RUTHFULLY YOURS

Do you remember Lewis “Scooter” Libby?

In 2003, the Department of Justice appointed a special counsel to investigate allegations that Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, unlawfully disclosed the covert status of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Yet Plame may not have been a covert undercover agent, based on the formal government definition of that role. And even if she were, it was widely known at the time that Secretary of State Colin Powell’s subordinate, Richard Armitage, had most likely disclosed her status earlier.

In other words, Libby was in an Orwellian position of being accused of a crime that may not have existed. But if it had, it was more likely committed by someone else.

Publicity-seeking special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald persuaded a Washington, D.C., jury to find Libby guilty of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators — not the supposed crimes for which he was originally targeted by the media.

Apparently, the very suspicion of improper behavior by high public servants once warranted vigorous legal inquiry — by supposedly independent and autonomous prosecutors.

In the eight-plus years since the Libby trial, the Obama administration has blown up the law as we have known it for centuries.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/09/oxfam-part-2/

In case you missed part 1: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2015/09/facts-go-begging-oxfams-fundraising/

Tony Thomas With Friends Like Oxfam…

The organisation’s fundraising literature and ad campaigns focus on helping the starving and wretched. How odd that its deep-green activism would make that poverty even worse by denying reliable power, development and jobs to the same Third World it professes to care so much about
Are you thinking of an annual donation to Oxfam Australia to help those dirt-poor people in the Third World? Actually, you would be helping to finance Oxfam’s dark-green push to destroy the Australian coal and petroleum industry. Oxfam’s latest climate document gloats that destroying these industries would represent a $100 billion per annum hit to the federal government’s export expectations.

“The shift to a 2degC [warming] pathway would see annual export revenue from coal, gas and iron ore fall to AUD100b less than the Australian government’s current projections ,” enthuses Oxfam’s climate guru, Dr Simon Bradshaw, who wants a zero-emissions Australia well before 2050. So who is Bradshaw? He’s a “climate leader” in Al Gore’s official team of global warming propagandists, also a climate campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation and a PhD (in philosophy) from Melbourne University, an institution which seems to specialise in promoting green zealotry and anti-growth ideologies (e.g. it now runs 1300 “sustainability” researchers at a cost of $218m p.a.).

Bradshaw did his thesis on contrasts between Tibetan ecology and “over-consumption in the modern industrial world”. As his thesis puts it:

On the one hand, our continued desire for growth at a time of ever more dire warnings of ecological collapse can look like collective insanity. However, a brief reflection on the complex and entrapping nature of modern economic systems soon serves to illustrate some of the difficulties in breaking free from the shackles of the past and moving beyond the growth economy ….

The result, to use a popular analogy, becomes something akin to thinking we are flying when in fact our aeroplane is plummeting from the skies, the ground rushing up ever more rapidly towards us. Strangely, only the more inquisitive or concerned are aware of what’s coming. The majority remain oblivious or choose to ignore the inevitable impending crash…

Meanwhile, within the world’s most ‘advanced’ and economically prosperous industrial nations, apparent rises in incidence of psychoses (including particularly depression) coupled with trends in obesity, marital break-up, heart disease, cancer, drug use, prisoner numbers and a variety of other societal ills suggest that ‘happiness’ is on the decline and give cause to re- evaluate the social success of capitalism….”

“The fruits of liberty enjoyed by Germans today are not Germany’s to squander in the first place. Every bit of this precious freedom was paid for in blood — from the beaches of Normandy to the pavements of the Warsaw Ghetto — often meter-by-meter with bare knuckles and bloody fists.As if history has come full circle, in the span of less than a century, Germany’s state institutions are folding again at the mere sight of an organized band of fascists.”

German, and possibly European, demographics are being set to change forever.

Conservative Islam, the one dominant in Germany, is incapable of thinking critically about its past.

“No one knows exactly what actually happens in Islamic classes in German primary schools.” — Abdel-Hakim Ourghi, head of the Faculty for Islamic Theology and Religious Studies at the Freiburg University of Education.

According to the report, the textbooks fail to “confront the problematic verses of Koran.” The curriculum also fails in its most important purpose — integrating Muslims into the German society — as it fails to reconcile the “Islamic faith of the students with the reality of the western society” they are living in.

By legitimizing extremist groups such as DITIB within German Muslim society as the sole legitimate representatives of Islam, the German government has marginalized genuine voices of reform and dissent within its Muslim population.

These courageous dissident Muslim men and women are left to face threats and intimidation on their own, while the government is busy appeasing the self-proclaimed leaders of the faith.

The New York Times reported last month that an IG investigation was looking into complaints that military officials skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a false, Obama-approved narrative about their progress.

Now, in an exclusive for the Daily Beast, Shane Harris and Nancy A. Youssef report on a “revolt” by more than 50 intelligence analysts who are sick and tired of seeing their honest assessments about the campaign turned into unrealistic “happy talk.”

The spooks working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command “have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials,” the Daily Beast reports.

Some of those CENTCOM analysts described the sizeable cadre of protesting analysts as a “revolt” by intelligence professionals who are paid to give their honest assessment, based on facts, and not to be influenced by national-level policy. The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the director of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress. The analysts take a more pessimistic view about how military efforts to destroy the groups are going.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed today that Israel won’t exist in 25 years, and in the time leading up to that the Jewish state will have “no moment of serenity.”

In a public address in Tehran today, Khamenei called Israel “fake,” according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

“Some of the Zionists have said that given the results of the nuclear negotiations, they have been relieved of concerns about Iran for 25 years, but we tell them that basically, you will not see the next 25 years and with God’s grace, nothing under the name of the Zionist regime will exist in the region by then,” the ayatollah said.

He later tweeted his quotes with a photo of people walking on the Star of David, stressing that “heroic and jihadi morale” will torture Israel until its fall.

Maybe he can be so conservative on taxes that voters will forget about his immigration position.

I love the way Jeb Bush thinks. He knows that his views on illegal immigration are unpopular, so he thinks that if he talks conservatively enough about other topics, people will overlook his minor policy differences with mainstream America on illegal aliens and vote for him.

Don’t laugh. After all, if he promised to drop marginal rates to zero and to eliminate the income tax and replace it with a national sales tax (which no other candidate has called for!), wouldn’t that be worth the price of legalizing the existing legal aliens? If the answer is yes, then there is a tax rate at which you would vote for Jeb Bush!

So the question becomes, how big a tax cut do you need to vote for Jeb Bush? When I consider the question, I weigh the many downsides of illegal immigration and assign a point value. Right now the top marginal tax rate is 39%, or with a extra 4% tax on investments, about 43%, depending on the circumstances (and obviously not everyone pays the top rate). Bush wants to reduce the top rate to 28% (while raising it at the same time for people who are evil by virtue of the fact that they invest in hedge funds).

Should the United States take in (even more) Syrian refugees?No.And here’s why.

We have already committed to accepting thousands of Syrians over the course of the next five years. So the decision to bring Syrians to our country is not one merely being debated, it is, regrettably, already well underway. (It is regrettable to have to say “regrettably” when talking about this, but Muslims pose a unique threat to free people everywhere.)

By the end of 2016, the State Department anticipates we will have brought as many as 10,000 Syrians to the United States. It’s safe to assume that number is low since just last month the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) submitted the names of more than 16,000 refugees from Syria for resettlement in the United States. Either way, this is just the beginning. The State Department expects the numbers to “surge” over the few years.

Numbers aside, the issue of Syrian refugees must be put into a larger context. (And, just for the record, the word refugees really should be put in quotes, as will be explained later.)

First, everyone must ask why so many Islamic nations are refusing these refugees. Breitbart reports:

“…amidst cries for Europe to do more, it has transpired that of the five wealthiest countries on the Arabian Peninsula, that is, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, not one has taken in a single refugee from Syria. Instead, they have argued that accepting large numbers of Syrians is a threat to their safety, as terrorists could be hiding within an influx of people….”

The EPA employees at fault won’t face criminal charges. Neither should companies that make similar mistakes.

The Animas River disaster in Colorado is looking worse and worse for the Environmental Protection Agency. On Wednesday, EPA officials faced grilling from a congressional committee for the agency’s Aug. 5 spill of three million gallons of toxic wastewater into a tributary of the Animas during the cleanup of an abandoned mine near Silverton, Colo. On Aug. 24, the agency released the findings of an internal investigation that found its staff had failed to accurately gauge the water pressure within the mine, thus increasing the chances for a “blowout” like the one that occurred.

All this came after reports that the EPA had known for more than a year that cleaning up the mine was highly risky. As Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, asked in Wednesday’s hearing: “Why did the EPA ignore these obvious warnings?”

Offering a helping hand to America’s enemies in Iran, Russia and Cuba will ruin lives and many more will die.
A quick glance at the latest headlines suggests a jarring disconnect from the stream of foreign-policy successes touted by the Obama White House and its allies. President Obama has been hailed by many as a peacemaker for eschewing the use of military force and for signing accords with several of America’s worst enemies. The idea that things will work out better if the U.S. declines to act in the world also obeys Mr. Obama’s keen political instincts. A perpetual campaigner in office, he realizes that it is much harder to criticize an act not taken.

But what is good for Mr. Obama’s media coverage is not necessarily good for America or the world. From the unceasing violence in eastern Ukraine to the thousands of Syrian refugees streaming into Europe, it is clear that inaction can also have terrible consequences. The nuclear agreement with Iran is also likely to have disastrous and far-reaching effects. But in every case of Mr. Obama’s timidity and procrastination, the response to criticism amounts to this: It could have been worse.

Tax reform that would cut rates and unleash business investment.

“Mr. Bush will have to sell his plan in the crowded GOP field, but perhaps his policy seriousness will steer Republicans away from this summer’s sloganeering and toward a debate about what really would make America great again.”

Conventional politics says presidential candidates should keep their tax reform plans gauzy and nonspecific. So much for that. Jeb Bush on Wednesday rolled out a tax plan that is remarkably detailed, including the tax deductions he’d eliminate in return for cutting rates to spur faster economic growth.

The former Florida Governor has made reviving growth and raising wages his main policy goals, and the tax plan is his first down payment on getting there. These are the right goals given six years of tepid growth and median household income that is still lower than when the expansion began in 2009. Faster growth than 2% a year is crucial to solving every other problem—from drawing more Americans back into the workforce, to reducing poverty, to financing U.S. defenses against growing global threats.