RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since Hillary is setting records as a sore loser harridan with he book tour, I thought this column from 2016 says it best….rsk

Who are the haters? Who are the autocrats? Who are the serial abusers of power?

Only one presidential candidate has wielded the sledgehammer of government against personal enemies.

Only one presidential candidate has exploited a spouse’s public office to exact revenge on political dissenters.

Only one presidential candidate has a quarter-century track record of taxpayer-subsidized demagoguery and class warfare.

And, as the most recent undercover investigation by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas revealed this past week, only one presidential candidate has been directly linked to a scheme to foment chaos and violence at her opponent’s rallies.

Ignore the kindly grandma with the “Stronger Together” backdrop warbling about her happy family and singing the praises of diversity and inclusion. Look beyond the carefully manufactured semblance of bipartisanship and moderation.

Remember history — or rather, “herstory.”

Hillary Clinton isn’t just a nasty woman. She’s a ruthless hatemonger devoted wholly to two corrupt pursuits while on the federal teat: tearing down and cashing in.

To clueless millennials, “bimbo eruptions” might sound like a Trumpism. But it was vintage Team Hillary’s misogynistic moniker for horndog Slick Willie’s accuser outbreaks in the 1990s.

Respect for women? This is the snarling elitist who attacked Gennifer Flowers, a paramour of her cheating husband, as a “failed cabaret singer” whom she would verbally “crucify” if she had the chance.

Just how vindictive can Crooked Grandma be? Ask the people who know her best. David Watkins, a former top administrative aide from Arkansas in the Clinton administration, laid out the then-first-lady’s central role in the crony-motivated White House travel-office firings.

The Clintons’ old pal, Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, had pushed for wholesale dismissal of travel-office staff in favor of their connected friends.

“We both know that there would be hell to pay,” Watkins informed chief of staff Thomas McLarty, if “we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady’s wishes.”

Indeed, Hill unleashed hell. Watkins was sacked under the guise of punishment for using a government helicopter as transportation to a golfing event — something that’s a privilege for presidents, not peons.

He was far from alone. Bill and Hill’s IRS (two for the price of one, don’t forget) targeted conservative think tanks and nonprofits. Bill and Hill’s FBI improperly and illegally accessed the files of countless citizens who inconveniently ruined the Clinton narrative.

And the woman who just weeks ago mauled millions of Trump supporters nationwide as “irredeemable” and “deplorable” is a pro at sweeping demonizations.

What a way to peddle books.

Hillary Clinton, the woman who lost the White House to a candidate who never competed seriously for so much as a school-board seat, took to the airwaves to slander the man who crushed her political dreams.

President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural address was “a cry from the white-nationalist gut,” the Duchess of Chappaqua proclaimed on Sunday while pitching What Happened, her brand-new, blame-all extravaganza about why her Oval Office bid crashed and burned. As she further pronounced in an audience that she granted to CBS News: “What an opportunity to say, ‘Okay, I’m proud of my supporters, but I’m president of all Americans.’ That’s not what we heard at all.”

Wrong!

In a case of he said/she said “he didn’t say,” President Trump uttered nearly verbatim the very words that Hillary accused him of not expressing. Consider these direct quotes excerpted from President Trump’s remarks, immediately after taking the Oath of Office:

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people. . . .

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. . . .

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

You will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

We Will Make America Proud Again.

We Will Make America Safe Again.

And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again.

Funny, President Trump’s inclusive, unifying inaugural address contains the words “we” 49 times, “I” thrice, and “white” exactly once: “It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.”

Donald Trump’s deal with the Democrats to raise the debt ceiling for three months and fund $15 billion in disaster relief has delighted the Dems and infuriated Republicans. “Trump got rolled!” was the refrain, said in disgust by one side and exultation by the other, since the Dems gave up nothing for the deal. The president seemed to rub salt in the Republicans’ wounds when he called the Senate minority leader and House minority leader “Chuck and Nancy.” The old NeverTrump claim that Trump is neither a true Conservative nor a Republican appeared prescient.

Leaving all that aside, the move probably will satisfy a majority of voters. The vote in the House before the meeting was 316-90, suggesting that the most democratic branch of government, and hence most accountable to the people, had an idea that such a move is what the people want. Later, the presumably more sober and judicious Senate agreed with an 80-17 vote. The old lesson of democracy is still valid: politicians succeed by giving people what they want. Ignoring vox populi is a surefire way to get tossed from office.

Raising the debt ceiling is an especially revealing moment in our democratic politics. The problem is critical: Common sense and simple mathematics tell us our runaway debt, deficits, and entitlement spending will in a few decades hit our economy like a Cat 5 hurricane. But the electorate’s fondness for these programs makes them nearly untouchable.

Nearly two-thirds of the annual budget goes to “mandatory” spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on $20 trillion of debt, along with some of the 83 social welfare programs. This spending will continue to grow as the population ages and interest costs return to normal levels. Social Security illustrates the problem. Its unfunded liability for the next 75 years is $12.5 trillion, an increase of 166% from just ten years ago. Social Security is losing money every year, $54 billion in 2016. In ten years that deficit will reach $215 billion in real dollars. Today, the “trust fund” financing the program is made up of Treasury debt, which means the feds have to borrow more money or raise taxes when the bonds are cashed in to pay recipients. It’s sort of like using one credit card to make a payment on another.

If left unreformed, programs like Social Security and Medicaid will hit the demographic wall: right behind the 75 million Boomers are nearly 76 million Millennials. Increasing longevity means that benefits for more people will be paid out for more years. We can’t grow ourselves or tax ourselves out of this looming disaster. Programs have to be reformed (higher employee contributions and retirement ages, and means-testing benefits), and more importantly, cut.

This problem is well known, amply documented, often decried, and seldom addressed meaningfully. Deficit and debt hawks blame politicians for pandering to the people, especially Democrats who think the “rich” don’t “pay their fair share,” and have secret vaults of money they’ve unjustly finagled from the people, even though the collective wealth of the country’s some 540 billionaires couldn’t fund the federal government for one year. Weak-kneed Republicans go along, afraid of their constituents and the progressive media that will Scrooge them royally every time a modest reform––such as cutting just the rate of increased spending for a program––is put on the table.

Watch the C-SPAN interview, click here.

Adam Andrzejewski discusses OpenTheBooks, a watchdog organization he founded that tracks government spending at the federal, state, and local levels.Brian Lamb’s inquiries dug into our OpenTheBooks’ mission, vision, data capture and oversight reports. It’s a robust body of work that we are very proud of – there was a lot to discuss over the course of an hour.

In the interview, we had an opportunity to tell our organization’s story from the beginning and explain the vision behind our lifelong commitment to government oversight.

Have you ever wondered how OpenTheBooks conducts its oversight? Adam Andrzejewski explained the process we use to hold government accountable.

Brian Lamb asked hard questions about our federal oversight reports. Here’s a list of our reports covered in the interview:

Ivy League, Inc. – The government’s $42 billion subsidy of the Ivy League schools. Watch the segment. Read the report.

The National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities – Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal arts and humanities grants flowing to asset-rich organizations, not the starving artist. Watch the segment. Read the report.

The Veterans Affairs Scandal Two Years Later – Spending $20 million in luxury art while sick veterans die waiting to see a doctor.
Watch the segment. Read the report.

Farm Subsidies & The Big Dogs – Millions of dollars in federal farm subsidies to urban areas where there are no farms.
Watch the segment. Read the report.

Fortune 100 Companies – $1.2 trillion in federal contracts and grants to the Fortune 100. Watch the segment. Read the report.

Lawyered Up 2017 – 36,000 federal lawyers enforcing the regulated states of America. Watch the segment. Read the FY2015 report.

Watch our interview now posted online:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?432472-1/qa-adam-andrzejewski

Will America, nine months into Donald Trump’s unexpected presidency, continue to chase its tail while a nuclear Korea looms, tax and immigration reform are pending, and the country is torn apart by identity politics—or will it return to sanity?

Presumably, special investigator Robert Mueller is focused mainly on whether former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, or ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, or members of the Trump family, or Trump himself colluded with agents of the Russian government.

Allegedly, either individually or in combination, they racketeered for money or business opportunities or for inflated honoraria—in exchange for abetting Russia’s efforts to hack information from the Clinton campaign affiliates that would vault Donald Trump to the White House.

Ostensibly, Mueller would be looking for suspicious bank deposits, sudden increases in cash spending, or any of the other tell-tale signs of quid pro quo profiteering. By extension, he would be pursuing leads that might show how such efforts actually altered the election, in a way that Barack Obama on the eve of the election—and a purportedly assured Clinton victory—suggested was impossible.

So far little seems to have turned up in nearly a year of intensive press and political probing—other perhaps than the lurid Christopher Steele/Fusion GPS file accusing Trump of criminal conspiracies along with a host of sexual perversions. But that dossier apparently was paid for by opposition candidates and even may have been purchased by the FBI. Its preposterousness and weird origins have turned attention back to the authors and financiers of this calibrated smear document.

As Mueller continues this inquiries (if the history of special counsels and investigators is any indication, the time, money, and effort expended is inversely related to the number of successful convictions), several investigations are underway on the other side of the aisle.

Unmasking the Unmaskers
The House Intelligence Committee at some point may turn over its findings to the attorney general to ascertain whether John Brennan, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and other high Obama intelligence, cabinet, and diplomatic officials were requesting covert intelligence findings on American citizens, having their names unmasked, and then leaking them to pet reporters. The Obama team’s activity apparently spiked during the 2015-2016 campaign season and may well have been directed at perceived political opponents. If ­­so, the leaking likely constituted criminal activity—and would represent a violation of government trust not seen in decades. The committee may also finally take a careful look at the Steele file to ask what exactly was the relationship between this political hit job and James Comey’s FBI—and those implications are every bit as serious as the unmasking mess.

Meanwhile, the FBI and Capitol police are scrutinizing former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her former information technology team, headed by Imran Awan and various members of his family. Imran, et. al., allegedly engaged in bank and procurement fraud, and may have been peddling classified government information.

Al-Qaeda marked the 16th anniversary of 9/11 by releasing previously unseen footage of Mohand al-Shehri, one of the hijackers aboard United Airlines Flight 175 that crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, noting that the terrorists have “longed for your beautiful lands” and find the blood of Americans “delicious.”

Al-Shehri, 22, was a Saudi who trained in Chechnya and Afghanistan months before being granted a student visa to the United States. He arrived in the U.S. four months before the attacks and trained on a flight simulator in Vero Beach, Fla.

According to the video, al-Shehri shot the statement April 17, 2001, before he arrived in the United States that May.

The 35-minute English-subtitled video from al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab media apologizes for the video quality of the 16-year old reel, shot back in the days when terrorists released rough cuts of videocam footage instead of the highly produced films that now come from terror groups’ studios.

It begins with a few minutes of archive footage of late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before moving on to al-Shehri reading his statement. “The tyrants have led the ummah [Muslim community] to this abyss. Filth and immorality have become widespread and has deprived the hearts of sobriety and filled them with lowliness,” he said.

“So accompany me in this last will as I address you from the deck of my ship as to guide you to the shores of salvation. Perhaps your boat will hear my words of inspiration and rock with enthusiasm and you would stop in your way and change course to head for the gardens of eternity. Allah will surely replace those who have chosen to sit back and refrain from the obligation of jihad with others who will rise and act on the basis of the Islamic creed, be willing to pay the price of honor and overcome the enemies of Allah,” he continued. “Those who have chosen to sit back will then be left worthless, and their reckoning will neither be delayed nor hastened, for Allah is all-powerful and nothing can stop him from replacing you with another people.”

As the 9/11 hijacker spoke, the al-Qaeda production showed footage from 9/11, including parts of a PBS documentary, and from other attacks including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, for which late Libyan dictator Moammar al-Gadhafi accepted responsibility.

Al-Shehri vowed that “this ummah has been molded by the Quran and the sword, and neither of them can be separated from the other,” and decried the “Judaization of Palestine.”

“If we abandon this cause, do not wake up from our slumber and do not dedicate to this cause except for the little spare time that we have, the Arabian Peninsula itself will become a killing ground of Muslims, just like Palestine,” he said, stressing that jihadists need to “defeat America and the Cross.”

This time one year ago, I was touring America to see the country in the grip of the agonistic election campaign and to prepare, like other foreigners before me, to write a book. I had only one afternoon in New York. I also had a remarkable guide, a friend who had spent his childhood weekends—before the city descended into the criminal madness of the 1970s—getting on the train from suburban Connecticut and tramping around Manhattan with his friends. https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/11/debasing-memory-911/

We grabbed a cab at Grand Central in the morning and travelled all the way to the Battery, marveling at the gleaming buildings in New Jersey. Then we spent all day walking back to 42nd Street, through an almost empty city—it was Labor Day weekend. The only queue we saw was a long, spindly, but seemingly funereal procession of very pretty girls. I crossed the street to ask them why they were all lined up and seeming so morose only to be told the obvious: It was a casting call for models. I’m no more used to Manhattan than anyone else…

We only spent significant time in two places. The first was the Empire State Building, which felt like a tourist trap. I felt compelled to go up to the top, and it’s worth thinking about what this iconic building reveals about New York—but it’s not important right now. The other place was the World Trade Center site and the memorial to the 9/11 victims.

This, off course, was much more shocking. It is a heartbreak that sends the blood throbbing to the temples even now. The newfangled skyscraper is quite beautiful, but perhaps it is more impressive to Americans than to a foreigner. We did not enter to the memorial museum. Even so, we saw the twisted metal remains—the skeleton of the once-proud towers. That is the only thing that I can remember seeing there to remind me of the sheer scale of the atrocity.

I felt confusion and anger well up in me, all the more as I realized I was all alone in these emotions at this place. The Americans I saw at Ground Zero did not seem exactly to be tourists, but neither were they pilgrims. I thought I saw the heart of easygoing American law-abidingness there, and I did not like it. No one was revolted at the travesty that is Ground Zero. If you’re a student of American history, you know that public architecture died sometime around 1950, just after the Jefferson Memorial was completed.

Since then, and for complicated reasons, influential Americans of various kinds, from politicians to architects, have been busy using their prestige to plan and execute what amounts to the desecration of the great heroes of America and, accordingly, to remove from Americans their dignity as citizens. The Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial is a fearful joke, recalling Communism, as it does. The Dwight Eisenhower memorial is, thank God, never going to happen, having been taken over by madmen not fit to polish the Liberator of Europe’s boots. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the great, world-spanning war president of American history, has not fared significantly better. I am told American veterans treat the Vietnam memorial as sacred, which is altogether fitting and proper, but the memorial is no more fitting to the war or to the country than the reception of the returning soldiers was. I will not talk about the other war memorials. A conspiracy of incompetence and ignobility has robbed the American people of what ought to be the necessary focus of their reverence.

Then the 9/11 memorial happened. The efforts of two generations of influential people humiliating the public memory reached their apex and betrayed the need to memorialize the most shocking attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Now there’s a black marble hole in the ground where one of the towers stood, and along its perimeter, water running down there endlessly, one supposes to symbolize the void where patriotism should be. Names are written into the marble on the edge. There’s a paved park around it. A few benches. A few trees. Everything screams, “Relax, nothing to see here. Carry on! Nothing more than tragedy happened here.” But it wasn’t a tragedy. It was an outrage.

The people; the parties; the politicians; the influential clever speakers on the radio, TV, and Internet—none of them seem to care much about this matter. What tremendous effort of the will would it take to raise a scandal so that Americans remember they deserve much better than this and that they owe more to the dead?

The Obama rapid response team quickly swung into action against the latest Republican move on immigration last week. The new policy was “wrong.” It was “self-defeating.” It was “cruel.” It wasn’t “required legally,” but was “a political decision.”

Only two things were unusual about this strong Democratic pushback: Barack Obama was no longer in office at the time — and yet all the above responses came from the former president himself.

If the 2016 presidential election seems like a never-ending contest, with vanquished Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton constantly relitigating the campaign and criticizing the man who ultimately bested her, the tug-of-war between President Trump and his immediate predecessor has been just as intense.

“He is like our president-in-exile,” joked a Democratic operative who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the former president. “His profile makes sense, because while we Democrats and really the whole country owe President Obama a lot, he does have some things to answer for in terms of our current situation” with Republicans controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

What merited Obama’s latest statement against his successor was Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama executive order put in place to shield young illegal immigrants from deportation when Congress declined to pass immigration legislation the former president supported. The announcement that it would be phased out after six months, with Congress given an opportunity to pass legislation replacing it, was made by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a leading opponent of Obama’s immigration policies as a Republican senator from Alabama.

An Obama-era predecessor of Sessions’ was quick to rebuke the current attorney general for calling DACA “an ‘open-borders policy’ that admitted ‘everyone.’ ”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder has emerged as a front man of sorts for his former boss President Barack Obama’s unprecedentedly activist post-presidency. (AP Photos)

“To the contrary,” former Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 6, “it was a beacon of hope for a narrowly defined group who crossed our borders before they could have fully understood what a ‘border’ was.”

Holder wasn’t done. “States must resist Trump’s inevitable deportation efforts,” he continued. “The private sector must come together to defend its employees. Americans must raise their voices — and use their ballots.”

Obama and Holder remain partners in an effort to persuade Democratic voters to do just that. This involves playing defense when Obama policies are attacked by the new administration, and also offense as they try to elect Democrats, especially in races that will influence redistricting after the 2020 census.

One of those efforts is getting an assist from left-wing billionaire George Soros, who spent half a million dollars on ads into a district attorney race in Texas in which a Democrat challenger beat the Republican incumbent. That has prompted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to tell other Republicans that they need to “wake up” to what Obama and others are up to.

Holder has emerged as a front man of sorts for his former bosses’ unprecedentedly activist post-presidency. Before Obama even left office, Holder launched the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a tax-exempt 527 political action committee that bills itself as “an organization of Democratic leaders enacting a comprehensive, multi-cycle Democratic Party redistricting strategy over the next 5 years and beyond.” The group will also support legal challenges and ballot initiatives as they try to wipe out what they argue is an unfair Republican advantage.