RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress-waits-waits-waits-for-sally-yates-documents

Obama appointee Sally Yates was acting attorney general under President Trump for just 10 days — from Jan. 20, 2017 until Jan. 30, 2017 — but by any measure they were consequential days. Even now, two issues from Yates’ brief tenure are still of interest to congressional investigators. One was the series of events that led Yates, in charge of the Justice Department, to reject the president’s executive order temporarily suspending the admittance into the United States of people from some Muslim nations. The second is Yates’ role in the FBI’s questioning, apparently on dubious premises, the president’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, four days into the new administration — questioning that ultimately led to Flynn’s guilty plea in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Both are matters of great public significance and interest — and on both, the Justice Department is refusing to allow the Senate Judiciary Committee access to documents from Yates’ time in office.

On Feb. 23, 2017, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions asking for “all emails to, from, copying, or blind-copying Ms. Yates from Jan. 20, 2017, through Jan. 31, 2017.” Grassley also asked for all of Yates’ other correspondence from that period, plus records of her calls and meetings.

The reason Grassley cited — his committee has direct oversight authority over the Justice Department — was that Yates’ order to the Justice Department not to defend the president’s executive order cost the administration precious time as it prepared to fight the inevitable legal challenges. The Department did not have its facts together when a federal judge in Washington state demanded them, setting the stage for the judge to issue a temporary restraining order.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/03/burying-the-dead-with-bile

The big news last week revolved around the funerals of a 1960s pop singer and an unreliable Republican senator with a cult following among masochistic conservatives and cynical leftists eager to capitalize on his capacity to spread dissension among his nominal allies.

I suppose the exploitation of funerals for grubby political ends is nothing new. Mark Antony did it with notable success when he eulogized Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. But there was something especially stomach-churning about the injection of partisan animus into the obsequies of Aretha Franklin and John McCain.

Both were reminders—as if we needed any—of how these jangled, hyperpartisan times have the capacity to infect even the most solemn ceremonies of life with bile-filled histrionics, our latter-day version of the theater of the absurd.

The race hustling reverends Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson led the bandwagon at Franklin’s funeral, loading their praise of the soul singer with vicious anti-Trump rhetoric. Dyson described the president of the United States as an “orange apparition,” a “lugubrious leech,” a “dictator” and “fascist.” Nicely done, Reverend!

The tone at John McCain’s spectacle was more restrained but the message of hatred and contempt for the president was just as patent.

The professional NeverTrumper and Twitter activist Bill Kristol sniffed that “I don’t believe the name of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was mentioned during the service for John McCain, and I’ll continue that practice, in McCain’s honor, for the rest of the day. Today was a moment to celebrate, appreciate and reflect on what is admirable.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/02/trump

For months, I’ve been driving on different routes through the vast San Joaquin Valley back and forth from the California coast—and through the usually economically depressed small towns on and near the Highway 99 corridor through the Central Valley. The poverty rate in many valley counties is higher than in West Virginia. It is a world away from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the Stanford or Caltech campus, Malibu, and Pacific Heights.

In an overregulated, overtaxed state of open borders and sanctuary cities, with the nation’s near highest electricity and gasoline prices, and facing a looming state and local pension unfunded liability of well over $300 billion, one might not expect much of an uptick from the supposed Trump economic revival. California’s calcified strategy, after all, is that global lucre pouring into coastal high-tech and finance will more than balance out the economic damage wrought by state government. Sacramento is a sort of court jester to Menlo Park.

Throughout California’s coastal and mountain forests there are waves of dead trees unharvested after a devastating drought. There are large fields of recoverable gas and oil in lots of places that are not being drilled, as well as valuable ores and metals not being mined, and unmatched farmland deprived of its long ago contracted water rights. The idea of a renaissance in the vast rich interior of the state seems implausible—especially when state government is more interested in banning plastic straws and mandating gender-neutral restrooms than in building dams or roads.

Signs of Hope in Central California
Yet signs for help wanted along highways are now ubiquitous—truckers, welders, fabricators, assemblers. Agriculture worries not just in perennial fashion about the lack of farm harvesters, even at wages of $10.50 to $14 dollars an hour. Now they’re short of forklift drivers, packing house workers, and mechanics.

New housing construction is growing after roughly a decade’s hiatus, at least to the degree carpenters, electricians, and plumbers can be found. Upward mobility is evident. At the local Walmart, the checkers often tell me they’re leaving despite raises—for better paying jobs. I drive home to my farm by a new warehouse that seems under endless construction. I finally ask the neighboring business, why? Answer: they cannot find or keep workers. The same reply comes from a friend redoing his house. Painters and floor workers no sooner start to paint and tile than they are hired away. Many now working have never held a fulltime job.