“What did they know and when did they know it?” and “It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up” are two of the biggest journalistic clichés of our time.

But clichés or not, sometimes they are true and they both apply (and then some) to the astonishing Eric Schneiderman situation.

This appalling scandal  should be nothing less than a spiritual crisis for the Democrat Party and so-called liberals and progressives everywhere.

It should.  But it probably won't be, even though the level of hypocrisy is stratospheric.  And that is the essence of the problem.

But the initial question immediately arises.  Since now six women (the NY Post has the latest per the cover story above) have reported near identical pathologies on the part of Schneiderman.

Didn't anyone know about this?

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When President Trump presided over a business roundtable in Cleveland last weekend, it was one of several events he has hosted in the Midwest since Election Day.

Trump held a raucous victory rally in Ohio just a few weeks after he won the presidency, and has since made frequent trips to Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan: He will visit Elkhart, Indiana today (5/10)

Trump skipped the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last month and instead campaigned in central Michigan. The president’s courting of voters in the Heartland is a shrewd political calculation by Team Trump.  The POTUS has this figured out:

Democrats have been counting on the Great Lakes to deliver a Big Blue Wave this November to help win back control of Congress, but with no compelling message aside from impeachment, no policy agenda for the economy or national security, and no tactical strategy to lure swing voters back, Democrats might reverse the historical trend of the out-of-power party gaining more power in the midterm election.

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Robert Mueller has plenty of questions for President Trump, and maybe he will get to ask them. Most of them are perjury traps rather than real questions for the president.

Surprisingly, they contain very little that wasn’t in the public domain though prior leaks. In other words, the president is not a target because they have nothing implicating him, and so they want to use the interview to create such material.

But the conduct of the investigation by the special counsel and his team has raised a lot of questions as to its foundation, conflicts of interest, fairness and methods.

If you believe the last Harvard Caps-Harris Poll, much of the public supports Robert Mueller going forward with his investigation, although the Washington Post reported yesterday (5/01), “The number of people who say the Mueller investigation should continue is shrinking.’

That shrinking would no doubt continue if Mr. Mueller were required to answer a few questions himself.  In a deposition under oath with threat of perjury.  Such as:

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There are lots of possible counterfactuals to think about had Hillary Clinton won the presidency as all the experts had predicted.

The U.S. embassy would have stayed in Tel Aviv. “Strategic patience” would likely still govern the North Korea dilemma. Fracking would be curtailed. The — rather than “our” — miners really would be put out of work. Coal certainly would not have been “beautiful.”

The economy probably would be slogging along at below 2 percent GDP growth.

China would be delighted, as would Iran. But most important, there would be no collusion narrative — neither one concerning a defeated Donald Trump nor another implicating a victorious Hillary Clinton.

In triumph, progressives couldn’t have cared less whether Russians supposedly had tried to help a now irrelevant Trump; and they certainly would have prevented any investigation of the winning Clinton 2016 campaign.

In sum, Hillary’s supposedly sure victory, not fear of breaking the law, prompted most of the current 2016 scandals, and her embittering defeat means they are not being addressed as scandals.

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The end of April was extraordinarily rich in high-profile international events—and Russia was conspicuously absent from all these dynamics.

The president of South Korea and the North Korean dictator planted a pine tree of peace just to the south of the ceasefire line that still divides these two states.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid a state visit to Washington, DC (an oak tree was duly planted), and his overtly friendly talks with United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday (April 24) were followed-up by the visibly less cordial exchanges with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who traveled the same route on Friday.

Foreign and security ministers of the G7 met in Toronto, Canada, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held a ministerial meeting on Friday, greeting the newly confirmed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Putin had no role in any of this and much much more.

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When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what’s next? The Left’s “Resistance” wants Trump’s head — on the chopping block.

On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer confidence, and in some, Trump himself has gained ground.

Yet good news is bad news to the Resistance and its demonic continued efforts to stop an elected president in a way it failed to do in the 2016 election.

As the Resistance goes from one ploy to the next, it ignores its string of failed prior efforts, forgetting everything and learning nothing.  Are we reaching a point in the so-far-failed Resistance where little is left except abject violence in the manner of the French Revolution?

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Hell hath no fury than libtards spurned by blacks.

With just seven words, a seismic shift in the cultural and political American landscape this weekend emanated from an unlikely epicenter: superstar rapper Kanye West.

Nothing triggers leftist anger quite like blacks thinking for themselves, and not like they are told to be lefties. So when Kanye tweeted a  endorsement of black conservative commentator Candace Owens, the left erupted with predictable fury toward both West and Owens.

Kanye, whose ubiquitous wife Kim Kardashian was a prominent supporter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has drawn leftist fire before.  But with those seven words, he may have started a revolution – because he has 22.5 million Twitter followers

If blacks and other minorities start getting the subversive idea that they can think for themselves and thrive on their own off the Democrat plantation that has kept them under the Party’s thumb for half a century, then the Democrat Party is finished.

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Russian meddling? Campaign collusion? Forget that. That “did they or didn’t they” story has nothing on the ongoing saga of cybersecurity breaches with the possible involvement of a foreign government taking place in the House of Representatives.

The story has all the features of a political spy novel: stolen servers, access to confidential congressional files, claims of “controlling the White House” and $12,000 in a suitcase.

Compared to the rampant speculation over yet-unproven claims of Russian collusion in the Trump campaign, the events in the House have received minimal attention from the mainstream press (the exception is the impressive level of coverage from the Daily Caller News Foundation’s investigator Luke Rosiak).

Now President Trump has raised public questions about the issue, in the tweet above on April 20.

The unwillingness of major news outlets to devote significant coverage to the story is all the more noteworthy considering the presence of clear indications of wrongdoing by congressional staff, Members of Congress who are actively delaying the investigation, and a number of critical questions that remain unanswered.

Here are the basic facts.

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The United States is flooding the European markets with record amounts crude oil as US producers seize on Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) pact to cut output resulting in soaring oil prices.

US crude oil is seen as the cheaper option as the OPEC-Russia pact begins to bite after agreeing to oil output jointly by 1.8million barrels per day (bpd) help rebalance the market and to help elevate the benchmark Brent prices.

Now, the relatively high prices brought about by that pact, coupled with surging US output, are making it harder to sell Russian, Nigerian and other oil grades in Europe, traders say.

A trader with a Mediterranean refiner, who regularly buys Russian and Caspian Sea crude and has recently started purchasing US oil. He said: “US oil is on offer everywhere. It puts local grades under a lot of pressure.”  Call it Trump’s Revenge.

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Grand geopolitical scheming took a break in Moscow last week. The main news—improbably—turned to the fiasco of the government trying and failing, since April 16, to ban the popular instant messenger app Telegram.

The fiasco exposes Vladimir Putin as a “poser” – someone who pretends to know what he’s doing but doesn’t.

Millions of Russians remain blissfully unaware about this “state failure,” but probably as many others are following it with keen interest; in fact, use of this popular app has actually increased since being “blocked” in Russia (RBC, April 19).

One striking feature of this developing story is that President Vladimir Putin is absent from the picture.  As he is in so much else.

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When we enjoyed this back in 1984, and began to understand black criticisms of our dancing, we had no idea it would be prophecy. More people are waking up to the fact that the civil war is here, and it's real. The Thing is under the boat, and it's beginning to rise. If you aren't woke to that reality yet, recent events should wake you. After that, we face a question that was old when Thyucididies chronicled it: what then is to be our war? Recent times offer us more than a few pointers. So do ancient times.

I'm going to touch on a few highlights, and offer some resources you can peruse now or later. There is hope. There is always hope. But genuine hope can only begin once you understand where you really stand...

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It’s really not that complicated.

President Trump’s Syria strikes have reopened the debate over what defines his foreign policy. Is he an interventionist or an isolationist? Foreign policy experts claim that he’s making it up as he goes along.

They’re not paying attention.

President Trump’s foreign policy has two consistent elements. From threatening Kim Jong-Un on Twitter to moving the embassy to Jerusalem to bombing Syria, he applies pressure and then he disengages.

Here’s how that works.  Hint:  Regarding North Korea, Trump accomplished more with a few tweets than previous administrations had with billions of dollars.

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What a delicious hors d’oeuvre Michael Horowitz gave the world on Friday!

The inspector general for Department of Justice finally issued his eagerly awaited (eagerly awaited by some of us, anyway) report on Andrew McCabe, the disgraced former deputy director of the FBI.

Note that this is only an appetizer. In the coming weeks, Horowitz will follow up with entrees on the FBI’s partisan activities in the 2016 presidential election and, later, another report on (if I may employ the term) collusion with the State Department.

As of today (4/17), it is unclear exactly what the scope of the inspector general’s inquiries will be.

Speaking for myself, I hope the desert course includes a close look at the January 5, 2017 meeting at the Obama White House.

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The economic outlook in Germany is deteriorating with alarming speed and any mistake by policy-makers could push the country into a full-blown slump, a leading economic institute has warned.

“The danger of recession has increased markedly. It is a notably more critical picture than a month ago,” says the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK) in Düsseldorf.

The IMK’s early warning indicator says the recession risk over the next three months has jumped suddenly to 32.4% as trade tensions mount and liquidity ebbs away in the international financial system.

Germany is heavily reliant on world trade and is therefore a bellwether for the broader health of the global economy. Its industrial sector lurched abruptly from boom to bust early in the last downturn and proved to be a leading indicator for the Great Recession.

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Whoever was surprised by the hate-fest against the National Rifle Association and conservative Americans in general that followed the Parkland, FL school shooting must not have been paying attention.

Over the past half century, a ruling class formed by our uniformly leftist educational system and occupying the commanding heights of corporate life, governmental bureaucracies, the media, etc. accuses its targets of everything from murder and terrorism to culpable psycho-social disorders (racism, sexism, and so forth).

When one side rejects persuasion in favor of war, what are the other’s options? To convince our opponents to accept us as equals? To reform them? Fat chance! Decency for ourselves is our objective. Hence, the words and deeds by which we deal with those who make war on us must aim at affirming ourselves, despite them.

Hence, the practical question: what is to be our war?

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Lee Smith's seminal The Strong Horse: Politics, Power and the Clash of Arab Civilizations  (2010) explains how the Arab world typically follows the leader with the most strength and power, i. e. the strong horse.

This proclivity for the powerful does not restrict itself to the Middle East, however.  Xi Jinping these days is a pretty strong horse.  Nor does it even restrict itself to dictators.  Winston Churchill may have been the strongest horse of the last hundred years, having led the allies from the brink of defeat to victory in World War II, sometimes through sheer force of will.

Now it's Donald Trump's turn.

Russia, China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, among other countries and non-state actors, not to mention a whole host of domestic foes, have all aligned themselves against him (and consequently America) in various degrees.

At the same time, an investigation into his inner circle threatens to sweep up virtually everyone from his personal lawyer to his son while his adversaries chortle.

But these adversaries, ambitious and vengeful as they are, have little idea of the chaos that will ensue in this country should Trump fall, the ruptures that will occur.

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What helped elect Trump was a collective weariness with demands put on a country $20 trillion in debt. America is currently running a $57 billion a month trade deficit.

The poverty of inner-city Detroit, or rural Central California, or West Virginia does not suggest an endlessly opulent nation, at least as a visitor might conclude from visiting Manhattan, Chevy Chase, or Presidio Heights.

Universities and colleges have taken for granted that they can count on massive federal student loan subsidies to increase vastly the number of administrators, pay for an expanding apparat of politicized and nonteaching staff, increase tuition beyond the rate of inflation and not dare to be held accountable for dismal graduation rates, poorly educated graduates, or ossified systems of tenure.

For all this and so very much more, what cannot go on won’t.  We have reached the limits of our patience.

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Obama owns the disaster in Syria in a way that no one else does. Three of his policies intersected to cause the bloodshed, devastation and horrors there.

1. The Iraq Withdrawal
2. The Arab Spring
3. The Iran Deal

Obama’s Iraq withdrawal turned the country over to Iran and ISIS. The tensions between the Shiite puppet regime in Baghdad (which Obama insisted on backing) and the Sunni population created a cycle of violence that reduced the country to a bloody civil war between Shiite militias and Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The collapse of the multicultural Iraqi army allowed Al Qaeda in Iraq to seize huge swathes of territory. And ISIS and Iran began carving up Iraq into their own ethnically cleansed dominions.

Iraq’s civil war spread to Syria. Initially Obama backed the Sunni Brotherhood militias. These groups represented themselves as free, secular and democratic. They were actually nothing of the kind.

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Russia’s economy was smaller than that of Texas even before the latest and most lethal sanctions imposed by Washington.

It has diminished further to Benelux proportions after the ruble’s 10% crash this week, the steepest fall since the late Nineties.

Upon this slender economic base, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is posing as a world-class superpower, the new master of the Middle East, insisting on its ‘droit de regard’ over the old Tsarist realms as if by natural right.

What is extraordinary is than anybody should believe in such geostrategic posturing.

The harsher truth is that Mr. Putin squandered the windfall wealth of the commodity supercycle and hollowed out what remained of the Soviet industrial and engineering base, leaving Russia’s Potemkin economy in a futureless cul de sac.

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Mike Ryan is filling in for Jack Wheeler this week.

Control and use of information technology and the intellectual property behind it has been a significant factor in recent events. The so-called trade war with China and the tariffs on basic materials are really about the future of intellectual property rights.

President Trump is using solid commodities such as steel and aluminum to work towards more favorable intellectual property rights expectations and legalities.

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Google returned their self-driving cars to the road. They are perfecting information technology that has the potential to impact the 2020 election powerfully.

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Iranians appear to be on their way towards regime change, using information technology that the Mullahs are having difficulty controlling.

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At the same time, Facebook’s Zuckerburg proposes turning over access to messaging technology to the US Government in exchange for more favorable press.

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President Trump’s tweets turned around a horde of migrants, and Hillary still can’t accept that her AI driven election tools were fooled by President Trump. What do these all have in common? Artificially intelligent systems.

Read about all these in this week's HFR! ...

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