RUTHFULLY YOURS

The tax-cut bill is the beginning of the end of the Cult of Victimization. With its passage, the Republican majority in Congress, however tenuous, has scored its first (and only) major legislative victory, handing president Trump and the American people an early Christmas present. That it was passed without a single opposition-party vote in either house should tell you all you need to know about the socialist ethos that has seized control of the criminal organization masquerading as a political party known as the Democrats.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/21/with-dignity-trump-crosses-the-delaware/

As it happens, this gift—to all Americans, not just the “rich” and “corporations,” as the socialists would have you believe—nearly coincides with Washington’s famous surprise attack on the sleeping Hessian mercenaries in 1776. While the Democrats were not caught off-guard to quite the same extent as the frozen German soldiers, they were just as thoroughly routed, as you can tell from the bitter denunciations coming from such veteran party apparatchiks as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), along with their party mouthpieces, such as the New York Times.

Quoth Schumer: “There are only two places where America is popping champagne—the White House and the corporate board rooms, including Trump Tower.”

If not quite as sweeping and simplifying as Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 or the reforms of 1986, the bill rectifies some of our tax code’s worst distortions, with remedies such as reducing the corporate tax rate to more internationally competitive levels and eliminating Obamacare’s individual “mandate,” which financed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (passed with zero Republican votes) at IRS gunpoint.

That these two selling points were immediately decried as “tax cuts for the wealthy” and “destroying poor people’s health care” tells you all you need to know about the poverty of the Democrats’ ideological pro forma response. But then to these people, everything is the End of the World As We Know It, including rolling back Obama’s “net neutrality,” restoring state lands in Utah, and letting you keep some more of your own money. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut’s reaction was typical:

On Thursday morning, a former staffer for President Obama infamous for the Iran Deal daydreamed about the deaths of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Vice President Mike Pence. He joined the chorus of liberals attacking the tax reform bill President Donald Trump signed into law Wednesday.

“I hope this is the photo they use on the front page of the Times on the day Trump is indicted,” former Obama national security advisor and CNN contributor Dan Pfeiffer tweeted Tuesday night. Pfeiffer implied that Ryan, McConnell, and Pence would be remembered as willing accomplices to treason in the history books.As if this insult were not enough, Ben Rhodes chimed in, “And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence.”
Ben Rhodes

✔ @brhodes

And alongside the obits for Ryan, McConnell, and Pence https://twitter.com/danpfeiffer/status/943708505491456005 …
12:10 AM – Dec 21, 2017

Rhodes is infamous for his role in propping up the Iran nuclear deal. A New York Times profile on Rhodes revealed that he was a speechwriter without any foreign policy educational experience, military experience, or international experience, and yet Obama tapped him to become deputy national security advisor for strategic communications and speechwriting.

In September of this year, The Washington Post published a fake news story at the top of the front page about President Obama allegedly prodding Facebook on Russia’s role during the 2016 election. After the story ran, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg corrected the report, pointing out that Russia was not discussed at the Obama meeting.

Rhodes traveled with Obama to Lima, Peru, at the time of the meeting. He did not attend the Obama-Zuckerberg meeting in person, but likely knew a great deal about it. This separation would give him plausible deniability if called out on leaking the false story to The Washington Post. CONTINUE AT SITE

In the wake of last year’s election, a humiliated press corps was forced to reassess, to explain how it had gotten the presidential race so monumentally wrong. Conclusions: It had been too blinded by its own biases, too sheltered from Middle America. It apologized. It promised to do better.

Or not.

Yahoo News: “Meet some victims of the Trump tax bill.” Washington Post: “10 Reasons Democrats think the tax bill will be a political loser for Trump’s GOP.” New York Times: “In Tax Overhaul, Trump Tries to Defy Economic Odds.” Business Insider: “Americans have already made up their minds about the tax bill—and it looks brutal for the GOP.”

To read all this coverage, you’d be justified in believing that the entire Republican Party had been hit with a stupid stick. Its members united to jack up the taxes of millions of middle-income voters, throw the country into recession, and saddle today’s toddlers with a future debt crisis—all to enable the transfer of tax plunder to fat-cat donors. And not only did it pass this colossally idiotic policy, it did so enthusiastically, in full view of the public—guaranteeing a 2018 GOP midterm wipeout. What dimwits!

This is the Democratic line, and the media is embracing it. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi bet that the GOP would fail to enact tax reform, so they pressed their members to boycott negotiations. Instead, Republicans are delivering bigger paychecks and the prospect of accelerated economic growth, and not a single Democrat can take credit. The Democratic Party’s only path is therefore to spin an obvious GOP victory into a disaster. The press, with all its biases and insularity, once again is all in, with another attack on reality.

Nearly every story quotes a variation of Mrs. Pelosi’s line that the bill is “wholesale robbery of the middle class.” Mr. Schumer continues to claim the reform helps “only the wealthiest few.” These are Trumpian-size whoppers, which the media eagerly repeats. Yet even the liberal Tax Policy Center has acknowledged that 90% of the middle class will get a tax cut in 2018, and that the average cut will be $1,600.

USA Today was so desperate to depict the bill as a tax hike that its analysis of “5 household situations” included a childless single renter earning $1 million a year, paying $50,000 in state and local taxes, and claiming $40,000 in charitable deductions. The paper triumphantly pointed out that this downtrodden soul would pay $1,887 more in taxes. And therefore have to forgo a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.

Democrats spent months insisting that corporations would pocket their tax cuts rather than invest in their workers. The press continues to parrot this line—even as AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo and others immediately announced bonuses, pay hikes, higher starting wages, better benefits and plans for new hiring. Democrats call these PR stunts, but so what? Workers are benefiting. CONTINUE AT SITE

Something fascinating is happening in Chicago. When Barack Obama became president, the city was ebullient; he was, after all, a favorite son, and he’d promised to deliver the liberal policies beloved by Chicagoans. But now, nearly nine years later, city residents find themselves at odds with Obama over the plans for his presidential library.

In its initial bid for the right to host the library, put forth on behalf of the city, the University of Chicago offered large tracts of idyllic land in Washington Park and Jackson Park as two potential sites. Almost immediately, the people of those parks’ districts began scratching their heads. “Why not build it in one of the many blighted areas?” they asked. “Why are you taking a huge chunk of our parks?” Obama’s response was essentially an ultimatum: If the library couldn’t be built in a Chicago park, he’d take it to Honolulu or New York City.

After Obama selected Chicago and the Jackson Park site, protests began to grow. Residents of the park’s district, Woodlawn, took to local government and the op-ed pages of the city’s papers to express their fear that the project would rapidly gentrify the minority-majority area, force out longtime residents, and ruin the park’s role as a community gathering place.

In May of this year, protesters began a campaign to implore the Obama Foundation, the group overseeing the library’s construction, to sign a community benefit agreement (CBA), which would commit the Foundation to setting aside jobs for residents around the library, protecting low-income housing, supporting black-owned businesses, and strengthening neighborhood schools. The Foundation refused, and when a resident asked Obama himself to sign the agreement at a September public meeting about the library, Obama refused as well.

Rarely has such a naturally rich and scenic region become so mismanaged by so many creative and well-intentioned people.

In California, Yuletide rush hours are apparently the perfect time for state workers to shut down major freeways to make long-overdue repairs to the ancient pavement. Last week, I saw thousands of cars stuck in a road-construction zone that was juxtaposed with a huge concrete (but only quarter-built) high-speed-rail overpass nearby.

The multibillion-dollar high-speed-rail project, stalled and way over budget, eventually may be completed in a decade or two. But for now, California needs good old-fashioned roads that don’t disrupt holiday shopping — before it starts futuristic projects it cannot fully fund.

California’s steep new gasoline tax — one of the highest in the nation — has not even fully kicked in, and yet the cash-strapped state is already complaining that the anticipated additional revenue will be too little.

Now, some officials also want to consider taxing motorists for each mile they drive on the state’s antediluvian roads.

Nature this year is predictably not cooperating with California.

In most areas of the Sierra Nevada, the state’s chief source of stored water, there is not a drop of snow on the ground. The High Sierra so far this year looks more like Death Valley than Alpine Switzerland.

The last two months of California weather were among the driest autumn months on record. Unless 2018 is a miraculously wet year, California will find itself on the cusp of another existential drought.

Yet California politicians are currently obsessed with the usual race/class/gender agendas, as Sacramento broadcasts that California is a sanctuary state exempt from federal immigration laws.

Periodically, Governor Jerry Brown, in prophetic Old Testament style, offers rebukes of President Donald Trump, as Brown tours the globe as commander in chief of California.

It is probably the most important date in United States history, but to most people Dec. 23 signifies only that there are two shopping days left until Christmas.

On that date in 1783, however, a remarkable event occurred.

After victoriously leading an army for more than eight years against the mightiest military force on the planet, Gen. George Washington walked before the Continental Congress and announced, “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action …”

He had commanded an army clothed in rags, its soldiers so hungry they ate tree bark to fill their stomachs. They died from dysentery and starvation.

Here’s how author Ron Chernow describes it in his biography of the general: “There was scarcely a time during the war when Washington didn’t grapple with a crisis that threatened to disband the army and abort the Revolution. The extraordinary, wearisome, nerve-racking frustration he put up with for nearly nine years is hard to express. He repeatedly had to exhort Congress and the 13 states to remedy desperate shortages of men, shoes, shirts, blankets and gunpowder.”

Each year his army would simply disappear as their enlistments expired meaning Washington had to start training them from scratch.

After the fighting had ended and before the peace was signed, King George III of England asked an acquaintance whether Washington would remain in charge of the army or become the new nation’s monarch. When told Washington’s aim was to simply give up his power and return to his farm, the king replied, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

He resigned in Annapolis, Maryland, and immediately set out for home. For the first time in eight years Washington returned to Mount Vernon for Christmas. It would be six years before he was elected the nation’s first president and once again called away from home.

In the history of the world there are a multitude of heroic military leaders who have led successful revolts against oppressors only to seize power themselves, becoming dictators and despots.

Put simply, this government of the people and by the people exists only because George Washington voluntarily gave up his power, first as the military leader and later as its chief of state.

Yet, there is no national holiday marking the occasion. No fireworks light the skies. The calendar does not even designate Dec. 23 as a day to fly the flag.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s closed-door interview with House Intelligence Committee investigators on Tuesday did not go well for him, Fox News’ James Rosen reported in an exclusive on Wednesday.

According to congressional sources, McCabe’s answers during his seven-hour interrogation conflicted with the testimony of previous witnesses, prompting one House investigator to tell Fox News, “It’s hard to know who’s telling us the truth.”

The discrepancies have spurred Republican majority staff of the intel committee to issue fresh subpoenas next week for other Justice Department and FBI personnel.

Fox News reports that those personnel are likely to be “demoted DOJ official Bruce G. Ohr and FBI General Counsel James A. Baker, who accompanied McCabe, along with other lawyers, to Tuesday’s HPSCI session.” Ohr — whose wife Nellie worked for Fusion GPS through the summer and fall of 2016 — is set to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee later this week, as well.

The questioning on Tuesday was led by Rep. Trey Gowdy, (R-SC) with several other lawmakers participating, according to Fox News. Gowdy, in particular, has been very keen to find out whether the FBI relied on the anti-Trump dossier to secure a FISA warrant to spy on President Trump and his associates. “I want to know whether the nation’s premier law enforcement agency relied on a document that looks like the National Enquirer prepared it,” Gowdy said in October.

In what has to be a blow to the #RussiaGate crowd, the number two official in the FBI was apparently unable to cite which specific details in the dossier had been actually corroborated, after he told investigators that the bureau had verified some of the allegations. He also seemed to suffer from an attack of amnesia when asked about the Democratic funding of the dossier.

Sources close to the investigation say that McCabe was a “friendly witness” to the Democrats in the room, who are said to have pressed the deputy director, without success, to help them build a case against President Trump for obstruction of justice in the Russia-collusion probe. “If he could have, he would have,” said one participant in the questioning.

Investigators say McCabe recounted to the panel how hard the FBI had worked to verify the contents of the anti-Trump “dossier” and stood by its credibility. But when pressed to identify what in the salacious document the bureau had actually corroborated, the sources said, McCabe cited only the fact that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had traveled to Moscow. Beyond that, investigators said, McCabe could not even say that the bureau had verified the dossier’s allegations about the specific meetings Page supposedly held in Moscow.

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance. CONTINUE AT SITE

Alternative remedies like homeopathic treatments have become popular in recent years and now make up a $3 billion industry. But the Food and Drug Administration will begin scrutinizing products that could be dangerous to vulnerable populations.

Many homeopathic remedies are derived from plants and claim to treat everything from the common cold to serious diseases. But the FDA fears that these products can “bring little to no benefit in combating serious ailments, or worse — may cause significant and even irreparable harm because the products are poorly manufactured, or contain active ingredients that aren’t adequately tested or disclosed to patients,” according to FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.
In 1988, the FDA allowed for drugs that are labeled “homeopathic” to be marketed and sold without the agency’s approval, according to USA Today.

But recent issues concerning products for babies, including popular teething tablets, have led the agency to issue warnings. As a result, alternative treatments targeted at young children and those suffering from cancer, heart disease, and other serious ailments will be under heavier scrutiny by the agency.

Mark Land, the president of the American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists, is concerned that this move by the FDA will affect “the ‘vast majority’ of homeopathic remedies available in the United States, according to NPR, but Gottlieb feels it is important to “protect the public from products that may not deliver any benefit and have the potential to cause harm.”

The new guidelines will be subject to a 90-day public comment period before becoming final. CONTINUE AT SITE

‘Certain grievances about Confederate memorials are legitimate. Others are steeped in a shocking level of ignorance. And that’s the problem evident even at this distance. Far from being guided by Lincoln’s better angels in human nature, the recent behaviour of some self-appointed moral sentinels appears more inclined to attention-seeking, stirring trouble, unsettling communities, causing division, feigning distress, staging shouting matches, and not caring an iota for historical truth.”
In New York, a church removed the plaque from a tree planted on its grounds by Robert E. Lee. That same day in far-off San Diego, the bronze dedication to Jefferson Davis was stripped from the highway which bears his name. Forgiveness and historical perspective are lately in very short supply.

They swung into hushed action in early morning a few months ago, just before 1.30 a.m. on Monday, April 24. A large contingent of New Orleans police barricaded off Iberville Street and Canal Place, temporary lighting was set up, and police snipers were stationed on a parking garage and other buildings with a clear view overlooking the Battle of Liberty Place monument.[1]

Then trucks and equipment from the demolition company arrived. On each vehicle the firm’s name and logo were concealed by masking tape and cardboard, while workers had been issued with bulletproof vests, yellow helmets and bandanas which they tied across their faces to prevent identification. A cherry-picker was carefully moved into place, with a tarpaulin positioned to obstruct view of actual work, then, at about 3.00 a.m. a couple of workmen, armed with grinders, started removing the top section of the obelisk.
This essay appears in the December edition of Quadrant.
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Once that first section had been levered away then dropped on a flatbed truck, at 3.15 a.m., the New Orleans mayor’s office issued a press statement formally announcing that the Battle of Liberty Place monument was being removed, and that another three divisive public statues—of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, of General Robert E. Lee, and of General P.G.T. Beauregard—would likewise be going in weeks to come. The statement explained that private funding from unnamed sources was paying for the work, and that “details about future statue removals will not be provided to the public” for safety reasons. The city mayor, Mitch Landrieu, emphasised that the removal “sends a clear and unequivocal message” about New Orleans’s focus on celebrating “our diversity, inclusion and tolerance”. He went on:

Relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, blame or retaliation. This is not a naive quest to solve all our problems at once. This is about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile—and most importantly—choose a better future.

The Jefferson Davis statue was whisked away on May 11, followed six days later by the equestrian statue of General Beauregard. The Robert E. Lee memorial looked like a tougher proposition. Modelled on Nelson’s Column in London, the general’s statue surveyed New Orleans from atop a sixty-foot column rising from a twelve-foot earth mound in a traffic island. The media confidently predicted a delay before complex work could occur. But only two days later the city council and police moved in a lightning operation, with a crane swinging the bronze figure free of its column on May 19.

It can be baffling for Australians to fathom present efforts in America seemingly to purge certain cities and towns of Civil War-related memorials. Why are statues being removed? Is art being censored? Are unpalatable aspects of history now to be erased? Various academics and artists here worry the trend resembles political correctness taken to extremes. Matters are not clarified by a sensationalist media which has reported contentious removals without explaining the deeper history of these memorials; because most have been the symbolic focus of bitter troubles festering in their communities for generations.

Take the Battle of Liberty Place monument in New Orleans. This commemorated an attempted armed coup in 1874 by a renegade group, the Democratic White League, which was seething at the result of Louisiana’s post-Civil War elections. Comprising former Confederate soldiers, League members deemed the elections invalid because blacks had been allowed to vote and stand as candidates.

So on September 19, 1874, the 5000-strong League rode en masse into New Orleans intending to unseat the state governor, William Kellogg, and his black lieutenant-governor, Caesar Antoine, both Republicans. In a pitched fire-fight on Canal Place, the League easily defeated the outnumbered city police and state militia, who sustained over 100 casualties. The League then occupied the state house, armoury and several nearby buildings, intent on taking control of the state and installing a white Democrat leadership. But after three days they fled the city when news broke that a sizable force of federal troops was on its way.