RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/may-jobs-numbers-are-bad-news-for-democrats.html

Friday’s monthly employment report was great news for anyone looking for a job in America – unless you happen to be a Democrat running for Congress.
That’s because voters who are employed are historically more likely to favor incumbents than those who are out of work.
With the jobless rate now down to 3.8 percent, Democrats in 435 House districts and 35 Senate races face a major challenge as they try to unseat Republican majorities in both chambers.

Among the many contentious topics swirling around this year’s campaign, none is more important than the perennial issue of employment. Voters who are employed are historically more likely to favor incumbents than those who are out of work.

That poses a major challenge for Democrats in 435 House districts and 35 Senate races who are looking to unseat Republican majorities in both chambers.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/trump-campaign-spying-obama-administration-investigation/Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio evidently paid little attention to testimony before their own committees on how Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.

Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative — the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government’s awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate — and, more to the point, to smear — its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies — the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation — want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.

What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?

And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration’s top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.

Former National Intelligence director James Clapper was first to the scene of the blaze. Clapper concedes that, well, yes, the FBI did run an informant — “spy” is such an icky word — at Trump campaign officials; but you must understand that this was merely to investigate Russia. Cross his heart, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign. No, no, no. Indeed, they only used an informant because — bet you didn’t know this — doing so is the most benign, least intrusive mode of conducting an investigation.

Me? I’m thinking the tens of thousands of convicts serving lengthy sentences due to the penetration of their schemes by informants would beg to differ. (Mr. Gambino, I assure you, this was just for you own good . . .) In any event, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine the Democrats’ response if, say, the Bush administration had run a covert intelligence operative against Obama 2008 campaign officials, including the campaign’s co-chairman. I’m sure David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, the New York Times, and Rachel Maddow would chirp that “all is forgiven” once they heard Republicans punctiliously parse the nuances between investigating campaign officials versus the campaign proper; between “spies,” “informants,” and other government-directed covert operatives.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/31/what-nevertrump-never-understood/
Imagine if, on the evening of Tuesday, September 4, President Trump delivered the following speech from the White House . . .

My fellow Americans,

Traditionally, this is the day when the country ends summer fantasies, gets back to work and to school—when we get serious. And it is high time for our political system to follow suit and get serious. Tonight we start.

Two months from now, we will vote for 435 members of the House of Representatives, 34 senators, and countless other officials. Since the last election, we’ve been bombarded with accusations from government officials acting in semi-secrecy and through friendly collaborators in the media that your votes were somehow tainted, and the election results were illegitimate.

Sadly, this outrageous campaign has abetted the Democratic Party’s near-unanimous refusal to accept the results of our election. Aptly, they call what they have been doing “the Resistance.” This open cabal of officials, of the media, of corporate America’s leadership, these upscale lords of the universe, are trying to overturn the results of the last presidential election.

They aim to convince you that you are stupid, unsophisticated, and at least a little racist. In short, they want you to know that you can’t govern yourselves as well as they would have you governed. They tell you that you must vote for Democrats, any and all Democrats, because if enough are elected, they will impeach Donald Trump who is responsible in part for the stupidity, racism, sexism, etc. that led you to vote as you did in 2016.

For what will they impeach me? For having done exactly what? They won’t say directly. They want an endless investigation producing more leaks and suggestions that the worst of the allegations about me may be true. And they want elections to be run on the basis of their smoke and mirrors campaigns.

But it’s time to get serious. That’s why, tonight, I’m telling them what Muhammed Ali told George Foreman after he had absorbed his best punches: Now it’s my turn.

So, tonight, hear this.

Robert Mueller, you’re fired. As of noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 5, along with every person you have hired, you are no longer an employee of the United States. The same goes for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. I am canceling all security clearances of yours and of theirs as of that hour. By that moment, you and they will have delivered to the Justice Department’s inspector general every copy of every document connected with your investigation of anything having to do with the 2016 election, and every electronic instrument containing such documents. After that moment, your possession of any such documents, in any form, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Second, in the exercise of my authority under Article II of the Constitution, I hereby declassify, as of noon Eastern Daylight Time on September 5, any and all documents in the possession of the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency relating in any way to the election of 2016.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/report-obama-white-house-tried-to-intrude-on-fbis-russia-investigation/

The Obama administration tried to take over the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign, The Hill’s John Solomon reported on Fox News Thursday night. And according Solomon, the FBI began spying on members of the Trump campaign to gather the intelligence that ultimately justified the collusion investigation, weeks or even months before the FBI had a formal predicate.

“That’s very important. The rules say you can’t use sources until you have a predicated investigation. The predication is July 31, 2016,” Solomon told Fox host Sean Hannity. The investigative reporter said he had sources and documents backing up his claim that he would be making public in his report in The Hill on Friday.

He stressed that informants were making contacts with the Trump officials and providing information to the FBI “much, much earlier than July 31.”

The second part of his bombshell report, Solomon explained, deals with internal FBI communications between former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, his mistress Lisa Page, and others discussing how the Obama White House was trying to take over the investigation.

“The words ‘the White House is running this’ are clear in the text message,” Solomon told Hannity, adding that “the FBI agents who opened this case feared that Barack Obama was weak on national security and wouldn’t do what they needed for Russia.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-curious-case-of-mr-downer-1527809075?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

To hear the Federal Bureau of Investigation tell it, its decision to launch a counterintelligence probe into a major-party presidential campaign comes down to a foreign tip about a 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The FBI’s media scribes have dutifully reported the bare facts of that “intel.” We are told the infamous tip came from Alexander Downer, at the time the Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer invited Mr. Papadopoulos for a drink in early May 2016, where the aide told the ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Word of this encounter at some point reached the FBI, inspiring it to launch its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31.

Notably (nay, suspiciously) absent or muddled are the details of how and when that information made its way to the FBI, and what exactly was transmitted. A December 2017 New York Times story vaguely explains that the Australians passed the info to “American counterparts” about “two months later,” and that once it “reached the FBI,” the bureau acted. Even the Times admits it’s “not clear” why it took the Aussies so long to flip such a supposedly smoking tip. The story meanwhile slyly leads readers to believe that Mr. Papadopoulos told Mr. Downer that Moscow had “thousands of emails,” but read it closely and the Times in fact never specifies what the Trump aide said, beyond “dirt.”

When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian, a national newspaper, and “spoke for the first time” about the Papadopoulos event. Mr. Downer said he officially reported the Papadopoulos meeting back to Australia “the following day or a day or two after,” as it “seemed quite interesting.” The story nonchalantly notes that “after a period of time, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, passed the information on to Washington.”

My reporting indicates otherwise. A diplomatic source tells me Mr. Hockey neither transmitted any information to the FBI nor was approached by the U.S. about the tip. Rather, it was Mr. Downer who at some point decided to convey his information—to the U.S. Embassy in London.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/would-you-like-some-strife-with-your-meal-1527807733

My hometown became a foodie paradise starting a decade or so ago, when I lived in California. At first it was beautiful. With each visit home, I noticed new food carts selling everything from Korean tacos and Thai-Hainanese chicken and rice to Texas-style pulled pork. Later came breweries, exotic doughnut shops and haute-hipster ice-cream parlors.

But these days politics is ruining the scene. One of the first victims, Sally Krantz, in 2016 opened a bistro, Saffron Colonial, featuring historical recipes from the British Empire. Furious social-justice warriors accused her of racism and glorifying colonialism. Mobs gathered outside the establishment, and detractors swamped its Yelp page with negative reviews and insults. Suppliers boycotted her. Eventually Ms. Krantz gave in and changed the name to British Overseas Restaurant Corporation.

Blood was in the water. In the spring of 2017, Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly were accused of “stealing” Mexican culture—by selling burritos from a truck. They received death threats and shut down their business and their social-media presence.

Then an anonymous Google spreadsheet began circulating warning about restaurants that served ethnic cuisine: “These white-owned businesses hamper the ability for POC”—people of color—“to run successful businesses of their own . . . by either consuming market share with their attempt at authenticity or by modifying foods to market to white palates.”

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/29/obama-says-didnt-scandals/

At a Las Vegas tech conference last week, former president Barack Obama told an audience that his presidency had been scandal-free. “I didn’t have scandals, which seems like it shouldn’t be something you brag about,” Obama joked, according to Newsweek. We hear this talking point quite often from Democrats.

Now, perhaps the president didn’t experience the fallout from a scandal, which is very different from never having been involved in one. For this confusion, Obama can thank the political media.

Why does it matter now? For one thing, historical revisionism shouldn’t go unchallenged. Democrats are running to retake power, and many of them were participants or accomplices in numerous corrosive scandals that have been airbrushed.

The other reason, of course, is that when we start to juxtapose the mythically idyllic Obama presidency with the tumultuous reign of Trump, we’re reminded that many journalists largely abdicated their responsibilities for eight years — which has a lot to do with the situation we find ourselves in today.

It’s not about Obama’s brazen lying about Obamacare or even recurrent abuse of power. I’m talking about supposed non-scandals like “Operation Fast and Furious,” a program devised by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) that put around 2,000 weapons into the hands of narco-traffickers (and an Islamic terrorist), leading to the murder of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American, border agent Brian Terry.

The body count could have been higher when a homegrown extremist who, with another assailant, attempted to murder the audience at a “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas with one of the Fast and Furious weapons. An off-duty police officer killed both of the attackers.

Despite the incompetence, absurdity, recklessness, and fatalities of the program, the entire affair never really received scandal-like attention. No one lost his job. There will almost certainly be a tweet from Trump this week that political media will afford more attention than a story in which an American border agent was murdered with the gun Obama’s ATF provided.

Not even when the administration refused to cooperate with congressional investigators was it handled like a scandal. Not even when a federal judge rejected Obama’s assertion of executive privilege in efforts to deny Congress files relating to the gun-walking operation was it treated as a scandal. Not even when we learned that Obama attorney general Eric Holder misled Congress about when he was made aware of the program did it rise to the importance of a Trump tweet. Holder became the first sitting attorney general in American history to be held in contempt of Congress — a vote that included 17 Democrats — and Obama still never paid a political price.

As it was, the Obama administration persistently ignored courts and oversight, breaking norms because it was allowed to do so. The president was articulate, friendly, and progressive. He might have executed an American citizen without a trial (not a scandal!), but his contempt for the process could be forgiven.

Flash back to September 2016, and let’s revisit a rumor that circulated widely in certain circles. It has been recounted so many times that it serves almost as a bedtime story for the Right. The scene: it’s the first joint appearance between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton—the Commander-in-Chief Forum sponsored by NBC—and it has just finished. Backstage, the now-disgraced moderator Matt Lauer is waiting to shake hands with the former first lady— but, instead, he is confronted by a furious Clinton and her entourage.

What faux pas had he committed? Apparently, Lauer had asked Clinton a question about her illegal email server that she was not prepared to answer, a question that she had not pre-approved.

According to the NBC insider who witnessed the scene, Clinton “proceeded to pick up a full glass of water and threw it at the face of her assistant and the screaming started.” She then lost her temper and began shouting at her staff. “You f —ing idiots, you were supposed to have this thing set up for me and you’ve screwed it up! If that f—ing bastard wins we all hang from nooses! Lauer’s finished…and if I lose it’s all on you ass—-s for screwing this up.”

This is a fantastic scene, one which would be hard to believe, if Clinton had not spent most of 2017 whining about her loss in assorted public forums, and blaming everyone but herself. The American public now understands that profanity-laced displays of manic rage are perfectly in keeping with the character of the former first lady so aptly nicknamed “Lady Macbeth” by a portion of the press. What makes this tirade so interesting, of course, is the dire prophecy that a Trump presidency would see Hillary and her gang not just humiliated or defeated but hanging by nooses—that is, presumably executed for treason.

Our Dumb Intelligence Community
Fast forward to 2018, and the scene now makes perfect sense. A growing segment of the American public now knows that the country’s intelligence community was spying on the Trump campaign, and then attempting to sabotage the Trump Administration with false allegations of “Russian collusion.” That’s #Spygate in a sentence.

Hey, what’s up. Long time no talk.https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/30/dear-ex-friends-in-the-resistance/

I think the last civil conversations we had occurred just days before November 8, 2016. You were supremely confident Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election; you voted for her with glee. As a lifelong Republican, I bit down hard and cast my vote for Donald Trump. Then the unimaginable happened. He won.

And you lost your fucking minds.

I knew you would take the loss hard—and personally—since all of you were super jacked-up to elect the first woman president. But I did not imagine you would become totally deranged, attacking anyone who voted for Trump or supported his presidency as a racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic Nazi-sympathizer.

The weirdness started on social media late on Election Night, as it became clear Hillary was going to lose. A few of you actually admitted that you were cradling your sleeping children, weeping, wondering what to tell your kindergartner the next morning about Trump’s victory. It continued over the next several days. Some of you seriously expressed fear about modern-day concentration camps. Despite living a privileged lifestyle, you were suddenly a casualty of the white patriarchy. Your daughters were future victims; your sons were predators-in-waiting. You threatened to leave Facebook because you could no longer enjoy the family photos or vacation posts from people who, once friends, became Literal Hitlers to you on November 8 because they voted for Donald Trump.

I admit I was a little hurt at first. The attacks against us Trump voters were so personal and so vicious that I did not think it could be sustained. I thought maybe you would regain your sanity after some turkey and egg nog.

But you did not. You got worse. And I went from sad to angry to where I am today: Amused.

As the whole charade you have been suckered into over the last 18 months starts to fall apart—that Trump would not survive his presidency; he would be betrayed by his own staff, family, and/or political party; he would destroy the Republican Party; he would be declared mentally ill and removed from office; he would be handcuffed and dragged out of the White House by Robert Mueller for “colluding” with Russia—let me remind you what complete fools you have made of yourselves. Not to mention how you’ve been fooled by the media, the Democratic Party, and your new heroes on the NeverTrump Right.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/clapper-disinformation-campaign-1527636194?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

James Clapper, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, gained a reputation among liberals as a liar for covering up the existence of secret data-collection programs.

Since becoming a private citizen, he has claimed that President Trump is a Russian “asset” and that Vladimir Putin is his “case officer,” then when pressed said he was speaking “figuratively.”

His latest assertion, in a book and interviews, that Mr. Putin elected Mr. Trump is based on non-reasoning that effectively puts defenders of U.S. democracy in a position of having to prove a negative. “It just exceeds logic and credulity that they didn’t affect the election,” he told PBS.

Mr. Clapper not only exaggerates Russia’s efforts, he crucially overlooks the fact that it’s the net effect that matters. Allegations and insinuations of Russian meddling clearly cost Mr. Trump some sizeable number of votes. Hillary Clinton made good use of this mallet, as would be clearer now if she had also made good use of her other assets to contest those states where the election would actually be decided.

Mr. Clapper misleads you (and possibly himself) by appealing to the hindsight fallacy: Because Mr. Trump’s victory was unexpected, Russia must have caused it. But why does he want you to believe that he believes what he can’t possibly know?

There’s been much talk about origins. Let’s understand how all this really began. James Comey knew it was unrealistic that Mrs. Clinton would be prosecuted for email mishandling but also knew it was the Obama Justice Department’s decision to make, own and defend. Why did he insert himself?

The first answer is that he expected Mrs. Clinton to win—and likely believed it was necessary that she win. Secondly he had a pretext for violating the normal and proper protocol for criminal investigations. He did so by turning it into a counterintelligence matter, seizing on a Democratic email supposedly in Russian hands that dubiously referred to a compromising conversation of Attorney General Loretta Lynch regarding the Hillary investigation.

Put aside whether this information really necessitated his intervention. (It didn’t. This is the great non sequitur of the Comey story.) Now adopted, Russia became the rationale for actions that should trouble Americans simply on account of their foolishness.

Think about it: The FBI’s original intervention in the Hillary matter was premised on apparent false information from the Russians. Its actions against the Trump campaign flowed from an implausible, unsupported document attributed to Russian sources and paid for by Mr. Trump’s political opponents. CONTINUE AT SITE