RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-compared-with-what/

Trump, as most presidents, of course, will point to achievements next Tuesday. And despite the 90-percent-negative media coverage and the shutdown, he can brag about continued robust economic growth, low unemployment, record oil and gas production, tax reform and reduction, and a generally positive economic picture.

Manufacturing jobs show marked increases. Minority unemployment is at record lows. Deregulation, not more regulation, is now the new gospel.

Abroad, for all the herky-jerky presidential rhetoric and musical-chairs key appointments, there is emerging a reification of the NSC’s 2017 strategic assessment emphasizing principled realism. China’s trajectory to global supremacy is no longer shrugged off in the West as inevitable — and it will likely renegotiate downwards its mercantile trade surpluses.

We have been quite harder on Vladimir Putin than at any time under the previous administration. NATO is coughing up millions more in defense investments. There is new attention to missile defense.

ISIS’s land hegemony is almost gone. The verdict is out on North Korea and Iran as well as planned redeployment out of Afghanistan and Syria, but the consensus is also that U.S. foreign policy prior to 2017, reifying the status quo with Pyongyang and Tehran, and paralysis vis-à-vis the Taliban and ISIS, was failing. For all the melodramas about the “wall,” at least there is an effort to secure the border to reduce illegal immigration, and the Democrats at some point will have to explain why they now utterly reject their long-held past agreements to fortify parts of the border with a wall.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/30/much-has-changed

The news obsesses over the recent government shutdown, the latest Robert Mueller arrest and, of course, fake news—from the BuzzFeed Michael Cohen non-story to the smears of the Covington Catholic High School students.

But aside from the weekly hysterias, the world has dramatically changed since 2016 in ways we scarcely have appreciated.

The idea that China systematically rigged trade laws and engaged in technological espionage to run up huge deficits is no longer a Trump, or even a partisan, issue.

In the last two years, a mainstream consensus has grown that China poses a commercial and mercantile threat to world trade, to its neighbors and to the very security of the United States—and requires a strong response, including temporary tariffs.

The world did not fall apart after the U.S. pulled out of the flawed Iran nuclear deal. Most yawned when the U.S. left the symbolic but empty Paris Climate Accord. Ditto when the U.S. moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In retrospect, most Americans accept that such once controversial decisions were not ever all that controversial.

There is also a growing, though little reported, consensus about what created the current economic renaissance: tax cuts, massive deregulation, recalibration of trade policy, tax incentives to bring back offshore capital, and dramatic rises in oil and natural gas production.

Although partisan bickering continues over the extent of the upswing, most appreciate that millions of Americans are now back again working—especially minority youth—in a manner not seen in over a decade.

The Supreme Court and federal judges will be far more conservative for a generation—as Trump’s judicial nominations are uniformly conservative, mostly young and well qualified.

For all the acrimony about illegal immigration, the government shutdown over the wall and the question of amnesties, most Americans also finally favor some sort of grand bargain compromise.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/29/antifa-leader-marines-arrested/

Washington, D.C. Antifa leader Joseph “Jose” Alcoff, also known as “Chepe,” was arrested and charged with multiple felonies in Philadelphia on Jan. 10 in connection to the Antifa mob attack against two Marines in November.

Alcoff faces 17 charges, including multiple counts of aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, conspiracy and terroristic threats, and one count of robbery while inflicting serious bodily injury.

An affidavit filed in the case reveals that The Daily Caller News Foundation’s reporting on Alcoff’s connection to violent Antifa groups was an integral factor leading to his arrest.

The Marines, Alejandro Godinez and Luis Torres, testified in December that a group of 10 to 12 Antifa members called them “Nazis” and “white supremacists” and attacked them on the street despite their denials that they had no association with the right-wing group demonstrating nearby.

During the attack, Godinez said he shouted “I’m Mexican” at the mob, which allegedly led the attackers to call him a “spic” and “wetback.”

Thomas Keenan and Thomas Massey were arrested in November in connection to the beating. Keenan, who has been called a “leader” of the Antifa contingent in the Philadelphia area, was arrested and charged with rioting alongside Alcoff in New Jersey in 2011.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/29/its
Out here in Realville, we better get real about our opponents. They are not well-meaning liberals. They are dangerous. The target is not Trump. They are out to get all of us.

Out here in Realville, to borrow from Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump’s supporters could be very happy. For ordinary Americans—from the top to the bottom of the economic spectrum, black, white and brown—President Trump has brought good times. Except for the screeching drama queens in the Democratic Party and among #TheResistance—and our serious mass immigration problems—life is good and the country is secure.

In a sensible world, we would be basking in this period of unprecedented prosperity and peace.

The country should be unified and full of bonhomie. The whole world has advanced to inconceivable levels of global peace and prosperity. Life is easier, healthier, and more comfortable for more people than ever before in history.

Socialism and Communism—those tragic sisters from the 1800s that led to the greatest human suffering, poverty, and mass starvation in human history—should barely be remembered.

Instead, they are ascendant in the Democrat Party. Cultural Marxism and socialism are the new Democrat chic. The entire country is in an uproar. Everyone feels a sense of doom and gloom.

There is more to #TheResistance than the political panic inspired by the likes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). They are riding a monster not of their own making. In order to survive, they are providing cover and normalization of something not at all normal.

Conservative pundits have latched onto the fun words “hysteria” and “Trump derangement syndrome.” These words, though cute, mask the seriousness of what is actually happening. The mass hysteria is a goal and a tactic, whipped up by cool-headed, purposeful people. It was not caused by Trump’s tweets or orange coloring. It has everything to do with a long game to change our country. Things are so weird in American politics on purpose or, rather, for purposes—radical left purposes.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13649/roger-stone-arrest

If there was no legitimate reason for the arrest and handcuffing of this presumed innocent defendant, what was the illegitimate reason? The illegitimate purpose of the arrest was to intimidate the potential witness — namely Stone — into not invoking his constitutional right to remain silent, rather than to testify as a government witness.

As Judge T.S. Ellis, III, who presided over the Manafort trial observed: “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud – what you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

The ACLU has been absolutely silent in regard to the questionable tactics employed by Mueller. They, too, would have been up in arms had these tactics been employed against their favorite candidate and mine, Hillary Clinton. Their silence speaks volumes about their partisanship and lack of neutral standards of civil liberties.

Congress must act to prevent these abuses from recurring.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-panel-postpones-william-barr%E2%80%99s-confirmation-vote-amid-democrats%E2%80%99-concerns/ar-BBSTWla?OCID=ansmsnnews11

A planned Senate Judiciary Committee vote on William P. Barr’s nomination to serve as attorney general has been delayed for a week, as Democrats continue to raise concerns about whether he will allow special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to finish his probe and publicize the results unimpeded.

The delay, which is customary for high-profile nominations, is not expected to impede Barr’s eventual chances of being confirmed by the full Senate. But it is the latest reflection of the deep partisan tension surrounding Barr’s nomination, most of which centers on Democrats’ desire to protect Mueller’s probe from being unduly constrained.

The committee postponed its vote on Barr as one of 46 nominations the panel was scheduled to vote on Tuesday but decided to delay until its next meeting.

In both his public testimony and his written answers to senators’ questions, Barr has repeatedly refused to give senators any firm guarantee that he will release Mueller’s report to Congress and the public free of redactions. In similar fashion, he has only promised to ask for, but not necessarily heed, the advice of the Justice Department’s ethics counsel on the matter of whether he should recuse himself from oversight of the probe.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-detai

New details contained in congressional transcripts and emails about a July 2016 meeting involving the author of the anti-Trump “dossier,” Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, and his wife, Nellie, appear to conflict with claims from Democrats — and the co-founder of the firm behind the dossier — that significant contacts did not occur until after the election.

According to the records, the little-known breakfast meeting was held on July 30, 2016 at Washington, D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel.

Congressional transcripts, confirmed by Fox News, showed Nellie Ohr told House investigators last year that Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled the dossier, wanted to get word to the FBI at the time.

“My understanding was that Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce (Ohr) could put in a word with the FBI to follow-up in some way,” Nellie Ohr testified in response to a Republican line of questioning, regarding the purpose of the meeting. Bruce Ohr did just that, almost immediately contacting then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/neomi-rao-gets-kavanaughed-11548722089

Remember Brett Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook? Democrats pored over every word to try to disqualify him for the Supreme Court. Democrats are now employing a similar tactic, albeit advanced a couple of years to college, as they try to defeat Neomi Rao’s nomination for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

BuzzFeed News recently published a story about the writings of Ms. Rao, who is President Trump’s nominee for the seat vacated by Justice Kavanaugh. Since 2017 Ms. Rao has run the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where she’s managed Mr. Trump’s deregulation effort with distinction and to America’s great benefit.

Ms. Rao cleared the Senate for that post with bipartisan support—unusual in the Trump era—after an uneventful confirmation process. She’s certainly qualified for a judgeship. Ms. Rao clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, taught for a decade at George Mason University’s law school, and worked in George W. Bush’s White House counsel’s office. She’s an expert on administrative law, which is valuable for a court that hears many challenges to federal regulation.

But here comes BuzzFeed with the scoop of the year that Ms. Rao “wrote inflammatory op-eds in college.” Yes, apparently this is why some people get into journalism. The story is clearly an oppo-research dump, probably from the left-wing Alliance for Justice, which is trying to torpedo Ms. Rao.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/27/attack-

The Covington Lie offered the perfect occasion for the electronic mob to pounce—after temporarily licking its wounds following the BuzzFeed fake news hysteria. And it did so without shame or even much regret after the fact, as Jason Leopold, the BuzzFeed fabulist, ceded center stage to a kindred serial prevaricator, Nathan Phillips. The latter in his 15 minutes of fame did not make a major statement that was not contradicted by an earlier statement or by the facts.

The entire psychodrama boiled down not to what the facts on the ground showed, but rather who each party was perceived innately to be.

On the one side, the suspects were seen as rambunctious teenage kids (thus easy targets not especially schooled in the arts of rhetoric or repartee).

They were white (enough said) and smiling (indicative of their smirking privilege and lack of victim status).

They also were doctrinaire religious (the current upsurge in left-wing Catholic bigotry is our updated version of the “whore of Babylon” smear wave of the 19th century).

They were mostly male (toxic masculinity, Gillette just reminded, is the font et origio of our sins).

They were pro-life, and anti-abortion (insensitive to the reality that an ascendant Planned Parenthood just announced record annual income of $1.67 billion and its highest annual profit in history with $244.8 million).

Some were wearing red Trump MAGA hats (or as Joy Behar justified the lynch mob frenzy, “Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office. That’s why.”)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/the-c-list-caper/

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of Roger Stone, rumored for months to be imminent, is more telling for what it omits than what it alleges.

Stone is charged with lying during congressional investigations of what happed in 2016 rather than for anything directly related to his laughably inept efforts to gather information on what WikiLeaks was about dump on Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

Allegedly, Stone testified falsely about his communications with two associates in 2016, Jerome Corsi, Stone’s confederate at the Infowars conspiracy-theory site, and Randy Credico, a left-wing comedian and talk-show host. Needless to say, this was a decidedly C-list caper. Stone is further charged with witness tampering and with falsely denying that he was in possession of emails and texts documenting communications about WikiLeaks.

The evidence of Stone’s corruptly influencing Credico to stonewall the committees seems, ahem, strong. Referring to the committee’s subpoena, he texted Credico, “Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan . . . Richard Nixon.” Also: “If you testify you’re a fool.” Stone, who has long prided himself on his outlaw politics and may now have literally lived down to his self-image, also made a reference to mobster Frank Pentangeli’s sudden bout of amnesia during congressional testimony in The Godfather: Part II.

Most of the 23-page indictment weaves the tale of the longtime Trump associate’s desperation to find out what WikiLeaks had, and to press sources who had access to Julian Assange — particularly Credico, who interviewed him. The idea, clearly, was to urge WikiLeaks to publish damaging information in the weeks before Election Day. Stone, however, is mostly in the dark. His one request — through intermediary Credico, that Assange provide information about a specific incident (not described) during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state — is apparently rebuffed.