RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/12/rage-rage-

Homer’s Muse sings of the rage of Achilles, brought forth from his tent by the death of his friend Patroclus to engage the Trojan hero, Hector, in mortal combat. But Achilles’ anger solves nothing; although he kills Hector, he then desecrates the body by dragging it around the walls of Troy, thus violating the laws of warfare and sealing his own fate. His determination to avenge his friend thus becomes “the accursed rage that brought great suffering to the Achaeans.” In the end, it’s not the rage of Achilles that wins the war for the Greeks, but the trickery of Odysseus that finagles the wooden horse inside the impregnable gates of Ilium.

We are witnessing a similar self-destructive rage today: the rage of the American Left against the Trump Administration in general and the president in particular, an explosion of frustrated, impotent (but still dangerous) anger that has given up all pretense of genuine protest—against the results of a duly constituted American election, let us remember—and has devolved instead into a toddler’s extended tantrum. It bears the hallmarks of one of the most unseemly displays in American political history.

It’s being conducted in the halls of Congress, where the Democrats have at last dropped all pretense of civility and shown the voters their true, foam-flecked faces. It’s being waged in the media, where the ladies and gentlemen of the press, such as they are, have thrown over journalistic practices that served the profession well over the past century or so, and now regard malicious gossip and news as one and the same thing.

Most ominously, it is taking place in the streets where, over the past year, Republican congressmen and Trump supporters have been shot, attacked with a switchblade knife, clubbed with a bicycle lock, had their vehicles and offices vandalized and set on fire; even the president’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was destroyed.

The masked fascist thugs who ludicrously call themselves “Antifa,” routinely attack public gatherings, and Left wingers sporting “Say No to Hate” t-shirts scream at the sky at the very thought of Trump and his policies. Not since the 1960s have we witnessed such a public breakdown in moral and psychological order.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/13/demonization-of-nunes

Much of what we now know about the unethical and often illegal behavior of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Justice emerged due to the efforts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Its chairman during its stunning disclosures has been Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who in turn has been constantly demonized for his efforts.

Yet without the committee’s digging, Americans would not have known that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for an unsubstantiated 2016 dossier on Donald Trump compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Prior to the committee’s work, we did not know that the FBI and Justice Department used unverified information from the Steele dossier to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing for the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Without the committee’s disclosures, Americans would not have had any idea that Bruce Ohr, who once ranked fourth in the Department of Justice hierarchy, coordinated opposition research on Trump with Steele, the FBI and Fusion GPS. Ohr took this unethical step because his wife was working for Fusion GPS—a fact that was withheld on federal disclosure forms.

The Nunes-led committee also uncovered the names of prominent FBI and Justice Department officials—including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, and Sally Yates—who had approved FISA court warrant applications that were based on the largely discredited Steele dossier.

Most dramatically, we learned that members of the Obama Administration had unmasked the names of U.S. citizens swept up in government surveillance. Many of those names were illegally leaked to the press. This disclosure forced former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice to confess that they had requested most of the unmaskings. Rice had previously denied it.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence also confirmed that FBI agents had interviewed former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and did not think he had lied to them concerning his contact with a top Russian diplomat.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/12/u-s-doctors-performing-double-mastectomies-healthy-13-year-old-girls/

Some physicians in the United States are performing double mastectomies on healthy 13-year-old girls. The justification is gender dysphoria (“transgenderism”)—the girls now identify as boys and therefore want to look like boys.

Sometimes this dysphoria doesn’t appear until adolescence, and often little or no psychological evaluation is done to determine the underlying cause of the teenager’s desire to mutilate her body. But these doctors are willing to give her what she thinks she wants. And your federal tax money is paying for research to validate this gruesome treatment (see here and here).

Reasonable people would be mystified, if not repelled, by the statements and actions of a leading researcher into transgender treatment. In a study funded by a $5.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers including Dr. Johanna Olson of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are supposedly evaluating use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on dysphoric children.

As I’ve written with a coauthor, however, the study is fundamentally skewed toward the conclusions transgender activists desire: it contains no control group of subjects who will be spared these drugs, and will expire after five years, long before many negative effects may surface.

These design flaws aren’t surprising. Olson dismisses the possibility that gender dysphoria could be caused by psychological disturbance, claiming the only “mental health issue” related to gender dysphoria “comes from the way that the outside world responds” to the confused youth. She states, as though from a medical basis, that gender-dysphoric youth will go through the “wrong puberty” unless she and her cohorts can medicate them early enough in their lives to “put them through the right puberty.”

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!”