Thought it was pretty good .. good game too!

Not sure what news organizations you're referring to, but I saw and listened to coverage of Trump's trip on numerous TV and radio broadcasts. Didn't hear any criticism about golf or partying.

New State Department Documents Implicate Mike Pompeo In Trump-Giuliani Extortion Scheme
The White House is disputing Gordon Sondland’s testimony that everyone was in the loop regarding the Trump-Giuliani extortion scheme, but that argument is officially dead after the new release of State Department documents.
As Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted on Saturday, Giuliani wasn’t “freelancing” when he was pressuring for an investigation of the Bidens; he was carrying out a scheme that everybody knew about.
“The demands, these bribery demands, were exactly the same. They were identical. Everybody was on the same page,” the Democratic lawmaker said.
Rep. Lieu said:
We have this new additional batch of documents, as you just reported, from American Oversight, that further confirms what Sondland said, that everybody knew what we were doing and why we were doing it, and these documents show that Giuliani was not freelancing, that he was essentially talking to Secretary Pompeo. And if you look at the demands that Trump made of the Ukrainian leader, he asked for an investigation into the Bidens as well as the DNC server. Giuliani didn’t then go and say, ‘Hey, go and investigate Amazon and Elizabeth Warren.’ The demands, these bribery demands, were exactly the same. They were identical. Everybody was on the same page.
New documents show frequent contact between Giuliani and Pompeo
As The Hill noted on Saturday, “The State Department late Friday night released nearly 100 pages of documents showing repeated contacts between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney.”
In other words, the line of defense that Giuliani was acting alone is completely false. Not only was the former New York mayor acting at the direction of the president, but he seems to have been acting with the support of Mike Pompeo’s State Department.
As Rep. Ted Lieu said on Saturday, “Everybody was on the same page.”

Devin Nunes was directly involved in the push for Biden Ukraine investigations, says Lev Parnas
Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, says he helped arrange meetings between Nunes and Ukrainians.
By Sean Collins
Ed MacMahon, a lawyer for Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who faces charges of campaign finance violations, has told the Daily Beast that his client helped Republican Rep. Devin Nunes arrange meetings meant to advance the Ukrainian investigations into the Biden family that are at the center of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
Now, another lawyer for Parnas — Joseph A. Bondy — has told CNN that Parnas is willing to testify before the House Intelligence Committee about Nunes’s involvement in the Ukraine scandal. Nunes is the ranking member of that committee, and in that capacity has led the Republican defense of Trump during the recent public impeachment inquiry hearings.
Nunes has argued the impeachment inquiry is a partisan attack on the president; he tried to derail the proceedings by introducing (disproved) conspiracy theories, worked to out an anonymous whistleblower whose complaint launched the inquiry, and repeatedly referred to the inquiry as a “drug deal.”
During Thursday’s hearing — at which former National Security Council official Fiona Hill and State Department official David Holmes testified — Nunes himself briefly became the subject of the proceedings due to the Daily Beast article, which Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell read into the record.
Parnas has said his efforts, as described in the Daily Beast article, bore fruit — and that Nunes eventually met with with disgraced former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in Vienna in December 2018.
Congressional records show that Nunes and members of his staff travelled to Europe in late November and early December 2018. The records do not specify whether he went to Vienna, however, or who he met with.
“I can confirm that Victor Shokin told Lev Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in late 2018, and that [Nunes aide] Derek Harvey informed that they were investigating the activities of Joe and H****r B***n related to Burisma,” Bondy told NBC News.
Shokin was pushed out of his role by the US and its allies in March 2016 over concerns he was not properly pursuing anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. Former Vice President Joe Biden helped lead these efforts for the US, and it is his role in Shokin’s removal that sits at the heart of the conspiracy theory behind Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden — namely, that the former vice president fired Shokin to protect a Ukrainian company on which his son had a board seat.
This meeting would suggest that efforts to discredit the Bidens were well underway before Giuliani began to publicly discuss them this spring, and that attempts to launch some sort of investigation into the Biden family went beyond executive branch officials.
It could also lead to Nunes facing his second ethics investigation in less than three years. Democratic Rep. Adam Smith told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Saturday he believes it is “quite likely” Nunes will face an ethics inquiry. Ethics investigators cleared Nunes of accusations he disseminated classified information related to Russian e******n meddling in December 2017.
Parnas also claims to have met with Nunes and his aides personally in Vienna, and that he and Nunes spoke on the phone at least twice following that in-person meeting. Parnas says he continued to occasionally meet with Harvey at the Trump hotel in Washington, DC, where they discussed investigations into the Biden family and a Democratic National Committee server that a disproved conspiracy theory holds contains information of Ukrainian e******n meddling to benefit Democrats in the 2016 e******ns.
Parnas claims to have told Nunes that the basis for his suspicions about the Bidens came from the writings of John Solomon, who, as Vox’s Jane Coaston has explained, published columns in The Hill regarding what are now known to be conspiracies theories about the Bidens and Ukraine. Harvey would occasionally attend meetings at the Trump hotel that included Solomon, Parnas claims, as well as Giuliani.
Nunes has refused to answer any questions about the allegations of his involvement in these investigations, but did tell alt-right outlet Breitbart the reporting is “demonstrably false” and that he plans to sue both CNN and the Daily Beast.
Parnas wants to testify about Nunes
Nunes has in the past accused House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of withholding valuable information from the committee. Ahead of the public hearings, Nunes sent Schiff a letter demanding the chairman “sit for a closed-door deposition before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees” in order to discuss the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint helped launch the impeachment inquiry.
Schiff has claimed he does not know the identity of this whistleblower — Nunes maintains he is lying about this, largely because this whistleblower reportedly reached out to members of Schiff’s staff for advice on the proper way to detail his concerns about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine. Those aides gave the whistleblower the procedure for filing a complaint, and have said the whistleblower contacted them because he is a member of the intelligence community and Schiff leads the House committee associated with that group.
Now, however, Nunes himself may be of interest as a witness, and Bondy has begun to argue the representative ought to recuse himself from further proceedings.
It is not clear whether Parnas will be called to testify himself, although Bondy has asked Schiff to subpoena him.
It also is not clear whether Parnas would be viewed as a credible witness. He is currently on house arrest in Florida; as Vox’s Andrew Prokop has explained, he faces serious allegations of financial wrongdoing:
The indictment focuses on alleged false statements and disclosures made by Parnas and Fruman regarding hundreds of thousands of dollars they donated to Republican groups and candidates in 2018.... The indictment also alleges that Parnas and Fruman funneled money in from foreign sources to influence US politics and were directly involved in the effort to force out the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
But despite the allegations he faces, it does appear that Parnas may have knowledge of an early anti-Biden campaign that extends beyond Giuliani, the “three amigos,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — now involving a key member of Congress. For instance, he and a business partner reportedly tried to pressure Ukraine’s last president into starting a Biden investigation, and he’s reportedly told people Trump had personally given him a “secret mission” to carry out in Ukraine.
If all of this — and his latest claims about Nunes — are indeed accurate, that would make Parnas a wealth of firsthand knowledge about the campaign to investigate the Bidens.
Much has already been revealed in public impeachment inquiry hearings held during the last two weeks. US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland testified that “everyone was in the loop” — meaning that top Trump administration officials were informed and on board with Giuliani’s mission on behalf of the president to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Biden family. A day later, State Department official David Holmes testified he heard Trump personally ask Sondland for a status update on the pressure campaign.
Together, the witnesses have painted an image of a campaign led by Trump and Giuliani that subverted US foreign policy in Ukraine into a mechanism for domestic political gain that — sometimes with their willing cooperation, and sometimes despite their best efforts — swept up career diplomats and Trump-appointed officials alike.
House Democrats have signaled they would like to end the impeachment inquiry sooner rather than later, and have gathered a large quantity of evidence that could be used in drafting articles of impeachment.
However, lawmakers have yet to hear the testimony of key high ranking officials like Pompeo or former National Security Adviser John Bolton. It is possible that lawmakers could pursue testimony from these witnesses, and the testimony of Parnas — who appears to have been a close confidant of Giuliani’s — could help guide the questioning.
Many of these top officials, however, like Bolton or acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, have signaled that it would take a court order for them to testify — that simply being subpoenaed is not enough. Nevertheless, House Democrats may issue additional subpoenas, Parnas included.

Zero Hedge is an extreme right biased conspiracy website as is Gateway Pundit ... They make Faux Noise almost legitimate ...

https://youtu.be/OsBOWSjOLsE

I think you might want to provide facts and information to support your claim ..

I did watch that rediculous stunt and can understand how you might be confused by their antics ..
but you really need to do a little research .. 47 Republicans are participating in the hearings with full authority to question witnesses ..

I did watch that rediculous stunt and can understand how you might be confused by their antics ..
but you really need to do a little research .. 47 Republicans are participating in the hearings with full authority to question witnesses ..

You really need to do a little research .. 47 Republicans are participating in the hearings with full authority to question witnesses ..

How is it a "closed door impeachment exercise" when 47 Republicans are participating in the hearings with the opportunity to question witnesses?

Trump’s false claims about H****r B***n’s China dealings

“When Biden’s son walks out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund, and the biggest funds in the world can’t get money out of China, and he’s there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing. I think it’s a horrible thing.”
— President Trump, remarks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Sept. 25, 2019
“Ask how his son made millions of dollars from Ukraine, made millions of dollars from China, even though he had no expertise whatsoever.”
— Trump, in remarks to reporters with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Sept. 24
“The son took money from China — a lot of money from China.”
— Trump, remarks to reporters at the United Nations, Sept. 23
We’ve been writing a lot about Trump’s false claims concerning Ukraine, Joe Biden and Biden’s son, H****r. Now let’s turn our attention to Trump’s repeated suggestions that H****r struck it rich with a sketchy deal in China.

We had fact-checked this back in May, but as the Ukraine controversy has heated up, it’s also become a regular staple of Trump’s attacks on Biden. So here’s an expanded look that takes into account new information and an updated Pinocchio rating.
The Facts
First, we will stipulate that any child of a prominent politician needs to be wary of even the appearance of a conflict of interest between his or her business interests and their parent’s political position. H****r B***n, as detailed in a New Yorker profile published in July, has had a checkered life and yet has managed to score business deals in countries — in particular Ukraine and China — that might not have materialized without the prominence of his father.
Similarly, Ivanka Trump was granted Chinese trademarks days before and after President Trump vowed to save jobs at ZTE, a major Chinese telecom, in 2018. She also was granted Chinese trademarks in 2017, on the same day she sat next to Chinese President Xi Jinping at a dinner.

Trump, of course, chose to focus on Biden’s son, not his own daughter. He has claimed that H****r B***n “made millions of dollars from China” and “took money from China — a lot of money.” He also said that H****r B***n walked out of China with “$1.5 billion in a fund … after one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two.”
So let’s back up a bit. H****r B***n launched a consulting firm in 2008. Then, in 2009, he co-founded another company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, with Christopher Heinz, stepson of then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), and Devon Archer, a Yale classmate of Heinz’s. At times, H****r B***n and Archer did deals that did not include Heinz, who apparently was more wary of business arrangements that might attract public attention.
Archer and H****r B***n, for instance, connected with Jonathan Li, who ran a Chinese private-equity fund. In June 2013, according to the New Yorker, Li, Archer and other partners (including Chinese entities) signed a memorandum of understanding to create a fund called BHR Partners. H****r B***n originally was on an advisory board for BHR and was not an equity owner in the fund while Joe Biden was vice president. He later acquired a 10 percent interest in the entity overseeing the fund.

The supposed size of the China fund — $1.5 billion — comes courtesy of “Secret Empires,” a 2018 book by conservative author Peter Schweizer, who earlier had targeted Hillary Clinton in the book “Clinton Cash.” The Fact Checker spent a lot of time in the 2016 campaign chasing down dubious claims touted by Schweizer, such as about the Uranium One deal.
Affiliates of the advisory firm had said they planned to raise $1.5 billion, but it appears the fundraising fell far short of that.
In December 2013, H****r B***n and one of his daughters flew from Japan to China with Joe Biden on Air Force Two. (This is what Trump referred to when he said: “He’s there for one quick meeting and he flies in on Air Force Two, I think that’s a horrible thing.”)
The vice president had diplomacy on his agenda. H****r B***n was not spotted much, though Schweizer makes a big deal about H****r following his father into a shop as the vice president buys an ice cream bar.
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“The vice president raised his Magnum ice cream bar to show the world’s press how personable Joe Biden could be,” Schweizer wrote. “Intentionally or not, H****r B***n was showing the Chinese that he had guanxi [connections].”
The New Yorker detailed that Schweizer’s claims about the China deal are disputed by the Biden camp.
Schweizer asserts that “Rosemont Seneca Partners had been negotiating an exclusive deal with Chinese officials, which they signed approximately ten days after H****r visited China with his father.” In fact, the deal had been signed before the trip—according to the BHR representative, it was a business license that came through shortly afterward—and H****r was not a signatory. H****r and Archer said that they never met with any Chinese officials about the fund. And the deal wasn’t with Rosemont Seneca Partners but with a new holding company, established solely by Archer; Christopher Heinz was not part of the BHR t***saction. Schweizer also asserts that the Chinese fund was “lucrative” for H****r, but H****r and his business partners told me that he has yet to receive a payment from the company.
In May, the Fact Checker also reported that H****r B***n had not received any payments from the deal.
Still, the New Yorker said that H****r B***n’s behavior at one point raised questions among the vice president’s staff about whether he was leveraging access for his benefit.
According to a Beijing-based BHR representative, H****r, shortly after arriving in Beijing, on December 4th, helped arrange for Li to shake hands with his father in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel. Afterward, H****r and Li had what both parties described as a social meeting. H****r told me that he didn’t understand why anyone would have been concerned about this. “How do I go to Beijing, halfway around the world, and not see them for a cup of coffee?” he said.
Twelve days after he flew to Beijing, H****r B***n joined the board of BHR. George Mesires, a lawyer for H****r B***n, said in a July interview with The Washington Post’s Michael Kranish that his client’s role has been misconstrued. He said H****r B***n was on the board of the advisory firm that did not directly invest, but instead advised those who did.

“To date, Mr. Biden has not received any return or compensation on account of this investment or his position on the board of directors,” Mesires told The Fact Checker after Trump’s remarks with Zelensky. “The characterization of Mr. Biden as owning a $1.5 billion private equity firm funded by the Chinese, or suggesting that Mr. Biden has earned millions of dollars from the firm is a gross misrepresentation of Mr. Biden’s role with BHR.”
Mesires said that the investment management company “was capitalized from various sources with a total of 30 million RMB [Chinese Renminbi], or about $4.2 million, not $1.5 billion.” Because Biden acquired a 10 percent minority interest, his “capital commitment is approximately $420,000,” Mesires said.
The Pinocchio Test
The president says H****r B***n “walked out of China with $1.5 billion in a fund” and earned “millions” of dollars from the deal. There is no evidence to support those claims.

One could argue H****r B***n has been trading off his father’s name, and certainly arranging a handshake between a business partner and the vice president in China raises eyebrows. But H****r B***n did not raise money for the fund; instead, he was on a board that advised potential investors. He did not obtain an equity stake until after his father was no longer vice president — and that investment of less than half a million dollars has not yet yielded a payoff for H****r B***n, according to his attorney.
Trump earns Four Pinocchios.

The prosecutor was fired because he wasn't doing his job .. and the United States along with the rest of the western world wanted him removed .. prior to that, Biden's son was not accused of any wrongdoing .. if you're truly concerned about children of political figures sitting on corporate boards, you might want to take a look at the millions the Trump clan rakes in for doing just that ..

I'm very familiar with this entire issue, but you're the one who raised the question of quid pro quo, and I'm simply asking what you're referring to .. are you referencing Trump's attempt to get a foreign country to attack one of his political opponents before he would release military aid that had previously been approved by Congress?

What quid pro quo are you referring to?