RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/9785/a-cure-worse-than-the-disease

“As we see in the UK, Canada, Europe and elsewhere, a permanent state power is ever more comfortable suppressing the possibility of political change. But in America the active partnership between the most lavish and secretive agencies on the planet and the Democrat-media complex is a threat of an entirely different order. Matt Taibbi understands that America can survive a “bad president”, but that it cannot survive the normalization of the Comey-Brennan-Clapper-McCabe rogue state.”

Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers, Happy Columbus Day to our American readers, Happy First Day of Sukkot to our Jewish readers. We would wish our Ukrainian readers a Happy Defender of Ukraine Day, but we’re worried it might be the annual celebration of Hunter Biden’s latest oligarch-kissing sinecures.

~Matt Taibbi is a man of the left, but he is an iconoclastic one and The Washington Post’s recent attempt to #MeToo him has probably made him more so. He’s also a much better writer than most lefties, hobbled as they are by the Downton-Abbey-for-progressives rules of identity politics. Ten years ago, I was very admiring of his evisceration of The New York Times’ beloved comic figure Thomas Friedman:

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: ‘I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, “We need better headlights for our tri-plane.”‘ And off he goes.

Indeed Taibbi can do Friedman rather better than the original:

After Thomas Friedman correlates (on the back of a napkin) freedom and the price of oil, Mr Taibbi correlates, rather more plausibly, happiness and the size of Valerie Bertinelli’s ass (with accompanying graph).

A lot of us were content to do low comedy a decade back. But these are ever more fevered times and Matt Taibbi has written a sobering piece after three years of what he calls “a permanent coup”. The nub of his argument:

My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/14/no-james-comey-america-doesnt-want-your-help/

With so little to unite Americans on the Left and Right, our shared rejection of further assistance from the former FBI director just might be the salve the country needs.

America is a dangerously divided nation. Democrats, unable to accept the results of a presidential election three years ago, would now undo the constitutional expression of American voters by pushing a half-cocked impeachment inquiry. Democratic presidential candidates offer outlandish ideas such as free healthcare to illegal immigrants and subsidized gender reassignment surgery for inmates while Democratic voters fret their field of candidates is too old, too left-wing, and too sluggish to oust Donald Trump in 2020.

Republicans want the House of Representatives back, especially after witnessing the Democrats’ nonstop assault on the president. They also are impatiently awaiting the outcome of multiple investigations into how the Obama Administration weaponized the most powerful government agencies in the world to sabotage Trump’s campaign and destabilize his presidency. (Don’t miss my review of Ball of Collusion, the excellent book by Andrew McCarthy.)

But despite our deep partisan differences and, at times, raging animus toward our political foes, there is one thing on which nearly all Americans can agree:

No, James Comey, we don’t need your help.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/buddy-dyer-and-his-multicultural-committees-joe-kaufman/

This past July, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer convened the first meeting of his newly formed Committee on Multicultural Affairs. According to the group’s website, “This appointed committee is comprised of 17 community leaders that represent diversity in race, gender, age, religious beliefs, national origin, cultural background, profession, sexual orientation and gender identity.” Part of the Mayor’s diversity appears to, as well, include extreme bigotry against Jews and the state of Israel, as fourth down on the list of the 17 member names (on the Orlando government page devoted to the committee) is none other than rabid anti-Semite Rasha Mubarak.

Rasha Ahmad Mubarak has an intense hatred of Israel. As a result, she has affiliated and continues to affiliate herself with radical Muslim groups associated with Hamas, including: CAIR, which has foundational and financial ties to Hamas; Islamic Relief (IR), which the Israeli government has labeled a Hamas front and has banned; and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), which has coordinated activities with the Holy Land Foundation (HRF), a now-defunct Hamas financing wing that the US government named a Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT) in December 2001. Mubarak is currently the President of the PCRF Orlando chapter.

Beyond her radical affiliations, Mubarak has exhibited her own support for Hamas. At the end of the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, along with photos of a jubilant Hamas, who had, bizarrely, just declared victory, Mubarak tweeted, “Thousands of people celebrating in the streets of Gaza for the victory. Alhamdulillah. #VictoryForGaza.” And following continued Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, in November 2012, Mubarak retweeted her fellow CAIR operative, Laila Abdelaziz, who had tweeted, “Don’t worry ya Gaza, we’re working hard for you in Florida.” Mubarak emphatically added, “Yes we are!”