RUTHFULLY YOURS

The spirit of the times has opened the floodgates of long-suppressed heartache. Victimized women are thus coming forward a decade or more after being abused by this political don or that show-biz celeb — who, in Al Franken’s case, could be the same guy.

It is vital that we hear their stories. There should be no expectation, though, of a courtroom reckoning. While prosecution is practically impossible, that doesn’t absolve the culprits. Public office is a public trust, and weighing fitness for it is a matter of everyday discernment, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. You know this when the un-convicted sociopath, fresh off his second or third harassment arrest, shows up on the doorstep looking to take your daughter out. Do you really need a jury to decide that one for you?

No, they’ll never stand trial, but Franken should go away, and Roy Moore should stay away.

No sooner had yet another Moore accuser come forward than did Senator Franken’s infamia burst on the scene. True to the way these things go now, the Minnesota Democrat’s scandal had worsened by evening when a second harassment complainant (citing verbal rather than physical abuse) emerged. Past being prologue, by the time you read this, there are apt to be more victims and more outed predators.

Felony Sexual Battery
The freshet of commentary about Moore, Alabama’s Republican Senate candidate, has continued for a week. We are all too familiar with the anguish of his accusers and the difficulty — probably, the impossibility — of proving their claims, some of which stretch back 40 years.

The Franken allegations, leveled by newscaster and model Leeann Tweeden, are at once less abominable (a creepy kiss during a rehearsal and a grope while she was asleep) but more certain (there is photographic evidence of the grope). Franken garnered some sympathy by a prompt apology, but he is playing out a shopworn stratagem. When evidence is equivocal or in the nature of a “he said, she said,” you deny — as Moore has, and as Franken has regarding the forcible kiss (“I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit the same way” as Ms. Tweeden). But where the evidence is incontestable, don’t contest it — no point fighting an authentic picture, but saying “I’m sorry” might convince the credulous that you really are.

Does overwhelming evidence equate to a slam-dunk conviction? No. As with Moore, the case against Franken is too stale for prosecution.

The last thing the world needs is another opinion on the Roy Moore scandal, so I will spare you my revelatory and game-changing lowdown on the whole thing.https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/16/moore-is-yet-to-come-in-2018/

I will, however, say this: If you think this is bad, just wait until 2018.

By this time next year, the Moore story will seem like one of those weightless, superfluous amuse-bouche concoctions the server gives you courtesy of the kitchen, which always turns out to be more of a vanity project of the chef than anything intended to satiate you. Yet it arouses your appetite, and after you’ve gorged yourself on multiple courses, shifting uncomfortably in your chair from overindulgence, cursing your excess yet gratified by the experience, the amuse bouche is long forgotten. But it was the first bite of the feast.

If Doug Jones wins the Alabama senate seat next month, Democrats will need two more pick-ups next year to take control of the U.S. Senate. (According to the recent Cook Political Report, just two Republican seats are now listed as toss-ups: Arizona, a state Trump won, and Nevada, a state Trump narrowly lost. The rest are in safe R states.) Although the outlook for Democrats to regain control of the House of Representatives is bleaker—“if Democrats were to hold all of the seats we rate as leaning towards them, all 12 of the Toss Ups, and half of the seats in Lean Republican, they would still fall two seats shy of a majority,” according to an October 6 analysis in Cook—Dems are now emboldened by big wins in Virginia earlier this month and the dumpster fire that is now the GOP panicking over Roy Moore’s stubborn candidacy.

While most normal people view the Roy Moore scandal as another example of America’s rotting political sewer, Democrats are downright giddy about what they think is an early Christmas present. Party operatives—and their minions who work in the media—are undoubtedly plotting how to replicate this debacle, resuscitate long-dormant rumors about sexual misconduct, lure victims out of the shadows and into Gloria Allred’s loving talons, er, arms. No yearbook or shopping mall will be spared. It is but a small, if tawdry, taste of what’s to come.

There are already ominous clues about what 2018 will offer our hide-the-children electorate. Liberals are now in self-flagellation mode over how they handled serial-abuser Bill Clinton for the past 25 years. A generation raised on Clinton-worship is learning a history they probably never knew, and victims who have been vilified and ignored are finally getting some measure of justice in the court of public opinion. But don’t kid yourself; this collective mea culpa is nothing more than a way for Democrats and the media to erase their past culpability to regain future credibility. How can they attack Republican offenders next year if they defended Clinton for so long? They learned a lesson when voters seemed largely anesthetized to allegations against Donald Trump, and the media will not let that happen again. So, now that they have offered up their phony apologies—and have an arsenal of tweets and articles to prove their repentance—the left has immunized itself against criticism. It’s about as cynical a move as you can get.

Hell hath no fury like a swamp creature scorned, and that ferocity was trained almost exclusively these past weeks on California House Republicans. The attack was a case study in standing up to entrenched special tax interests, and a lesson to other Republicans in the virtues of having the backbone to go on offense.

The House GOP passed its tax-reform bill on Thursday, and special medals of valor go to the 11 of 14 California Republicans who voted in support. The lobbyist brigade had joined with Democrats to target the Golden State delegation, seeing it as their best shot at peeling off enough Republicans to kill the bill. The assault was brutal, dishonest and all-out.

The National Association of Realtors, incensed that the nation’s millionaires might face limits on their mortgage-interest deduction, staged a “fly-in” to Washington, sending dozens of real-estate agents to harass Californians. The California Association of Realtors took out full-page ads in state and national newspapers, accusing Republicans of “punishing” state homeowners. National and California-based housing and building associations staged press conferences, online ad campaigns, petition drives—targeting everyone from Palmdale’s Steve Knight to the Central Valley’s David Valadao.

Gov. Jerry Brown unleashed on state Republicans, calling them “sheep” for supporting an end to most state and local tax, or SALT, deductions, and sending them letters deploring the tax hit on residents of high-tax California. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused them of “looting” the state. Her Senate counterpart, New York’s Chuck Schumer, warned of “political fallout” that would be “catastrophic.” Liberal groups, super PACs and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee unfurled a digital and TV ad blitz, charging the GOP with “eliminating middle-class tax deductions” to help the wealthy.

This is the reward for attempting to simplify the tax code—the forces of distortion scurry to protect their privileges. Democrats had hoped Republican infighting would tank tax reform. But as the GOP kept marching, the left and special interests instead turned to picking off blue-state Republicans with scare campaigns about mortgage interest and SALT. Most of the New York and New Jersey GOP contingencies quickly caved, which left the Californians to field all the incoming fire. Had they defected in the same manner as their Northeastern colleagues, the bill would have failed.

Their resistance instead shows the virtues of aggressively arguing the tax-reform case. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Ways and Means member Devin Nunes are Californians themselves, and they worked to keep the delegation armed against the disinformation. The press, for instance, continued to parrot Realtor-fed numbers about super-high house values, even though much of the state outside pricey San Francisco and Los Angeles would not be hit. In Central Valley districts like Mr. Nunes’s, approximately 98% of homes aren’t worth enough to be subject to the $500,000 proposed principal limit on the mortgage-interest deduction. Members made a point of repeating this. Some also reminded middle-class constituents that the left often notes the mortgage deduction mostly benefits wealthier Americans. CONTINUE AT SITE

Yesterday, a male prisoner serving a three-to-four-year sentence for drug offenses sued the Massachusetts Correctional Institution, demanding, among other things, that the state transfer him to a female correctional facility because he suffers from gender dysphoria.

In his lawsuit, filed by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders under the pseudonym Jane Doe, Doe alleged violations of his federal and state constitutional rights to equal protection and due process, as well as his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. All of Doe’s legal theories are dubious, but none so much as his disability claim under the ADA.

Passed in 1990, the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of a disability, and also requires employers and public entities — including prisons — to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled individuals. But in passing the ADA, Congress explicitly provided that “the term ‘disability’ shall not include (1) transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders.” And Doe’s complaint specifically says that his “doctor ultimately diagnosed Jane Doe with Gender Identity Disorder, or transsexualism.”

Given the clear statutory language, a court should quickly toss out Doe’s ADA claim. But that is not what happened the last time a man suffering from gender dysphoria brought a disability-discrimination claim under the ADA. Rather, when Kate Lynn Blatt sued his employer in 2014 under the ADA, the case lingered until May 2017, when federal district-court judge Joseph F. Leeson Jr. refused to dismiss the lawsuit, and instead held:

It is fairly possible to interpret the term gender identity disorders narrowly to refer to simply the condition of identifying with a different gender, not to exclude from ADA coverage disabling conditions that persons who identify with a different gender may have — such as Blatt’s gender dysphoria, which substantially limits her major life activities of interacting with others, reproducing, and social and occupational functioning.

The court’s reasoning is illogical: As Ed Whelan asked at the time, “We’re supposed to believe that it is ‘fairly possible’ to read gender identity disorders to mean only gender identity (‘identifying with a different gender’) and not to extend to disorders?” Because the parties in the Blatt case settled shortly after Judge Leeson refused to toss out the plaintiff’s case, a higher court will not have the opportunity to correct the district court’s flawed analysis.

European Islamist scion Tariq Ramadan was banned from the U.S. by the Bush administration in February 2004 for his financial support of a charity that funded terrorist groups. In January 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overturned that ban. Clinton personally approved a visa for the controversial grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, Tariq Ramadan is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault of minors.

Hillary Clinton’s visa for Tariq Ramadan was seen as part of the new Obama administration policy of embracing more hardcore Islamists.

The New York Times reported in 2010:

Six years after using the Patriot Act to revoke the visa of a prominent Muslim academic, the United States State Department reversed itself and said Wednesday that it would no longer bar the scholar from entering the United States.

The decision came in the form of an order signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. It paves the way for the scholar, Prof. Tariq Ramadan, to apply for a new visa free of the authorities’ former accusation that he had contributed money to a charity connected to terrorism.

Here’s a copy of the signed Clinton order clearing the way for Tariq Ramadan’s visa to the U.S.:

Since last month, Ramadan has been the target of multiple rape claims.

The National reports:

Mr Ramadan, who is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, has been accused of rape and sexual assault by three women in the past 10 days.

One of them, French writer Henda Ayari, says Mr Ramadan raped her in a Paris hotel room in 2012. Ms Ayari, 41, who lodged a rape complaint against the 55-year-old Swiss national on October 20, claimed that for Mr Ramadan, “either you wear a veil or you get raped”.

“He choked me so hard that I thought I was going to die,” she told Le Parisien on Monday.

Mr Ramadan is also accused of raping another woman in a hotel room in 2009. The unnamed 42-year-old, who is reported to have disability in her legs, said on Friday that the professor had subjected her to a terrifying and violent sexual assault.

A third complainant, identified as Yasmina, told Le Parisien in an interview on Saturday that Mr Ramadan sexually harassed her in 2014 and blackmailed her for sexual favours.

Mr Ramadan has denied the accusations and has filed counter-charges for libel. CONTINUE AT SITE

WASHINGTON — Both GOP and Democratic Senate leaders said they want the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) over a radio reporter saying he kissed and groped her without consent in December 2006.

In a testimonial posted today on the website of L.A.’s 790 KABC, Leeann Tweeden said she was on her ninth USO tour with comedian Franken as the headliner.

“Franken had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience,” Tweeden said. “As a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model familiar to the audience from the covers of FHM, Maxim and Playboy, I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along.”

“When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd,” she continued. “On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, ‘We need to rehearse the kiss.’ I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’ He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.”

Tweeden said he insisted on rehearsing the kiss, she finally agreed, and “he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”

“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” she said. “I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth. I felt disgusted and violated.” When they performed the skit for the USO show, she turned her head at the kiss part, she added.

“I avoided him as much as possible and made sure I was never alone with him again for the rest of the tour. Franken repaid me with petty insults, including drawing devil horns on at least one of the headshots I was autographing for the troops.”

She then found a photo from the trip in which she had fallen asleep on a C-17 flying out of Afghanistan and Franken was grabbing her breasts. CONTINUE AT SITE

Former President Barack Obama and his advisers claimed that their 2010 health insurance law would create incentives to provide better and more efficient patient care. A new study suggests that one of their bright ideas has since gone disastrously wrong.

This week the Journal reports:

The Affordable Care Act required Medicare to penalize hospitals with high numbers of heart failure patients who returned for treatment shortly after discharge. New research shows that penalty was associated with fewer readmissions, but also higher rates of death among that patient group.

The researchers said the study results, being published in JAMA Cardiology, can’t show cause and effect, but “support the possibility that the [penalty] has had the unintended consequence of increased mortality in patients hospitalized with heart failure.”

The policy went into effect in October 2012 and the new study examines hospital readmission and mortality rates both before and after the penalties were in force. It’s just one study, generated by the experiences of 115,245 Medicare patients hospitalized for heart failure at 416 hospitals between 2006 and 2014. But the results are disturbing:

One in five heart failure patients returned to the hospital within 30 days before the ACA passed. That dropped to 18.4% after the penalties. Mortality rates increased from 7.2% before the ACA to 8.6% after the penalties, or about 5,400 additional deaths a year for Medicare beneficiaries not in managed care plans.

While doctors and researchers consider whether this particular Affordable Care Act policy is killing thousands of patients, the larger question is whether ObamaCare overall is making us less healthy. The implementation of the law has coincided with bad news on U.S. mortality and life expectancy.

Last month the Society of Actuaries reported:

The age-adjusted mortality rate for 2015 was 733.1 (per 100,000), an increase of 1.2% over the 2014 rate of 724.6. This was the first year-over-year increase in the age-adjusted U.S. mortality rates since 2005, and only the seventh year-over-year increase since 1980. In fact, the only other time since 1980 that an annual age-adjusted mortality rate increased by more than 1.0% was in 1993, when the rate increased 2.3% over the 1992 rate.

Back in the early ‘90s, the U.S. was battling the AIDS crisis. Now, we face a number of health challenges, which many believe are related to diminished economic prospects and other long-term trends. Also, preliminary data for 2016 look better than the 2015 numbers, though not as good as 2014, according to the actuaries.

It may be a little early to pronounce that ObamaCare has made us sicker and is—at the margin—killing us. But given all the cost and disruption, Americans can reasonably be disappointed if it’s not making us healthier. Also, given the abundant evidence that wealthier people are healthier and the disincentives to work embedded in ObamaCare, it’s hard to be optimistic about our future health if the law remains unreformed. CONTINUE AT SITE

In the winter of ’56, Khrushchev told the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that Stalin may not have been a very nice guy. In the fall of ’17, the media began to concede that maybe Bill Clinton did abuse a whole bunch of women. And maybe those women weren’t really part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to make a bloated piggish progressive hero seem like he might not be a very nice guy.

Why are Democrats turning on the Clintons? Same reason Khrushchev turned on Stalin. They’re purging the Clintons for the same reasons that they defended them. They’re calling out Bill Clinton for his sexual assaults for the same reasons that they covered them up. It’s about power and money.

The Democrats smeared Bill Clinton’s accusers then. Now they’ll exploit them to throw the Clintons out.

The #MeToo campaign provided an opening. But if you really want to understand why the left is disavowing Bill Clinton, ignore the hashtags and look at the bigger picture.

Earlier this month, the rollout of Donna Brazile’s book raked Hillary Clinton and her campaign over the coals. The former interim DNC boss made the case that the Clinton campaign had rigged the primaries.

Brazile’s outrage at the rigging is laughable. Not only was she caught passing a debate question to Hillary, but the only reason she was allowed to replace Debbie Wasserman Schultz is that she was a Clintonista who had served as a Clinton adviser and was promoted to head Gore’s campaign.

After Hillary’s collapse, Brazile was left out in the cold. Like Schultz, she was one of Hillary’s fall girls. And unlike Schultz, she didn’t have a cozy congressional district to call her own. Her CNN contract was torn up after the debate question leak. (Though if you think CNN was actually surprised that a Clinton ally leaked it to the Clintons, you’re also shocked that there’s gambling going on at Rick’s Cafe Americain. CNN had disavow Donna who then had to disavow Hillary. Now the Dems are disavowing the Clintons.)

Brazile’s book tour was Act 1 in purging the Clintons from the Dem establishment. Talking about Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment and abuses is Act 2. And the odds are very good that there’s an Act 3.

Why get rid of the Clintons? Let’s look at what the First Grifters have been doing to the Dems.

In May, Hillary rolled out Onward Together. The new SuperPAC was supposed to fundraise for lefty groups. But the groups don’t actually appear to be getting the cash.

Understandable. The flat broke Clintons always have lots of bills to pay and private jets to book. And good chardonnay doesn’t come cheap. A 1787 vintage Chateau d’Yquem runs to $100K a bottle.