RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/3-growth-if-we-can-keep-it-1540595205

Can economic growth from tax reform and deregulation stand up to the headwinds from higher interest rates, tariffs and perhaps a Democratic Congress? That’s the question we take away from Friday’s strong but somewhat disappointing report on economic growth in the third quarter. The answer isn’t obvious.

The Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at a robust 3.5% in the third quarter, a mild slowdown from 4.2% in the second. Consumer spending led the way with a 4% increase rooted in a tight job market and wage gains that have bolstered economic confidence. The economy has now grown by 3% over the last 12 months.

The U.S. economy hasn’t grown at 3% in a calendar year since 2005, and that is now achievable this year. Barack Obama has recently been claiming credit for this faster growth as he campaigns for Democrats, but that boast is right up there with his promise that if you like your health plan you can keep it.

It’s clear that the Republican policy mix of tax reform, deregulation and general encouragement for risk-taking rescued an expansion that was fading fast and almost fell into recession in the last six quarters of the Obama Administration. The nearby chart tells the story that Mr. Obama and his economists won’t admit. Soaring business and consumer confidence have been central to this rebound.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/andrew_mccabe_the_deep_state_henchman.html

The process by which the FBI and Department of Justice were corrupted into serving as political attack machines for the Democrats is finally coming into focus. In an article in The Hill that is today’s read of the day, a retired senior FBI executive puts together the evidence already on the record to offer a roadmap of how the politicization of these powerful bureaucracies was accomplished.

Kevin R. Brock, who is identified as “former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC),” sees Andrew McCabe as the point man, pulled up through the career bureaucracy of the bureau by his mentor, James Comey, who was, after all, an outsider political appointee in need of a henchman to implement his political machinations. Once Comey was fired, McCabe became the key figure leading the law enforcement branch of the Deep State’s resistance to Trump.

This is an article that deserves to be read in full, but here are a couple of tidbits to entice you, demonstrating the wit and experience that Brock brings to the subject.

According to FBI executives, Comey personally fast-tracked McCabe’s career into the deputy director position. McCabe was not happy that the president fired his boss and that Rosenstein provided the ammo.

Comey, who has urged America to vote Democrat, apparently liked what he saw in McCabe, who was overseeing the Clinton email investigation in the Washington Field Office, even though his wife, a Democratic candidate for Virginia Senate, had accepted over $1 million bundled together by longtime Clinton loyalist Terry McAuliffe for her campaign just two weeks prior to the 2015 election that she lost.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/26/know-suspected-package-bomb-sender-far/

A man has been arrested in connection to the packaged bombs sent to prominent Democratic leaders Friday morning. Authorities say DNA evidence linked 56-year-old Cesar Altieri Sayoc, of Florida, to the dozen packages with explosive devices sent earlier this week to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Joe Biden, CNN contributor John Brennan, among others, CBS news reports.

A van reportedly confiscated by the FBI that is believed to belong to Sayoc displayed numerous decals depicting targets on liberal leaders, including Clinton. Sayoc reportedly used to work as a stripper and “lived like a gypsy,” the Washington Examiner reported.

“He really couldn’t find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now,” Sayoc’s former employer Tony Valentine told the Examiner. “Back in the ’90s, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. He was like a gypsy.”

Sayoc is a registered Republican who has been arrested numerous times, including an arrest in 2002 for attempting to use a bomb. NBC News reports Sayoc was living out of his van and showering at the gym. A cousin of the suspect called him “a lost soul,” according to The Guardian.

“He’s been in the strip clubs since he was 22, that was his life,” the relative told The Guardian. “He was a male dancer and he wanted to be a wrestler. He was taking steroids. He was all buffed up….He was built like a rock.”

Democratic strategist Rochelle Ritchie claims Sayoc threatened her via Twitter after she appeared on Fox News.

https://spectator.us/bombgate-political-theatre/

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review Online a couple of days ago, was certainly correct that it would have been outrageous and irresponsible to have suggested, at that early juncture of this still-unfolding episode, that the pipe ‘bombs’ were hoaxes devised by leftist activists to make it appear that nebulous right wing activists are targeting famous critics of Donald Trump, from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, all the way down the food chain to Senator ‘Spartacus’ Booker and Mad Maxine Waters.

But the fact that McCarthy’s column is titled ‘Why No One Trusts the Media’ tells you that his prudent restraint is redolent of that device rhetoricians denominate apophasis or praeteritio. ‘After all,’ quoth McCarthy, ‘there is no evidence that the atrocious but thankfully unsuccessful targeting . . . was carried out by political leftists. There is no proof that any Democrat was hoping to cast suspicion on Republican supporters, to suggest to voters, less than two weeks before the midterms, that Trump and GOP rhetoric incites violence. To intimate, in the absence of any proof, that left-wing agitators may be responsible would be a condemnable smear.’ And it is surely premature, not to say unjustified, to say that Mark Antony pimped his wife, had unnatural relations with Octavian, and is guilty of bribery, extortion, and desecration.

Here’s what we know as of Friday morning, October 26 2018, at about 10:30. A dozen, apparently make-believe bombs, none of which has detonated, and at least some of which could not be detonated, have been sent by nobody knows whom to an A and B list of prominent Trump haters. This has precipitated round-the-clock, flood-the-zone coverage. ‘Hundreds’ of journalists have signed a letter condemning President Trump’s ‘attacks on the press.’ CNN even ran a chyron referring to recipients of the fantasy bombs as ‘Trump’s targets.’ And a man in Florida called Cesar Sayoc has just been arrested in connection with the envelopes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271751/chelsea-clinton-saving-planet-shorter-showers-daniel-greenfield

Don’t you care about the planet?

While you wallow lasciviously in your shower for a whole 5 minutes or 600 seconds, the noble heroes of the Left are sacrificing their shower time to save the planet.

Here’s a heartbreaking interview with Chelsea Clinton, possible presidential candidate in 2024.

Q. What changes have you made in the past five years in your family life to be environmentally conscious?

A. I’ve always recycled and used smart light bulbs and tried to take short showers. The things that seem small are the things that if we all did would make a profound impact.

And the really small things, like taking smaller private jets.

Chelsea Clinton opted to travel to a “clean energy” roundtable in this week in a private jet to campaign on behalf of her mother Hillary Clinton.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271753/non-functioning-bombs-and-double-standards-matthew-vadum

Political terrorism is almost exclusively the province of the Left in America, so naturally, conservatives find the timing of the delivery of non-functioning, vaguely scary-looking replicas of letter bombs this week to opponents of President Trump suspicious to say the least.

Remember that the Democratic National Committee has officially endorsed the violent Black Lives Matter movement and that more than a few Democrats support the Antifa terrorist movement. Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 running-mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), whose son Woody is an Antifa terrorist, said recently that Democrats need to “fight in the streets” against Republicans.

Intended recipients of the packages include former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Trump critic and actor Robert DeNiro, and leftist billionaire George Soros, CBS News reports.

Some of those targeted are the worst purveyors of violent rhetoric targeting Republicans.

Hillary Clinton embraced violence against Republicans when she said Oct. 9, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate that’s when civility can start again.”

So did Maxine Waters when she said June 23, “And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore anywhere”

Eric Holder said Oct. 10 that Democrats need to get physical with Republicans. “Michelle [Obama] always says ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them,” he said to a cheering crowd at a political rally.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/413019-president-trumps-war-on-federal-wa

Recently, President Donald Trump declared war on federal waste. The president pledged to cut spending and asked his agency heads to cut five percent of their budgets. It’s a great first step and an achievable goal.

Under the previous two administrations, the federal debt has tripled. The last Bush administration began with a $5.7 billion national debt and ended with $10.7 trillion. By the end of the Obama Administration, the debt had reached $19.5 trillion. Today, our national debt exceeds $21.5 trillion.

Economists differ on how much of a threat the debt poses to our economy. We share the view of President Obama’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen who said the debt is a our greatest national security threat. However, everyone can agree that misallocating tax dollars for activities that produce no benefit keeps tax rates artificially high and deprives investors and innovators of scarce capital.

Our recent investigations and oversight reports show that the president has a target-rich environment. Here is a small sample of our findings:

The federal government doled out more than $600 billion in grants last year; many produced little value for taxpayers. A $1.4 million grant funded sex-education for California prostitutes, another one studied “where it hurts the most to be stung by a bee.” And a $1 million grant sought to prepare religions for the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Lastly, NASA spent $2.5 million to produce “Space Racers,” an animated children’s cartoon. The American taxpayer paid for a $9.2 million grant to the airport on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Even America’s most elite universities and successful corporations received plenty of taxpayer subsidies. In a six-year period, the eight schools of the Ivy League received $22 billion in federal grants — despite having $120 billion amassed in their endowments. Over the last three years, Fortune 100 companies received $3.2 billion in grants. Boeing can’t argue it needed the $774 million in federal grants while reporting nearly $100 billion in annual revenue.

https://www.steynonline.com/8943/bombs-a-weighed

Me yesterday:

I shall hold off further comment until more facts are known.

No such circumspection stayed Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney, who reacted instantly to the “suspicious packages” mailed to the Clintons, Obama, George Soros, CNN and others, and weighed in with boundless confidence:

Hate acts follow hate speech. It is past time for us to turn down and tune out the rabid rhetoric.

This is a nitwit statement even by Mitt’s recent standards, and doubtless a preview of the role he intends to play in the Senate. It is also an object lesson in the perils of Tweet-speed insight. “Moderate” “reasonable” “centrists”, like all other politicians, should take a deep breath and be mindful of the old adage: Don’t just say something, stand there.

“Hate speech” is not a notion a supposedly “severe conservative” (as Mitt once styled himself) would sign on to. “Hate speech” is free speech – because the concept of free speech exists for the speech you hate. In the modern world, “hate speech” is the enforcement arm of identity politics: Once an approved victim group is designated – Muslims, transgenders – “hate speech” is a pseudo-legal concept for shutting people up: Unpersuaded by the benefits of mass Muslim immigration? Concerned that seven-year-olds should not be hustled into “transitioning”? Hate speech, hate speech, hate speech…

Until you reach the stage that most of the western world is at – where polite society has ruled anything worth talking about out of bounds. At which point the masses turn to impolite society – Trump, Brexiteers, Salvini, Orbán…

Is it true that “hate acts follow hate speech”? To lazy types like, alas, “severely conservative” Republican Senate candidates, the logic is self-evident. As I wrote almost a decade ago:

Ever since this magazine attracted the attention of Canada’s “human rights” regime, defenders of the system have clung to a familiar argument. In a letter to Maclean’s, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., Canada’s chief censor, put it this way:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271720/anniversary-shameful-us-surrender%E2%80%94-cuban-missile-humberto-fontova

Those who think “Fake News” started with Trump’s term and the media’s “slobbering love affair” with a U.S. president started during Obama’s should have seen John F. Kennedy’s term.

Imagine Obama’s term with no Fox News, internet or talk radio. That’s about what JFK enjoyed. And tragically, the fairy tales Kennedy’s court scribes (with their media cohorts of the time) concocted about JFK’s Pattonesque handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis prevail in media/academic circles even today.

In fact, that Khrushchev swept the floor with cowed Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainstream conservative conclusion throughout much of the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, for instance, represented opposite poles of the Republican establishment of their time.

“We locked Castro’s communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal,” growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”

“Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” complained Richard Nixon. “Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard.”

Generals Curtis Le May and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment.

“The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!” bellowed Air Force chief Curtis Lemay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/papadopoulos-told-fbi-informant-in-2016-there-was-no-russian-collusion-in-trump-campaign/

For months, Republicans have been claiming that classified documents revealed exculpatory evidence that should have been included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Carter Page — and now The Hill’s John Solomon has the scoop.

In mid-September of 2016, weeks after the Russia counterintelligence probe was launched, then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an FBI informant there was no collusion going on between the campaign and Russia that he knew of, and that such activity would be “treasonous.”

Papadopoulos told Solomon that he made the comments to London-based professor and FBI informant Stefan Halper.

“He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else,” Papadopoulos said. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, it’s great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?’”

Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails that summer. “I think I told him something along the lines of, ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,’” Papadopoulos recalled.