RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-spokeswoman-expected-to-become-u-n-ambassador-1541096354?mod=hp_lead_pos4

WASHINGTON—President Trump is expected to nominate Heather Nauert as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a senior administration official said.

Ms. Nauert, a former Fox News correspondent, joined the Trump administration last year and is currently the chief communications official at the State Department.

She would replace Nikki Haley, who announced plans to step down from the position last month.

Mr. Trump also has considered replacing Ms. Haley with Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, or with Dina Powell, a prominent former White House official.

Other potential appointees have included Kay Bailey Hutchison, the former Texas senator who now serves as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Another Texan, Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, also was considered.

Ms. Nauert has no prior diplomatic experience. She became the State Department spokeswoman in April 2017, serving under former secretary Rex Tillerson and continued in that job after Mr. Tillerson was fired by President Trump and succeeded by Mike Pompeo.

She also served as acting undersecretary of State for public diplomacy and public affairs from March 13 to Oct. 10, 2018.

Before her arrival, Mark Toner, a career foreign service officer and former deputy State Department spokesman under the Obama administration, briefed the press in an acting capacity.

At Fox News, Ms. Nauert served as a television news anchor and most recently appeared on the program Fox & Friends. She last appeared on Fox News in February 2017.

Ms. Nauert, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, hasn’t appeared publicly at the State Department this week. In her place, Robert Palladino, a career foreign service officer who has been Ms. Nauert’s deputy since August, has briefed reporters three times this week.

Remember when Democrats promised that if you liked your plan or your doctor you could keep them? Now they’re pushing another bogus claim, accusing Republicans of wanting to take away health insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Here’s the truth: everyone — Republicans and Democrats — support protecting people with pre-existing conditions.
Way back in 2009, Republicans proposed a health care plan “to guarantee all Americans, regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses, have access to affordable coverage.” A 2009 news report noted that President Obama’s plan to provide insurance coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions would “borrow from” Senator John McCain’s 2008 platform. When Democrats presented the framework of Obamacare in September 2009, the Republican response laid out “four important areas where we can agree.” The very first one was that “All individuals should have access to coverage, regardless of pre-existing conditions.”

Republicans supported these protections then, and they continue to support them now. The reason Democrats are claiming otherwise and trying to rewrite history is simple: They’re trying to protect the status quo created by Obamacare and set the stage for a single-payer health care system. They’re using the nine pages of Obamacare that deal with pre-existing conditions to defend the entire law — all 961 pages.

That’s silly. We don’t have to protect Obamacare to protect people with pre-existing conditions. I have introduced and supported other legislation to achieve that goal. And further, many people with pre-existing conditions have been losers under Obamacare.
One Colorado woman with a pre-existing condition had been covered by a high-risk pool for years, but her insurance plan was canceled under Obamacare. “Since then, my premiums skyrocketed. In 2017, I paid $735 a month with total out-of-pocket costs of $5,500. In 2018, my premiums went up to $1,100 a month with a deductible of $6,300,” said Janet. “I have to spend $19,500 before my insurance pays anything, and it doesn’t cover all my prescription costs. My old plan was almost a third of what I have to pay now.”
After four-year-old Colette in Virginia was diagnosed with cancer, her family became entangled in a nightmare of insurance company red tape that reflects both problems with Obamacare and the risks of letting the political uncertainty around health care continue. Their only option for health insurance did not cover the only local hospital with a pediatric cancer unit. They had to consider moving to a new zip code just to get the coverage they needed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/reporting_to_duty_again.html

Is anyone shocked? I am not. Remember the five Gitmo terrorists exchanged for U.S. Army sgt. Bowe Bergdahl? It turns out that all five are reporting back to duty, according to the AP:

Five members of the Afghan Taliban who were freed from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captured U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl have joined the insurgent group’s political office in Qatar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

They will now be among Taliban representatives negotiating for peace in Afghanistan, a sign some negotiators in Kabul say indicates the Taliban’s desire for a peace pact.“

“These people are respected among all the Taliban,” said Mujahed. “Their word carries weight with the Taliban leadership and the mujahedeen.”

Maybe so. Maybe they are highly respected, but who cares? They are free men and working for the other side.

I remember the families of the men who were killed in Afghanistan or in a mission to rescue Bergdahl. The families of dead soldiers don’t get their sons back. The fallen soldiers don’t get a second chance. They are dead and buried.

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/american-horror-story-american-parents-separated-from-children-by-abusive-government-agencies/

As the caravan of people marching toward America approaches, filled with children who will soon be “separated from their parents” for processing, get ready for a press assault with pictures of crying children and anguished reporting on the cruelty of it all. Yet, American parents grieve silently the loss of their children to out-of-control or inept child protective government agencies every single day. As I reported a few months ago, Michael Chambers, though cleared of any wrongdoing by a judge, is still without his daughter. Tens of thousands of American parents are in the same situation, but while the network news media trip over themselves to find stories of separation and trauma of Honduran children whose parents break our immigration laws, they are completely silent in the face of these American stories.

There are enough families suffering abuse at the hands of state “family” agencies like CPS to write a column a day for the next century. It is an epidemic. Alyssa Leite is a 27-year-old mom of three who no longer has her parental rights, thanks to the Massachusetts Department of Family Services and family court. Her story is tragic. Leite had twin girls in March 2016. They were healthy girls until she took them for a routine well visit, where they each received four vaccines. They were two and a half months old. The next day she noticed that one of the girls’ feet was turning purple. “I called the doctor and they made me an appointment to have her looked at,” Leite told PJM. “But in the morning, she was unresponsive. I tried CPR, I called 911 and my house was swarmed with police and detectives and emergency services.”

Responders tried to revive baby Alliyah and took her to the hospital, where all attempts to save her failed.

Leite told PJM she was in a daze, grief-stricken, and confused. “When we were at the hospital the police turned my other daughter and son over to DFS to be evaluated. I wanted to go check on them but I was told I wasn’t allowed,” reported Leite. “The detective who had been at my house told me to just do everything DFS told me and it would be okay.”

He was so very wrong. Leite was given the opportunity to hold her deceased baby to say goodbye. “During that time, the DFS agent, Jessica Arrugio, came into the room saying, ‘I don’t have time for this, we have to go,’ forcing me to leave my child and go with her for an interview. I think I yelled at her because I just lost my baby and she was threatening to take my other children,” said Leite. She left her baby and went with the DFS agent for the interview. Leite was never charged with any crime, either that night or later, but Arrugio demanded that she sign a paper allowing her remaining children to go into foster care the same day she just lost her baby.

“She told me I would never see my children again if I did not sign it,” says Leite.

This is a common complaint that parents report about DFS agents overstepping their authority. Pam Wright of Wolf Rising, an organization that helps parents recover their children from state agencies, told PJM, “The fact that the social worker threatened that shows that they assume they have judge-like power.” A termination of parental rights is “considered so serious that they automatically get the parent assigned council — usually reserved for criminal cases,” she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/video/montage-liberals-call-for-dialed-down-rhetoric-then-brand-trump-evil-nazi-worse-than-isis/

In the wake of the attempting bombing of various Democrats, liberal commentators have rightly called for the dialing down of divisive rhetoric. However, they have refused to lead by example, instead repeatedly demonizing President Donald Trump in the most radical terms.

Grabien put together a montage of the worst comments uttered by liberal commentators in recent days.

Among the highlights:

“This president has radicalized so many more people that ISIS ever did,” said Julia Ioffe (she later apologized, but went on to say “a silent majority” of Trump supporters think racism is okay).

“The biggest terror threat in this country is white men radicalized on the right,” said CNN’s Don Lemon.

“The same type of propaganda that you would have seen in Germany in 1938 [under Adolf Hitler], the dehumanization, turning people into infested vermin,” said former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt.

“Evil, nasty authoritarianism,” decried Howard Dean.

Steve Schmidt again: Trump’s “erratic behavior, his ignorance, could pose a profound danger to every single person in this country and literally every inhabitant of the planet earth.”

Yet more Schmidt: “This whole caravan in the last week of the election is a giant lie. This is Trump’s Reichstag fire,” a reference to Hitler’s disgusting tactic of blaming the Jews for setting the German parliament on fire when Nazis did it.

“We’re going to see if his reign lasts for 30 days or two years, or a thousand-year reich,” said legal analyst Elie Mystal, referencing Hitler’s propaganda that his would be a “thousand-year reich.”

“It’s not even a question of whether it’s presidential behavior or not, it’s not minimally human behavior,” said MSNBC analyst John Heilemann. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/31/why-did-media-and-democrats-abandon-their-investigation-into-brett-kavanaugh/

What happened to the multiple allegations of sexual misconduct levied against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation battle? The claims ranged from Christine Blasey Ford’s remotely plausible if unsubstantiated allegation of a violent attempted rape to Michael Avenatti’s completely outlandish and also unsubstantiated allegation of hosting serial gang rape parties.

From September 12 to October 6, the claims absolutely dominated all major media. They ran on the front pages of all major newspapers and filled the hours on cable and network news. Magazine journalists at The New Yorker ran with the claims, despite massive corroboration problems.

The claims were taken so seriously by the media and some U.S. senators it led to serious delays of the confirmation voting process. A hearing was held during and after which all the talking heads on cable asserted Blasey Ford was completely “credible.” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, even maneuvered to reopen an FBI investigation to dig into the claims. Then they disappeared. Overnight.

The argument for delaying the confirmation process indefinitely was that everyone needed time to investigate the allegations. The argument underlying the media coverage was that these allegations were “credible” and needed to be investigated and reported on given the importance of the lifetime position for which Kavanaugh was nominated. The allegations were hitting in the midst of the Me Too movement, which claims to address sexual assault by powerful men. It should be noted that for a claim to be declared “credible,” it doesn’t need to be verified or have any substantiating evidence but merely that journalists and pundits “believe” it or find it possible.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pittsburgh-and-the-press-1540935634?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

How seriously should Americans take media folk who say the President’s press criticism is too harsh even as they blame him for murders he did not commit?

This column is not in the habit of labelling all shoddy reporting and commentary as “fake news.” The term should perhaps be reserved for discussions among non-doctors on cable news programs who purport to issue long-distance diagnoses of Donald Trump’s mental health. But who can defend the current widespread media effort to blame the President for a murderous rampage in Pittsburgh by a gunman who was explicitly anti-Trump?

Not that it’s fair to blame national political figures for all the acts committed by their supporters either. But Paul Krugman of the New York Times suggests that whatever the motivation, whatever the political affiliation of a particular criminal and regardless of the facts of each case, Mr. Trump is at fault:

In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a wave of hate crimes. Just in the past few days, bombs were mailed to a number of prominent Democrats, plus CNN. Then, a gunman massacred 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Meanwhile, another gunman killed two African-Americans at a Louisville supermarket, after first trying unsuccessfully to break into a black church — if he had gotten there an hour earlier, we would probably have had another mass murder.

All of these hate crimes seem clearly linked to the climate of paranoia and racism deliberately fostered by Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and the media.

This latest column in the Times is obviously compelling evidence that Mr. Krugman is no better at analyzing violent attacks than he is at predicting the pace of economic growth or forecasting stock market moves. But even a casual news consumer knows that such moral confusion has not been confined to Mr. Krugman since the Saturday massacre. And history has shown that it really has nothing in particular to do with Mr. Trump.

“Conservatives Don’t Get to Mourn,” is the headline on an insightful piece by Karol Markowicz, who writes in National Review today:

After every horrible mass shooting, when we should be mourning together, looking for solutions to stop future attacks, consoling the families of the victims, there’s an immediate rush to make sure conservatives know they do not belong to that wider American community feeling the pain. Worse, there’s a constant allusion to the fact that those on the right are responsible for the slaughter. Republicans spend the time following these attacks not in mourning like they should be but beating back the sickening idea that they inspired the shooter.

PITTSBURGH — As the Jewish community of Squirrel Hill began to bury its dead Tuesday from the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday, President Trump paid his respects, in a visit few had requested and many opposed. His motorcade was greeted by a demonstration of hundreds marchers calling to one another to “turn your back” on the president.

A line stretched far down the block for the funeral of Dr. David Rabinowitz, one of the 11 killed by a gunman whom police have identified as a 46-year-old man, whose social media posts indicate he was enraged by what he perceived as Jewish support for immigration. Rabinowitz, 77, was known for his compassionate treatment of AIDS victims. The service for brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal also drew a large crowd a mile and a half away. There was a heavy police presence outside the Jewish Community Center where Rabinowitz’s service was held, with officers from the Pittsburgh Police Department and nearby Carnegie Mellon University surrounding the facility.

Trump, who spent three and a half hours in the city, including a visit to a pop-up memorial to the victims and to wounded police officers recovering in the hospital, had been asked by Mayor Bill Peduto to delay the trip until all the services were concluded. City councilor Erika Strassburger, who lives near the Tree of Life and drives past the building every day, said her constituents had contacted her to oppose the trip.

“There are many, many constituents who’ve reached out to me by phone and email concerned that the president’s visit today will add to the trauma of the community and many community members,” said Strassburger early Tuesday afternoon before Trump’s arrival. “I won’t say that necessarily speaks for every single person in my district, that’s just what I’ve heard.”Strassburger’s constituents weren’t the only ones against Trump’s visit. Local officials — Peduto, county executive Rich Fitzgerald, Gov. Tom Wolf, and Sen. Bob Casey and Sen. Pat Toomey (all Democrats save for Toomey) — declined to join. Trump also failed to convince congressional leadership from either party to take the trip. Trump spoke with family members of at least one victim, according to Dr. Donald Yealy, but others reportedly rebuffed offers from the White House to meet the president, who has been blamed by commentators for inspiring violence with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and his demonization of “globalists,” a word that has been historically associated with anti-Semitism. His remarks shortly after the shooting that the gunman could have been deterred by an armed guard were also controversial. (Four police officers were injured in the apprehension of the shooter.)

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

No, I haven’t attended the vigils, the interfaith prayer services, the gatherings, or other feel-good manifestations of hand-holding kumbaya after the recent carnage in Pittsburgh. Or those of other slaughters in black churches, schools, workplaces, outdoor concerts, or wherever. It is not because I’m not appalled at the loss of innocent life there. I am. But the attendees leave, feeling they did something, resume their lives…’til the next time. For some, it is a form of healing.

But the gooey statements of mindless clichés that condemn the evil, preaching a form of artificial unity while condemning the inanimate weapon or mental illness for the horrendous deed, evading the issue of the hatred prevalent in some individuals and communities alienates me. Also, the leeching groups and individuals who latch on to the incident to promote their agenda – gun control, dislike of a political figure – desecrate the victims and diminishes the evil.

For example, on Monday, Pittsburgh’s mayor Bill Peduto (D) spoke movingly about the consequences of hatred.

Peduto took the microphone, speaking passionately about the Pittsburgh community and combating hatred.

“We come together tonight to mourn, and it’s the right thing to do. We lost eleven of our neighbors, and we’re here to mourn the way that they were taken from us. We’re here to mourn the fact that we live in a society where something like this could even exist. We’re here to mourn the attack upon our Jewish community. We’re here to be supporters. We’re here to make sure that those victims’ families have what Pittsburghers do, the understanding that we are all here for them and we will help them through this horror that they are living. We are here to recognize the officers and the two members of the congregation who are still suffering, and to let them and their families know, we’re here for you because we’re Pittsburghers and that’s what we do. We care and take care of those in need and we show it as a community of one.”