Tag: finance

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad asset who was used by Israeli intelligence to blackmail American politicians, according to a former Israeli spy.

Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli spy and alleged “handler” of Robert Maxwell, told the authors of a new book, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, that Epstein ran a “complex intelligence operation” at the behest of Mossad.

Believing that Epstein planned to marry his daughter, Maxwell introduced him and Ghislaine Maxwell to Ben-Menashe’s Mossad circle.

“Maxwell sort of started liking him, and my theory is that Maxwell felt that this guy is going for his daughter,” Ben-Menashe said.

“He felt that he could bless him with some work and help him out in like a paternal [way].”

Israeli intelligence bosses gave the green light and Epstein then became a Mossad asset.

“They were agents of the Israeli Intelligence Services,” said Ben-Menashe.

When it became clear that Epstein wasn’t very competent at doing much else, his primary role became “blackmailing American and other political figures.”

“Mr. Epstein was the simple idiot who was going around providing girls to all kinds of politicians in the United States,” said Ben-Menashe.

“See, fucking around is not a crime. It could be embarrassing, but it’s not a crime. But fucking a fourteen-year-old girl is a crime. And he was taking photos of politicians fucking fourteen-year-old girls — if you want to get it straight. They would just blackmail people, they would just blackmail people like that.”

There’s also a Mossad connection to a different kind of sex offender; Harvey Weinstein.

Weinstein reportedly hired ex-Mossad agents to suppress allegations against him. Working for an Israeli firm called Black Cube, these agents pressured witnesses and tried to intimidate journalist Ronan Farrow in order to “bury the truth” about Weinstein’s activity.

*  *  *

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Artist Portia Munson is known for chaotic looking pieces of “art” which often times features thousands of pieces of ephemera per piece. Ephemera comes from the Latin word for “things you can find at a yard sale or tucked away in your grandparents garage“. 

Case in point is her work “The Garden”, which she made in 1996 and contains more than 1500 separate objects from plastic flowers to stuffed animals, according to Bloomberg. She calls the piece a “meditation on feminism and climate change”. 

Because, of course…

As you can see from the photo, the piece looks more like something you’d see on a Beatles album cover or inside of Cheech and Chong’s Volkswagen bus.

Wendy Olsoff, owner of New York Gallery P.P.O.W., thought it may be a good idea to feature the art at the Meridians section of Art Basel Miami Beach in hopes that she could sell it. 

Olsoff said: “We thought it would be fantastic. It talks a lot about the environment, which is obviously in dire straits in Florida, and it also taps into feminism and other topics that we always explore in our program.”

Munson says the objects are arranged in a specific manner that minds the “idea of artificial beauty, consumerism, and cultural ideas around the feminine aspects of nature.”

Olsoff hoped to sell the piece and, after shelling out $60,000 to reassemble, fireproof and maintain the pile of crap, she slapped a $225,000 price tag on it.

Olsoff said: “Maybe if we had done a little homework first and figured out how much it would cost [to install], [we] might not have been so hasty. We didn’t really realize it.”

It was last on display two years ago and since then, the thousands of items for the piece had been sitting in storage at Munson’s home, collecting dust. Every object had to be catalogued and restored. 

“When you open a box of plastic after three or five years, there’s going to be pieces that are decaying and disgusting,” Olsoff said.

Then, every piece of fabric had to be made fire resistant to meet fire safety guidelines. 

Trey Hollis, the gallery’s director of art fairs, traveled to Munson’s house upstate, brought everything to an open field, strung up the objects on a clothesline, put on a mask, and sprayed everything with fire-retardant coating. 

Olsoff did little outreach to existing collectors. “We do normal previews. But this is a little different,” she said. 

But lo and behold, the piece was only on display for six minutes before Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, the husband and wife founders of the 21c Museum Hotel, took interest in it. It was a match made in liberal heaven. Wilson, standing in the piece, seemed to fit right in with it:

Steve Wilson said: “We own a piece by Munson already, which we bought 12 years ago. And we just bought this piece.”

They settled at a price under the $225,000 asking price – a small price to pay for a new safe zone where Steve can also meditate on feminism and climate change. 

“It’s a done deal. It’s a spectacular piece— one of those things that takes my breath away.”

If you say so, Steve. 

Seemingly unaware that everybody in the world is already laughing at SoftBank’s disasterous “investment” in WeWork, one Bernstein analyst believes that Masayoshi Son is going to have the “last laugh”. 

Bernstein’s Chris Lane says that he believes WeWork can still have a bright future if SoftBank is able to overhaul the business plan (isn’t that true for any business?). Lane says the company should focus on the corporate office market and likens WeWork’s model to Starbucks, where its branding and global scale can give it an advantage, according to Bloomberg.

He believes the company can achieve profitability by pulling back on “extraneous areas” and slowing its expansion to focus on its existing space. He thinks this will lead to the company being able to grab 8% of an emergent market for pre-fitted offices for corporate clients. 

Lane wrote in his report: “We think investors should think of the basic business as being similar to Starbucks. While profitable, the scale of profits that can be generated from a single site is small. Starbucks as a corporation only makes sense if you plan to open thousands of outlets.”

Lane spoke to management and says he thinks there’s an opportunity for WeWork to move beyond the niche of selling office space for entrepreneurs and onto offering flexible real estate for a broad range of companies. Hilariously, he is referring to it as “managed space as a service” and thinks WeWork can make $500 per month on memberships as an “ongoing annuity”. 

We used to just call this “being a landlord”.

Lane is also confident in WeWork’s new management:

SoftBank named Marcelo Claure, the former chief executive at Sprint Corp., executive chairman of WeWork and put him in charge of the turnaround effort. Under his leadership, Lane says the company will be able to focus on profitability by stopping any incremental expansion, filling its existing space and slashing overhead by getting rid of expansion staff and non-core businesses. WeWork’s ability to gather data about office-use and optimize layouts — while not entirely substantiated — could prove disruptive to the industry, he added.

He estimates that WeWork’s revenue will rise to $1.5 billion per quarter, up from $720 million a quarter, if it can push occupancy to 90% on its current portfolio. He predicts the company will once again try to go public, but not until 2023. He thinks the company could have an EV of $28.8 billion by 2025, which would make SoftBank’s stake worth $19.1 billion. 

Lane concluded: “We believe WeWork’s valuation is justified if you believe in the long-term, ‘office space’ will be a managed service outsourced to professionals – and that WeWork will be the leading global player. Despite the huge embarrassment WeWork has been for SoftBank this year, we suspect SoftBank will have the last laugh when they bring the company back to market in a few years – bigger and profitable.”

We’ll believe it when we see it. 

Recall, after SoftBank’s initial investment in WeWork, the company started chasing its losses and re-invested in the company months ago. WeWork’s shares are down about 30% from their peak and the $14 billion Softbank has invested has been decimated – WeWork is now valued at less than $8 billion. 

A year after Elon Musk hit the jackpot when the SEC decided to merely slap his wrist over his infamous “funding secured” securities fraud, the Tesla creator struck legal gold again on Friday afternoon, when a Los Angeles federal jury found that Elon Musk did not defame British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth by calling him a “pedo guy” on Twitter.

“My faith in humanity is restored,” Musk told reporters in the hallways of the courtroom after shaking hands with his lawyer moments after hearing the verdict in the Los Angeles courtroom. He did not address Unsworth, whose team had told the court earlier on Friday the Tesla CEO should pay at least $190 million in damages for his tweets about the diver.

The lawsuit had pitted a 64-year-old financial adviser earning a salary of about $33,000 against one of the richest and most famous men in the world, who told the jury he was worth about $20 billion…. but was “short on cash.” The dispute stems from the Tesla and SpaceX chief’s involvement in the Tham Luang cave rescue in June and July 2018, which saw 12 young football players and their coach successfully extracted from a flooded cave system by a team of British cave divers.

On 13 July 2018, after the successful completion of the rescue, Unsworth said in an interview with CNN that the rescue pod Musk had delivered to the cave site was a “PR stunt”, adding that he should “stick his submarine where it hurts”. A video clip of the interview went viral, drawing the ire of Musk.

The billionaire entrepreneur responded in a series of tweets on 15 July, suggesting that Unsworth’s presence in Thailand was “sus[picious]” and calling him “pedo guy”.

Musk eventually deleted the tweets and apologized to Unsworth.

The jury had been tasked with determining whether a reasonable person would understand the tweets to mean that Musk was calling Unsworth a pedophile. Musk’s attorneys argued that the tweet was not a statement of fact, but an insult, which is considered protected speech. They also attempted to show that Unsworth’s reputation had not been seriously damaged.

According to The Guardian, Unsworth’s attorneys introduced evidence of the broad dissemination of Musk’s tweets, which were reported in 490 English-language articles on 361 websites in 33 countries. They also introduced evidence of Musk’s behavior after the 15 July tweets, including his hiring of a private investigator to seek proof of Unsworth’s “nefarious behaviour”.

As Bloomberg notes, the four-day civil trial marked the first time that Musk has been called as a witness at trial. The Tesla CEO told the jury the tweet shouldn’t have been taken literally and was fired off in anger after Unsworth, in a TV interview, insulted his effort to help rescue members of a Thai soccer team from a flooded cave in 2018.

It’s another win for Musk, 48, who’s managed to get out of legal trouble relatively unscathed. Musk agreed to step down from his role of chairman of Tesla Inc. for three years in 2018 to settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit over a tweet the regulator said misled investors. But he’s run Tesla and SpaceX as usual.

As was widely expected, late on Friday the White House said it won’t participate in Monday’s hearing by the House Judiciary Committee.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called the impeachment inquiry a “reckless abuse of power” in a letter to Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler ahead of a Friday deadline he set for the president to indicate whether his representatives would seek to call or cross-examine any witnesses or submit evidence. The letter didn’t say explicitly whether Trump would participate in the hearing, although it was strongly implied.

White House will not participate in Impeachment Hearings next week. Letter from White House attorney attached. #Impeachment #POTUS pic.twitter.com/XwOj9pXqq3

— Edward Lawrence (@EdwardLawrence) December 6, 2019

“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” Cipollone wrote. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings. Adopting articles of impeachment would be a reckless abuse of power by House Democrats, and would constitute the most unjust, highly partisan, and unconstitutional attempt at impeachment in our Nation’s history.”

The letter quoted Trump, who said earlier this week that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our country can get back to business.”

As a reminder, on Wednesday House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., will pick up the baton from his Intelligence Committee counterpart Adam Schiff., as the House’s impeachment inquiry moves to the next step – but it is a far cry for Nadler from 1998, when he warned that an impeachment would “overturn the popular will of the voters.”

“The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters,” Nadler said on the House floor during the Clinton impeachment hearings, in footage unearthed by Grabien. “We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our system of government or constitutional liberties against a dire threat, and we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people.”

Authored by Adam Sabes via CampusReform.org,

New York University-Shanghai quietly created a pro-Chinese government course last year, in which students study “civic education,” all at the request of the Chinese government.

According to Vice, the course, titled “NYU Shanghai Chinese National Student Civic Education,” includes a lesson in which students watch a video about “Promoting the Prosperity and Development of Socialist Culture with Chinese Characteristics.”

The course syllabus lists multiple trips that students take as part of the course, such as a visit to the Longhua Memorial Cemetary and one the Shanghai War Memorial. Both locations celebrate and honor those who have died fighting for the communist party.

The course syllabus also reportedly states that the classes are not taught by NYU professors, but rather from other Shanghai universities.

This course was very much kept a secret, without ever being listed along with other courses. Students who were required to take the course were only informed about the new class via WeChat, a chat application used in China.

The course was introduced during the 2018-2019 school year over winter break and was not listed on the class registration system, according to the report.

A university spokesperson told Vice that the course is required by the Chinese government for Chinese citizens, and added that students who are not citizens of China do not have to take the course.

While the university maintains that the course is independent of NYU-Shanghai, the chancellor of the school appears to have spoken during one of the class sessions, according to the syllabus obtained by Vice.

Bobby Miller, vice president of the NYU College Republicans, said NYU has submitted to the “will of the Chinese regime.”

“NYU Shanghai’s shameful capitulation to the Chinese Communist Party’s propagandistic demands is a total betrayal of the university’s pledge that classes would be conducted ‘in accordance with the principles of academic freedom,'” Miller said.

Miller also noted that NYU’s Tel Aviv campus, located in Israel, is constantly under scrutiny by university members.

In May, an NYU academic department boycotted the program over entry restrictions, as reported by Campus Reform.

He said that this is “highly ironic” since NYU operates campuses in Shanghai and Abu Dhabi, “both of which are located in countries with abysmal human rights records and a complete disregard for academic freedom,” Miller said.

This new report comes at a time when Confucius institutes in the United States are under intense scrutiny, with FBI Director Christopher Wray having testified to Congress that the Chinese government is using U.S. universities to exploit American research and development.

R. Kelly has been accused of bribing an Illinois government employee in 1994 to obtain a fake ID so that he could legally marry 15-year-old singer Aaliyah Dana Haughton, according to a federal indictment.

After obtaining the fake ID on August 30, 1994, Kelly and Haughton applied for a marriage license which listed her age as 18, according to the New York Times, citing a personal familiar with the matter. The marriage was eventually annulled, and Haughton died in a 2001 plane crash at the age of 22. She is identified in the indictment as “Jane Doe #1.”

Kelly, 52, has maintained that he had “no idea” Aaliyah was 15 when they married.

“My understanding is that she did not claim to be 15, and in order to get married, she had to lie about her age,” said Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, during a 2018 interview with ABC‘s “Good Morning America.”

Not true, according to prosecutors – who say Kelly had a direct role in that lie.

More than two decades ago, Vibe magazine reported that an Illinois marriage license for Mr. Kelly and Aaliyah listed her age as 18. Mr. Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, was 27 at the time. The license was dated Aug. 31, 1994, the day after Mr. Kelly allegedly paid the bribe.

Aaliyah was 14 when she made her first album, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” which was released in 1994 and produced by Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly, an R&B singer whose hit singles include “Ignition (Remix)” and “I Believe I Can Fly,” has faced longstanding sexual abuse accusations. Law enforcement scrutiny of Mr. Kelly intensified after several women spoke out publicly in a six-part Lifetime documentary, “Surviving R. Kelly,” which was released in January. –New York Times

Kelly was arrested after “Surviving R. Kelly” aired in January, 2019 – after he was accused of mental, physical and sexual abuse by dozens of accusers.

How can Kelly be indicted now?

While criminal activity from 25 years ago would normally fall outside the statute of limitations, preventing prosecution – Kelly faces a broad racketeering charge in Brooklyn, where he is accused of operating a criminal scheme to recruit fans, many underage, to have sex with him.

Because of this, the statute of limitations does not apply, allowing federal prosecutors to introduce claims from any time relevant time.

His associates arranged for the travel and lodging of his sexual partners. But once they arrived, prosecutors said, the women had to follow strict rules. They were not allowed to leave their room without Mr. Kelly’s permission and had to call him “daddy.” They were isolated from their friends and families, making them financially dependent on Mr. Kelly, the indictment said.

…

The Brooklyn indictment, which was originally filed in June, also accuses Mr. Kelly of kidnapping, forced labor, failing to disclose a sexually transmitted disease to sexual partners and producing child pornography. –New York Times

Kelly has pleaded not guilty, and is currently in federal custody in Chicago. As the Times notes, he was first arrested on charges of possessing child pornography in 2002, stemming from a sex tape which featured him urinating on an underage girl. He was acquitted in 2008 on all counts. 

Moreover, a Brooklyn federal prosecutor said recently that Kelly had paid off witnesses in the Chicago case who were willing to flip on him. According to his lawyer, they simply decided not to testify.

Miami police and other officers appear to have used surrounding bystanders as “human shields” when they responded to the the hijacked UPS truck following an armed heist of a jewelry store Thursday. After suspects led police on a two-county rush-hour chase through Miami which ended in a hail of gunfire in the middle of crowded traffic on Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road, hundreds of police bullets from 19 officers firing on the truck brought it to an end.

As we reported earlier, four people have been confirmed dead, including the robbers and the UPS driver, since identified as 27-year-old Frank Ordonez, who unluckily had been taken hostage on a day he was reportedly filling in for another driver. Some of his own family members are blaming the “trigger happy” Florida police for killing him in their overeagerness to stop the criminals.

An investigation is underway which will also focus on the other innocent bystander that died — an unidentified person shot while trapped at the intersection in one of the many surrounding vehicles. 

Cops just unloaded on an innocent UPS driver that was hostage in an armed robbery. You can watch the video for yourself pretty graphic.

This happened in Miami. pic.twitter.com/OB3W35D3Dz

— Kluebtorious (@rklueber28) December 5, 2019

“In addition to the UPS driver – who was on his knees – the innocent bystander was shot while sitting in a car waiting at the stop light in the intersection,” CBS4 News in Miami reporter Jim DeFede has confirmed.

“The number of shots fired by the officers is not currently known but my source said it could exceed 200 rounds,” he reported. The deceased bystander had been “inside an idle car at the scene.”

7:30 p.m. update: Reports say four people were killed — the two robbers, the abducted UPS driver and a bystander who was inside an idle car at the scene. https://t.co/lHdXO2wknb

— South Florida Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) December 6, 2019

DeFede concluded that though police were facing a “chaotic situation” it remains that “innocent people are dead” and “questions need to be asked”. 

A number of online commentators noted the dramatic scene of police immediately rushing into stalled traffic on foot and emptying their weapons in return fire appeared something more from a Hollywood action movie. 

3. I count at least five instances of cops firing on the vehicle *with the hostage* while using occupied civilian vehicles as *human shields.* This is shocking and deplorable police work. Everyone should have their badges and guns taken away. pic.twitter.com/frU5tUSVvM

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) December 6, 2019

Viral video shows the UPS truck stopped amid heavy traffic with bystanders in their vehicles on either side. But the police response is now under criticism given that instead of hanging back and waiting for fewer civilians to be in the line of fire, or even establishing contact through a police negotiator, officers rushed the UPS truck in a blaze of bullets.

Police had the other option of backing off the easily identifiable and trackable large brown UPS truck in order to engage with it in a more open area. 

When the cops shoot you dead in the street your boss will thank the cops https://t.co/mHR0EBjGfl

— Dennis Hogan (@dennismhogan) December 6, 2019

It is as yet unclear whether a police bullet or one of the robbers actually killed Ordonez. But what is clear from overhead video is that some among the responding officers actually hid behind vehicles with bystanders and families in them, who were trying to flee as gunfire rang out.

Though in the initial press conference in the immediate aftermath the issue wasn’t raised, national media is beginning to acknowledge the growing public outrage. NPR reports:

Former [U.S. Department] Department of Housing and Urban Development official Brandon Friedman described the shootout as “appalling.” He said the department should be held accountable for “choosing to assault the vehicle in the middle of stopped rush hour traffic” and using occupied vehicles as “human shields.”

From one of the overhead news chopper videos, one panicked blue SUV is seen attempting to ram its way out of being in the direct line of fire, between the suspects shooting at police and the police themselves. 

A family member who set up a GoFundMe page on behalf of the UPS driver victim Frank Ordonez’s children and for funeral expenses, which has raised nearly 100,000 in 24 hours, had this to say:

“They [the robbers] kidnapped my brother and took him on a high speed chase, when they came to a stop he was gunned down like a criminal by the Florida police, he didn’t deserve to die the way he did…”

1. This absolutely appalling highway shootout yesterday encapsulates the under-trained, military-cosplaying, Punisher-wannabe cops who permeate America’s police departments.

They killed both the hostage and a bystander, then bragged “no LEOs were harmed.”pic.twitter.com/jNFvkNyAPI

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) December 6, 2019

The former State Department of Housing and Urban Development official also had this to say of the botched police response: “Here are a few things that those in charge of this disaster should be held accountable for”— 

• Choosing to assault the vehicle
• Choosing to assault the vehicle in the middle of stopped rush hour traffic
• Using civilian cars with people *in them* as human shields

Astoundingly, about a half-dozen police are seen crouching behind and shadowing the vehicle for protection despite what appears to be bystanders inside trying to get away.

It is unknown at this point which among the vehicles had an innocent passenger shot and killed, or if it had been a police bullet or gunfire from the robbers inside the UPS truck.

The FBI is currently assisting an investigation into the incident, which involved officers from five different responding departments and agencies, most reportedly from Miami-Dade police department.

Ray Dalio’s popularity is soaring: his most recent book sold over 2 million copies and it seems like nary a day goes by where he is not being talked about, quoted or appearing on television. 

But strangely, the height of his popularity is happening at a time when the $40 billion Bridgewater Associates’ Pure Alpha II fund is posting what Bloomberg calls one of its “worst years on record”. 

Could “Principles”, his 600 page manifesto that has been praised by celebrities like Bill Gates and Sean “Diddy” Combs, be due for some re-writes?

Or is the book’s PR success acting as cover for the underlying performance at Dalio’s fund?

Dalio’s fund had peak returns of 45% in 2010 and 25% in 2011, but has struggled since then. His flagship fund returned an annualized 3.8% since the beginning of 2012, even with last year’s 15% gain. This lags other well known funds like Jeff Talpins’s Element Capital Management and Tudor Investment Corp.

Bridgewater has still racked up 11.4% annualized since its inception, and it is hardly the only fund to struggle with keeping up with the markets over the last decade, as other names have “found it hard to make big profits trading in their usual fare of government bonds, currencies, commodities and stock indexes.”

But the response to Dalio is different than to other funds. Brevan Howard Asset Management, for example, has seen its assets shrink from $40 billion in 2013 to $7.5 billion now. 

But Bridgewater remains closed to new capital and actually has a $5 billion waiting list. Dalio’s reputation, the fund’s marketing and its customer service are often cited as reasons for its consistent popularity, despite its returns. 

Dalio “has an aura akin to that of Warren Buffett or Bill Gross,” Bloomberg says, adding that his name has been mentioned more than 9,000 times in the media since his book has been published. 

In addition to the outsized returns of yesteryear, Bridgewater’s company culture also gives it allure. The company is run from the woods of Connecticut and follows the 200 principles of Dalio’s best-selling book. The most well known of these principles is “radical transparency”, which demands all employees be brutally honest with one another. All of the firms meetings are taped and archived for future study. 

John Culbertson, president and chief investment officer of Context Capital Partners, said: “Bridgewater has just become such an institutional name. It’s very hard to get fired for allocating capital to Bridgewater because of who they are and their reputation.”

Bridgewater now boasts $160 billion in assets across classes that include hedge funds and low-fee products. This number has stayed the same for most of the decade. 

The company has about 200 people that oversee client relationships, which amounts to one per every 1.7 investors. The company also publishes daily thoughts about the markets or economies that “investment heads say helps them look smart when they appear before their boards.”

But its been this appearance of being smart that is helping the firm retain its clients, despite losses this year from bearish wagers on global interest rates. 

And competing firms have posted far better returns this year so far, Bloomberg notes: “Element returned about 8.4% through October and Greg Coffey’s Kirkoswald Global Macro Fund climbed almost 29% in that period. Andrew Law’s Caxton Associates has jumped about 17%.”

That simply doesn’t matter for some people. Michael Rosen, chief investment officer for Angeles Investment Advisors, said: “I think Ray is a genius. What he built is extraordinary and I think his legacy is secure.”

Just this week, Bridgewater announced that Eileen Murray, co-chief executive officer was leaving and would be replaced by David McCormick. Five CEOs have held the position since Dalio ceded it in 2011. 

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The last time the Democratic Party blew up in a presidential election year was 1860. It had evolved from Jefferson’s 1800 bloc of yeoman farmers to Andrew Jackson’s rowdy caucus of frontier populists in the 1830s, and settled into a slough of pro-slavery apologists by the 1850s, including two do-nothing Democratic presidents, Pierce and Buchanan. The party held a nominating convention in the spring of 1860 and couldn’t come up with a candidate when a claque of southern “fire-eaters” walked out. They tried again a few months later and cracked up into three separate parties with three nominees — and of course Mr. Lincoln won the election. The result was the bloodiest war in US history.

That’s one way to drain a swamp. Historical obfuscators might say the Civil War was a lofty, legalistic quarrel over “state’s rights,” but of course it was really about the intolerable depravity of slavery. A hundred years later, the mysterious inversions of history converted the old slaver’s party into the Civil Rights party. That had a good fifty-year run. It included a hearty side-dish of anti-war sentiment, and a general disposition against the Big Brother treatment of citizens, including especially the overreach of the CIA and the FBI.

What is the Democratic Party today? Well, it’s the cheerleading squad for “seventeen” government agencies that add up to the craftily-labeled “intel community,” a warm-and-fuzzy coalition of snoops, false witnesses, rogue lawfare cadres, seditionists, and bad-faith artists working sedulously to hide their previous misdeeds with ever-fresh ones. They’re the party against free speech, the party against due process of law, the party determined to provoke war with Russia. They’re the party of sexual confusion, sexual hysteria, and sexual conflict, the party of kangaroo courts, cancel culture, erasing boundaries (including national borders), and of making up rules for all that as they go along — like the Nazis and Soviets used to do. The ideas and policies they advocate are so comprehensively crazy that their old support of slavery looks quaintly straightforward in comparison.

It’s taken a while for the full efflorescence of these political pathologies to present. But now they are finally on display for all to see in what is supposed to be a climactic impeachment melodrama. The impeachment process itself has revealed the party’s genius for inventing new debaucheries of law and government misconduct — the latest being Rep Adam Schiff’s blatantly illegal cadging of his opponents’ phone logs. And now, after three years of unchallenged wickedness, they literally face the moment of truth.

That is, when all the many players in this grand game of Gotcha have to face the consequences of what they have done. The Horowitz report is necessarily limited to the DOJ inspector general’s narrow mission scope: the IG can only interview current employees of the agency and its stepchild, the FBI, which means that key players in the Gotcha game such as former FBI director Comey, former acting director McCabe, fired special agent Peter Stzrok and notably ex-CIA director John Brennan were outside of Mr. Horowitz’s sphere of operations. His scope was also supposedly limited to the issues around FISA warrant mischief — though those complex shenanigans may have led the IG to other related dodges, cons, and crimes outright. The IG has no real law enforcement powers. He can only refer or recommend further action. Nevertheless, a great miasma of anxiety oppresses the Democratic Party now as it awaits whatever Mr. Horowitz has to say about these matters.

The party’s propaganda arms at The New York Times, the WashPo, and cable news networks worked up a frenzy of distractions and ruses this past week — for instance the “bombshell” that International-Man-of-Mystery Joseph Mifsud was not a hireling of the FBI. Of course, nobody ever claimed he was. Rather, he is suspected of being an agent of the Italian intel service with links to British intel, both used by the CIA as beards for its nefarious activities around its own election meddling of 2016. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic caucus has been busy with ersatz impeachment proceedings, which are invidiously scheduled to continue next week as a smokescreen to conceal the Horowitz findings. It’s been a frantic campaign for them at a fraught moment in this long saga — but the odor of desperation is thick and rank.

Of course, behind the Horowitz report loom the specters of Barr & Durham. Whatever they’ve been up to has been hermetically sealed in a globe of silence even more oppressive and nightmarish for the Dems than the IG’s inquiry. Barr & Durham are able to make things stick, most crucially genuine criminal culpability for the entire RussiaGate fiasco and all of its offshoots, including the most recent “Whistleblower” caper — a patently treasonous scheme. Who knows if and when indictments start raining down, but there’s a chance that it will be a very hard rain indeed.

I’m not so sure that the Democratic Party can survive the washing away of its beloved narrative by that hard rain.

They are also faced with a field of manifestly lame presidential candidates, especially the current leader of the pack, Joe Biden, fumbling and doddering his way down the campaign trail in an apparent effort to dodge being investigated for the grifts of his Veep years. All this may be enough to put the party down, like a dog that has peed on the carpet one time too many. Somebody else, from some other hastily assembled party, may have to stand against Mr. Trump in 2020.