RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16682/american-election-party-system

The American two-party system resembles cartel arrangements in business: it restricts access to power to two gigantic machines that, like big business driving out little business, prevent diversity and competition on a large scale. As a result, small radial groups are forced to infiltrate the two parties and push them in directions not necessarily wanted by the mass of their followers.

The two-party system offers unusual political stability.

The reverse side, however, is that it narrows policy options to two and the role of elections to deciding the exercise of power rather than its substance.

Does the current presidential campaign in the United States have an ideological content?

Having covered six of the last nine campaigns as a reporter and followed the other three from the sidelines my answer is “yes and no”.

Let’s start with the no side of my equivocal answer first.

The current campaign is focused on two themes that leave little room for the broader questions the US faces with dramatic demographic, cultural and societal changes at home and the crumbling structure of world order.

The first theme of the campaign has been the personality of Donald J Trump. No leader in American history has been the subject of such vilification as Trump.

Jimmy Carter was mocked as “the peanut farmer” and Ronald Reagan dismissed as “Hollywood cowboy”. Bill Clinton was laughed at as “the skirt-chasing bozo” while George W Bush generated an industry with his Bushisms. Barack Obama was dubbed “the ventriloquist’s dummy” who, as Hillary Clinton quipped, “makes a speech each time there is a crisis”. Before that, Richard Nixon had been branded “Tricky Dick” and Lyndon Johnson castigated as serial liar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/02/bidens-foreign-policy-folly/

He has been wrong about everything 

Early on in his first term as vice president, Joe Biden asked for a private meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Gates had been appointed to the job by President George W. Bush in the shake-up after the 2006 midterm election, and President Obama kept him on for continuity. Biden had abstained from voting for Gates’s confirmation under Bush, making him one of only five senators who hadn’t voted to confirm him.

Besides shoring up Obama’s reputation as a man who could work with longtime moderates in the Democratic Party, Biden’s addition to the ticket was meant to give Obama some extra credibility on foreign policy; Biden had been the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee since 1997. But the White House is different. Gates was serving his eighth president. So Biden solicited his advice on how to play a constructive role as part of the administration’s foreign-policy team.

Gates told Biden that there were two models for a vice president. Under Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush had his team attend all relevant national-security meetings and brief him afterward. Bush gave his opinions and advice only to Reagan himself, usually privately. By contrast, Dick Cheney attended most meetings and was a forceful advocate for his own views. Gates said that the Bush approach was more fitting to the dignity of the office and would also protect Biden. Cheney’s approach came with a price; it eventually became obvious to outsiders when Cheney was losing the argument in the administration, and it diminished him. Writing in his memoir of this time, Gates recalls that Biden “listened closely, thanked me, and then did precisely the opposite of what I recommended, following the Cheney model to a T.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/election-meddling-redux/

Our adversaries have figured out that the best way to promote American discord is to give the left-wing media what it craves and watch our divisive politics do the rest.

I t is not an attack on the American election. It is an influence operation aimed at the American media, using the $60 billion per annum American intelligence apparatus to pull it off.

And it’s working.

On Wednesday night, it was suddenly announced that U.S. security services would conduct a press conference to announce vital information. With millions of Americans already voting, with our official Election Day less than two weeks away, and with minds ever attuned to the specter of 2016 election shenanigans that the media-Democrat complex has never stopped litigating, there was an instant supposition that some new “attack on our democracy” was afoot.

Sure enough, out trotted the directors of national intelligence and the FBI, mien studiously grave, to proclaim . . . well . . . I’m not sure if we want to call it abject nonsense or agitation of exactly the kind hostile foreign intelligence services would take joy in hearing from U.S. spy chiefs — in which case, it really is 2016 all over again.

The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, somberly explained that those Iranian rascals, posing as (to quote the Wall Street Journal’s report) “the far-right group the Proud Boys,” have been poking at registered Democrats in election battleground states: “Intimidating” them with emails that contain — hope you’re sitting down for this — “false information”; warning them that the Proud Boys have captured “the entire voting infrastructure,” and that Democrats must “vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you.” And — try to contain your astonishment — the black hand of Moscow, and who knows what other sinister alien forces, are similarly up to no good.

“These are desperate acts by desperate adversaries,” Ratcliffe declaimed. FBI director Christopher Wray was even more stern: “We are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections, or any criminal activity that threatens the sanctity of your vote or undermines public confidence in the outcome of the election.”

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/10/22/hunters_ex-business_partner_says_joe_biden_lied_about_business_deals_in_china_fbi_has_proof.html

Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, accused former VP Joe Biden of lying about his role in his son’s international dealings during a statement to the WH press corps just 90 minutes before Thursday’s presidential debate. Bobulinski, who will be a guest at the debate, said he has three phones that will prove his claims and he is giving them to the FBI.

BOBULINSKI: Good evening. My name is Tony Bobunlinski. I served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy with high security clearance. My father and grandfather, both served for decades in our country’s armed forces. Since leaving the Navy, I’ve been involved in various successful businesses, both in this country and abroad. I’m making the statement to set the record straight about the involvement of the Biden family, Vice President Biden, his brother Jim Biden, and his son Hunter Biden, in dealings with the Chinese.

I’ve heard Joe Biden say that he’s never discussed business with Hunter. That is false.

I have first hand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden. I have also heard the Vice President Biden said on Tuesday, that Senator Ron Johnson the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, should be ashamed for suggesting the Biden family sought to profit from their name. Well here are the facts, I know. And everything I’m saying is corroborated by emails, WhatsApp chats, agreements, documents, and other evidence and American people can judge for themselves.

I brought, I guess, for the record three phones, that spanned the years 2015 to 2018. These phones have never been held by anybody else besides myself. I was told this past Sunday by somebody who was also involved in this matter that if I went public this information would be it would bury all of us, man, the Bidens included.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/23/dont-mention-joe-being-involved-bombshell-texts-show-effort-to-hide-joe-bidens-involvement-in-hunters-business-deals/

Explosive texts from a Biden family business associate discuss how to conceal the involvement of former Vice President Joe Biden in a deal being planned with a Chinese Communist government-linked firm. Biden has repeatedly claimed that he knew nothing about any of Hunter Biden’s foreign business activities.

“Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when you are face to face,” reads a text from Hunter Biden’s business partner to another business associate. The two are discussing putting together a deal between SinoHawk, which was a Biden family company reportedly named in part for China and in part for Beau Biden’s favorite animal.

The text exchange is between James Gilliar, who is a business partner of Hunter Biden’s, and Tony Bobulinski, a retired Navy lieutenant, who was the CEO of SinoHawk.

Later in the 2017 exchange, they discuss Hunter’s role in a 2020 Joe Biden presidential campaign.

The texts are part of a massive tranche of messages, e-mails, and company documents that Bobulinski handed over to reporters in recent days. Bobulinski said on Thursday that he had handed over all of his records to Senate investigators as well as the FBI.

One e-mail details how different Biden family associates would benefit from the deal, including 20 percent for Hunter Biden, 10 percent for James Biden, and 10 percent to be held by Hunter Biden on behalf of “the big guy,” who Bobulinski says was Joe himself.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-23-biden-corruption-trickle-of-in

Kindly give the Manhattan Contrarian some credit for calling this one correctly at the very earliest stages. On the other hand, this was not a difficult call to make; you had to be either blind or braindead or corrupt or all three not to call it correctly. The category “all three” applies to the entirety of the progressive, Washington and mainstream media blob.

It was September 20, 2019 that the Wall Street Journal reported the existence of a so-called “whistleblower” complaint, asserting that on a telephone call in July of that year, President Trump had “pressured” the new President of Ukraine to investigate allegations of money laundering involving Joe and Hunter Biden. On September 23, 2019, as reported in the New York Post, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani responded by asserting that some $3 million had been paid to Biden’s son Hunter from Ukraine. Over the next couple of weeks, various journalists (all from the right) put together relatively detailed timelines of the activities of Hunter Biden in Ukraine. (Here is one from Jim Geraghty of National Review on September 30, 2019.) Meanwhile, the “whistleblower” allegations turned into the impeachment inquiry, that continued until it ultimately cratered with Trump’s acquittal in the Senate on February 5, 2020.

By October 6, 2019, I was already ready to make the call, which I did in a post titled “The Bidens: ‘Stone Cold Crooked.’” That post covered in considerable detail the facts as to the Bidens and Ukraine as then known; but really, this was not complicated. Dubious Ukrainian energy companies in the crosshairs of prosecutors do not pay $1 million per year for attendance at two annual board meetings to people with Hunter Biden’s background (no experience in the energy industry) supposedly to get the benefit of their business acumen. It was screamingly obvious that this had to be payment for access or influence or both with respect to Hunter’s dad Joe. For many more Manhattan Contrarian posts on the subject of Biden corruption, particularly as regards Ukraine, go to this composite link and scroll down.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Donald Trump is not a man “for all seasons,” but he is, in my opinion, a man for this season, at this point in our history. We know his negatives: His character is faulty. He is an egoist, braggart and often vengeful. He is overly sensitive to insults and has little patience. His speech makes one wince. But Mr. Trump is an unabashed patriot who believes that, fundamentally, America is good, while his opponents are equally vocal, in emphasizing how America has been a force for evil. He, alone among Washington’s smug political class, has had the fortitude to stand up to what has become Washington’s “swamp,” a quagmire that has lured those that want the security of a federally funded job, with an income above the national average and the influence and power that accompanies such jobs. As well, too many elected officials have gone to Washington, not to serve the public’s interest but to gain the notoriety to profit from a book or to make contacts that allow them to join a lobbyist firm upon retirement – in short, to become rich. Nobody wants a system where a poor person cannot run for political office, but the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A Senator or Representative makes more than double the median household income in the Washington metropolitan area, which itself is 25% above the national average. The median net worth of a member of Congress is more than ten times the median net worth of the typical American. Healthcare and retirement benefits are substantially higher than those received by average Americans. And a compromised politician cannot serve the best interests of the American people.

Is it any wonder that Mr. Trump has raised the ire of so many whose livelihoods could be at risk? If Mr. Trump has his way some government agencies could be shut down and others moved out of the D. C. metropolitan area. Abroad, Mr. Trump achieved a rapprochement in the Middle East that had evaded professional policy experts for decades. He moved our embassy to Jerusalem, caused our NATO partners to up their share of defense spending and withdrew the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council, which “makes a mockery of human rights,” as Ambassador Nikki Haley said. He took on China, imposed sanctions on Russian leaders, released the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear deal and removed the U.S. from the toothless and expensive Paris Accord. He came to Washington as a political outsider. Despite almost four years in the White House, he remains an outsider, which threatens those who see Washington as their own private feeding trough, a place where they can exercise political, economic and personal power. Donald Trump is like the little boy who saw that the emperor was naked, that corruption was rampant. The most recent example has been the Biden revelations – trading access for dollars. But Mr. Trump loves his country and he recognizes that its institutions of family, church, history and tradition are under attack. There are numerous issues over which reasonable people can disagree – the economy, COVID-19, the judiciary, education, taxes, regulation, national defense, healthcare, climate, the environment, immigration, foreign policy, guns, right-to-life – but we should be united on the issue of liberty, freedoms to speak, write and assemble, and of the right to live freely within the confines of a just society based on the rule of law. And, we should be able to trust those who run our government.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/23/trump-takes-the-lead-in-az-in-new-poll/

Donald Trump took a small lead in Arizona according to a new survey by Susquehanna Polling and Research for the Center for American Greatness.

The phone survey of 500 likely voters conducted October 19-22 showed Trump with 46.6 percent and Biden with 46.2 percent support, with a 4.3 percent margin of error. The poll also showed that Biden’s negatives in the states popped up to 49%. In the same poll at the end of September they stood at 44% while his favorable rating declined to 39%.

There are others danger signs for Biden in the poll. When asked who they think will win the election regardless of who they prefer, just 37% of respondents thought Biden would win and only 19% think their neighbors are voting for Biden.

The other big news in the poll is that Senator Martha McSally took the lead over challenger Mark Kelly 50-47. McSally has struggled against Kelly this year and she has been widely seen as one of the most vulnerable Republican senators, owing more to her low energy campaign than to changes in Arizona voters. This same poll had her losing to Kelly 48-45 in late September.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/23/msnbc-host-black-lives-matter-never-advocated-violence-against-police-n1081714

During the final debate with Joe Biden on Thursday, President Donald Trump recalled a particularly horrific moment in the Black Lives Matter protests, the chant, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon!” After the debate, MSNBC host Joy Reid falsely claimed that the group chanting that slogan was not connected to Black Lives Matter. She also claimed that Black Lives Matter protesters “have never advocated violence against police.”

Reid was lying through her teeth.

“There was an offshoot, separate group of people. Nobody knows who they are, they were never connected to the march,” the MSNBC host said of the “pigs in a blanket” line.

“There is absolutely zero, none, zero evidence that Black Lives Matter has ever pushed for anything violent, pushed for anything violent to happen to police,” Reid insisted. “Black Lives Matter is about one thing: stop killing black people just because you pulled them over for a parking violation or a moving violation. Just stop killing black people.”

“They have never advocated violence against police. For [Trump] to traffic that again tonight was not only desperate… it was also stupid,” she argued.

1. “Pigs in a blanket”

The “pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon” chant traces back to August 2015 when WKBT TV reported that Rashad Turner, founder of Black Lives Matter-St. Paul, defended the chant. Turner did not deny that the chant had taken place nor that it came from individuals disaffiliated with Black Lives Matter.

2. ‘Zero evidence’ of Black Lives Matter violence

Reid also claimed that “there is absolutely zero, none, zero evidence that Black Lives Matter has ever pushed for anything violent, pushed for anything violent to happen to police.”

Yet this past June, Greater New York Black Lives Matter leader Hank Newsome said, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”