RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2018/07/27/follow-the-money
Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found nearly 35,000 state and local government employees in Florida brought home six and seven-figure salaries, costing taxpayers $5.5 billion annually.
Since last year, the headcount of these high-compensated Florida government workers jumped by nearly 4,000 employees.
Here are a few examples of what we uncovered:

717 small-town, city, and village employees – including 26 local administrators out-earning every U.S. governor at $180,000.
2,484 State of Florida employees – including $276,000 for Commissioner of Education Pamela Stewart; $218,925 each for Department of Children and Families Medical Executive Directors Josefina Baluga and Steve Brasington.
3,195 teachers and school administrators – including chief academic officer Daniel Gohl ($196,001) in Broward County School District; minority achievement officer James Lawson ($181,120) in Orange County School District; and English and Journalism teacher James Johnson ($121,493) in St. Johns County School District.
13,305 college and university employees – including Vice President of Health Affairs David Guzick ($1.2 million) and Director of the Graduate Tax Program Martin McMahon ($780,392) at the University of Florida.

Not even resignations and retirements can stop some public employees from receiving huge payouts. Bruce Pelly, Palm Beach County’s airport director, pulled in $236,768 in 2017 on top of the $70,968 in annual retirement checks. Pelly worked for more than 20 years before “retiring” in 2010 to collect a $304,000 lump sum payout. Just 30 days later, he was rehired in the exact same position.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/andrew-mccarthy-collusion-comments-fox-news-clarification/

In response to Paging Andy McCarthy

It’s bad enough that I botched what I intended to say on Laura Ingraham’s show last night (and what I think I was pretty clear about if you actually watched the interview). But mea maxima culpaif I’ve confused Jonah by the rest of what I said. And if there’s a three-strikes-and-you’re-out law, I’m going down in flames on that, too: This morning, when I found out to my surprise and annoyance that I’d misspoken, I considered posting another tweet to make it crystal clear that I have never changed my position on the Trump Tower meeting. Specifically, I was going to tweet out this column again . . . but I got distracted by a phone call and never got around to it.

Too bad, because maybe I could have saved Jonah some time.

I won’t belabor what I’ve already corrected on Twitter (a correction I am grateful to Jonah for including). I have a bad habit of interrupting myself, particularly at the start of a sentence when I change my mind about how best to say something. When I did that last night, the garble resulted in what appears (if a dash is not inserted where I interrupted myself) to be a sentence that stands for the opposite of what I was arguing. Enough said.

Now, on to my confusion of collusion.

It is a challenge in a time-crunched television interview, with people occasionally talking over one another, to explain complex issues and distinctions adequately. I offer this in mitigation, not as an excuse. I’ve been harping on the distinction between “collusion” and “conspiracy” from the beginning. Since I criticize others for conflating the two, I have an added obligation to avoid that error myself, even when pressed for time. I didn’t do that well enough last night. When I said that turning to a foreign government for campaign dirt was not “collusion,” I meant it was not the collusion that is the rationale for the Trump-Russia investigation — specifically, the cyber-espionage conspiracy to influence the 2016 campaign.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/opinion/sunday/motherhood-in-

Teachers and parents who subject their children to gender confusion including hormone treatments, or those who subject infant girls to barbaric genital mutilation are not arrested….rsk

CHICAGO — I was on my way home from dropping my kids off at preschool when a police officer called to ask if I was aware there was an outstanding warrant for my arrest.

“No, no,” I told him. “I didn’t know that.”

I needed to call my husband, but my fingers were shaking. I don’t remember if I was crying when he answered, only that he was saying he couldn’t understand me, that I needed to calm down, to tell him what had happened.

What happened began over a year before on a cool March day in 2011, at the end of a visit with my parents in Virginia. I needed to run an errand before our flight home to Chicago, and my son, then 4, didn’t want to get out of the car.

“Come on,” I said.

“No, no, no! I wait here.”

I took a deep breath. I knew what I was supposed to do. But I was tired. I was late. I didn’t want, at that moment, to deal with a meltdown. And there was something else: a small, quiet voice I’d been hearing more and more lately. “Why?” the voice asked.

Why did I have to fight this battle? He wasn’t asking to Rollerblade in traffic. He just wanted to sit in the car. Why couldn’t I leave him, just this once?

If it had been warm out, I would have said no. I knew about how quickly a closed car can overheat, even on a 60-degree day. But it was cool and cloudy. I’d grown up in that same town in the 1980s and had spent hours waiting in the back seat of my parents’ station wagon, windows open, reading or daydreaming, while they ran errands. Had so much really changed since then?

So I told him I’d be right back. I cracked the windows and child-locked the doors and set the alarm. When I got back five minutes later, he was still playing his game, smiling. We picked up his sister and our suitcases back at my parents’ house and caught our flight home.

It took me a while to figure out what had taken place in the parking lot — that a stranger had watched me go into the store, recorded my son, recorded the license plate on my mother’s car and called 911. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/27/how-far-will-the-left-go

My colleague Victor Davis Hanson raised the question in these pages the other day: “Just how far will the Left go?” in its attempt to overthrow the government of Donald J. Trump? With his customary precision, Hanson laid out the catalog of enormities committed by the Left in its pursuit of Trump and of conservatives in general, among them the fatuous investigation led by Mr. Straight Arrow himself, the demonization of Trump-as-Hitler, their frustration over losing the 2016 election (which they thought would cement their hostile takeover of the American Republic) and their inability to mask their true anti-American natures any longer.

So let me provide an answer: As far as they can, for as long as it takes.

The Poison Behind “Youthful Idealism”
I first became aware of the deadly hostility of the American Left back in the early 1970s, during the height of the student protests against the Vietnam War (largely motivated by a fervent desire to avoid the draft), when they hitched their “youthful idealism” to two causes: anti-imperialism—you don’t hear much about that these days, but that was how the Vietnam War was mischaracterized—and anti-racism, a byproduct of the American civil rights movement. Since then, almost every cause the Left has espoused has combined some elements of America-as-predator (whether international or domestic) and America-as-racist-bastion.

Vietnam was ideal for both tropes. We were waging (in their eyes) and aggressive war against brown people, because we could. In their telling, the domino theory—a holdover from the aftermath of World War II—was merely a fictive fig leaf to conceal our country’s rapaciousness, belligerence, and innate hegemonistic tendencies. We had run out of Indians to kill, so now we had to venture abroad to find fresh victims. And we did it because they were brown. What happened to South Vietnam and Cambodia after the Communist victory was of no interest to them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12767/who-leaked-the-trump-tape

The reason this is important to all Americans, beyond the immediate parties to this taped conversation, is that it may well discourage clients, patients, penitents and others from confiding in their lawyers, doctors, priests and the professionals who promise them confidentiality.

Cohen promised confidentiality and yet the world heard what his client confided in him.

Obviously, people who are willing improperly to leak confidential material may also be willing to lie about it under oath, but the consequences of lying under oath are greater than leaking, since leaking is not a crime but perjury is.

Someone leaked the lawyer/client confidential tape containing a conversation between President Donald J. Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen. A former judge, assigned by the presiding judge to evaluate the seized tapes, reportedly concluded that this conversation was privileged. Yet someone leaked their contents. The President Trump’s current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, then waived the privilege as to that tape. He said he never would have waived it had its existence and content not been improperly leaked.

So, the question remains: Who leaked this privileged material? If it was anyone in the Trump camp, there would be no violation of confidentiality, as the privilege belongs to the client, namely Trump, who can waive it. But no one else, most especially his lawyer, may properly waive the privilege. And Giuliani has categorically denied that it was leaked by Trump or anyone on his behalf. Indeed, he has expressed outrage at the leak.

Whom does that leave? Cohen is an obvious suspect, although I am confident that his excellent and experienced lawyer, Lanny Davis, would not have done so. Perhaps Cohen himself, who ran into Michael Avenatti at a restaurant, told him about the tape. We simply do not know.

ht/25/chautauqua-institutions-destruction/tp://joshfirst.com/blog/2018/07

It was safe, quiet, full of interesting people reading books or lecturing about the most recent book they had written. The on-site opera and orchestra provided just about everyone with any artistic taste with something.

Decades later, it has been completely taken over by the same people who have targeted every other American institution for capture and control, or destruction.

Chautauqua is now a summertime parade of communists, bigots, America haters, partisan political activists. Each speaker is treated to lavish welcome ceremonies as if they are the most gifted thinker on Planet Earth, when in fact they are the meanest, most close-minded political street brawlers in America.

The place reeks of radical, angry politics everywhere you turn. The air is poisonous with hate and tension, but always sold as love and open-mindedness.

I think the institution is still physically safe, for now, but my own kids have this sense that all is not well there. They have grown up going there every summer, and they report back feeling that same tension that anyone with different views feels there now. Unwelcome.

The last time I was there, or one of the last times, I sat at the Amp for a lecture by Donna Brazile. Of course she was presented as some kind of open-minded Deep Thinker, when in fact she is a narrowly partisan fighter and proven liar. Brazile helped fix Hillary’s illegal cheating “win” over Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-good-trade-news-1532560648

The meeting on trade Wednesday between President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had all the makings of a potential crackup, but in the event it provided the best economic news in weeks. Financial markets were clearly pleased, as stocks rose across the board before the closing bell on the statements by the two presidents after their White House session. Call it a relief rally.

The two sides essentially declared a tariff truce, pending negotiations on a larger trade deal between the 28-nation European Union and the U.S. Mr. Trump agreed to step back from his threat of 25% tariffs on European car imports, while the two sides pledged to resolve the current U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs and Europe’s retaliatory levies on U.S. goods.

Europe also agreed to buy more soybeans immediately, and much more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. in the future as its import capacity expands. U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to nearly triple by 2020 to 9.6 billion cubic feet a day, as more export terminals come online and the fracking boom continues.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/obama-administration-al-qaeda-affiliate-knowingly-funded/

The group had been on a list of terrorist funders for a decade when a government agency specifically approved funding for it.

The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization. More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.

The story began in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.

According to the U.S. Treasury, in 1997 ISRA established formal cooperation with MK. By 2000, ISRA had raised $5 million for bin Laden’s group. The Treasury Department notes that ISRA officials even sought to help “relocate [bin Laden] to secure safe harbor for him.” It further reports that ISRA raised funds in 2003 in Western Europe specifically earmarked for Hamas suicide bombings.

The 2004 designation included all of ISRA’s branches, including a U.S. office called the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA-USA). Eventually it became known that this American branch had illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.

ISRA’s influence also spread to Washington. Former U.S. congressman Mark Siljander (R., Mich.) pled guilty in 2010 to obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent after prosecutors found that IARA-USA had paid him $75,000 — using misappropriated USAID grant money — to lobby the government, in an attempt to remove the charity from the government’s terror list.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/trump-we-hope-to-work-something-out-on-a-fair-trade-deal-with-europe.html

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said the United States and the European Union had launched a “new phase” in their relationship, saying that the two major economies would start negotiations immediately on a number of areas including working toward “zero tariffs” on industrial goods and further cooperation on energy issues.

“We agreed today first of all to work together towards zero tariffs, zero nontariff barriers and zero subsides for the non-auto industrial goods,” Trump said Wednesday.

The announcement came during a joint press fconference in the White House Rose Garden with Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Juncker said the two leaders agreed that as long as negotiations were ongoing, “we’ll hold off further tariffs and reassess existing tariffs on steel and aluminum” put in place by the Trump administration. “This was a good, constructive meeting,” he added.

The major averages rallied earlier in the day following a report in The Wall Street Journal stating that Trump had secured a number of concessions from the E.U.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average popped more than half a percent to a session high Wednesday afternoon. The NASDAQ rose about 1 percent. The euro also rose, hitting a session high against the dollar.

European Commission spokesperson Kinga Malinowska said that Juncker had not yet made any concessions.

“All I can say is that the talks are ongoing,” Malinowska said in a statement. “President Juncker is working to avert new tariffs. No concessions made.”

Trump said earlier on Wednesday, during a meeting with Juncker, that he hoped “to work something out on a fair trade deal with Europe.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tricky-dick-schumer-1532474954

Spare a thought for Chuck Schumer. The Senate Minority Leader is under enormous political pressure to defeat Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, or at least pretend that he’s trying very hard. His strategy so far is to stall for time and compare the nominee to Richard Nixon. Bear with us; you’ll enjoy this.

As expected, Mr. Schumer has demanded millions of documents from Mr. Kavanaugh’s years in government to push a confirmation vote past the November election. The New Yorker has refused even to meet with Mr. Kavanaugh unless Republicans first agree to let Democrats dive through the Bush and Clinton archives. When he was Minority Leader in 2013, Mitch McConnell met with nominee Elena Kagan within two days.

This Democratic sitzkrieg isn’t likely to work. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota have already said they’ll meet with the nominee, date to be determined. Others running for re-election will likely follow as their opponents back home highlight the pettiness of not meeting.

More substantively, Republicans have no reason to agree to what are unreasonable Democratic demands. Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley is trying to work out a document deal with ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein. But Democrats are seeking literally millions of documents from Mr. Kavanaugh’s years as Staff Secretary in the George W. Bush White House that are irrelevant to his views or his qualifications for the Court.

The White House has said it is willing to produce some 80,000 document pages and 200,000 email pages from Mr. Kavanaugh’s time in the White House counsel’s office. This is more than the 173,000 pages produced for Justice Kagan’s White House service, and the 182,000 pages for Neil Gorsuch’s time in the George W. Bush Justice Department.