RUTHFULLY YOURS

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!”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ukraine-was-investigating-hunter-biden-trumps-matthew-vadum/

Officials in Ukraine reportedly opened an investigation into an energy company that employed former Vice President Joe Biden’s son long before President Donald Trump’s July 25 nothing-burger of a telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that spurred the Democrats’ haphazard, increasingly Kafkaesque impeachment inquiry.

The time element of the revelation, devastating as it is to the 2016-election-nullification push disguised as an impeachment process, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media which is overly preoccupied –as usual— attacking President Trump.

The information came last week from investigative reporter John Solomon, who recently was hired as a Fox News contributor, after Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said Oct. 4 he plans to review previous corruption investigations into Hunter Biden and his former employer, Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. Hunter got the job in 2014 while his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.

Solomon’s growing prominence in the media ecosystem means that leftist journalists –when they’re not busy making excuses for the secretive un-American Star Chamber-like impeachment process initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi– now feel obligated to engage in character-assassination efforts against him.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/destroying_americas_history_one_icon_at_a_time.html

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Less than two decades later, destroying monuments is becoming a national sport in America with little outcry and support from the media.

Columbus Day brought a refreshing reminder that leftists are effectively erasing America’s heritage as an important step in transforming America into a socialist state. 

As I look, “Happy Indigenous Peoples” day is approaching 100K tweets, which is simply advancing the narrative that was already set in motion by leftists across America. 

A teacher posted some of the proud pictures from her propagandized little ones with sayings like “Christopher Columbus didn’t find America,” and “Christopher Columbus is a really mean man.”  How charming. 

A Christopher Columbus statue was torn down in Los Angeles in 2018 and several others were vandalized this year. 

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan.  The prevailing cultural zeitgeist at the time ran clearly against toppling statues.  Don’t these third-world barbarians know that they are destroying world culture?  It helped elevate the Taliban’s evil in the eyes of the world. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/corrupt_senators_took_ukraine_cash.html

While Democrats are pushing the bogus Trump-Ukraine quid pro quo story invented by that great storyteller, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, two groups of Democratic senators have been colluding with Ukrainian interests to advance their own agenda and political careers.

Kudos to Steve Hilton for pointing out the corruption of the first group on the Oct. 13 edition of his Fox show “The Next Revolution” – a group of Democratic senators took cash from a Ukraine lobbyist to push Ukrainian gas interests at the same time the Democrats are pushing the Trump-Ukraine yarn. As Hilton states in a transcript of his show available on Fox Opinion:

Remember Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner? He had previously been a top fundraiser for John Kerry, who was Secretary of State at the time. And soon after Devon and Hunter joined the Burisma Board, the company channeled $90,000 to a lobbying firm called ML Strategies, which was headed by none other than David Leiter, John Kerry’s former chief of staff.

That’s handy because then-Secretary of State John Kerry himself has visited Ukraine with promises of U.S. aid and assistance. Well, Leiter registered as a Burisma lobbyist in mid-2014. But in the year leading up to that, he gave close to $60,000 to Democrats, including a select group of U.S. senators who would later be instrumental in pushing cash towards Ukraine’s energy sector, directly in line with Burisma’s interests.

He donated to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., four times and to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., three times. A month after the last of those donations, both Markey and Shaheen were among four senators who wrote a letter to President Obama that said, “We should leverage the full resources and expertise of the U.S. government to assist Ukraine in improving its energy efficiency, increasing its domestic production and reforming its energy markets.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bidens-concede-11571078740

Not even the Biden family seems willing to stand behind their questionable financial arrangements. A business associate in Shanghai doesn’t seem to have an explanation yet, either. Are the bitter-enders at CNN and NBC News finally ready to stop defending the indefensible?

Last week this column noted that former Vice President Joe Biden once again declined to offer a defense of his family’s business model even in an op-ed ostensibly responding to attacks on this model. Over the weekend, his son Hunter Biden quit another of the overseas engagements for which he seemed eminently unqualified.

The Journal’s Ken Thomas and Thomas Grove noted on Sunday:

Hunter Biden is stepping down from a director’s position at a Chinese private-equity firm and said he wouldn’t serve on any foreign boards if his father, Joe Biden, is elected president, lowering his controversial business profile as it becomes embroiled in the 2020 election and Democrats’ efforts to impeach President Trump.
…The former vice president’s son, 49 years old, served on the board of Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings Ltd. while his father oversaw U.S. policy on Ukraine as vice president. Hunter Biden stepped down from the Burisma board in April. The younger Biden remained a director of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., a Chinese investment firm, where Mr. Trump also alleges inappropriate conduct by the Bidens. Hunter Biden said Sunday he would remove himself from the firm’s board on Oct. 31. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/13/the-strategies-of-targeting-trump/

There is no logical Democratic explanation for impeaching Donald Trump. The various factions within the Democratic Party calling for impeachment are united only by their loathing of Donald Trump, the person, and his systematic repeal of the Obama progressive project.

After failing with the voting machine gambit, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the emoluments clause, the McCabe-Rosenstein faux-coup, the Comey memos farce, the “resistance” efforts outlined by the New York Times anonymous op-ed writer, the campaign finance violations accusations, Stormy, tax returns, whistleblowers, leakers, the Mueller 22 months charade, and now impeachment 2.0, what exactly is the point of impeaching Trump just 13 months before the election?

Here are the various rationales behind Trump’s Democratic and leftwing opponents’ latest “whistleblower” hoax. None of these scenarios are mutually exclusive.

The Primal Scream? 

There doesn’t have to be a point to impeachment. Democrats loathe Trump. That is enough. They would have impeached him on day one of his presidency before he set foot in the White House but they did not have control of the House. Now they do, so they can. Who cares whether he is convicted in the Senate? House members just want to go on record that they impeached him and put an asterisk on his presidency at worst, and at best drive his polls down to prevent his reelection.

The only hesitation after January 2018 when they took over the House was the completion of the Mueller investigation that seemed a certain road to impeachment. When that failed, it took just a few weeks to recoup, get their spirits back up, and resort to the prearranged fallback whistleblower tact. Now they are back on track.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/adam-schiffs-grand-jury-11571003444

Donald Trump is lucky in his opponents. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, and now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has chosen Rep. Adam Schiff to be the face of impeachment for Democrats.

Mrs. Pelosi took the impeachment reins away from Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler and handed them to Mr. Schiff, who has been running secret hearings as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Witnesses testify behind closed doors, and Democrats selectively leak the testimony or evidence to the pro-impeachment press in ways that are often distorted or incomplete. Republicans then offer a competing narrative, and the public is left to wonder what’s true. All of this is supposedly in service to the serious purpose of removing a President elected by 63 million Americans.

Mr. Schiff was challenged on his secrecy on Sunday by Margaret Brennan of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and the Democrat’s response was extraordinary. “There’s a reason why investigations and grand jury proceedings for example, and I think this is analogous to a grand jury proceeding, are done out of the public view initially,” Mr. Schiff said. “Now we may very well call some of the same witnesses or all the same witnesses in public hearings as well. But we want to make sure that we meet the needs of the investigation and not give the President or his legal minions the opportunity to tailor their testimony and in some cases fabricate testimony to suit their interests.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/10/four-stages-never-trump-republicans-daniel-greenfield/

There are four stages of Never Trumper Republicans, much like the four stages of grief, and the most pivotal of these is the open letter to lefties.

James Comey did one of those. As did Jennifer Rubin. Also, I believe Max Boot. And innumerable other quislings. Now Tom Nichols has one.

We don’t agree about everything; still, we get along pretty well, you and I, centered around the daily understanding that Donald Trump is a dire threat to the United States. That’s why I’ve been comfortable in my public commitment to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, come hell or high water. You’ve mostly responded to this by…

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I feel like you’re not doing your part here.

We take our walks together and we discuss the importance of getting rid of Donald Trump. And yet, when we both leave for work in the morning, it feels like only one of us is really, truly serious about that.

Here we go.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/rashida_and_the_law.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/rashida_and_the_law.html

Rashida opens mouth, inserts foot.

It seems that the charming and attractive Rashida Talib is still running off at the mouth about arresting people, specifically administration officials who refuse to respond to the House’s “impeachment” subpoenas.

According to Rashida:

“There have been actual serious conversations about what the logistics would look like… if we did have to force someone through a court order to come before the Congressional committee… she said. “This is pretty uncharted territory for many of us and even for Congress.”

Of course there have been. Leftists yearn for police powers, for the ability to reach out and punish anyone they see, with a ferocity unknown to normal human beings. That was true during the French Revolution, and will be true of the Ganymede revolt of 2250.

There’s only one problem, as I see it. To arrest somebody, you have to be able to appeal to authority, and there’s no authority involved here. An impeachment process has not be formally begun, therefore, the House has absolutely no grounds for subpoenaing anybody. It’s quite similar to all the jabber about “obstruction of justice” surrounding the Mueller Report. If there’s no crime, there’s no obstruction. You’d figure an institution packed full of lawyers would have some grasp of actual law.

Rashida opens mouth, inserts foot.

It seems that the charming and attractive Rashida Talib is still running off at the mouth about arresting people, specifically administration officials who refuse to respond to the House’s “impeachment” subpoenas.

According to Rashida:

“There have been actual serious conversations about what the logistics would look like… if we did have to force someone through a court order to come before the Congressional committee… she said. “This is pretty uncharted territory for many of us and even for Congress.”

Of course there have been. Leftists yearn for police powers, for the ability to reach out and punish anyone they see, with a ferocity unknown to normal human beings. That was true during the French Revolution, and will be true of the Ganymede revolt of 2250.

There’s only one problem, as I see it. To arrest somebody, you have to be able to appeal to authority, and there’s no authority involved here. An impeachment process has not be formally begun, therefore, the House has absolutely no grounds for subpoenaing anybody. It’s quite similar to all the jabber about “obstruction of justice” surrounding the Mueller Report. If there’s no crime, there’s no obstruction. You’d figure an institution packed full of lawyers would have some grasp of actual law.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Accusations fly furiously around corridors of power in Washington and in newsrooms across the country. Neighbor no longer speaks to neighbor; children are distanced from their parents; colleges promote ideologies rather than encourage debate. Doctors tell us we have become stressed due to harsh and unrelenting political attacks. Serious debate is ignored, yet issues remain: What kind of government do we want? A state whose tentacles reach deep into our lives, or one based on self-rule that values individual independence? Should we tilt toward socialism or rely on free-market capitalism?

For almost a century, the nation has moved away from small government and citizen representatives, toward big government and professional politicians, bureaucrats and administrators – toward a “deep state,” defined by Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, as “consisting of career civil servants who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows.” Both political parties have perpetuated this trend. Even under Reagan, for example, Washington bureaucracy continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace. But the Left has always been more aggressive. Think of FDR and the New Deal, LBJ and the Great Society and Barack Obama “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

As to when and where it began – the trust-busting policies of regulatory reformers in the late 19th Century, the appointment of J. Edgar Hoover as director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, or the Alphabet Agencies of Franklin Roosevelt’s thirteen-year reign – is less important than recognition that an unfortunate consequence has been the expanding influence and power of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and administrators. It has been cozy, tacit arrangements that allowed both political parties to accommodate their special interests. It has permitted political and personal loyalty to germinate and expand within agencies – loyalty toward those who encourage the growth of their responsibilities and treachery toward those who challenge their positions.