RUTHFULLY YOURS

The activists bearing freezing temperatures to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline seem to have won a victory in North Dakota last week after the Obama administration rejected a crucial permit needed to complete the controversial project.

But while members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their supporters have protested the construction of the pipeline slated to run just a half-mile beyond their border, other tribes have peacefully courted deals for pipelines that run through the middle of their reservations. This stark contrast illustrates the importance of tribal jurisdiction and the detrimental effects of federal policies that limit development opportunities on many tribal lands.

In most cases, federal policies discourage developers from doing business on Native American reservations in the first place, in effect denying tribes the opportunity to benefit from energy projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). In some cases, however, tribes have succeeded in developing their own energy resources for the benefit of tribal members and their communities.

The& Three Affiliated Tribes (the Mandan, the Hidatsa, and the Sahnish) of the Fort Berthold Reservation, for example, which sits just 150 miles north of the Standing Rock Sioux, have more than 4,000 miles of pipelines crossing their reservation, contributing to the hundreds of million dollars the tribes earn from energy-development activities each year. In Colorado, the Southern Ute tribe controls 1,600 oil and natural-gas wells, including several pipelines, in addition to operating their own energy company that develops oil and gas throughout the western U.S. The tribe’s success in the energy sector has allowed it to maintain “a higher long-term credit rating than Wells Fargo & Co.,” according to a Bloomberg Markets story published in October.

Where pipelines cross tribal lands, tribes have some say in weighing the benefits and costs of energy development, and they reap direct benefits if they choose to say yes to the projects. Revenues from oil and gas development and related infrastructure provide much-needed income for tribal members and their communities. Energy-development activities on tribal lands generated more than $850 million for Native Americans last year, according to the Department of the Interior; the funds are often used to develop infrastructure, provide health care and education, and support community programs on tribal lands.

The socialist essayist and novelist George Orwell by 1944 grew depressed that as a cost for the defeat of the Axis Powers the Allies had empowered an equally nightmarish monster in the Soviet Union.

Since his days fighting for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War, the left-wing Orwell had become an increasingly outspoken enemy of Communism. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, when Stalin renounced all his wartime assurances and steamrolled Eastern Europe, Orwell came to see state socialism under authoritarian auspices as the greatest threat to human freedom. It was not as if right-wing dictators were not equally lethal, but the inclusion of the words “socialist” and “republic” in a left-wing tyrant’s official lexicon tended to fool millions.

Indeed, it was precisely the leftist totalitarians’ habit of embroidering their murderous pursuit of power with professions of “equality,” “fairness,” and “egalitarianism” that so often allowed them to employ any means necessary to achieve their supposedly exalted ends. In sum, in Orwell’s eyes, the radical Left’s erasure of historical memory and its distortion of reality through the manipulation of language were the chief threat of the 20th century.

His 1945 novella Animal Farm — initially difficult for Orwell to publish and deeply hated by Western leftists — was an allegorical warning to liberals of the dangers of left-wing propaganda. Words and phrases changed their meanings — again and again — to serve a tyrannical agenda. The assorted creatures of Orwell’s fictional barnyard frequently wake up to new commandments posted on the barn wall by their Stalinesque pig leaders, with yesterday’s edicts crossed out or modified — and soon to be forgotten.

Given the political sympathies and self-interest of the present mainstream media and cultural elite, when the Obama administration came into power in 2009, we crossed out prior, out-of-power edicts and wrote new establishment versions in their place — as if no one would ever quite know the difference, or would soon forget if he did. Many of us at the time wrote about the nearly Orwellian change in liberal mentality required to accommodate Obama’s many contradictions.

Rich people were suddenly not all bad blue-stocking Republicans, but also hip, valuable Silicon Valley progressives in flip-flops who, with some reluctance, outsourced and off-shored.

In our past eight years of historical revisionism, huge political contributions — like the hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies given by multi-billionaire financial speculator George Soros — were now helpful for democracy if only they were given to left-wing causes.

Once-liberal public campaign-financing laws and limits on fund-raising applied to all candidates except Barack Obama, who became the largest recipient of campaign cash in election history.

Since election day, Democrats have engaged in a panicked attempt to leverage their last couple of weeks in control of the executive branch to delegitimize the Trump presidency. Obama has even gone so far as to order a “full report” on Russian tampering in the 2016 election cycle to be completed before he leaves office (see “A “Soft Coup” Attempt: Furious Trump Slams “Secret” CIA Report Russia Helped Him Win”). Of course, we should simply ignore the fact that a true investigation of such allegations would take much longer than the one month that Obama has left in office because any delay could run the risk of a bipartisan/independent review and that’s just not how the Obama administration plays the game.http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/12/fbi-disputes-cias-fuzzy-and-ambiguous-claims-that-russia-sought-to-influence-presidential-election/

But at least one investigative agency, the FBI, isn’t buying the “fuzzy and ambiguous” assertions from the CIA that Russia “quite” clearly meddled in the U.S. elections on behalf of the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, the FBI’s unwillingness to play along is infuriating Democrats.

The FBI did not corroborate the CIA’s claim that Russia had a hand in the election of President-elect Donald Trump in a meeting with lawmakers last week.

A senior FBI counterintelligence official met with Republican and Democrat members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in order to give the bureau’s view of a recent CIA report. The official did not concur with the CIA, frustrating Democrats.

The CIA believes Russia “quite” clearly intended to send Trump to the White House. The claim is a bold one and concerned Democrats and some Republicans who are worried about Trump’s desire to mend relations with an increasingly aggressive Russia. The CIA report was “direct, bold and unqualified,” one of the officials at the meeting told The Washington Post Saturday.

PRESUMED TO BE A CRETIN…HE PROVES IT IN HIS OUTGOING RANT….RSK

Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid lambasted FBI Director James Comey in a Monday interview with CNN, claiming that Comey “single-handedly” cost Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton the election.

Comey had released a letter to congressional leaders less than two weeks ahead of the election announcing that authorities had discovered additional emails related to the investigation into her use of a private server. The agency then announced days before the election that the additional emails would not alter its initial decision to not bring forth charges against the former secretary of state.

“Had he not written that letter a week or so before the election, she would’ve won,” Reid said. “We would’ve picked up at least two more Senate seats.”

The Nevada Democrat also criticized Comey for not taking a stronger stance against reported Russian meddling in the US election, of which the Washington Post and New York Times reported Friday that an assessment by the CIAconcluded that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump’s presidential bid.