RUTHFULLY YOURS

According to the Department of Labor, the number of workers receiving unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in 44 years at the end of 2017. The Thursday report showed that 1.87 million people received unemployment insurance benefits in the last week of December, marking the lowest seasonally-adjusted mark since December of 1973. In most states, benefits are available for up to 26 weeks.

The lower rate of unemployment benefits recipients indicates an improving economy and that fewer people are being subjected to layoffs. In recent months, the total number of unemployment claims came close to the lowest levels in many years. In the first week of 2018, claims rose 11,000 to 261,000, according to the same report.

While economic forecasters had expected employment claims to descend only slightly from the previous week’s level of 250,000, which was the highest since November, they rose to their highest level since September, when the numbers were inflated by hurricane damage to states in the Deep South. The Department of Labor said that damage related to hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are affecting claims in those places.

However, new unemployment claims are still below the level that would suggest a spike in unemployment. Economists suggest that it should be about 300,000.
With the unemployment at the lowest rate since 2000 (4.1 percent), job creation by the economy has been strong, recently. Joblessness could thus decline even further this year. Over the last three months, job gains have averaged 204,000 for each month. While unemployment claims fell during the end of Barack Obama’s tenure in office, they spiked during the financial crisis and reached levels not seen in the mid-2000s. During Trump’s first year in office, unemployment has steadily declined.

More and more feminists are now ditching those pink, anti-Trump “pussyhats” on the grounds that they’re actually racist and transphobic.

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, many activists have concerns that the hat “excludes and is offensive to transgender women and gender nonbinary people who don’t have typical female genitalia and to women of color because their genitals are more likely to be brown than pink.”

Honestly? This is so stupid that I don’t even know where to start.

As for the color issue, the Pussyhat Project (yes — that’s a thing) states on its official website that the hats’ pink color has nothing to do with “genitals” — it’s simply that the color pink “is considered a very female color representing caring, compassion, and love.”

In other words: This complaint is ridiculous, and based on an objectively inaccurate assumption. (Of course, to be fair, many social-justice activists would actually consider the claim that pink is “a very female color” to be an equally offensive explanation. For example: A campaign at Syracuse University last year encouraged students to file a report on campus if they were to see any signs that were “color-coded pink for girls and blue for boys,” calling such material “abhorrent and intolerable.” I’m actually kind of shocked that an organization as progressive as the Pussyhat Project didn’t know this.)

As for transphobia? Well, first of all, the website addresses that:

Some people have questioned whether the very name “pussyhats” means our movement is saying only people with vaginas can be feminists. No way! Trans people and intersex people and people with any genital anatomy can be feminists and wear Pussyhats™. Feminists who wear Pussyhats™ fight transmisogyny and support ALL women.

To demonstrate their opposition to male sexual misconduct, women in Hollywood wore black to the Golden Globes awards this week. To demonstrate their opposition to male sexual misconduct, women in Congress plan to wear black to President Donald J. Trump (R)’s first State of the Union address in a few weeks. To demonstrate their opposition to the surprising (to them) election of Trump, last year, women across the country – indeed, across the world – joined in large gatherings called Women’s Marches, many of them donning awkwardly shaped pink (a female color) so-called pussy hats, based on a statement the new president had made in private a decade ago.

(And yes, Trump’s election – did I mention the shock? – instead of President Bill Clinton [D]’s sexual misconduct-enabler wife was the raison d’être for the latter female temper tantrum.)

Those caps are now collectors’ items. In the year since the Women’s March, many women, especially in the entertainment and political arenas, have gone public about their experiences with male inappropriate sexual behavior, ranging from unpleasant remarks and actions to actual rape and violence, mostly at the hands of liberal, feminism-professing males. So at this year’s Women’s March – and yes, there will be another one, because…well, Trump is still president – most women will not be re-wearing the symbolic headgear. Why not?

(Computer and phone safety trigger warning alert: Clear your mouth of all food and liquids so as not to ruin your computer’s or phone’s keyboard when you burst out laughing.)

OK, ready? According to Kristen Shamus of the Detroit Free Press:

The reason: The sentiment that the pink pussy[] hat excludes and is offensive to transgender women [sic; that is, men who consider themselves women –ed.] and gender non[-]binary people [sic; who knows? –ed.] who don’t have typical female genitalia [sic!] and to women of color because their genitals are more likely to be brown than pink.

If we are to believe the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, released unexpectedly by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the search for a smoking gun in the dossier scandal may lead us to a dead body, at least according to Simpson’s lawyer:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in August 2017, Glenn Simpson was questioned about whether he tried to “assess the credibility” of sources behind information uncovered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who compiled the dossier.

“Yes, but I’m not going to get into sourcing information,” Simpson said.

Asked again what “steps he took to verify their credibility,” Simpson declined to answer.

His lawyer, Joshua Levy, then intervened and said Simpson was just trying to protect his sources.

“Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work,” Levy said.

The interview didn’t pursue the line of questioning further.

Well, maybe somebody should pursue this hand grenade tossed in the middle of the room. Whoa! Somebody’s already been killed as the result of the dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele from questionable Russian sources and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, and possibly used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the campaign of Hillary’s opponent, Donald J. Trump?

As shocking as this revelation may be, it dovetails nicely with fear expressed for her safety by former DNC chair Donna Brazile. In a stunning interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about her new book, Hacks, Brazile made cryptic references to murdered DNC I.T. staffer Seth Rich and revealed that afterward, she took the precautions one takes when one fears for his life.

It has been nearly three months since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, and the island’s recovery has been slow. The U.S. territory is struggling with shortages of food and medical supplies, and a full 45% of residents still don’t have power.

San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz blames Washington for failing to devote adequate resources to Puerto Rico’s recovery — she recently dubbed President Trump the “disaster-in-chief”. But a journalist for El Nuevo Día, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Puerto Rico, has found a different culprit: “the Jew.”

Columnist Wilda Rodríguez wrote a piece on Monday, titled “What Does ‘The Jew’ Want From The Colony?” According to Rodríguez, it is “Wall Street types,” not politicians, that dictate U.S. policy. And, who are the power brokers on Wall Street?

“In the end, Congress will do what ‘the Jew’ wants, as the vulgar prototype of true power is called,” she wrote.

Rodríguez added a disclaimer: “No offense to people of that religion.” She even argued that the term is a source of pride for Israeli Jews.

“More than 20 years ago, the Israeli paper Ma’ariv had an article in Hebrew that explained how the Jews control Washington,” she wrote. “For Israelis, recognizing Jewish power over Washington is not an offensive statement. It is the victory of the Diaspora.”

Back in 2006, when George W. Bush was still president, Duke University Medical Center professor of psychiatry Dr. Jonathan Davidson published a study that reviewed biographical sources for the first 37 presidents (from 1776 to 1974), and expert psychiatrists concluded that half suffered from mental illness, 27 percent while still in office. Twenty-four percent met the diagnostic criteria for depression at some point in their lives, including most famously Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge. Richard Nixon was treated for many years for stress by psychiatrist Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, and was severely depressed after leaving office. The psychiatrist who treated Nixon after Watergate has confirmed this to me. “Who wouldn’t be?” he said.

The key to all these cases was either a physician making an in-person assessment and coming up with a diagnostic impression and treatment plan or at least the president or those close to him recognizing the problem. What makes the current pundit-media attack on President Trump’s mental health most disturbing is that those leading the charge are either non-psychiatrists, or else have never examined the president, such as psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee of Yale, who traveled to Washington last month to brief twelve Democratic and one Republican lawmakers on President Trump’s supposed mental instability.

Dr. Lee’s claims come across as partisan meanness, and they undermine the integrity of the medical profession at a time when we are already spending too little actual face time with our patients. Philadelphia psychiatrist Dr. Claire Pouncey, writing in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, supported the actions of Dr. Lee, along with the book of essays she published, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. But Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, writing a response in the New England Journal of Medicine, called Pouncey and Lee’s actions “a misguided and dangerous morality.”

On Tuesday, the American Psychiatric Association reaffirmed its adherence to the so-called Goldwater Rule, which stipulates that member psychiatrists should not publicly discuss the mental health of a public figure, leader, or candidate. This rule is wise, protects our integrity as physicians, and continues to apply here.

The first community organizer to become president has managed to anger community groups so much with his planned personal monument, aka a “presidential center,” that part of the plan was just scrapped.

Lolly Bowean of the Chicago Tribune reports:

Bowing to community pressure, the Obama Foundation has scrapped its plan for an above-ground parking garage and will instead build an underground facility below the presidential center in Jackson Park, officials said late Monday.

The original plan would have grabbed a treasured part of Chicago’s park system, the Midway (site of Chicago’s World’s Fair), for a two-story garage. The group Save the Midway sprang up to protect the historic public park land from a private developer (the Obama Foundation) appropriating the land for a private purpose (the Obama Center will not be part of the National Archives System):

The embarrassment is palpable:

After numerous meetings with the community and other valued stakeholders over the past months, the Foundation understands that many of those voices feel strongly that the parking for the OPC should be located within the OPC campus in Jackson Park. The Foundation has heard those voices, and has decided to locate the OPC’s parking underground in Jackson Park.

The FBI used the unverified anti-Trump dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to obtain the warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court (FISA), investigative journalist Sara Carter reported Wednesday.

Representatives of four committees — the House Intelligence Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, House Judiciary Committee, and Senate Judiciary Committee — have been able to examine FISA documents in a secure room at the Justice Department, according to the Washington Examiner’s Byron York.

They were not allowed to take the documents out of the room or to copy them, but they could make notes. They thus know the answer to the was-the-dossier-used-for-spying question.

The answer to the question is classified, however, and as of Wednesday morning, no one had yet leaked.

Nevertheless, later in the day, according to Carter, multiple sources told her that “the dossier was used along with other evidence to obtain the warrant” from the FISA court. Fox News’ Sean Hannity corroborated the news on his show Wednesday night, reporting that three separate sources told him the same thing.

Most of the 35-page dossier, which was put together by former British spy Christopher Steele for the liberal opposition research firm Fusion GPS, has either been proven wrong or remains unsubstantiated. In spite of this, the FBI used the DNC/Clinton campaign-sponsored dossier to seek and gain approval from the FISA court to surveil members of Trump’s campaign, sources claim.

“It’s outrageous and clearly should be thoroughly investigated,” a senior law enforcement source with knowledge of the process told Carter.

According to Carter, the sources “also stressed that there will be more information in the coming week regarding systemic ‘FISA abuse.’” CONTINUE AT SITE