RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/how-anti-trump-leakers-moved-from-offense-to-defense/

A trail of evidence appearing in major news outlets suggests a campaign to undermine President Trump from within the government through illegal leaks of classified information, and then thwart congressional investigators probing the disclosures.

On Monday the Justice Department released a handful of texts and other documents that included two former officials known for their anti-Trump bias – Peter Strzok and Lisa Page of the FBI – discussing the DOJ’s “media leak strategy.” Strzok now says, through his lawyer, that that strategy was aimed at preventing leaks. Nevertheless, days later he and Page approvingly mention forthcoming news articles critical of Trump associates.

“The leaks that have been coming out of the FBI and DOJ since 2016 are unconscionable,” said retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano. “There’s a difference between whistleblowing and leaking for self-serving or partisan purposes.”

Past and present U.S. officials say the template for the leak campaign can be traced back to the Obama administration’s efforts to sell the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which made the press reliant on background conversations and favorable leaks from government officials. Obama adviser Ben Rhodes told the New York Times in 2016 that “we created an echo chamber” that “helped retail the administration’s narrative.”

“That same configuration,” said Michael Doran, a senior official in the George W. Bush White House, “the press, political operatives, newly minted experts, social media validators—was repurposed to target Trump, his campaign, transition team, then presidency.” The echo chamber’s primary instrument in attacking the current White House, said Doran, “is the Russia collusion narrative.”

RCI has found that the anti-Trump leaks fall into two broad categories, or phases. Initially the leaking was an offensive operation aimed at disrupting Trump’s agenda, especially through leaks alleging connections between his campaign and the Russians. Its early successes included leaks of highly classified material that led to the firing of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from overseeing that probe.

The second phase – which began roughly a year into the Trump administration – has been more defensive, pushing back against congressional oversight committees that had uncovered irregularities in the FBI’s investigation of Trump. This phase has been marked by the willingness of press outlets to run stories backing off earlier reported leaks that proved to be deeply misleading – including the roots of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and the relationship between Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr and the opposition research firm that produced a central document of that probe, the largely discredited “Steele dossier.”

This second phase has also included articles and opinion pieces – some written by journalists who have published classified information – dismissing suspicions of an orchestrated campaign against Trump as, to use the phrase invoked in a recent New Yorker article, a “conspiracy theory.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_once_golden_state_is_badly_tarnished.html

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. In cities such as San Francisco, public defecation is legal, drug use is flagrant, and tent cities are designated biohazards. In once pristine San Diego, contractors have been spraying down homeless encampments with household bleach to stave off a hepatitis A epidemic. The so-called “Golden State,” which now has the highest poverty rate in the nation, is tarnished beyond recognition with such serious problems that the sublime climate and striking coastline may no longer be enough to sustain its reputation and cachet. With laws that benefit criminals and illegals, big government that endeavors to control every aspect of residents’ lives from plastic bags to straws; sanctioned street, tent, and vehicle dwelling; and an unaffordable overhyped bullet train boondoggle that will cost taxpayers almost $100 billion, California is headed for economic disaster.

Rising Crime

In the past few years, California has instituted criminal justice reform legislation and initiatives, ostensibly to reduce budget expenditures and prison overcrowding, which has led invariably to the release of more criminals into the state’s population.

Proposition 47, a referendum passed in 2014, reclassified certain drug possession felonies to misdemeanors and required misdemeanor sentencing for theft when the amount involved is $950 or less. Drug possession for personal use is now considered a misdemeanor.
Proposition 57, a statewide ballot proposition passed in 2016, changed parole policies for those convicted of nonviolent felonies. But the proposition failed to define “nonviolent crimes”. The result was that those committing “nonviolent” crimes such as rape of an unconscious or intoxicated person, assault of a police office, domestic violence, hostage taking, drive-by shootings, and human trafficking of a child became eligible for early parole based on a paper review in lieu of a parole hearing.
Assembly Bill 1448 and Assembly Bill 1308 allow for the early release of prisoners who are 60 years or older who have served at least 25 years of their sentence and prisoners who committed crimes at least 25 years or younger who have served at least 15 years, respectively. Both were signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2017.

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/405948-opposition-to-the-president-is-not-treason

POTUS ≠ US. It is a simple formula. If President Trump and his core supporters would internalize it, they’d be well served.

The presidency of the United States is the most significant, most powerful single office in our constitutional government. But, all the same, the president is a public servant. He is not the sovereign; we are. He represents the nation; he does not embody it.

Consequently, a betrayal of the president’s trust is not a betrayal of the country. It is dangerous to confound these two things.
The president is extremely agitated about an anonymous New York Times op-ed, penned by what the Gray Lady describes as “a senior official in the Trump administration.” I don’t blame him. The piece, in which the author brags about being part of a faction resisting the president from within, is dishonorable.

For an executive officer with integrity, there is a simple choice. If you object to the policies of an administration, or if you find the character of the president so objectionable that you have difficulty carrying out his directives, you can either (a) remain in the administration, do your best to veer the president toward policies you believe are in the nation’s interest, and then faithfully execute his lawful directives regardless of whether you agree with them; or (b) resign your position and engage in the public debate — in your own name, not in craven anonymity.

The official who authored the op-ed took the coward’s way out. He or she did not just betray the president. To the extent this self-serving preen has prompted a predictable presidential tirade and internal investigation, the author also has betrayed the selfless, patriotic administration officials who, every day, work diligently to govern and to pursue America’s best interests.

Moreover, the author has confirmed the indictment long lodged by Trump supporters: There is an entrenched “deep state” working against the president. Euphemizing it as the “steady state,” as Anonymous does, fails to camouflage the nature of the “Resistance.” And posturing about how the “steady state” beats back the president’s worst impulses does not conceal its imperious claim to be a permanent, unaccountable regime.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-destabilizing-status-quo-is-chaos-impeachable-offense/

Trump is destabilizing the status quo, as he promised to do. The keepers of the status quo cry foul.

Until 2017, there were certain political assumptions that most people no longer really believed but also preferred not to question — given the likely animus from the so-called bipartisan establishment, a naked entity which, by convention, we all agreed was splendidly clothed.

China could freely cheat on trade, and the U.S. could take the commercial hit, because one day its misbegotten riches would force liberalization and thereby make China a member in good standing of the family of democratic nations. After 40 years, we are still waiting on the promised democratic transformation — at great cost to the industrial and manufacturing heartland of the United States.

NATO member nations always would promise, indeed swear, that they would meet their military spending commitments, even as they had no intention at all of doing so. Fine, we shrugged, since World War II it has been the duty of the United States to lead and protect the West. What other nation had America’s inexhaustible wealth and power to subsidize rich socialist democracies, and commensurate unconcern with its own insidiously hollowed-out industrial interior? Accordingly, American presidents would lecture NATO nations about their promised obligations and meanwhile expect public nods and private snickers. In the New York and Washington corridor, the gospel was never to question the changing role or funding of NATO but always to utter “NATO is the linchpin of the West.” End of discussion.

The Palestinians will always remain “refugees” in a way that similar contemporaneously displaced people who were also forced out of their homeland — Prussians, Jews of the Middle East, or Volga Germans — no longer have refugee status, after more than 70 years. A chaotic Trump recently accepted reality and quit funding the United Nations relief organization that supposedly attends to “refugees” who in reality are a political construct deemed useful for demonizing Israel around the world.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/that_silent_coup_in_the_white_house.html

With reference to the much ballyhooed early September op-ed piece in the New York Times authored by “Anonymous,” which set off iterative bomblets throughout the kingdom of Donald and his closest and supposedly most trusted aides, several points to keep in mind:

With technology available to all, not least to tech-savvy Millennials trolling the current presidency, feigning (perhaps) respect for their CEO, President Donald Trump, it is a simple thing to suss out writers’ frequent usage of standout terms and phrases, such as, of course, the so-called telltale “lodestar.” Even specific grammatical constructs can be programmed and revealed by the same modality.

It’s called forensic linguistics.

A few days ago, TheWeek.com wrote about this in a piece called “The delicate art of using linguistics to identify an anonymous author.” It noted: “There’s the anonymously-authored book Primary Colors, closely paralleling Bill Clinton’s campaign…”

Mike Pence took a lot of the initial suspicion of being the author of the Times piece, but he denied it, and there is no other evidence besides a single word – his common use of “lodestar” – to argue he was involved. That White House chief economics man, Larry Kudlow, has used such words, too, is no guarantee of anything dispositive, either, as it would be highly uncharacteristic of Kudlow to pen such a combative piece against a man he has professed as worthy of our attention and respect. Thus, the frequency of such idiosyncratic terms as “lodestar” is debunked: any high-schooler could have divined that Pence, say, hit that word X number of times. It would be, furthermore, a usage that would deflect adults into a slotted canyon of blame; a Millennial would savor that. An adult over the age of normalcy and thought would not have done that word usage search and then planted that telltale, so-called.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/09/10/bob-woodward-accuracy-issues-watergate-trump/

Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Woodward has a muddy history with a trail of allegations that he embellished the truth or otherwise misled his readers.
Media coverage of Woodward’s book has been largely positive and ignores Woodward’s controversial record.

Longtime journalist Bob Woodward’s best-selling new book, “Fear,” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump and his ability to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.

While senior Trump officials including Secretary of Defense James Mattis have denied quotations attributed to them in the book, media coverage of “Fear” has been largely positive, emphasizing the 75-year-old Woodward’s experience and trustworthiness.

But that coverage has left out part of the story: repeated, credible charges — including from well-respected fellow journalists — that in previous books Woodward embellished the truth, made dubious bombshell claims or was otherwise misleading.

Woodward’s former editor at the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, though publicly complimentary of Woodward, privately doubted some of the more dramatic elements of Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate-era bestseller, “All The President’s Men.”

Bradlee and Woodward’s former assistant at the Post, Jeff Himmelman, revealed Bradlee’s nagging doubts in a 2012 biography of the longtime editor.

Bradlee gave Himmelman full access to his files, which revealed that details about Woodward’s relationship with infamous Watergate source “Deep Throat” gnawed at Bradlee years later. Details such as Woodward communicating with Deep Throat by placing a flag in a potted plant on his balcony, or their dozens of shadowy garage meetings.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12987/are-we-remembering-9-11-or-forgetting-it

Instead of being angry at the perpetrators of 9/11, some people are angry at those who waterboarded three (only three) terrorists, including one of the chief planners of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As a result of information he revealed, a plot to crash a plane into the Los Angeles Library Tower was broken up, saving thousands of lives.
The attack of 9/11 was not only an act of war. It was also a horribly costly lesson. Let’s not waste it….This does not mean that we should involve ourselves in every conflict in the Middle East. But if it is, we should use not a “light footprint” but a size-14 boot stomp. Our object should be to encourage our friends and frighten our enemies, not the opposite….
Some argue that the terrorists are trying to goad us into getting involved more deeply, so we should do nothing. These people forget the long series of terrorist attacks that led up to 9/11….In fact, by doing nothing, we are goading the terrorists into escalating.
The purpose of remembering 9/11 is not merely a history lesson. Like remembering the Holocaust, the purpose is never again.

Rick Rescorla, chief of security for Morgan Stanley, safely evacuated all 2,700 employees on 9/11, except for six. Four of the six were himself and his three deputies (two pictured above): Wesley Mercer, Jorge Velasquez, and Godwin Forde. That’s true multiculturalism.

Rick was last seen going back into Tower 2 shortly before its collapse. When he was told he should get out, he replied, “As soon as I make sure everyone else is out.” His body was never recovered, but U.S. troops at Fallujah remembered him well.

Then there is Mike Kehoe, the firefighter who was photographed going up the stairs when most people were going down. From the expression on his face, I would guess that he had doubts about his survival. But he did survive. He got out about 30 seconds before the tower collapsed. But 343 of his fellow firefighters were not so lucky.

And what about Todd Beamer? He was a passenger on United Flight 93. What happened was verified by the telephone supervisor with whom he spoke. They recited the Lord’s Prayer together, and he made her promise to tell his wife and sons he loved them. He then said his timeless words: “God help me. Jesus help me. Are you ready? Let’s roll!”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/11/the-only-subject-

Ben Sasse is a man of contradictions.

The junior senator from Nebraska is a frequent critic of President Trump but Sasse votes with him nearly 87 percent of the time. He laments inaction by Congress on big issues, but can boast of few legislative accomplishments that are his own. Sasse now claims he might leave the Republican Party—a threat he also made before Trump was elected—but he has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Republican donors and interest groups.

He blasts the president’s lack of civility, but he regularly demeans his colleagues, to say nothing of the president. Sasse complains that folks in Washington have no long term plan for the country, but he stumbles when asked for his own specific vision. And the father of three wrote a book chock full of advice about how to raise kids all before his own have even left home. (If Senate work doesn’t work out for him, perhaps he might find a bright future as a parenting blogger?) He has a new book to sell now, which could explain his latest PR stunt.

All of this has—of course—earned him the fawning admiration of establishment conservatives who view Donald Trump with horror and disdain. Sasse’s name has been floated by NeverTrumpers either as a primary or third-party challenge to the president in 2020, a proposition the 48-year-old, two-thirds of a first-term senator does not rebuff. The Ivy Leaguer is a perfect fit for outlier Republicans who sneer at Trump’s working-class base and his crass mannerisms.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271292/remembering-911-age-trump-bruce-bawer

One day in the early stages of the AIDS crisis – so early, in fact, that I don’t think the disease had yet acquired that name – I fell into conversation with a young man at a gay bar in L.A. It turned out that he, like me, was from New York. But whereas I was in L.A. on a trip, he had recently pulled up stakes and moved there. Why? Because, he told me, his friends back east were beginning to get sick and die, and it was having an impact on the “scene.”

I pointed out that the gay population of San Francisco was also hard hit, and that even if the situation was not yet quite as dire in L.A., it would surely catch up soon enough. He admitted as much, but estimated that in L.A. he had another six months during which he could keep leading the freewheeling life he’d enjoyed in the Big Apple. His attitude, in short, hovered somewhere in the dark, uncharted territory between denial and fatalism.

On September 11, 2001, New York – along with Washington, D.C. – was struck by mass death in another form. It shook the world. Mainstream European commentators attributed the terrorist attacks to legitimate Muslim grievances against America, and breezily dismissed suggestions that Europe might soon be struck as well. Sweeping aside Osama bin Laden’s claims, President Bush asserted that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam, which he called a “religion of peace.” He then sent armed forces to “liberate” Afghanistan and Iraq, on the premise that the people of those countries, if allowed to vote in democratic elections, would choose a democratic path.

It all turned out to be spectacularly wrong. The European savants were shown up by the horrific attacks on Madrid, Beslan, London, and elsewhere. Their perpetrators put the lie to the “religion of peace” rhetoric, repeatedly announcing that they were committing jihad, a core Islamic concept. Some people in the West understood. But the West’s cultural elite turned away. And Western leaders, while sending young men to fight abroad, left the gates wide open at home.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12986/why-did-the-clintons-share-the-stage-with

But the “shoe on the other foot” question remains: would he [Former President William Jefferson Clinton] have acted similarly if it had been [David] Duke rather than [Louis] Farrakhan?
Farrakhan is at least as bigoted as Duke. This is a man who only last year called Jews members of the “Synagogue of Satan” and claimed that Jesus called the Jews “the children of the devil.” Farrakhan is also a homophobe, claiming that “Jews [are] responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.”
There are not “good people” on the side of anti-Semitism, any more than there are “good people” on the side of white supremacy. There is no place for a double standard when it comes to anti-Semitism. Black anti-Semitism should not get a pass on account of the oppression suffered by so many Black people; neither should “progressive” tolerance of anti-Semitism of the kind shown by Bernie Sanders’ support for Jeremy Corbyn, the anti-Semite who heads the British Labour Party and may well become the next prime minister of America’s closest ally.

Imagine President Trump being invited to speak at the funeral of a white singer whom he admired (say Ted Nugent, if he were to pass) and seeing that David Duke was on stage in a place of honor. Imagine the reaction of the media if President Trump actually gave a speech in the presence of David Duke. Well, President Clinton gave a speech in the presence of Louis Farrakhan. (Hillary Clinton was sitting off to the right, but did not speak.)

Why would President Clinton, a good man and a friend of the Jewish people, do this? There are several possible answers:

(1) He was taken by surprise at Farrakhan’s presence and didn’t want to do anything that would disrupt the service. But the “shoe on the other foot” question remains: would he have acted similarly if it had been Duke rather than Farrakhan?
(2) Clinton doesn’t believe that refusing to sit alongside a bigot is the proper response to bigotry. Again the shoe on the other foot question: would he sit alongside Duke?
(3) Clinton doesn’t regard Farrakhan as comparable to Duke. But that is simply wrong: Farrakhan is a blatant anti-Semite with an enormous following.
(4) Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism is not as serious a problem as Duke’s white supremacy. But without getting into comparative assessments of bigotry, anti-Semitism is surely a serious and growing problem.