RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-big-lie-about-russian-hacking_2825871.html

Hearing Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) address former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen in committee last week was another grating reminder of how unproven theories—fantasies, even—become Big Lies: through constant, brazen repetition. At a certain point, they cut channels through the public mind and run through history evermore as “conventional wisdom.”

We now teeter at this point with the unproven theory—a.k.a. Big Lie—that “the Russians” “hacked” the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

Something happened at the DNC in 2016, all right, and that “something” led to the WikiLeaks publication of thousands of DNC emails, and the swift disgrace and resignations of top DNC officials, including DNC “chair” Wasserman Schultz, over revelations of DNC favoritism toward Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.

Nearly three years have passed, however, and no one has produced forensic evidence of a DNC “hack” by “the Russians”—and that includes special counsel Robert Mueller, whose 2018 indictment of a dozen or so Russians presents zero evidence to support his accusations. Not even the FBI discovered any “hack” evidence at the DNC because, in part, the nation’s federal law enforcement body never examined the DNC’s computer servers.

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Ilhan-Omar-Linda-Sarsour-anti-semitism-Pelosi-13665817.php

Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour ripped into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after House Democrats drafted a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to Rep. Ilhan Omar accusing pro-Israel lawmakers of pushing for “allegiance to a foreign country.”

Sarsour, who served as co-chair of the Women’s March in 2017 and 2019, accused Pelosi of “doing the dirty work of powerful white men” by condemning Omar.

“Nancy is a typical white feminist upholding the patriarchy doing the dirty work of powerful white men,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “God forbid the men are upset – no worries, Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.”

Sarsour, who has faced anti-Semitism accusations herself, said the resolution of condemnation gives Republicans an “easier path” in 2020.”Democrats are playing in to the hands of the right,” she wrote. “Dividing our base and reinforcing their narrative and giving them an easier path towards 2020… You want a resolution? Condemn all forms of bigotry. All forms of bigotry are unacceptable. We won’t let them pin us up against each other. We stand with Representative Ilhan Omar. Our top priority is the safety of our sister and her family.”

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/05/the-democrats-resolution-condemning-anti-semitism-is-a-transparent-joke/

Democrats’ draft measure condemning anti-Semitism, which the House will vote on this Wednesday, is a useless and transparent attempt to distract from a serious problem. The melodramatic resolution mentions Alfred Dreyfuss, Leo Frank, Henry Ford, and “anti-Muslim bigotry”—because, hey, even when Jews are being smeared it’s about Islamophobia—but not once does it condemn Rep. Ilhan Omar or the strain of Jew-hatred she is helping normalize on the left. The resolution, teeming with useless platitudes, is one that even Omar could probably support.

Omar argues that American “democracy is built on debate” and that she “should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress or serve on committee.” No decent person disagrees with this comment in theory. Also, no sane person believes this contention, perpetually repeated by anti-Israel progressives, is true of Omar.

No one asked her, or anyone else, to pledge allegiance to a foreign nation. It’s her belief that supporting the Jewish state, a long-time ideological and geopolitical ally of the United States, is an act of dual loyalty — either by Jews themselves, or by those they’ve hypnotized to do “evil” for them. She is the one who accuses Jewish Americans, a group that has played a robust role in the nation’s civic life for a long time, of doing the bidding of a foreign nation to the detriment of their own.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nadlers-obstruction-quest-11551833245

Well, we’re off on the march to impeachment, as we predicted last year even as Democrats said it wasn’t on their minds. With Chairman Jerry Nadler’s subpoena swarm from House Judiciary this week, and his assertions that President Trump obstructed justice, the articles of impeachment are apparently awaiting only the collection of the readily available details to fill in the blanks.

“Do you think the President obstructed justice?” asked ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

“Yes, I do,” replied Mr. Nadler. “It’s very clear that the President obstructed justice. It’s very clear—1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a witch hunt, he tried to—he fired—he tried to protect [Michael] Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [FBI director Jim] Comey in order to stop the Russian thing, as he told NBC News.”

Credit Mr. Nadler for candor that Democrats didn’t display when they campaigned last year. Then they talked only about holding the President “accountable.” Now they claim they already have enough to impeach Mr. Trump, though as Mr. Nadler admitted Sunday, “you have to persuade enough of the opposition party voters, Trump voters . . . that you’re not just trying to steal the last—to reverse the results of the last election.”

https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/somali-gangs-battle-in-minneapolis-somalis-demand-that-cops-do-something/

EXCERPT: “Which brings us to Little Mogadishu, in the city soon to be formerly known as Minneapolis, where the good people of Minnesota — of Scandinavian, German, and Irish stock — have been busily importing people from perhaps the most culturally alien region of the world, Muslim East Africa. In Charles Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby ignores her own brood while busily organizing aid to Africa; today’s Mrs. Jellybys have instead have brought East Africa to them.

East African community reeling from weekend violence, demands solutions

A group of Somali volunteers including Abdirahman Mukhtar, left, and Abdullahi Farah gave out pizza and tea to young people from a stand Friday in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.The men hope by connecting with youth and engaging them in conversation they can combat the shootings that have recently plagued the neighborhood. After the latest spasm of gang violence, Minneapolis’ Somali residents and business owners on Monday stepped up their calls for help from City Hall and police headquarters to help curb the senseless shootings that they say too often go overlooked. On Friday alone, five men of Somali descent were shot in separate attacks, one fatally.

Police and community members pinned the blame for the bloodshed on an ongoing feud between Cedar-Riverside neighborhood gangs like 1627 and Madhiban With Attitude (MWA) and their rivals, the Somali Outlaws, whose territory includes the area around Karmel Mall. Friday’s shootings were a repeat of a familiar pattern: a shooting on one gang’s turf is usually followed hours, if not minutes later by an “eye-for-an-eye” response so as not to appear weak, community members say. Two shootings last month are also blamed on the conflict. As with other recent shootings, police immediately stepped up patrols in both neighborhoods to prevent further retaliation. But some in the community wondered whether they could be doing more.

What more, one wonders, can they do? If a bunch of white cops come pouring into Little Mogadishu, both coasts will be able to hear the howls unaided. Should they do nothing, then the likelihood is that the neighborhood — represented by the ineffable Ilhan Omar in the United States Congress — may well descend into the levels of violence that characterize, well, Mogadishu. Meanwhile, the media’s Complaint Department is open for business:

Russom Solomon, owner of the Red Sea Bar and Restaurant, said that responsibility for curbing the violence falls equally on police and the community, but he questioned why the two Somali-American officers recently assigned to the Cedar-Riverside beat aren’t working nights, when many of the shootings occur. “The problem we’re dealing with is that they work during the day and not during the night, so they’ve just had little effect,” said Solomon, who also chairs the West Bank Community Coalition’s safety committee. “The perception of safety is not good, people don’t feel that safe — they’re just poisoning the whole neighborhood now.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/432595-trumps-approval-rating-on-economy-hits-new-high-gallup

President Trump’s approval rating on the economy has reached a new high, according to a Gallup poll published Tuesday.

The poll showed that 56 percent of adults in the U.S. approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, the best mark of Trump’s presidency and the highest approval rating for Trump on any of the 14 issues in the poll.

The poll also found that a majority of voters approve of Trump’s handling of unemployment and of the situation with North Korea, with 54 percent approving of Trump’s job with unemployment and 51 percent approving on North Korea.

But the president’s overall approval rating still sits at just 43 percent, according to the poll. Another 54 percent of adults, meanwhile, disapprove of Trump’s performance as president.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/04/no-collusion

By all accounts, even from his most devoted propagandists in the news media, Special Counsel Robert Mueller soon is expected to release a report that will devastate Trump antagonists who have been convinced his investigation would result in the president’s removal from office.

They are bracing themselves to hear two words from the special counsel that just a few months ago seemed inconceivable: No collusion.The idea that a nearly two-year long probe conducted by a team of partisan, Trump-hating prosecutors empowered with an unending supply of public resources and shielded from any legitimate scrutiny will come up empty-handed is causing great angst in the Acela Corridor.

The List of Shame—journalists, editors, cable news contributors, Democratic lawmakers, and NeverTrump operatives who’ve foisted this outrageous farce on the American people—is long and ignominious.One man who in many ways sits at the center of this manufactured storm is Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay. After Trump won the election, an outcome Omidyar tried to prevent by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars against Trump in 2016, the Hawaiian-based mogul ratcheted up his opposition to the president through a network of nonprofits.

One of his missions has been to stoke the Trump-Russian collusion conspiracy in an effort to derail Trump’s presidency. “Over the past two years, I have seen alarming and sometimes unprecedented violations of our country’s democratic norms,” wrote Joe Goldman, president of Democracy Fund, one of Omidyar’s well-funded foundations, last summer. “For an organization committed to strengthening democracy on behalf of the American people, this isn’t just disturbing—it’s humbling.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/04/nadler-trump-investigation-1201488

A key House committee with the power to impeach President Donald Trump kicked off a sweeping new investigation on Monday with document demands from the White House, Trump’s namesake company, charity, transition, inauguration and 2016 campaign, as well as several longtime associates and the president’s two adult sons.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, opened his much-anticipated probe with letters to 81 individuals, companies and government entities seeking a wide range of materials that go to the heart of allegations against the president — including abuses of power, corruption, and obstruction of justice.

“This is a critical time for our nation,” Nadler wrote to each recipient, all of which his staff noted have already been ensnared in investigations by special counsel Robert Mueller or other federal prosecutors. “President Trump and his administration face wide-ranging allegations of misconduct that strike at the heart of our constitutional order.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-russia-steele-dossier-claims-old-news/

It spun old facts. It didn’t give us new ones.
Ross Douthat had an excellent column in Times on Sunday about the state of the Trump-Russia investigation. He homed in on the Steele dossier and its four major claims (or, as he put it, the four “big possibilities” it raised). The first of these “was that Russian intelligence was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the release of stolen emails through WikiLeaks.” Ross adds that this big possibility was “soon well corroborated.”

I want to take issue with both the suggestion that Steele should get any credit for this claim and the implication that the corroboration of it is in any way a corroboration of Steele. On the matter of Russia’s culpability for hacking the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks, Steele was just following the crowd. His vaunted Russian sources clearly gave him no foreknowledge about it, notwithstanding that he’d been poking around for Trump–Russia conspiracy evidence for well over a month by July 22, 2016, when publication of the DNC emails began.

This is worth exploring because it highlights an insidious aspect of the dossier that has gotten too little attention: This opposition-research screed produced by the Clinton campaign did not, through Steele’s purportedly well-placed sources, foretell events. Rather, after events occurred, Steele wove them into the Democrats’ Trump-Russia conspiracy narrative.