RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/

Oleg Deripaska did not exculpate Paul Manafort, but he raises more questions about Christopher Steele.

John Solomon is a terrific reporter, and he has done excellent work on the Trump-Russia investigation. Nevertheless, legal analysis is not his specialty. That is evident in his otherwise intriguing report at The Hill about Oleg Deripaska’s dealings with the FBI.

Deripaska is an aluminum magnate who is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s oligarch” thanks to his close relationship with the Russian strongman. He was also Paul Manafort’s business partner.

Manafort, of course, was Donald Trump’s campaign chairman for about four months in mid 2016. He has paid dearly for entering Trump World.

In 2014, an investigation of Manafort’s work for the deposed Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych was closed. Manafort joined the Trump campaign in early 2016. The FBI and the Obama Justice Department reopened the Manafort case, helped along by pro-Clinton officials in Ukraine’s government. In August 2016, the latter leaked a ledger of questionable provenance, purporting to show over $12 million in cash payments to Manafort. The leak of the ledger led to Manafort’s dismissal from the Trump campaign. He was eventually indicted and convicted in the Mueller investigation for tax evasion and other financial-fraud charges. He is serving a 90-month prison sentence. (Manafort has never denied being paid by Yanukovych and his Party of Regions; he has maintained that he was paid by wire, not in cash. As Solomon has reported, the current Ukrainian government does not vouch for the authenticity of the ledger.)

Deripaska has credibly accused Manafort of swindling him in connection with an investment in a grossly overvalued Ukrainian telecom firm. He has sued the political consultant in various jurisdictions for over $25 million.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/more_independence_day_celebrations_june_jobs_report_up_up_and_up.html

President Donald J. Trump (R)’s Independence Day celebrations honoring the freedoms of America continued Friday morning as the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its June 2019 jobs report.  It was a definite cause for celebration…but not for Democrats, who strive to keep people dependent on a government ruled by Democrats in secure jobs.  

In dry bureaucratese, the BLS stated:

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — JUNE 2019

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 224,000 in June, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. …

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.3 percent), teenagers (12.7 percent), Whites (3.3 percent), Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (2.1 percent), and Hispanics (4.3 percent) showed little or no change in June. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.4 million in June and accounted for 23.7 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)

The labor force participation rate, at 62.9 percent, was little changed over the month and unchanged over the year.  In June, the employment- population ratio was 60.6 percent for the fourth month in a row. (See table A-1.) …

Construction employment continued to trend up in June (+21,000), in line with its average monthly gain over the prior 12 months.

Manufacturing employment edged up in June (+17,000), following 4 months of little change.  So far this year, job growth in the industry has averaged 8,000 per month, compared with an average of 22,000 per month in 2018. In June, employment rose in computer and electronic products (+7,000) and in plastics and rubber products (+4,000).

Employment in other major industries, including mining, wholesale trade, retail trade, information, financial activities, leisure and hospitality, and government, showed little change over the month.

In June, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 6 cents to $27.90, following a 9-cent gain in May.  Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 3.1 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 4 cents to $23.43 in June. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.4 hours in June. In manufacturing, the average workweek edged up 0.1 hour to 40.7 hours, while overtime was unchanged at 3.4 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls held at 33.6 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)

In real life, this means that the increase of 224,000 jobs was well above the 165,000 jobs the Labor Department expected.  

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2019/07/05/kevin-spacey-accuser-drops-lawsuit-against-actor/23763820/

 A young man who says Kevin Spacey groped him in a Nantucket bar in 2016 has dropped his lawsuit against the Oscar-winning actor.

Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for the man, announced in an email Friday that the suit filed June 26 in Nantucket Superior Court has been voluntarily dismissed. No reason was provided either by Garabedian or in the court filing. Garabedian said he would have no further comment.

An email was left Friday requesting comment from Alan Jackson, Spacey’s attorney.

Garabedian’s client, the son of Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, alleged Spacey got him drunk and sexually assaulted him at the Club Car restaurant where the then 18-year old man worked.Spacey still faces a criminal charge. He has pleaded not guilty to indecent assault and battery in January.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/03/ag-barr-must-stick-rico-on-antifa-the-21st-centurys-kkk/

On Saturday in Portland, Oregon, freelance journalist Andy Ngo was beaten so badly by a cowardly, masked Antifa mob, he suffered a brain hemorrhage. The weapons included eggs and the spraying of “milk shakes” suspected of including quick-drying cement, which together temporarily blinded Ngo. The local police precinct was within view, yet video of the episode shows no intervention.

Covering your face to avoid identification so you can beat and intimidate in the name of your political agenda and avoid arrest and prosecution – sound familiar? It’s practically the definition of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nearly 50 years ago, a Democratic Congress passed and a Republican president signed into law an extraordinary measure designed to make prosecutions stick and put organized criminal organizations such as the Klan and the Mafia in prison: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

RICO and Antifa are a match made in heaven.

The glaring similarity between the KKK and these Leninist criminals who practice the same tactics is no revelation to the left. In the far-left Mother Jones, of all places, nearly two years ago an article appeared entitled “Wearing Masks at Protests Didn’t Start With the Far Left – A brief primer on a controversial tactic.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/longest-economic-expansion-in-u-s-history-trump-economy-adds-another-224000-jobs/

The news release by the U.S. Department of Labor today was important not only because it showed an improving job market, but also because it confirmed that the U.S. has officially entered the longest recorded economic expansion in U.S. history.

The U.S. economy made significant gains in June as employment increased by 224,000 and the unemployment rate remained largely unchanged at 3.7 percent.

These payroll growth numbers have been the best gain since January and ran contrary to worries that both the employment picture and overall growth picture were beginning to worsen. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal originally expected the economy to only add 165,000 jobs in June.

The most notable gains occurred in professional and business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.

June marked the tenth anniversary of the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009. In July, the U.S. entered the 121st month of economic expansion arising out of the financial crisis.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-betsy-ross-flag-isnt-the-problem-outrage-culture-is/

On Wednesday, 2020 Democrat candidate Beto O’Rourke claimed that the 1776 Betsy Ross flag was a symbol of white nationalism, when he announced his support for Nike for pulling a sneaker with the flag design on it because Colin Kaepernick got his panties in a twist over the sneaker that was to be released on July 4th.

Not to be out-triggered, fellow 2020 candidate Julián Castro also weighed in on the controversy, comparing the 1776 Betsy Ross flag to “painful” Confederate symbols.It seems as though 2020 Democrats are getting their instructions on what to be outraged over by Colin Kaepernick, because getting triggered by the 1776 Betsy Ross flag wasn’t really a thing until the protesting football player decided it was offensive. Tim Murtaugh, the Director of Communications for the Trump reelection campaign, noted on Wednesday that the apparently offensive flag was prominently featured during the second inauguration of Barack Obama.

Did Obama not get the memo that the flag was offensive, or is the outrage over the flag completely manufactured by a football player trying to remain relevant? It must be the latter because Beto O’Rourke attended Obama’s second inuguartion and managed to not be triggered by the flags on display.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/triggered_nevertrumpers_pout_on_fourth_of_july_patriots_celebrate.html

While the oh-so-sensitive, oh-so-narrow-minded, oh-so-non-inclusive NeverTrumpers scuttled to their safe spaces of the Never-Trumpers’ broadcast networks and failing cable fake news networks, triggered by President Donald J. Trumps’ (R) proud and patriotic 4th of July Independence Day celebration, patriotic and proud Americans publicly displayed their loyalty to their country by participating in person in the festivities on Washington DC’s mall:

While the racist liberals compared the display of American military strength, which guarantees our country’s freedom and the freedom of so many around the world, to the real evil horrors of Nazism, about which they know nothing, those who understand the meaning of peace through strength cheered the Armed Forces flyovers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-economies-11562199595

Judging from last week’s debate, Democrats running for President see America as a Dickensian nightmare of inequality. It’s the best of times for millionaires and billionaires, and the worst of times for everybody else. Time to wake up from the Barack Obama economy, folks, and admit how many more Americans are prospering from the faster economic growth and tighter labor market after the policy changes of 2017.

“Who is this economy really working for? It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren declared at the debate. “When you’ve got a government, when you’ve got an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple.”

Sen. Cory Booker, who hails from high-tax New Jersey, moaned that “I live in a low-income black and brown community. I see every single day that this economy is not working for average Americans.” California Sen. Kamala Harris added: “You ask [the President], how are you measuring the greatness of this economy of yours? And they point to the jobless numbers.”

Faster Growth, Rising IncomesCompound annual per capita income growth in selected states in the first nine quarters of the TrumpAdministration and the second term of the Obama AdministrationSource: Bureau of Economic Analysis

A Rising Tide Lifts More BoatsAverage hourly earnings growth on a monthly basis during the first 29 months of the Trump Administrationand the second term of the Obama AdministrationSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics

So job numbers and other economic evidence are fake news? Hardly. The reality is that wages are rising at the fastest rate in a decade for lower-skilled workers, and unemployment among less-educated Americans and minorities is near a record low. Democrats want Americans to believe the fictions they spin rather than what they see with their own eyes.

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3896/Are-Our-Independence-Days-Numbered.aspx

https://www.theepochtimes.com/are-our-independence-days-numbered_2988614.html

We have arrived at a point in U.S. history that even our Founders, in their nearly infinite wisdom, may not have foreseen.

Regarding Election 2020, we are faced with the grave question of whether enough Americans remain in the 50 states to go to the polls to affirm the continued existence of the United States of America by voting for Donald Trump.

If the answer is no, if Americans are outnumbered and even surrounded by those animated by an openly anti-America agenda promoted by the Democratic Party, 2020 could be a terrible turning-point of no return.

This tells me it’s here: that pedal-to-the-metal moment, over a century in the making, when our potential survival as a nation-state really does seem to hang in the balance.

This is not because the Democratic Party has suddenly changed course. True to its beating, socialist heart, Democrats have been variously pushing us toward decriminalizing illegal immigration, establishing sanctuary cities and states (why not a sanctuary nation, too?), abolishing private health insurance, confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens, and the like for a very long time. Likewise, their reverential zeal for abortion, infanticide, and sexual psychoses, which they harness like battering rams against religious liberty and traditional morality.

What is markedly different now is that the Party’s mainstream could hardly be more aggressive in its contempt, its animus, for the U.S. Constitution, the flag, the Founding Fathers, the borders, and American citizenship.

The Democratic presidential candidates who have emerged from this hostile camp make this clear every time they speak. Listening to them in their first debates, I finally put it together in the starkest terms: Democrats hate America. Worse, they don’t care who knows it, because it’s a selling point for their anti-American constituencies. With this being the case, how are we not one election away from a phase of openly calculated national destruction?