RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-leaders-agree-on-possible-path-to-reopening-government/

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Chuck Schumer have agreed to a deal that could end the partial government shutdown, which entered its 32nd day Tuesday.

Under the deal, the Senate will vote Thursday on two bills intended to end the shutdown. One bill includes President Trump’s request for $5.7 billion to construct a wall at the southern border, and one would fund the government entities affected by the shutdown through February 8, kicking the fight down the road until then.

“People are saying isn’t there a way out of this mess, isn’t there a way to relieve the burden on the 800,000 federal workers not getting paid, isn’t there a way to get government services open first and debate what we should do for border security later?” Schumer said in announcing the deal. “Well, now there’s a way.”

About 800,000 federal workers are currently missing their paychecks as a result of the shutdown, which has broken the record for the longest in U.S. history.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/mueller-investigation-turns-law-upside-down/
Round and round the investigation goes. Where it stops…

Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently indicted yet another peripheral character in his Trump probe, Russian attorney Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, for alleged money laundering in a matter quite separate from Trump.

Like almost all of Mueller’s indictments of the past 20 months, the charges against Veselnitskaya had nothing to do with his original mandate of finding any possible Trump–Russia collusion. No matter; within minutes, Veselnitskaya’s name was injected into the media cycle as if the fact that she was Russian and connected to the name Mueller were de facto proof that Trump was guilty of something — if not collusion, something worse.

If Mueller was not a special counsel, and if he was not looking for anyone deemed useful to flip to find dirt on Donald Trump, then Veselnitskaya would have been just another daily Washington foreign influence-peddler being courted with impunity by her American influence-peddling and often equally suspect counterparts.

To date, in almost every one of his indictments of Americans, Mueller has gone after Trump staffers, often quite minor, for alleged crimes that either were committed well before Mueller began his investigations, or came as a result of plea bargaining in exchange for providing expected dirt on Trump, or were the result of government surveillance or the use of government informants, or all of that and more. And all that sensationalism, through leaks and insinuations, was packaged by the media as “bombshells” and “watersheds” and “turning points” ad nauseam for 20 months.

When Mueller indicted and obtained a confession from Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national-security adviser, it followed from an elaborate perjury ambush set up by the now fired, ethically conflicted, disgraced, and perhaps soon to be indicted deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. McCabe sent the now fired, ethically conflicted, and disgraced agent Peter Strzok to interview Flynn — a process overseen by the now fired, ethically conflicted, and disgraced James Comey. And even then, Mueller seemed to be the beneficiary of leaks from someone in the Department of Justice who sent to the media elements of surveillance transcripts of Flynn’s conversations.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/john-kerry-to-trump-resign/

Former Secretary of State John Kerry had one word of advice for President Trump on Tuesday: “Resign.”

“He doesn’t take any of this seriously,” Kerry said at first when asked what his message would be if the president were siting in front of him. “He doesn’t have an ability to have that kind of conversation.”

When pressed, however, the former top diplomat said, “Resign,” to laughter and applause from the audience at a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Trump had planned to attend the forum, but canceled the trip because of the partial government shutdown.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/from-the-buzzfeed-psychodrama-to-the-covington-video-melodrama/

In the current polarized climate concerning the shutdown, Trump, the media, etc., it would be wise for everyone to take a deep breath and wait at least 24 hours before snap editorializing, in response to the latest sensational morality tale flashing across electronic media.

In the present climate, one video (or even three or four videos from different angles and elevations) is not necessarily worth a thousand words.

Similarly, co-authored sensational scoops might not be so sensational if the old anonymous “sources say” modus operandi has no verifiable supporting documentary evidence as alleged — and if, at the outset, the co-authors cannot substantiate their story, and especially if they also cannot substantiate it later when challenged by the special counsel. (NB: In both the Michael Cohen and Covington stories, BuzzFeed ran with stories that were not substantiated but that did reflect its own predictable agendas).

I doubt we will know exactly what happened at the Washington, D.C., march until more eye-witnesses, videos, interviews, etc. are all collated (other than the fact that different groups were shouting different things, sometimes at each other). But the result will probably be a lot more complicated than the initial narrative of “white spoiled MAGA Catholic youth approached, surrounded, and taunted noble Native American elder,” a narrative that has induced an epidemic of virtue-signaling.

Trump’s freewheeling past should not lend automatic credibility to the latest media charge against him (which, a nanosecond after hitting the media, was followed by demands for his impeachment).

So, too, that a co-author of the BuzzFeed piece, Jason Leopold, had been a confessed felon, had been fired or repudiated by various news venues for alleged unprofessional conduct, and had been an admitted prevaricator did not ipso facto mean that his latest “scoop” had to be immediately written off as false. Just a few hours of gestation would make that clear enough.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13593/womens-march-antisemitism

Consider the front page story in the New York Times Sunday Review, which singled out the Palestinian issue as “one of the great moral challenges of our time” — ignoring Syria, Ukraine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Tibet, Cyprus and many far greater moral challenges, which are largely ignored by the hard left.

Recall that Hitler was not elected by anti-Semites or because of his anti-Semitism. He was elected as the result of his economic and other policies by people who gave him a pass for his anti-Semitism because they approved of his other policies.

People who support Louis Farrakhan because of the alleged good he does for the Black community and despite his overt anti-Semitism are complicit in bigotry, and those who march under the banner of such bigots are only one degree removed from such complicity.

Those women and men who marched in the Women’s March under the leadership of Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory colluded with anti-Semitism. These two leaders of the Women’s March worship the most influential anti-Semite in the United States today, Louis Farrakhan. They claim to disagree with his crass anti-Jewish (and anti-gay and anti-feminist) preaching — although there is reason to doubt this, as it relates to Jews — but they admire him for his impact on elements of the Black community. They must understand that this impact includes influencing hundreds of thousands of Blacks to consider Jews to be “termites” and destroyers of the world. But they do not care. They regard him as great — Mallory has called him “the GOAT” (“Greatest of All Time”).

Marching with these supporters of an anti-Semite is the equivalent of marching under the banner of David Duke, who inspires white supremacists with the same sort of bigotry with which Farrakhan preaches Black supremacy. Hitler inspired pride in Aryans, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Stalin spread the wealth. But would the women who marched with Farrakhan’s admirers have marched with these bigots?

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

This essay is about Donald Trump, but it could have been about Martin Luther King whose birthday we celebrate today. Democracies must always be challenged, else they atrophy. The Reverend Doctor King did so in the 1950s and 1960s to great effect. Mr. Trump did so in his campaign and has continued to do so thus far in his Presidency, but to an effect yet unknown.

In Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a small boy calls attention to the fact that the Emperor is naked – that the clothes sold him by an unscrupulous merchant who appealed to his vanity were, in fact, nothing. None of the people who watched the Emperor as he paraded by said anything, as they didn’t want to admit they were too ignorant to see his fine suit of clothes. It took a small boy to call out the truth, that the Emperor was indeed naked. Today, it is Donald J. Trump who has called our attention to the corruption, stagnation and cronyism of political systems populated with elites who think they live beyond the boundaries of criticism. For doing so, he has been vilified.

But disruption is natural to life. It is everywhere, and for that we should be thankful. Joseph Schumpeter popularized the concept of creative destruction – that progress requires destroying old technologies. It has always been so. Cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. The telegraph ended the Pony Express. Trains made obsolete the Erie Canal. Machine guns and tanks changed the way war was conducted on land, as submarines did on the seas. Wireless phones are eliminating the need for land-line phones. Amazon has changed the way we shop, and Netflix the way we are entertained. 401ks have replaced defined benefit retirement plans. Charter schools, facing pressure from unions and the politicians who rely on them, have competed against and made better traditional public schools. Norman Borlaug, in using plant pathology and genetics, dramatically increased crop supplies around the world. Without disruption, we would be poorer.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/mark-kot-anti-obamacare-doctor/

Good for Dr. Kot, but there is nothing new here. At New York City’s Weill Cornell Hospital, finding a private doctor that takes Medicare is impossible, even among those who accept other insurance…..And their waiting rooms are full because enough people are willing to pay for a doctor…..I am among them and my internist looks at me and not a computer…..rsk

Meet the man trying out a new way to deliver health care.

Dr. Mark Kot, an urgent-care specialist and the owner of Southampton Urgent Medical Care in Southampton, N.Y., is the anti-Obamacare doctor. He does not participate in most insurance plans and is not in any Affordable Care Act network. He feels sorry for the patients with this restricted insurance, and when they come to his door with a bad cough or a painful foot and ask to be seen, he does his best to provide them great care for a limited cost. The insurance card they got through Obamacare remains in their pocket, useless.

Kot is not a “concierge” doctor. He does not charge a membership fee, and he does not charge for follow-up visits, where he determines whether the initial treatment was effective.

Kot works with four nurses and staff, performs and interprets his own x-rays, and administers intravenous medications when needed. There is little waiting time, and the visits are efficient — geared to the complexity of care provided. He generally sees over 40 patients per day and performs rapid flu tests; treats ankle sprains, bronchitis, pneumonia, and sinus infections; and during the summer and fall sees several cases of suspected Lyme disease each day. Kot purchases antibiotics from a supplier so he can give his patients samples. He charges a base inclusive fee ($220 per initial visit); office procedures and tests may have additional charges, and some patients with good out-of-network coverage get reimbursed by their insurance. But reimbursement isn’t Kot’s focus, because he provides an affordable product and is paid up front.

Whereas Kot provides instant access to care, Obamacare erects barriers to it, such as high deductibles and narrow networks. Doctors fight for reimbursements and patients encounter bureaucratic obstacles to tests and treatments. While it is true that Obamacare has reduced the number of uninsured in the U.S. from 44 million in 2013 to less than 28 million in 2017, at the same time it has done a poor job of ensuring access to quality doctors.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/march-for-life-art-contrasts-with-vulgar-signs-at-womens-march-in-30-photos/

This weekend, Americans traveled from across the country to Washington, D.C., to participate in the March for Life and the Women’s March by walking with their poster art. While the pro-life marchers’ art focused on women and unborn life, the posters of Women’s March attendees, including small children, displayed anti-Trump messages along with vulgar imagery and words.

The Women’s March began Saturday morning at Freedom Plaza. The protest, which features a slew of liberal talking points, began in 2017 in response to the election of the president. While the first march boasted hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., the 2019 march appeared much smaller.