Ready for another Schiffy week? I know, it’s a thoroughly distasteful mess, something most appropriate for viewing on the bottom of a bird cage. But after a week of witnesses who didn’t have a clue about Trump’s rationale in Ukraine, disagreed with his policies, thought they knew better, wanted to run things and could offer only hearsay “evidence,” we’re now supposedly going to hear from some witnesses with “firsthand knowledge.” And, you know what? I think it actually might get pretty good, especially if you like watching train wrecks in slow motion.

To set this up, recall that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, in his written statement last week, told the story about the member of his staff who, on July 26 –- the day after the “problematic” Trump/Zelensky phone call –- sat on a patio having lunch with Ambassador Sondland and two other people and overheard his conversation with President Trump. The staffer said he could hear Trump’s side of the conversation quite clearly, as the President was speaking so loudly that Sondland had to hold the phone away from his ear. Trump asked Sondland if the Ukrainians were ready to move forward with “the investigations,” and Sondland said they were.

READ MORE AND COMMENT HERE>>>

As the week kicks off, I’m sure the liberal pundits will be chomping at the bit to trumpet Republican Eddie Rispone’s razor-thin loss to incumbent Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in Louisiana on Saturday, despite President Trump staging three rallies in the state to boost Republican turnout.  The message will be that the base is turning against Trump, or that Republicans are losing support in the South.  That’s all wishful thinking.

I’ve written for years about the folly of trying to read national political trends into state and local races, which are often about things that have nothing to do with the ongoing soap opera in Washington.  The Louisiana Governor’s race is a prime example.  I won’t go into detail because Joe Cunningham, who writes about Louisiana issues for Redstate.com, already explained it quite well here:

https://www.redstate.com/joesquire/2019/11/18/eddie-rispone-ralph-abraham-donald-trump-blame-louisiana-gubernatorial-loss/

The results have more to do with the kind of campaign Rispone ran, bad blood among many GOP voters over his primary tactics and the fact that Edwards ran as a pro-gun rights, anti-abortion moderate than Trump or the GOP’s relative popularity in Louisiana. As Cunningham notes, the Republicans have a super-majority in the Senate and close to one in the House, and they easily won all the other statewide races, so it seems likely that Rispone’s narrow loss was due to many Republicans rejecting him specifically. 

One thing I will add is that the Democratic side pulled out all the stops on voter turnout among minorities and union members, something that Republicans had better take into account in 2020.  When the next national election comes along, Republicans had better get out and vote as if America’s continued existence depends on it, because judging from the slate of Democrats up for election, it does. 

And before minorities and union members allow themselves to be exploited yet again by the Democrats, they might consider that their recently-created jobs, rising wages and good employer health plans may also go out of existence if they keep voting Democrat. 

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Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley had some choice words for “Anonymous,” the alleged White House mole/saboteur who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times and parlayed it into a book deal, bragging about how a cadre of Deep Staters are thwarting President Trump’s agenda from within – because, you know, they know so much better than the people’s elected representative.  Some of Haley’s words for him/her include “arrogant,” “cowardly” and “offensive.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/nikki-haley-blasts-anonymous-author-anti-trump-book-arrogant-cowardly/

There’s more at the link. Also, mark your calendars for next Saturday when Nikki Haley will have even more words to say as my guest on “Huckabee” on TBN.

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The latest example of “Everything Trump Does Is an OUTRAGE!” involves the criticism of his weekend pardons of two Army veterans accused of war crimes.  Their defenders say they were defending themselves on the battlefield (one was charged with war crimes for killing an alleged Taliban bomb maker.)

At the link, Matt Margolis of PJ Media offers some more details, along with a few examples of people who got pardons from Barack Obama that liberals didn’t get OUTRAGED over in the least.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-granted-clemency-to-terrorists-and-traitors-but-were-supposed-to-be-angry-at-trumps/

Bible Verse of the Day (KJV)