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Palestinians Cancel Soccer Final After Israel Denies Gaza Team Travel

Reuters:

The Palestinian national soccer club championship was called off on Wednesday after Israel denied travel permits to Gaza players who had hoped to face off with their opponents in the occupied West Bank.

Israel refused to let players from Gaza’s Khadamat Rafah club travel several dozen kilometers through its territory to play Nablus’s FC Balata in the central West Bank.

Israeli officials have not given a public explanation of the reasons. Some media reports have quoted Israeli security sources saying team members were believed to have links to terrorism.

Read the rest.

Who Is Really Responsible For The Ukraine Scandal?

Of course.  We should have known all along who was really behind this and why.

This Democrat-manufactured crisis has consumed Congress. But no one is more pleased than Vladimir Putin.

Intentional or not, Democrats are literally following the Russian president’s playbook. His goal, now and before the 2016 election, has been to pit Americans against one another and erode confidence in our democratic process. The world, which should focus on Mr. Putin’s illegitimate annexation of Crimea and continuing aggression elsewhere in Ukraine, instead is fixated on this partisan domestic theater.

By Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and 18 other Republican members of the committee.

More at the WSJ

 

 

Marc Thiessen Right About Something

For perhaps the first time in his life, the ridiculous torture- and war-monger Marc Thiessen is right about how ridiculous the Trump-Ukraine “scandal” is and how goddamn dumb the Democrats are:

It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?

—Snip stuff about the Bidens’ obvious corruption—

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced that Congress will initiate a formal impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine episode, a move Joe Biden endorsed in a speech, declaring, “It’s time for the Congress to fully investigate the conduct of this president.” Such an investigation will be far more damaging for Biden than the president. It will keep the story of Biden’s conflict of interest in the news through the 2020 election. Millions of Americans will learn the word “Burisma.” Senate Republicans can demand that Hunter Biden testify, and subpoena Obama White House aides such as Hochstein to explain under oath what the vice president knew and when he knew it. …

And the focus will not just be on Ukraine but also how, as The Post reported, “for more than two decades, [Hunter’s] professional work often tracked with his father’s life in politics, from Washington to Ukraine to China.” Trump will use an investigation to paint Joe Biden as a creature of the Washington swamp who used his official position to enrich his son. While Senate Republicans will not remove Trump from office, Democratic primary voters might decide that Biden and his troubles are a distraction they do not need. The irony is the Democrats’ investigation might do more to deny Biden the presidency than Trump.

Update: Just what did Hunter Biden spend all that money on? Coke and whores.

As I said the other day, this is going to end up so bad for the Dems that it might as well be a Roger Stone dirty trick being played on them. Not that I really think it is. But it sure could be: “How do we get the Dems to make Joe Biden’s corruption the next big scandal? I know! Joey, c’mere. You wanna be a whistleblower?”

Update more: The whistleblower report is here. Trump is sure stupid and ham-handed in personally bringing the issue up, and there is a bit more of an implication that the aid was withheld over the Biden case alone, since he claims there was no other previous discussion about suspending it. But it lacks any direct evidence of that.

It still seems nuts to think a president could be removed for such a thing, but again, since all American presidents of our era are war criminals, including this one, like with Bill Clinton in 1998, I’ll support his impeachment on whatever you got, even if it’s a terribly limited hangout. (At least he was clearly guilty of felony perjury before a federal criminal grand jury, one of the impeachment articles.)

But this is never going to work. In fact, the Dems have been trying to cheat and overturn the last election with their Russiagate hoax, their hush money for hoes hoax, and anything they can try to come up with outside of the actual use of presidential power, like killing hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians in an illegal, unauthorized war.

Of course all of the very worst things Trump has done, like with Yemen, have been to continue Obama’s policies in the wars. (Though he’s been worse on Palestine and Iran.)

So instead the Democrats are just going to try to keep nailing him on what amounts to a technicality, and just one year before the next presidential election, contributing to the narrative that this isn’t about what Trump did as much as their determination to find any excuse to unfairly cancel his election.

Update: The “whistleblower” is CIA.

Another Giant Non-Scandal — Toldyaso

Yes, Trump asked the new Ukrainian president to take a look at the firing of the prosecutor who had previously been investigating a natural gas firm that was paying then Vice President-Biden’s son Hunter $50,000 per month to sit on their board.

No, there is nothing like a quid pro quo or a threat from Trump to Zelenskiy.

In fact, due to Trump’s broken speech, “if you can look into it,” and “whatever you can do”: is the closest he gets to even making an ask.

Democrats are on TV, premature ejaculating all over the place, pretending they have been proven right anyway. The MSNBC reporter just paraphrased Trump on the call as saying, “this is a nice country you have here, it’d be a shame if something happened to it,” even though there is nothing like a threat or a promise anywhere in the call.

Another MSNBC “expert” just explained “you don’t need a quid pro quo to have a quid pro quo here.” Dem congressman says bringing up the question at all is impeachable.

Talk about derangement.

This whole thing might as well be a Roger Stone jerk-your-chain dirty trick on the liberals, as badly as they’re shooting themselves in the foot over all their half-assed claims against this president.

The relevant quotes:

“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, which is really unfair.”

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, what Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, It sounds horrible to me.”


Again: You want to impeach Trump? He’s guilty of genocide in an unauthorized, illegal war. How about that, huh? Oh… no? Obama started that war, so more Russia, Ukraine and other hoaxes will have to suffice.

Iran Bends Over Further, Will It Be Enough For Israel/Trump?

Iranian FM Zarif told CNN that Iran would be willing to sign another additional protocol to their Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, “allowing for more intrusive inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities at an earlier date than that set out in the 2015 deal. The country’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, would also enshrine a ban on nuclear weapons in law. … In return for what (Trump) has said he’s prepared to do and that is to go to Congress and have this ratified, which would mean Congress lifting the sanctions.”

“We are prepared, if President Trump is serious about permanent for permanent. Permanent — Iran was never a nuclear weapons state, but permanent denuclearization as they like to hear it,” said Zarif.

Ron and Dan: Defending Saudi Arabia… Hardly Our Moral Responsibility!

President Trump’s decision to deploy more US troops (and more failed Patriot Missile batteries) signals the US Administration’s continuing determination to back Saudi Arabia in its aggressive war against Yemen. But what does it mean that the mighty US air superiority has been defeated by a few cheap drones and missiles? The illusion of dominance. Should we be engaging further in the Middle East…or is it time to come home? Tune in to today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

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