RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-real-story-in-durhams-indictment-of-democratic-lawyer-michael-sussmann/

“Meantime, having orchestrated the creation of all this smoke, the Clinton campaign exploits it to tell the media and the American people, “See, Trump is a Kremlin mole!”I suddenly think the eventual Durham report could be very interesting reading.”

The special counsel’s final report on the Clinton campaign’s manufacturing of the Trump–Russia collusion narrative will be very interesting reading.

T here is a long game and a short game going on in special counsel John Durham’s indictment of Democratic Party lawyer Michael Sussmann on a false-statements count.

The short of it is this: A false statement was allegedly made by Sussmann to the FBI’s then-general counsel, James Baker, on September 19, 2016. In federal law, the false-statement crime has a five-year statute of limitations, meaning it had to be charged by this Sunday (September 19, 2021). Consequently, even if Durham would probably have preferred to wait until his full investigation was concluded before filing indictments, by delaying beyond Sunday, he would have lost what appears to be an eminently provable felony charge. If he was going to indict Sussmann on this conduct, it was now or never.

Now, more critically, the long game.

It is unusual for a one-count false-statement charge, which can be alleged in a paragraph, to be presented as a 27-page speaking indictment. But Durham wrote a highly detailed account of the facts and circumstances surrounding the false-statements charge. It is significant in that it tells us far more about his investigation.

Here is where the prosecutor appears to be going: The Trump–Russia collusion narrative was essentially a fabrication of the Clinton campaign that was peddled to the FBI (among other government agencies) and to the media by agents of the Clinton campaign — particularly, its lawyers at Perkins Coie — who concealed the fact that they were quite intentionally working on the campaign’s behalf, and that they did not actually believe there was much, if anything, to the collusion narrative. It was serviceable as political dirt but would not amount to anything real for criminal or national-security purposes.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/18/bidens-vaccine-mandate-violates-fundamental-freedoms/

On September 9, President Joe Biden announced that nearly 100 million Americans will be forced to get vaccinated, or else they could lose their livelihoods.

According to Biden, “the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”

He added, “all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid” and “those who work in hospitals, home healthcare facilities, or other medical facilities – a total of 17 million healthcare workers,” must all get vaccinated.

And, for good measure, Biden declared, “I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated — all.  And I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same.”

So, per the president, all the health care workers who literally put their lives on the line treating COVID-19 patients over the past 18 months, have no choice but to get vaccinated.

First, does the federal government have the authority to mandate vaccines? In a word, no.

The Constitution grants no such power to the national government. In fact, several officials in the Biden administration, including the president, have articulated that the federal government is not capable of forcing Americans to get vaccinated.

The states, per the 10th Amendment, do possess the power to implement vaccine mandates. In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled that states can enforce compulsory vaccination laws based on the police powers granted to the states in the Constitution. However, in that ruling, as well as subsequent vaccine-oriented rulings, the Court has made it clear that this power belongs to the states, and the states alone.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalism-crises-political-philosophy-religion-storey-kass-bloom-cancel-culture-war-11631889543?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Liberalism is in trouble. I don’t mean the narrow “liberalism” of the post-1960s Democratic Party, although that’s in trouble, too. I mean liberalism in the wider, classical sense—a view of government and society embracing free markets, representative democracy, individual freedom, strict limits on state power, and religious neutrality.

Twenty-five years ago, that understanding of liberalism was almost unquestionable. Not anymore. On the left, markets generate inequality, democracy works only when it achieves the right outcomes, individual freedom is uninteresting unless it involves sexual innovation or abortion, the state is everything, and religion doesn’t deserve neutrality. On the right—or anyway the intellectual/populist right—markets destroy traditional moral conventions, democracy is mostly a sham, individual freedom encourages behavioral deviancies, state power is a force for good, and the First Amendment’s ban on the establishment of religion was likely a bad idea.

Partisans will dispute these characterizations, but the liberal order in America (and Europe) is under attack—and not without reason. Political debates in Washington are bereft of good faith, the education system idealizes self-hatred and sexual confusion, and even corporate leaders—who until yesterday could be counted on to champion patriotism and hard work—eagerly recite the maxims of idiots.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/new-durham-indictment-exposes-second-leg-hillary

Nearly two years after evidence emerged that the infamous Steele dossier was a political dirty trick filled with Russian disinformation and disproved allegations, Special Counsel John Durham unloaded a new indictment that exposes a parallel effort by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to flood the FBI with more dubious Trump-Russia collusion dirt.

In painstaking detail, Durham laid out in the indictment Thursday how Democrat superlawyer Michael Sussmann used Clinton campaign funds to construct a now-debunked memo and other evidence alleging that computer communications between a server at the Alfa Bank in Russia and the Trump Tower in New York might be a secret backdoor communication system for Trump and Vladimir Putin to hijack the 2016 election.

Sussmann delivered the package in mid-September 2016 — just weeks before Election Day as Trump and Clinton were locked in a tight race — to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, even after the team of computer experts warned the theory was a “red-herring,” according to the indictment.

And then Sussmann falsely told Baker, the prosecutors alleged, he was providing the information to the FBI solely as a good citizen, and not on behalf of any client.

In fact, Sussmann was working on behalf of a tech executive and the Clinton campaign and charged nearly all the work on the Alfa Bank narrative to the Democratic presidential campaign, including his meeting with Baker, the indictment stated.

The alleged lying, Durham argued, deceived the FBI into thinking the allegations were coming from a neutral source — Sussmann had been a cybersecurity expert — and not an election-motivated client.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/macarthur_was_fired_milley_should_be_courtmartialed.html

Douglas MacArthur was one the nation’s greatest generals.  In his time, there was no more revered, lauded, and beloved military figure.  He graduated first in his class at West Point, where, after service in WWI, he served as its superintendent.  During WWII, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army in 1944 and given command of all Army forces in the Pacific.  On September 2, 1945, it was MacArthur who accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender, ending the war.  Following the surrender, he served as the military governor of Japan, helping to usher in a modern government and economy.  When North Korea invaded South Korea, in June 1950, it was MacArthur whom Truman put in command of the U.N. forces to repel the invasion and prevent South Korea from falling to communism.  It was a no-brainer.

After MacArthur drove the North Korean forces back across the 38th Parallel, the official demarcation line between the North and the South, beginning with a brilliant landing at Inch’ŏn harbor, the Communist Chinese sent massive forces into Korea in support of the North and drove the U.N. forces back below the 38th Parallel and into South Korea.  After recovering, MacArthur once again commanded his forces to send the enemy back into North Korea.

Unfortunately for MacArthur, he had an ego to match his brilliant military acumen.  It was this brash and flamboyant side that resulted in his being unceremoniously relieved of command of the U.N. forces.

Truman’s stated policy was for a more limited war in Korea to limit casualties and not risk a third world war.  MacArthur disagreed with this policy and wanted to expand the conflict to continue the advance into China and said so, publicly.  In doing so, he defied the commander-in-chief, President Truman, and thus, he was deemed to have threatened the civilian-military control balance.  For this transgression, along with several other earlier episodes of defiance, on April 11, 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from his command for insubordination.  In a statement made to the American people regarding the firing, Truman explained he had done it “so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”  In short, the civilians are in charge and set the policy, not the generals.

It has now come to light that while Trump was president, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley, on his own initiative, in a demented effort at professional courtesy, contacted a top-ranking Chinese general to give him the “heads-up” that if the U.S. were to attack, he would call ahead to let him know.  In addition, Milley communicated to and apparently coordinated with speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and then–minority leader Charles Shumer, in the waning days of the Trump presidency, to limit Trump’s abilities as the constitutionally designated commander-in-chief by improperly inserting himself into the nuclear launch sequence.  Not only were these acts insubordinate, but they arguably constitute conspiracy to commit treason.  They make what MacArthur did look like an infraction of failing to salute a superior officer.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/afghanistan-through-michael-scheuers-eyes-andrew-harrod/

Many Western observers “have ignored the very real accomplishments and popular acceptance of the Taliban government in Afghanistan,” then-CIA analyst Michael Scheuer wrote anonymously in 2002. His previously-analyzed book, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, contains sobering analysis, which foresaw the failure of American-led nation-building efforts in Afghanistan 20 years later.

Scheuer had focused on Afghanistan while tracking Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit in the years before and after September 11, 2001. Although since his 2004 retirement from the CIA he has exposed himself as an anti-Israel, conspiracy-mongering crank, his 2002 writings about attempts to liberalize  Afghanistan were highly thought-provoking. Already at the time he had criticized that the “Afghan war, then, is an opportunity for social work of international scope, not an opportunity to destroy al Qaeda.”

Afghanistan’s recent history of the mujahedeen defeating Soviet occupation in the decade 1979-1989 demonstrated for Scheuer the foolhardiness of any Afghan Islamic democracy project. “In fact, it is vital to recall that, next to the Soviets, the biggest losers in Afghanistan were the Muslim world’s Western-minded scholars, politicians, and intellectuals,” he wrote. He explained:

The Afghan jihad confronted the theoreticians of democratic Islam with a hard reality. The Red Army was not defeated by a democratic revolution, but by an Islamist revolution grounded, guided, and steeled by God’s words as found in the Koran and explained by the Prophet. Driven by their faith, the mujahedin used bullets, not votes, to win one for Allah.

Quoting Harvard University political scientist Tarek Masoud, Scheuer noted a “basic political fact” about democracy in Islam’s Arabic heartland. Masoud had observed that

there exists no grassroots movement for democracy in the Arab world, largely because democracy does not resonate with the average Arab. It has no basis the Arab past and is tainted by its association with the West.

Scheuer cautioned Americans who celebrated the quick American-led overthrow of Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers following 9/11. Many of these Westerners “have taken their lead from Mrs. Jay Leno and the Hollywood wives and equated the fall of Kabul with the liberation of Dachau.” But he noted how the Taliban’s sharia supremacy had found favor among many Afghans, for now the “murder, bribery, kidnapping, and extortion that the Taliban had all but eliminated have again become commonplace.” “Although reviled by the West as violent medieval madmen, the Taliban teamed its imposition of strict Islamic law with a slow process of rebuilding and modernizing Afghanistan’s war-ravaged infrastructure,” he added.