RUTHFULLY YOURS

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA administrator, is the top target of the anti-Trump lynch mob. He’s enduring daily attack pieces in the media and threats of violence against him and his family. It’s hard to think of any cabinet member — current or former — who has been subjected to more vitriol and vilification than Pruitt, and he’s been on the job for less than a year. Suddenly, everything from overlooked Superfund sites to the Flint water crisis to “toxic” pesticides are Pruitt’s fault, which of course means he is poisoning children and destroying the planet.

According to the EPA inspector general’s office, Pruitt has received “four to five times the number of threats” that his predecessor, Gina McCarthy, did. The level of concern for Pruitt’s safety is so deep that agents are being added to his round-the-clock security detail. In a recent Bloomberg News interview, Pruitt said, “The quantity and the volume — as well as the type — of threats are different. What’s really disappointing to me as it’s not just me — it’s family.”

Why are Pruitt and his family in the crosshairs? “What is different is that the Democrats have whipped up their base into a frenzy against him,” Steve Milloy, a longtime EPA critic, told me. “It’s not surprising that he’s getting even more threats than usual.”

And it isn’t just left-wing environmental extremists who are inciting or excusing calls to assassinate a key cabinet member. Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican governor of New Jersey and EPA chief under President George W. Bush, told CNN that “if he has had enough serious death threats, then he shouldn’t have proposed the deep cuts to the EPA budget.”

So, to borrow a line from the musical Chicago, he had it comin’, or so sings the chorus of swamp creatures threatened by Pruitt’s systematic disassembling of one of the federal government’s most notoriously rogue and punitive agencies. In a column for SFGATE, a sister site for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mark Morford suggested the death threats might be from “environmental advocates, or teachers, or peace activists, or lovers of life and humanity and nature, or distraught mothers, worried that Pruitt’s actions will endanger the lives of their children.” Morford concludes that “when you send death threats to the world and all who live on her, the world will, quite naturally, send them right back.”

Some Hollywood celebrities are also riding the Pruitt Hate Train; actor Mark Ruffalo routinely posts threatening tweets about the EPA chief. As Hurricane Irma took aim at the Florida coast in September, Ruffalo suggested that hurricane victims “direct some of your rage and loss” at “climate deniers like Scott Pruitt.” This week, Ruffalo said this about extreme weather events:

The country is shocked, shocked that the DNC colluded with the Hillary campaign to anoint her as their nominee. In her 2015 caper, Clinton made a backroom deal with the DNC. But in 2008, Barack Obama combined muscular Chicago-style clout with community organizing acumen to steal the nomination directly from the voters.

Obama’s illegal shenanigans in the 2008 Democrat primaries were far worse than Clinton’s – and will never be widely reported. Obama used outright election fraud and thuggery, the tried and true Chicago methods. When he got far enough, the DNC pressured Hillary’s pledged superdelegates to violate their voters’ wishes and award Obama an unearned victory.

It’s an odd experience to dig this information out of the memory hole. No one in the Democratic Party, their media, or their base cares – not about rule of law, not about fair elections. Their primaries reveal how their will to power trumps every other value. What these corrupt Democrat primaries show is that progressives want permanent power, not a functioning republic. They don’t want fair and free elections – witness their dirty attempts to overturn the last one and deprive Trump voters of their victory.

As Hillary might say, Democrat corruption, like Hollywood corruption, takes a village.

Like the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s abuses, one big dog gets punished, while the even bigger dog (Bill Clinton for sexual abuse, Barack Obama for political abuse) remains untouchable.

A documentary by Hillary supporters on Obama’s cheating and abuse was reported on Fox & Friends only in 2010; at the time of the election, no one would cover their complaints. Read about it here.

In one documentary interview, civil rights activist Helene Latimer recounts seeing an elderly woman being intimidated at the polls. “As she approached the entrance way to go into the building, one of the young men said to her, ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home because you’re not voting here today.'”

“It’s our right as Americans to be able to vote and everybody was alerted, we went to press, we went to Fox, we went to CNN, nobody wanted to hear the story (in 2008),” Gaston told Fox’s Alisyn Camerota. “Nobody wants to deal with this.”

From “How Obama Used an Army of Thugs to Steal the 2008 Democratic Party Nomination”:

… the Obama Campaign… encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stalk them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices and stop their right to vote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party are trying to torpedo the biggest tax cut since 1986. Schumer accuses GOP tax cutters of “messing up the good economy the president inherited from President Obama and hurting the middle class.” The senator must think we’re stupid. The Obama economy wasn’t “good.” It was lousy, sputtering along at a pathetic 2.1 percent, far below the 3.8 percent norm for this nation. Who got clobbered? The middle class, who had to settle for almost no increase in wages and disappointing job prospects.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act, unveiled by House Republicans on Thursday, is designed to ignite the nation’s economy, producing higher wages and more job opportunities for workers. America taxes corporations at the highest rate of any industrialized country. That drives companies overseas, sabotaging our workforce. The GOP tax cut lowers the corporate from 35 to 20 percent, to make the U.S. competitive again.

As for the middle class, they’ll benefit in two ways — from a faster growing economy and from tax breaks for individual filers. The GOP plan nearly doubles the standard deduction to $12,200 for single filers and $24,400 for married couples, and lowers most rates. It pays for those changes by eliminating certain deductions.

The impact on your wallet will depend on the deductions you’re used to taking. But a typical family earning $73,000 a year would save about $1,600 the first year.

The media began to paint Muslims as the victims of Saipov’s attack — not the dead and the wounded victims of the terrorist.

“As a Muslim committed to fighting Islamism, I appeal to you: The need for strong surveillance of Muslim communities in the West has never been greater…. Counterterrorism experts and politicians must know that far from being Islamophobic, the scrutiny is supported by Islam…. Nations seasoned in combating Islamism — most recently, Egypt…. have identified mosques as critical nerve centers for Islamism. Mosques in Egypt, for example, are monitored by the state….Islam itself demands no less.” — Dr. Qanta Ahmed, Muslim physician, Newsday.

New York has adopted, in its entirety, the European response to Islamic terrorism: Appeasement and genuflection to Islam. Historically, such behavior was required by non-Muslim citizens of Islamic states, known as dhimmis, in exchange for “protection”. The question is why American citizens, who live in the United States and not in an Islamic state, feel obliged to submit to Islam?

On October 31, Sayfullo Saipov, a Muslim immigrant from Uzbekistan, shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is the greatest!”) as he rammed his rented truck into 20 people in downtown Manhattan, killing eight and wounding twelve more. The truck-ramming attack, a terrorist tactic popularized by jihadists in Israel, then Europe, was the deadliest terror attack in New York since September 11, 2001. The response to Saipov’s attack from New York City officials, as well as the US media, displays the extent to which officials have submitted to Islamic terrorism since then, and how unquestioningly the mainstream media backs this capitulation. Americans should be extremely worried.

NY Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller said after the attack:

“This is not about Islam, this is not about the mosque he attends, there are hundreds of thousands of law abiding Muslims in New York City, who are adversely affected by things like this. It is probably a good time to say that we have seen in the aftermath of incidents like these, bias incidents, hate crimes, assaults… and anybody behind those will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”.

In fact, this attack had everything to do with Islam. Saipov was a devout Muslim, who left a note at the site of the attack making clear that he had committed the atrocity on behalf of ISIS, an organization that is, as studies have shown, nothing if not Islamic. The mosque Saipov allegedly attended had actually been under surveillance since 2005; and mosques are among the most popular places for Muslim outreach, dawa. Although the internet also plays a role in the radicalization process, a recent study showed that face-to-face encounters are even more important.

Instead of threatening New Yorkers — who have a constitutionally protected right to voice their objections to being murdered by Muslim terrorists, even if the deputy police commissioner thinks it might be “biased” to be against your own demise — with prosecution, the police deputy commissioner should have admonished them, “If you see something, say something”. Instead, he not only lied about the Islamic nature of the terrorist attack, but, through his grossly negligent remarks, enabled future attacks. Possibly, now, if people witness something suspicious, they will be afraid to speak out for fear of being labelled an “Islamophobe”, or, as in Europe, prosecuted.

Reminder: Unhinged libs are still planning to express their impotent rage at the results of the 2016 election with “Scream Helplessly at the Sky” gatherings in over two dozen cities on Wednesday. In most locations, anguished snowflakes will start screeching during the early evening hours.

Here is a list of 26 “Scream Helplessly at the Sky” events scheduled for November 8 (all times local):

1. Outside Trump Tower, Chicago: 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

2. Lubbock, Texas: (Location unannounced) 6:00 PM

3. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Long Meadow, Prospect Park, Garfield Entrance, 7:00 PM

4. Dallas, Texas: Continental Avenue Pedestrian Bridge, 6:00 PM

The campaign to sully Donald Trump’s reputation is without precedent. Of course, much of it is his own doing. It was, after all, Mr. Trump who created monikers like “little” Marco, “low energy” Jeb and “crooked” Hillary. Genius for inventing names, even those with a modicum of truth, is not appreciated by those assigned them. But, does such behavior suggest meanness? We read that some who have had business dealings with Mr. Trump claim to have been cheated. Some friends that I like and respect think he is mean. Others disagree. Is he? I don’t know; though those who know him best think he is not, but they may be biased. I don’t know the man. Once, years ago, I was introduced to him at the ‘21’ Club in New York – a matter of about thirty seconds, hardly enough time to form an opinion. On the other hand, mainstream media, along with coastal elites and Washington mandarins, have no qualms claiming the President to be a deceitful, undignified, crude, misogynist, xenophobic bigot. But, keep in mind, these are the same people who told us Ronald Reagan was a dumb movie star and that George W. Bush was a brainless spoiled brat. Perhaps partisanship plays a role? Unlike his Republican predecessors who either used humor to deflect criticism or who ignored such jabs, Mr. Trump fights back.

Politics, as has been said many times, is a blood sport – a game, at least in recent years, better played by the Left than the Right. But, Mr. Trump is a man who plays hard ball, just as do Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton. In the absence of a return to civility, which seems unlikely, we will have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like. Both Parties would do well to re-read the proverb about people in glass houses not throwing stones, but my guess is they won’t. And the media sees what it wants to see.

Mr. Trump is a manifestation of our culture and politics. He did not suddenly appear, like a Phoenix. As Hoover Institute Fellow Victor Davis Hanson wrote last May, “Critics miss the fact that Trump is not a catalyst, but a reflection of contemporary culture.” In politics, we get what we deserve.

Decency, respect, civility have withered. Historically, our culture – the civil behavior that guides our lives – was based on our Christian-Judeo heritage. Today, we live in a changed, multi-layered society. Political correctness has replaced common sense. Church attendance is down. Each year, the United States loses about 3000 churches, and about 2.7 million church members become inactive. Bricks and mortar do not make a good Christian, or a good person; but attendance encourages reflection and fellowship – important ingredients in civil society. Manners, likewise, have long disappeared. Opening car doors for women is considered sexist, as is saying, “ladies first.” Instead, pornography, graphic sex, vulgarities proliferate. Our historical culture has been subsumed by a multi-culturalism unrecognizable to prior generations. Respect is no longer innate. It is legislated, as in California’s Gender Recognition Act, while our flag is disrespected by NFL players. Patriotism today has a negative connotation. It is confused with nationalism, yet the former demands responsibility as well as love for one’s country, while the latter infers blind obeisance.

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Billionaire George Soros is the quintessential humanitarian huckster. He is the man behind the curtain who finances the radical left wing liberal agenda of the Democrat party in the United States through his disingenuous Open Society Foundation (OSF). Money buys political influence and George Soros has a lot of money to spread around. This is the way it works.

The Open Society Foundation funnels money into hundreds of smaller organizations with deceptively positive names like:

– Advancement Project

– Alliance for Justice

– Bill of Rights Defense Committee

– Center for American Progress

– Democracy Alliance

– New Israel Fund

– Psychologists for Social Responsibility

– Southern Poverty Law Center

One must enter the world of deception to fully understand what these organizations actually do. It is essential to remember that an organization with a humanitarian name does not make it a humanitarian organization. The primary focus of Soros’ Open Society Foundation and its funding goals is to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism. The long-term ambition being an internationalized globalized one-world government that globalist elites like Soros rule.

Soros’ Open Society was named after Viennese philosopher Karl Popper’s 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper believed that open societies possessed moral codes based on universal principles that benefited all mankind. Open societies recognized no ultimate truths and particularly disdained any society claiming superior cultural norms. Popper criticized the American confidence in its Declaration of Independence that boldly states “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Soros considered Popper’s greatest philosophical contribution to be his insistence that “the ultimate truth remains permanently beyond our reach.”

Mr. Bush has shown that the Republican establishment, variously frightened, paralyzed, or rendered incapable of rational judgment by political correctness, can be every bit as damaging to the cause of freedom as the cultural Marxists are.

“We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity.” (NPR, Oct. 19, 2017) So said former president George W. Bush in his recent criticism of fellow Republican, President Trump. The idea that, by their very nature, all human beings desire freedom is an unquestioned premise of modern liberalism. It underlay Mr. Bush’s efforts at nation-building in Iraq, and it has underlain a century and a half of U.S. immigration policy. And it is false.

According to Freedom House, 40 per cent of the world’s population today is free, while 60 per cent is only partly free or unfree. The Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, shows a map of the world in which economic freedom is confined to a just handful of countries, mostly in the English-speaking world and northern Europe. Freedom is the exception in the world today, as it has been throughout human history.

By “freedom” I mean the absence of physical compulsion—from three specific sources, foreign enemies, one’s fellow citizens, and one’s own government. As for the first, most peoples throughout history probably have resisted subjugation by other peoples. The desire for freedom in this sense is likely near-universal.

But when it comes to relations with one’s fellow citizens or one’s own government, the record suggests that many peoples have tolerated a great deal of physical compulsion—of women, for example. Saudi women are still prohibited by law from driving an automobile. It defies belief that Muslim women would have quietly tolerated subjugation by men for over a thousand years if the desire for freedom were inborn.

We are in a veritable war of competing visions. The strife inside the two parties is irrelevant—when compared to the larger existential war for the soul of America.

Like it or not, Donald Trump in fits and starts has chosen not to accommodate the progressive vision. But in most unlikely fashion he leads the fight against it.

Those who found him too crude, who saw his tweets as too adolescent, and who vowed never to vote for such an antithesis of conservative and family values have all weighed in.

So have those who are embarrassed that Trump—as did Obama during the Henry Louis Gates fiasco, the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, and the Ferguson shooting and subsequent riots—quite inappropriately weighs in on current criminal investigations and trials.

And yet, warts and all, the Trump presidency on all fronts is all that now stands in the way of the completion of what was started in 2009.

The Age of Intolerance

We are no longer in the late 1950s era of liberal reform. It is now a postmodern world of intolerance and lockstep orthodoxy.

There are few Berkeley-like free speech areas on college campuses any more. Students charged with particular crimes enjoy little due process. There is no Joan Baez-style acknowledgement of the tragedy of good Southern poor men fighting for an awful cause. No one acknowledges tragedy anywhere at all; it has all become melodrama. We may yet see Joan Baez’s version of The Band’s ballad or Shelby Foote’s commentaries in Ken Burn’s epic Civil War documentary Trotskyized.

The media is not disinterested. Networks such as CNN see their role actively on the barricades, devoted to the higher cause of destroying the Trump presidency, not as reporting its successes or failures. The danger to free expression and a free media is not even Trumpian bombast. It is the far more deliberate and insidious transformation (begun in full under Obama) of journalism into a progressive ministry of truth. Even if he wished, Trump could not take away what the professional press already surrendered voluntarily.