IF ONLY THE dEEP sTATE DESERVED CREDIT FOR BIBI TOO...:

A veteran American conservative pollster with close ties to both US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to push a conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party was running efforts to target the two leaders, as both face separate accusations of abusing the powers of office and corruption.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad "may have been falsely blamed" for the attack which led to American, British, and French bombings of suspected Syrian chemical weapons factories, and arguing that the deadly massacre "may never have happened in the first place."

These claims contradict and misrepresent the available evidence regarding the attack, the conclusions of multiple governments, and they are based on a Syrian and Russian misinformation campaign seeking to discredit investigators and absolve Assad of responsibility for the atrocity.

NO WONDER HE FELT COMFORTABLE WITH DONALD:

Three women say they faced sexual misconduct by Gordon Sondland before he was the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and at the center of the presidential impeachment inquiry. They say he retaliated against them professionally after they rejected his advances.

In one case, a potential business partner recalls that Sondland took her to tour a room in a hotel he owns, only to then grab her face and try to kiss her. After she rejected him, Sondland backtracked on investing in her business.

Another woman, a work associate at the time, says Sondland exposed himself to her during a business interaction. She also recalls falling over the back of a couch trying to get away from him. After she made her lack of interest clear, she says Sondland called her, screaming about her job performance.

A third woman, 27 years Sondland's junior, met him to discuss a potential job. She says he pushed himself against her and kissed her. She shoved him away. She says his job help stopped.

All three women have agreed to be named in this story. In all the cases, friends, family members or colleagues of the women recall being told about the encounters at the time. The cases span a seven-year period, ending less than a decade ago. 

THAT STABILITY WAS HIS ACHIEVEMENT:

The democratic transition that transformed Spain's government between 1976 and 1978 was unique. Never before had a firmly established modern authoritarian regime been peacefully democratised from the inside out, using the dictatorship's own law and institutions without the impact of international war or violent revolt. Though much of the political history of modern Spain is a record of failure, this was a singular achievement. It pioneered the model of democratisation later employed in Latin America, post-communist Eastern Europe, and a number of Asian and African countries.

After a motion introduced by the communists in 1977, and at the unanimous behest of other leftist deputies, the new regime voted a blanket amnesty for all those involved in killings and other politically-based infractions during the revolutionary civil war of 1936-1939 and the resulting dictatorship (1939- 1975). The new leaders agreed that history should be left to historians and that the cycle of vengeance against former foes inaugurated by the Republic of 1931-1936 should be rejected. This policy was also followed, mutatis mutandis, by the great majority of the numerous post-dictatorial parliamentary regimes in other parts of the world during the generation that followed.

The parliamentary regime inaugurated by King Juan Carlos quickly achieved stability and has governed with greater or lesser success for more than 40 years.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

The investigation found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place undercover agents or informants into his campaign, according to The Times.

Trump previously claimed, without evidence, that the FBI had sent a spy to infiltrate his 2016 campaign for "political purposes." He also baselessly accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping him during the campaign. Attorney General Bill Barr also suggested that the FBI had spied on the president's campaign.

The report also concluded that FBI officials were not politically motivated in their pursuit of a wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page after his departure.

Though the report is expected to criticize certain aspects of the FBI's handling of the Russia investigation, including errors which were discovered in the FBI's pursuit of a wiretap on Page, the report undercuts much of Trump and the Republican Party's defense of the president in the Russia scandal, according to The Times.

The report found that the FBI acted properly when it opened the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. The investigation began after former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat that he had been offered damaging information about former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

THE MEANS, NOT THE END:

Michael Oakeshott possessed a personality that generated an astounding attraction among all who met him. Hayek preferred to get along without one. The latter's acolytes persist among desiccated, soi-disant "conservative intellectuals" and cruising think-tankers who never quite work out what British conservatives are like by never asking what they like to do.

They like to drink, laugh, gossip, flirt, relish, rant, malign, sneer (such a wonderful disinfectant), pose, pretend, posture and provoke. Oakeshott knew all that by instinct and through the conversation that he craved.

Sitting on the floor of a student dorm with a group of undergraduates at two in the morning, he did what Hayek would have found impossible: he listened and enjoyed the lack of theme or direction. So a conversation in lower case transmuted into Conversation in higher: the Conversation of Mankind with its endorsement of poetry (any alternative to "science" and the "practical") and its engagements with the values inseparable from social existence.

Deaf to Hayek's insistence that other people's values can never be identified (meaning he couldn't through his lack of interest in other people), Oakeshott saw that conservative society cannot function as a value-neutral laboratory, but must respect inner commitments close to the heart. Conservatives value sharednesses because they share values.

This distancing promoted, too, a difference of language and address. Hayek wrote a pellucid brutalism concerned with the structures that promoted his one value of liberty. Oakeshott wrote on silk out of a lexicon that allowed no reduction to essence. You can turn Hayek into "Hayek"; you cannot turn Oakeshott into "Oakeshott".

EVERYTHING THE TRUMPBOTS HATE:

[Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman] closed his statement by telling his father that he'd made the right choice in bringing his family to America. His statement not only pointed to American exceptionalism in regards to religious liberty, but to the rule of law.

Foreign born Hill and Vindman, an immigrant and a refugee, might have been sent from central casting to remind us of the American creed: The idea that America is about principles and values, not ancestry and ethnicity. Vindman captured this perfectly in his statement: "The members of our all-volunteer force are made up of a patchwork of people from all ethnicities, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds who come together under a common oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America."

To be an American, is to accept a certain set of political values: the idea that we are all created equal and have the same liberties. G.K. Chesterton famously called America "a nation with the soul of a church" because it was founded on a "creed." It is telling that American celebrates itself on July 4th--the day it declared its independence to the world, justified by the political principles it set forth, which formed the basis of this creed. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln posited a nation founded with the Declaration of Independence, rooted in the proposition that "all men are created equal."

This creed explained why America was engaged in an ugly war to end an even uglier institution.

IT'S A rico CASE::

#TOTALLYNOTACULT:

In the 1980s, the late Sen. Barry Goldwater -- who was considered an arch-conservative in his day -- famously asserted that the Republican Party was making a huge mistake by embracing the Christian Right, which he described as a "terrible damn problem" for the conservative movement. But President Donald Trump, on the other hand, enthusiastically welcomes the support of far-right white evangelicals -- some of whom are declaring that the impeachment inquiry he is facing is against God's will and that demonic forces are trying to remove the president from office.

On November 21, evangelist Franklin Graham (son of the late Rev. Billy Graham and a strident Trump supporter) discussed impeachment when he appeared on fellow wingnut Eric Metaxas' radio show. Graham told Metaxas that it's "almost a demonic power that is trying" to remove Trump from office -- to which Metaxas responded, "I would disagree. It's not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it's a spiritual battle."

When far-right evangelicals speak of a "spiritual battle," they typically mean one between God and Satan -- and clearly, Graham and Metaxas believe that Trump is working for God, while his political opponents are working for Satan.

OUR TWO rEPUBLICAN PARTIES:

THE BIBIDAMMERUNG:

On Tuesday, more than 70 Israeli businesspeople signed a letter addressed to Israeli lawmakers requesting that they take immediate action to prevent a third election, the Calcalist business daily reported.

They said they were sending the letter out of concern for the nation's financial state.

"Growth and economic well-being require a strong and stable democracy. This requires a regime untainted by corruption that respects democratic values, including the independence of the legal system and a free press," the letter stated, according to a report on the Globes website. [...]

On Wednesday, another group of local tech figures called on Netanyahu to resign. [...]

The letter condemned the "unprecedented attacks on the rule of law, on Israel's attorney general, state attorney, the media, and the judicial system," according to Calcalist.

"We will not allow Israel and its democratic institutions to become collateral damage in the prime minister's personal fight for political survival," the letter read.

A NATION TURNS ITS LONELY EYES TO mURPH:

While acknowledging that his chances of winning the Feb. 11 primary, let alone the Oval Office, are akin to "a lightning strike" -- Murphy is campaigning by word of mouth and not soliciting contributions of money -- he sees a need to offer a contrast to a Trump presidency that he describes as "a terrible model for American youth."

"Part of it is for my students here at school," Murphy said. "My watchword is, 'If you feel strongly enough about something, why not go for it?' It's not enough to sit. It's not enough to think about something or other. You need to have some core values that you will stand up for and be identified with."

Bill Hammond, a former Hanover High colleague of Murphy's who described himself as an independent, said he's considering picking up a Republican ballot in support.

Murphy is "a reasoned thinker," said Hammond, whose time teaching a variety of subjects at Hanover High overlapped with half of Murphy's 58 years.

"As long as I've known Bill, he's always been coming up with ideas about how to make things better, whether it was in sports when he was a coach, or if it was in class, or if it was making the school work better," Hammond said.

To make the country work better, Murphy said, "I'm not interested in making significant changes to the system. I just think it's incumbent on Congress to pass the laws. I just want to provide a direction, to push Congress to do their work."