters on their own land fall under the control of the federal government.”

The narrower definition would exclude some waters that were covered under the Obama-era rule, including wetlands connected to covered waters through groundwater, many ditches, and ephemeral streams, or streams that flow with rain water.

“We’ll see more clarity coming out of this final rule,” said Jake Tyner, a manager and associate policy counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.

Businesses, particularly small business owners, “will be able to look at a water and be able to determine whether it is navigable or not,” Tyner said, adding the Obama administration’s rule had led to confusion that could require businesses to hire consultants and lawyers “to really get into the weeds on this.”

Environmentalists, however, say the Trump administration’s rule goes further than rolling back the Obama version of regulation, and in fact excludes waters that have been covered by federal agencies for decades.

“It’s a real departure from what we’ve been doing for decades now,” said Blan Holman, senior attorney of the Southern Environmental Law Center's Charleston office and leader of its Clean Water Defense Initiative.

“There’s been strong economic growth under the Clean Water Act for decades, and this is just a gratuitous slashing of core protections to protect special interests,” he added.

Environmentalists and former EPA officials have also raised concerns that many waters excluded from the Trump administration definition would now lack environmental protections because many states won't be able to step in and regulate.

For example, 13 states have direct prohibitions barring them from issuing water quality regulations stricter than federal limits, according to Betsy Southerland, former director of science and technology in the EPA’s Office of Water until 2017. Another 23 states would have to jump through regulatory or legislative hoops to implement stronger protections, she added.

Without a national floor of federal protections, states won’t have any incentive to issue stronger protections, Holman said, adding that many state environment agencies are already underfunded.

“It will be a one-way ratchet” toward less protection, he said. Holman added part of what made the Obama-era program so strong was it alleviated states from dealing with political pressure to weaken water quality protections, because they had to implement the federal standards.

A senior EPA official, though, dismissed criticism that a water would go unprotected if it isn't regulated federally.

Today's regulatory landscape isn't the same as the 1970s and 1980s because "states have robust environmental programs," the official told reporters on a press call Thursday. States "value and cherish their resources."

The official also pushed back on critiques from members of the EPA's Science Advisory Board, which issued a draft report late last year suggesting the Trump administration's proposal didn't have a "fully supportable scientific basis." The EPA official said the agencies had to follow the law, which is specific about which waters are covered federally.

“This isn’t about whether it’s an important water body,” the official said, noting all water bodies are important. “This is about what waters Congress intended for the agencies to regulate.”

Sure is quiet around here.