RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://newswithviews.com/economic-overview-for-2019/

As James Carville once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

As we enter 2019, the Federal Reserve is once again in the headlines for increasing interest rates. The Fed’s increase is what is responsible for the upsy-downsy stock market, not President Trump’s tariffs (though the fake media will tell you otherwise).

There are three important things to remember about the Federal Reserve System: 1) It is a private corporation and is not part of the government; 2) It is merely a wholesaler of financial services and does nothing that cannot be done by the United States Treasury Department; 3) American taxpayers are responsible for the unlawful debts accumulated by the Federal Reserve.

“Well,” you may say to yourself, “it’s only fair that we pay for Social Security and our highway system and all of the things that cause the national debt, isn’t it?”

You might want to take a look at the loans that have nothing to do with America and its well-being before being so generous with your forgiveness:

A 2006 audit showed that during the period from December 1, 2007 through July 21, 2010 the Fed made $16 trillion dollars in loans (our total national debt is $21 trillion) to US banks and corporations and to foreign banks.

Foreign banks? That’s right… foreign banks. The bank bailout of September 2008 was nothing compared to secret loans made by the Federal Reserve System about which the Congress was never informed.

Thanks to then-Congressman Ron Paul who kept pressure on the House of Representatives to pass legislation ordering the General Accounting Office audit of the Fed.

The loans were to cover up secret bank and corporate bailouts. They were made to prevent the banks and corporations who borrowed the money from bankruptcy. The money was loaned at nearly zero percent (.01%) interest – as in 1/10th of 1%.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272405/racist-anti-semitic-black-left-john-perazzo

In a recent interview on the popular radio show The Breakfast Club, Temple University professor and former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill affectionately referred to Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “my brother.” Moreover, Hill pushed back against whites who suggested that he and other black pundits should, in Hill’s words, “throw [Farrakhan] away wholesale” because of the latter’s long history of incendiary racial rhetoric. Noting that no one had ever urged him to similarly distance himself from what he describes as “extreme” conservatives like Bill O’Reilly and Ann Coulter when he was a Fox News contributor years ago, Hill now asks: “Why is only one set of people untouchable? And why does every black leader have to ritually denounce Farrakhan in order to sustain a position?”

Hill’s professed bewilderment vis-à-vis this alleged double standard is wholly unsurprising, in light of the very obvious fact that he, like Farrakhan, has shown himself to be quite fluent in the vernacular of racism and anti-Semitism. During a January 2017 appearance on a CNN panel, for instance, Hill took issue with black celebrities like Ray Lewis, Jim Brown, and Steve Harvey for accepting President-elect Donald Trump’s invitation to meet with him at Trump Tower. After Bruce LeVell — an African American member of Trump’s diversity coalition — objected to Hill’s complaints, Hill characterized LeVell and all other nonwhites who were working on behalf of Trump’s agenda as “a bunch of mediocre Negroes.”

On Columbus Day 2012, Hill published an op-ed in which he listed the “15 Most Overrated White People” – a list that included such names as Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, William Shakespeare, and Babe Ruth. Hill’s motivation for writing this column, he explained, was his angst over the celebration of a national holiday honoring “an immoral treasure hunter” and “vicious conquistador.”

In stark contrast to his sneering derision of “overrated” whites, Hill has heaped mountains of glowing praise upon convicted black cop-killers like Mumia Abu Jamal (“one of the world’s most celebrated journalists, freedom fighters, and political prisoners”) and Assata Shakur (“an American hero and freedom fighter”).

In October 2015, Hill lauded Rasmea Odeh — the mastermind of a deadly 1969 terrorist bombing in Jerusalem — as a “Palestinian freedom fighter.” Viewing Israel as “an apartheid state” that deserves to be crushed economically by organized worldwide boycotts, Hill contends that violence is a wholly legitimate means of advancing the creation of “a free Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In other words, all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — precisely the territory that constitutes Israel — should henceforth be known as “Palestine.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-u-s-intel-community-kept-exculpatory-evidence-about-gen-flynns-trip-to-moscow-secret-for-years/

Remember the huge fuss the never-Trump media made out of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow? In articles written in 2016, 2017, and 2018 they suggested that the retired Army general was a “compromised” Russian stooge and that the trip bordered on treason. This has been a cornerstone of the Russia collusion narrative involving Flynn for several years now.

When Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley learned the truth in May 2017, he requested that the information be made public in fairness to Flynn, because it completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing in the affair.

“It appears the public release of this information would not pose any ongoing risk to national security. Moreover, the declassification would be in the public interest, and is in the interest of fairness to Lt. Gen. Flynn,” Grassley wrote in August 2017.

A year and a half later, the truth finally has come out: “Flynn’s attendance at the RT event was disclosed in advance to the intelligence community, he took proactive steps to ensure he could not be compromised by attendees and he then came back to the United States and reported intelligence designed to benefit America,” The Hill’s John Solomon reported on Wednesday.

Incredibly, the U.S. intelligence community has kept this exculpatory information secret for nearly two years, allowing the retired Army general’s name to be dragged through the mud.

According to Solomon’s sources:

Before Flynn made his infamous December 2015 trip to Moscow — as a retired general and then-adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — he alerted his former employer, the DIA.

He then attended a “defensive” or “protective” briefing before he ever sat alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russia Today (RT) dinner, or before he talked with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The briefing educated and sensitized Flynn to possible efforts by his Russian host to compromise the former high-ranking defense official and prepared him for conversations in which he could potentially extract intelligence for U.S. agencies such as the DIA.
When Flynn returned from Moscow, he spent time briefing intelligence officials on what he learned during the Moscow contacts. Between two and nine intelligence officials attended the various meetings with Flynn about the RT event, and the information was moderately useful, about what one would expect from a public event, according to my sources. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nation-of-islam-and-the-house-11546559607

Donald Trump has repeatedly faced calls to disavow anti-Semites, but Democrats have their own anti-Semitism problem. The new House majority leadership includes several lawmakers with ties to the nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan:

• James Clyburn of South Carolina. Mr. Clyburn, first elected in 1992, will hold the No. 3 post, majority whip, as he did in 2007-11. Mr. Clyburn is also a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, which in September 1993 entered what then-CBC Chairman Kweisi Mfumecalled a “sacred covenant” with the Nation of Islam. The pact was ostensibly dissolved in February 1994, after it emerged that Farrakhan aide Khalid Abdul Muhammad had given a speech in which he called Jews the “bloodsuckers of the black nation.” But in July 2000, Mr. Clyburn, then CBC chairman, formed a partnership with Mr. Farrakhan’s Million Family March.

In 2005 Mr. Clyburn became chairman of the Democratic Caucus. The same year, photojournalist Askia Muhammad reported that “practically all 43 CBC members” (including then-Sen. Barack Obama) met Mr. Farrakhan in preparation for the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March. In 2011 Mr. Clyburn again joined Mr. Farrakhan, for a town-hall gathering in Pittsburgh titled “The Disappearing Black Community.” Mr. Clyburn told the Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, that he was “not bothered in the least bit” by criticism of the appearance.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/congresswoman-hopes-reparations-bill-is-path-to-repair-some-of-the-damage-caused-by-slavery/

Rep. Lee is famous for booting seating passengers off flights with insults and tantrums, and demanding their seats; she has stated that the US Constitution is 400 years old; asked if the Pathfinder had succeeded in taking a picture of the flag planted on Mars by Neil Armstrong in 1969; in 2010 she stated“Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.”not withstanding that there is no longer a South Vietnam. She graduated from Yale and the University of Virginia Law School….She should get reparations from those schools because she learned so little….rsk

WASHINGTON – Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) told PJM that the federal government should conduct a study of reparations for descendants of slaves to be able to determine the best way to “repair some of the damage” that slavery has caused to the African-American community.

Jackson Lee became the lead sponsor of H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) resigned from Congress.

The legislation seeks to “address the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.”

“It’s a commission to study the issue of what was the economic impact of the work of slaves and how does it translate in the 21st century. And what we want to do is to build a narrative, a story of the facts and out of that be able to access how we repair some of the damage,” Jackson Lee said during a recent interview after her speech at the annual Legislative and Policy Conference organized by Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/2018-successful-year-for-american-economy/

Aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.

The year 2018 will be deplored by pundits as a bad year of more unpredictable Donald Trump, headlined by wild stock-market gyrations, the melodramas of the Robert Mueller investigation, and the musical-chair tenures of officials in the Trump administration.

A quarter of the government is still shut down. Talk of impeachment by the newly Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is in the air. Seemingly every day there are sensational breakthroughs, scandals, and bombshells that race through social media and the Internet — only to be forgotten by the next day.

In truth, aside from the Washington hysterias, 2018 was a most successful year for Americans.

In December, the United States reached a staggering level of oil production, pumping some 11.6 million barrels per day. For the first time since 1973, America is now the world’s largest oil producer

Since Trump took office, the U.S. has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers. It appears that there is still far more oil beneath U.S. soil than has ever been taken out. American production could even soar higher in the months ahead.

In addition, the United States remains the largest producer of natural gas and the second-greatest producer of coal. The scary old energy-related phraseology of the last half-century — “energy crisis,” “peak oil,” “oil embargo” — no longer exists.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272440/romneys-betrayal-matthew-vadum

With a singularly impressive record of failure in public life under his belt, the always-predictable virtue-signaler Willard Mitt Romney has chosen to take the low road, beginning his freshman term in the United States Senate by stabbing President Trump and his fellow Republicans in the back.

Instead of, say, waiting a brief time to get settled into his new office as Utah senator, the former Massachusetts governor, who to this day refuses to apologize for his Bay State government healthcare program that inspired Obamacare, took to the pages of the Washington Post two days before his swearing-in to attack the “character” of someone who as president has been generous, forgiving, and supportive of him.

In his Jeff Bezos-approved column, Romney embraced the leftist critique of Trump, hurling every leftist smear he could think of and bashing the president for his mastery of social media, a field Romney barely grasps.

As senator, Romney vowed to “support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”

Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart News provided a helpful timeline of the flip-flopping unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate’s love-hate relationship with Trump in recent years on Twitter:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-romney-revival-project-11546463147

Just before taking his seat as Utah’s newest U.S. Senator, former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is condemning the character of President Donald Trump. But given Mr. Romney’s history, some members of the press corps are withholding the strange new respect customarily accorded to Republicans who criticize the President.

Mr. Romney states in an op-ed for the Washington Post that Mr. Trump “has not risen to the mantle of the office.” Mr. Romney presents himself as being moved by recent events to make his latest declaration of principle. Writes Mr. Romney:

The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.

Certainly a duly-elected President has the right to choose his subordinates. And if Mr. Romney was truly moved to condemn an “abandonment of allies,” wouldn’t he at least go to the trouble of naming them and spending at least a portion of the op-ed describing the details of their predicament? From the context it seems likely he was referring to the Kurds or others fighting against remaining ISIS forces in Syria, but the rest of the op-ed addresses various threats around the world and what Mr. Romney sees as a fraying of alliances with friends in Europe and Asia.

It’s also hard to believe that Mr. Romney is suddenly and deeply offended by Mr. Trump’s recent comment that Americans are no longer “suckers.” For better or worse, the idea that the U.S. government has been shouldering too much of the world’s defense burden has been a central part of the Trump message for years. It’s especially hard to believe that Utah’s newest senator thinks this insult is beyond the pale given that in 2016 Mr. Romney said that candidate Donald Trump was “playing the members of the American public for suckers.” Will Mr. Romney now apologize to the roughly 63 million Americans who voted for the Republican candidate in the last presidential election?

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post is among the media folk who aren’t sure they should take the latest Romney declaration at face value. Mr. Blake writes in the Post:

Romney criticized Trump in more severe terms than just about anybody in 2016, even after Trump was the de facto GOP nominee. But he’s also been happy to play ball and accept his help. As the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, he flew out to accept an endorsement from Trump, then in the throes of birtherism. After Trump was elected president, Romney interviewed to be Trump’s secretary of state.

When Romney decided to run for Senate, he accepted Trump’s endorsement again and backed off his previous criticisms of the leader. At a debate three months ago, Romney was asked three times whether he still thought Trump was a fraud and a phony. “I’m going to talk about the future,” he responded.

His op-ed seems, in part, to be an effort to explain his many about-faces. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/02/new-documents-suggest-steele-dossier-deliberate-setup-trump/

A trove of recently released documents sheds further light on the scope and logistics of the information operation designed to sabotage an American election. Players include the press, political operatives from both parties, and law enforcement and intelligence officials. Their instrument was the Steele dossier, first introduced to the American public two years ago.

A collection of reports compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, the dossier is now engraved in contemporary U.S. history. First marketed as bedrock evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, the dossier’s legitimacy took a hit after reports showed the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the work.

The revelation that the dossier was used to secure a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page compromised the integrity of the investigation the FBI had opened on Page and three other Trump associates by the end of July 2016. Nonetheless, that same probe continues today as the special counsel investigation.

The dossier plays a central role in Robert Mueller’s probe. In the unredacted portions of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s memo outlining Mueller’s scope are allegations that Trump adviser Paul Manafort colluded with Russian government officials interfering in the 2016 race. That claim is found in no other known document but the dossier. It is unclear whether further dossier allegations are in the redacted portions of the scope memo.

Further, with Mueller in charge, the dossier-won warrant on Page was renewed a third, and final, time in June 2017. It expired in September, when confidential human source Stefan Halper reportedly broke off regular communications with Page.