RUTHFULLY YOURS

Earlier today, the entire Pittsburgh Steelers team showed their disrespect to the American flag, the American people, and those serving in the military by boycotting the national anthem before their game against the Chicago Bears. It was a sickening display of misplaced arrogance by multimillionaires who have forgotten that they owe everything they have — those marvelous mansions, those awesome cars, those millions in their bank accounts — to their country.

Thankfully, however, there was one Steeler who didn’t submit to peer pressure but who stood tall for his anthem and flag.

Of course, being a U.S. Army captain, an Army Ranger, and a Bronze Star recipient who served not one, not two, but three tours of duty in Afghanistan, Villanueva actually understands what it means to represent and honor that flag. The spoiled brats who call themselves his “teammates” and who make themselves believe that they’re doing something useful when they’re insulting the entire country because Trump tweeted something they disagree with can learn a lot from him. This is what a real man looks like. Watch and learn.

The Status of the American Military and Readiness Concerns

In its latest report, The New York Analysis of Policy and Government describes the attenuated strength of the American military as well as present day challenges to U.S. national security.

Editor-in-chief, attorney and radio host, Frank Vernuccio, details the impact of an underfunded military that has suffered from extensive budget cuts over the past eight years and how this has created a crisis of significant proportions, vastly underreported by the American media.

Here are a list of critical problems/issues that could hamper America’s ability to fight the multifarious threats it currently faces:

America is no longer a technological leader. Russia and China have equivalent military technology and, in some cases, more leading-edge technology outpacing U.S. advancements.
America’s nuclear superiority was eliminated by Obama’s New START treaty with Russia. While the U.S. reduced its nuclear stockpile as per the “agreement,” Moscow violated the terms of the treaty and continued to perform testing and develop new capabilities.

Note: The nuclear capability of secretive states such as Russia and China cannot be verified. It has been calculated that U.S. estimates of Chinese stockpiles could be off by a factor of 10. The capabilities of Russia and China’s clients, North Korea and Iran, is a potential massive atomic threat to America and its allies.

3. During the Cold War, Russia and China were adversaries; they are now allies.

4. Russia has aggressively moved into Eastern Europe and Latin America and has engaged in an extensive arms build-up in the Arctic. China has expanded its influence in the South and East China Seas.

5. The U.S. now lacks the industrial base to rapidly build new ships, planes and tanks and is increasingly more reliant on foreign sources for necessary materials. The use of foreign components and raw materials can lead to supply disruptions and potential sabotage.

6. Due to changes made by the Obama administration, training levels have been reduced that impair U.S. battle readiness, even reducing the deployability of pilots.

7. Hezbollah, ISIS and Al Qaeda operate in the western hemisphere and poorly protected borders have allowed sleeper cells to penetrate the U.S.

8. The increased threat of infrastructure sabotage and cyber espionage have been inadequately addressed by the U.S. government.

9. Underfunded NATO nations do not represent a stalwart bulwark against the Russian-Chinese-North Korean-Iranian axis.

10. The U.S. faces the very real threat of an EMP attack of catastrophic proportions. Such an attack may not necessarily trigger our warning systems. Other nations have hardened their grids while the U.S. has done little to prepare for the devastation of a strike that could potentially take out the electrical grid and eliminate critical infrastructure including water, electricity, telephones, computer networks, heating, air conditioning, transportation, manufacturing and banking.

11. The U.S. no longer has a military capable of covering multiple military contingencies simultaneously.

12. A great deal of American taxpayer funded research and development has been stolen by espionage by America’s enemies, particularly China.

13. It is unclear if the U.S has adequate defenses against asymmetric warfare conducted by insurgency and terrorist movements utilizing bioweapons, cyber instruments and precision-strike capabilities that could result in large-scale violence and disruption.

For more information, read the full New York Analysis of Policy and Government report below.

Janet Levy,

One of the most outrageous abuses of the Obama presidency was a scheme by which fines for corporate misbehavior by the biggest Wall Street banks were channeled into the hands of radical leftist groups that are now vehemently opposing the policies of President Trump. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars that ought to have gone to the federal treasury, but instead became a slush fund for the left.

Paul Sperry explains in the New York Post:

Wall Street might be shocked to learn it is helping bankroll the anti-Trump “resistance” movement that’s aggressively fighting policies it favors — including corporate tax cuts and the repeal of Obama-era banking and health-care regulations.

The Obama administration’s massive shakedown of Big Banks over the mortgage crisis included unprecedented back-door funding for dozens of Democratic activist groups who were not even victims of the crisis.

At least three liberal nonprofit organizations the Justice Department approved to receive funds from multibillion-dollar mortgage settlements were instrumental in killing the ObamaCare repeal bill and are now lobbying against GOP tax reform, as well as efforts to rein in illegal immigration.

An estimated $640 million has been diverted into what critics say is an improper, if not unconstitutional, “slush fund” fed from government settlements with JPMorgan Chase and Co., Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., according to congressional sources.

The payola is potentially earmarked for third-party interest groups approved by the Justice Department and HUD without requiring any proof of how the funds will be spent. Many of the recipients so far are radical leftist organizations who solicited the settlement cash from the administration even though they were not parties to the lawsuits, records show.

This should never have happened, and conservatives (including AT) were aghast at the time. Imagine if President Trump were to try to funnel fines for corporate misbehavior to the NRA or the Family Research Council. The din of complaints from every MSM outlet in the country would endanger our national hearing. Sperry lists three radical left groups that are conducting anti-Trump activities that are funded by money belonging to taxpayers.

THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA

The Hispanic-rights group strenuously protested the Republican-led “skinny” repeal of the Affordable Care Act after receiving at least $1.5 million from the Obama regime’s bank settlement funds, congressional researchers say.

The notoriously radical organization, which advocates on behalf of illegal immigrants, argued the Trump proposal would have a “harmful impact” on the Hispanic community, including stripping potentially “8 million Latinos” of medical coverage.

Note that this group, originally funded by the Ford Foundation, has recently rebranded itself, because people started realizing that an explicitly race-based advocacy organization looks bad in a race-obsessed leftist universe. Now, they are transitioning to the brand of Unidos.

A third deadline has now passed for the FBI and Justice Department to give the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed documents related to the Trump dossier. And for a third time, the bureau has not produced the material.

The dossier is a collection of what former FBI Director James Comey called “salacious and unverified” allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump campaign figures in the 2016 campaign. The Russia allegations were compiled by a former British spy, Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which is thought to have been paid for the work by wealthy supporters of Hillary Clinton. The FBI reportedly considered taking over the dossier project in the fall of 2016, when the campaign was at its height, leading Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to say the dossier matter raised “questions about the FBI’s independence from politics.”

Both Grassley and the House Intelligence Committee have been interested in learning if the FBI ever used the “salacious and unverified” dossier as a basis for requesting surveillance on anyone in the Trump circle. Those questions only intensified this week with reports that the FBI wiretapped Trump associate and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the transition period.

Four weeks ago, on Aug. 24, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the FBI and Justice Department, seeking all internal FBI reports “incorporating, relying on, or referring to” information provided by Steele, his sources, or Fusion GPS. The committee also asked for documents on any FBI or Justice “efforts to corroborate, validate, or evaluate” Steele’s information. And the subpoena sought any surveillance applications that included any information or were based on any information, provided by Steele.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes originally set a Sept. 1 deadline for production of the dossier documents. The FBI did not comply. Nunes then extended the deadline to Sept. 14. The FBI did not comply. Then Nunes extended the deadline again, to Sept. 22. Now, again, the FBI has not complied.

It is not unusual for deadlines to be extended. It is not unusual for feet to be dragged. But at some point, there will have to be a resolution to this standoff. A congressional subpoena is not something a government agency can ignore forever.

But it seems likely that the dispute will eventually rise to a higher level. Nunes is a committee chairman, but he does not speak for the entire House. In addition, he has been weakened by Democratic accusations that he leaked classified information — a matter that seems stuck in the Ethics Committee. Given that, if Nunes is to prevail in the subpoena affair, it seems likely he would have to have the support of Speaker Paul Ryan. If the speaker stands behind Nunes’ efforts, the subpoena will have more weight and be more difficult for the FBI and Justice to defy. If on the other hand, Ryan does not stand behind the chairman, the FBI and Justice might be emboldened to delay forever. (A spokesman for Ryan did not immediately answer phone and email inquiries.)

There’s a lot at stake. Nunes is currently traveling in the Middle East, so it is not clear what the next step will be, or when it will happen. But so far, the FBI and the Justice Department do not appear to be in the mood to comply with the subpoena.

Valerie Plame Wilson, the former CIA agent at the center of a Bush administration faux scandal about the Iraq war that made her a cause célèbre for liberals, tweeted a virulent anti-Semitic article Thursday morning titled, “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars”, that calls for Jews to be labeled on TV like a “warning label on a bottle of rat poison.”

Valerie Plame, image via Twitter avatar.

The article is allegedly about stopping the perceived drive to war with Iran over its nuclear program, but it actually the latest update to the ‘blame the Jews’ bigotry found in the dark corners of the hard left and hard right. The article includes the names of several Jewish political writers and activists.

America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars https://t.co/oUH7b0QPMt

— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017

Here’s a screen grab of the tweet in case of deletion:

The anti-Jewish article was written by Philip Giraldi and published by The Unz Review.

Excerpts:

I spoke recently at a conference on America’s war party where afterwards an elderly gentleman came up to me and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?”

It was a question combined with a comment that I have heard many times before and my answer is always the same: any organization that aspires to be heard on foreign policy knows that to touch the live wire of Israel and American Jews guarantees a quick trip to obscurity. Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries, meaning that no one will hear about or from the offending party ever again. They are particularly sensitive on the issue of so-called “dual loyalty,” particularly as the expression itself is a bit of a sham since it is pretty clear that some of them only have real loyalty to Israel.

…matter. A recent article in the New Yorker on stopping the impending war with Iran strangely suggests that the current generation “Iran hawks” might be a force of moderation regarding policy options given the lessons learned from Iraq. The article cites as hardliners on Iran David Frum, Max Boot, Bill Kristol and Bret Stephens.

…And I would add a few more names, Mark Dubowitz, Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine; Elliot Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations; Meyrav Wurmser of the Middle East Media Research Institute; Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War; and Frederick Kagan, Danielle Pletka and David Wurmser of the American Enterprise Institute. And you can also throw into the hopper entire organizations like The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Hudson Institute. And yep, they’re all Jewish, plus most of them would self-describe as neo-conservatives. And I might add that only one of the named individuals has ever served in any branch of the American military – David Wurmser was once in the Navy reserve. These individuals largely constitute a cabal of sanctimonious chairborne warriors who prefer to do the heavy thinking while they let others do the fighting and dying.

So it is safe to say that much of the agitation to do something about Iran comes from Israel and from American Jews…

Valerie Plame had to know what she was tweeting. Plame retweeted a virulently anti-Semitic article by a well-known bigot, which she characterized as “thoughtful.” Now she’s trying to make excuses, but they don’t wash.

The article by Phillip Giraldi itself contains the usual anti-Semitic tropes: Jews are guilty of dual loyalty; they control politicians, the media and entertainment; they want the US to fight wars for the country to which they have real allegiance– Israel; they are dangerous to America. Giraldi has been pushing this garbage for years and Plame is one of his fans.

But this particular article goes much further in its neo-Nazi imagery. It advocates that the

“The media should be required to label [Jews like Bill Kristol] at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up … That would be kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison –translating roughly as ingest even the tiniest little dosage of the nonsense spewed by Bill Kristol at your own peril.”

In other words, Jewish supporters of Israel, like Kristol and me, should have to wear the modern day equivalent of a yellow star before we are allowed to appear on TV and poison real Americans. Nice stuff that Plame was retweeting and characterizing as thoughtful.

This was not the first time Plame retweeted Giraldi’s garbage. In 2014, she retweeted one of his screeds with the following notation: “Well put.” And after tweeting the current anti-Semitic article she described it as: “Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish. Ugh.” Nor is this the only time that Plame has re-Tweeted other nonsense from the bigoted platform this piece came from – a platform of which she has pleaded ignorance. According to journalist Yashar Ali, Plame has tweeted at least eight other articles from the same website since 2014. Sounds like she is into some strange websites.

I actually read the Philip Giraldi article before I was aware of the Plame tweet. I read it on a neo-Nazi website, where Giraldi’s articles are frequently featured. That’s where Giraldi’s articles belong – on overtly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites. For Plame, a former CIA operative, to claim that she was unaware of the anti-Semitic content of Giraldi’s article is to blink reality. Plame had to know what she was doing, since she was aware of Giraldi’s bigotry. Her apologies ring hollow. Her true feelings were revealed in what she said before she realized that she would be widely condemned for her original re- Tweet. She must now do more than apologize. She must explain how she came upon the article? Who sent it to her? Does she regularly read bigoted website? Why is she reading and re-Tweeting a known anti-Semite? What are her own personal views regarding the content of the Giraldi’s article.

The Plame incident reflects a broader problem about which I have written [A new tolerance for anti-Semitism, by Alan M. Dershowitz, published by Gatestone Institute, 2017].There is a growing tolerance for anti-Semitism. Even when some people themselves do not harbor these feelings, they are willing to support those who do, as long as the anti-Semites are on their side of the political spectrum. This is an unacceptable approach, especially in the post-Holocaust era. Unfortunately, Valerie Plame is the poster child for this growing tolerance. She must be called out on it, as must others who follow the same path of bigotry.

Robert Mueller’s sprawling special-counsel investigation is playing hardball.

It was not enough to get a search warrant to ransack the Virginia home of Paul Manafort, even as the former Trump campaign chairman was cooperating with congressional investigators. Mueller’s bad-asses persuaded a judge to give them permission to pick the door lock. That way, they could break into the premises in the wee hours, while Manafort and his wife were in bed sleeping. They proceeded to secure the premises — of a man they are reportedly investigating for tax and financial crimes, not gang murders and Mafia hits — by drawing their guns on the stunned couple, apparently to check their pajamas for weapons.

Mueller’s probe more resembles an empire, with 17 prosecutors retained on the public dime. So . . . what exactly is the crime of the century that requires five times the number of lawyers the Justice Department customarily assigns to crimes of the century? No one can say. The growing firm is clearly scorching the earth, scrutinizing over a decade of Manafort’s shady business dealings, determined to pluck out some white-collar felony or another that they can use to squeeze him.

You are forgiven if you can recall only vaguely that supposition about Trump-campaign collusion in Russian espionage against the 2016 election was the actual explanation for Mueller’s appointment as special counsel. To the extent there was any explanation, that is. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee, did not comply with the regulations requiring a description of the crimes Trump’s Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate, purportedly necessitating a quasi-independent special counsel.

The way it’s supposed to work, the Justice Department learns of a crime, so it assigns a prosecutor. To the contrary, this Justice Department assigned a prosecutor — make that: 17 hyper-aggressive prosecutors — and unleashed them to hunt for whatever crime they could find.

If you sense that this cuts against the presumption of innocence, you’re onto something. Because of that presumption, coupled with such other constitutional rights as the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable police searches, prosecutors are supposed to be measured in the use of their awesome powers, to employ only as much compulsion as seems appropriate under the circumstances. You don’t get a search warrant when a subpoena will do; if you have to get a warrant, you don’t do a covert pre-dawn entry when ringing the bell in the daytime will easily get you in the door.

In various places, our law reflects this common sense. For example, in applying for a wiretap authorization, besides describing the precise crime it suspects, the Justice Department must satisfy the judge that less intrusive techniques for obtaining evidence of similar quality have been attempted, or would be certain to fail if tried. (See section 2518(b) and (c) of the federal penal code.) The point is to instruct investigators that they must exercise restraint. The prosecutorial privilege to act “under color of law” comes with the duty to respect the rights the law guarantees.

Law enforcement is hard and sometimes dangerous work. Thus, there is leeway for officials to make errors in judgment. Without that leeway, they would be too paralyzed to do their jobs, and there would be no rule of law. But when prosecutors and investigators go way overboard just because they can, it is not law enforcement. It is abuse of law-enforcement power in order to intimidate.

There is no other way to interpret the brass-knuckles treatment of Manafort, a subject in a non-violent-crime investigation who is represented by counsel and was cooperating with Congress at the time Mueller’s Gang of 17 chose to break into his home. Did they really think they couldn’t have gotten the stuff they carted out of Manafort’s residence by calling up his well-regarded lawyers and asking for it? After he had already surrendered 300 pages of documents to investigative committees?

Besides scaring the bejesus out of him with the search warrant, prosecutors reportedly also told Manafort that they intend to indict him. Must mean they have a case, right? So, if Manafort is such a threat to obstruct justice that they needed to break into his home and grab the evidence before he could destroy it, then why hasn’t he been arrested yet? I mean, how could Mueller responsibly allow so dangerous a criminal to walk the streets?

The insurance commissioner for the state of Illinois announced that health insurance customers in the state will see premium increases average 35% in 2018.

Washington Free Beacon:

The four insurers serving the individual market in Illinois are Celtic Insurance Company, CIGNA HealthCare of Illinois, Health Alliance Medical Plans (HAMP), and Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC). Humana has announced earlier this year it was leaving the Illinois exchange.

For Obamacare’s lowest silver-plan, the four insurers are requesting a range of 15 to 43 percent in premium hikes, coming to an average of 35 percent.

A 21-year-old nonsmoker on the lowest cost silver-plan with Celtic Insurance can expect to see premiums of $315.33. For those with Cigna coverage, an individual in this category could expect to see a range of premiums of $448.97 to $344.23. Individuals with HAMP coverage can expect their premiums to go up from a range of $423.96 to $446.71. Those covered by HCSC can expect premiums to increase from a range of $358.46 to $520.94.

For those purchasing the second-lowest silver plan, the commissioner says many counties will see increases of more than 40 percent.

In October of last year, the Obama administration announced that premiums for 2017 would rise by double-digits. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, rate increases are a result of the increasing number of insurers experiencing losses on the exchanges.

“Years before the Trump administration came to office, Obamacare’s double-digit rate increases and onerous mandates have been squeezing the pocket books of the American people,” a spokesperson at the Department of Health and Human Services said.

“Americans are once again facing skyrocketing costs and plummeting choices because of Obamacare’s fundamental failures,” the spokesperson said. “Congress should bring relief to American families and end the Obamacare nightmare once and for all.”

Are these rate increases going to be typical nationwide? Those states with more insurance companies selling policies will see smaller increases, while those states where consumers have fewer options will probably see increases higher than an average of 35%. The key, as in any market, is competition. It’s not rocket science.

The Republican bill that Congress may vote on next week does not address the lack of competition in many states. And as the DHS spokesman points out, whatever uncertainty there is among insurance companies because Obamacare reform is up in the air pales in comparison to the fundamental and continuing flaws of Obamacare from the day it was implemented. The reason Obamacare continues to fail is that insurance companies can’t make money selling Obamacare policies.

Until that issue is addressed, we will continue to see skyrocketing premium increases driving more and more people out of the market.

The natural right of an individual to speak freely has been under assault by the Left for decades. With the election of Donald Trump, the pace and ferocity of the Left’s attacks on the freedom of speech have only accelerated.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/22/what-did-the-founders-think-about-freedom-of-speech/

The urge among progressives to codify into law “hate speech” exceptions to the First Amendment—and even to repeal the freedom of speech altogether—is no longer the stuff of hushed fantasy on the Left. It is open and proudly spoken in the salons of D.C. and Berkeley. Members of the Orwellian-named Antifa movement attack anyone—from neo-Nazis to your run-of-the mill harmless conservative—who disagrees with the Left’s destructive ideology of identity politics.

Yet some speech is still considered more equal than others. Consider the media’s self-serving elevation of their right to speak over and against all other Americans. This has become hard to miss. Pompous news anchors with furrowed brows tell us in tones fraught with “concern” that President Trump’s refusal to be the media’s punching bag is something akin to third world authoritarianism. It is the stuff of a tyrant who wants to crush the press under his heel.

The typical conservative response to these attacks has been less than helpful. In some cases, they even abet the Left.

William J. Haun, a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., has penned an important essay at the Library of Law and Liberty blog that delves into these details. In the piece, he traces the feckless conservative response to the progressive rejection of free speech and attempts to shed light on the American founders’ understanding of free speech.

Haun notes that instead of arguing from a basis steeped in the American political tradition, conservatives have adopted an “absolutist” view of the freedom of speech that is fearful of “drawing principled distinctions.” “The Right…seems to find it an alluring posture given dominant cultural forces’ militant hostility to conservative views,” Haun argues.

Afraid of voicing any fundamental concerns regarding the consensus morality of the ruling class, conservatives resign themselves to make dubious utilitarian arguments that cannot possibly meet the challenge the Left has put forward. Nearly every contributor at National Review who writes on free speech, for example, regularly conflates speech that is obscene or vile with speech that is not harmful to the rights of others.

Underlying this “absolutist” rhetoric is the notion that “dissent from the dominant political and cultural orthodoxies (read: conservative views) would be protected” if “drawing content-based restrictions” was prohibited. But this is a fool’s errand. Lines will be drawn always. The real question is where such restrictions are—not if there should be any restrictions in the first place.

As Haun contends, the conservative “absolutist” position can easily descend into a deep moral relativism:

The absolutist position is akin to a compass without a magnet: Without any extrinsic source of objective value—right reason and objective truth—to allow political communities to assign worth to any speech, speech’s worth is determined only by individual perceptions, and these perceptions are informed by one’s passions. When those passions are aggregated, as has happened with Progressive dominance on college campuses, the ‘marketplace of ideas’ lacks any strength to stop a mob silencing views that do not accord with those of the dominant consumers.

Democrats claim to have a monopoly on caring for the poor and suffering, and this week the left is portraying a GOP health-care bill as an attack on society’s vulnerable. So check out the data on how ObamaCare is a tax on some low-income families.

IRS data offers insight into who paid the law’s individual mandate penalty in 2015 for not buying health insurance, the latest year for which figures are available. Spoiler alert: The payers aren’t Warren Buffett or any of the other wealthy folks Democrats say they want to tax. More than one in three of taxed households earned less than $25,000, which is roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four.

More than 75% of penalized households made less than $50,000 and nine in 10 earned less than $75,000. Fewer families paid the tax in 2015 than in 2014, yet government revenues increased to more than $3 billion from about $1.7 billion, as the financial punishment for lacking coverage increased.

These Americans are paying a fine to avoid purchasing a product they don’t want or can’t afford but government compels them to buy. Such individuals don’t suddenly have access to less expensive or higher quality medical care, but they do have less money for household expenses, which can consume a high share of income for this class of families.

The unfortunate irony is that ObamaCare destroyed the private market that offered options that in some cases made sense for these people. For example: High-deductible, limited coverage for unexpected events.

Then again, the point of this coercion was to substitute the government’s political preferences for individual judgment, while forcing the young and healthy to pay more to finance the mandated benefits that Democrats think everyone must have. This is the status quo that Senators John McCain and Rand Paul are supporting with their opposition to reform.