RUTHFULLY YOURS

Some call it reframing; others put a coat of paint on it and call it a new car. Basically, it is the process by which a deception is perpetrated simply by saying thus is so and pointing to the shiny surface as proof.

This is once again happening with the egregious David Horowitz. Several years ago, I had the unexpected misfortune of having to experience the true nature of David Horowitz due to his spearheading a disinformation campaign against me and my 2013 book American Betrayal. This campaign of lies would end up including nearly two dozen pieces by a cabal of writers, the first of which I rebutted, perhaps ironically, at Breitbart News. (Other rebuttals, too, for that matter, ran at Breitbart when other websites refused me space.) For new readers, American Betrayal, in part, is about how Moscow-directed and -loyal communists and their accomplices were secretly able to infiltrate and influence the US and other great powers into cataclysmic acts that entrenched, enriched and expanded the Soviet empire abroad; at home, they rotted out the Republic long before “the Sixties” ever began — all, according to “court history” ever since, under the banner of “victory” in World War II and the Cold War. It seems fair to say this is not a subject that a normal anti-Communist, especially ex-Communist, would lose his mind over.

In the several years since (and during) this shockingly sustained attack-campaign, I also began to learn how Horowitz has shaded his own biography to obscure the proximity of his early life to the KGB in America — an alarming choice for one self-billed and trusted as a guide to domestic Communist affairs.

There. Disclaimer done. Where was I?

The latest Horowitz-reframing appears in a paint-job-superficial Washington Post piece headlined: “How a ‘shadow’ universe of charities joined with political warriors to fuel Trump’s rise.”

The Post’s premise — the centrality of Horowitz in that “shadow” universe supposedly fueling the rise of Donald Trump — could not be more wrong, or more absurd. For one thing, Trump’s lift-off was in 2015, sans charities or shadow-universe thereof. Where was Horowitz? “This column is not an endorsement of Donald Trump or any candidate,” Horowitz wrote on December 22, 2015. (Full disclosure: My own endorsement of Trump ran at Breitbart News on December 26, 2015; then again, I am not a tax-exempt charity.) Soon thereafter, as Trump swept toward the nomination, Horowitz would start piggybacking onto Breitbart News with a series of look-at-me-Trump op-eds. At the time, it struck me as a naked effort to catch up with the Trump Train before it pulled into Washington without him.

This is somewhat interesting on different levels. One would think, as a universe-creator and all that, Horowitz’s own Frontpagemag.com was the center of that supposed Trumpian firmament; at least, if Horowitz really was, as the Post claims, the “intellectual godfather to the far right.”

For some time in 2016, however, Horowitz was just another Breitbart by-line (average age 25?), apparently seeking some new credentials, if not “cred,” of his own. In May 2016, which was really just in the nick of time to make any kind of a pre-nomination fuss, Horowitz finally scored by dropping the perfect stinkbomb of a headline at Breitbart News: “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.”

Antique echoes of Daily Worker jargon aside (who but old-time Bolshis say “renegade” anything?): In the ensuing media clamor over Horowitz’s “Renegade Jew” headline (he *confessed* to writing it himself), Breitbart had to fend off charges of anti-Semitism, which would dog the site throughout the presidential campaign — but now with the help of Horowitz, who is Jewish. Mission accomplished! Having mixed it up with Breitbart boys under siege, Horowitz was now, basically, one of them. Plus, in so gratuitously slamming neocon Kristol, ex-Communist and, now, surely, ex-neocon Horowitz was also able to run up the Jolly Roger of the alt-right. “Renegade Jew,” indeed. Good political positioning is more like it. Meanwhile, the issue that lit him up so much — Obama’s Iran deal — is still on Trump’s table, not that Horowitz cares so much now.

So, why wouldn’t Horowitz just take care of all of this personal reframing exclusively at his own website?

A quick look at the latest Alexa website rankings explains all.

Today, Frontpage.mag is No. 12,639 in the US — which, of course, means there are 12,638 more popular websites than David Horowitz’s website out there today; it ranks 41,338 globally.

Breitbart News, on the other hand, is No. 61 in the US today, and No. 292 in the world.

To be fair, yours truly’s site ranking is barely measurable at No. 140,911 in the US — but perhaps dianawest.net would do a bit better if it raked in some fraction of the $5.4 million David Horowitz’s Freedom Center received as charitable largesse in 2015 alone, as the Post reports. Horowitz, not by the way, skimmed $583,000 of the top in salary that same year. Running a “shadow universe” is so terribly taxing, especially when your fancy web$ite isn’t so widely read.

https://spectator.org/buy-american-may-not-be-american/

President Trump asserts with patriotic fervor that his administration stands for America First, a commendable but somewhat ambiguous concept. What gives it meaning is the idea that Americans “buy American.” Presumably when facing consumer choices Americans should look for a label that keeps them at home.

The problem with the concept is that it defies an American commitment to the free market – an argument at least as patriotic as America First. Comparative advantage has been a hallmark of trade, notwithstanding many abuses and currency manipulation. Trade is never entirely fair since each of the trading partners seeks an advantage. Yet the market has a mechanism for addressing excesses, such as “dumping.”

If there is confusion in the market, it is over production provenance. The Ford, manufactured (or should I say assembled) in the United States has parts from at least 14 nations. Globalization, for better or worse, has changed the nature of trade and the method of manufacturing. We may choose to call a Ford an American car but it is no more American than a Volkswagen assembled in Mississippi. Even when one says I want to buy American because it is good for the country I love, you cannot be sure the product in question doesn’t have parts from abroad.

“Buy American” invariably requires an undesirable economic choice. Americans may be willing to pay a premium for a product manufactured here, but that is a choice rarely considered as Walmart’s gross sales suggests. Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, accounts for eleven percent of the unfavorable trade balance with a reliance on electronic products manufactured elsewhere. Unless a tariff is imposed on these products, it is unlikely U.S. counterparts can compete on economic terms. That is a reality the Trump position seemingly overlooks.

Ultimately what is good for the nation is not easy to determine. Job loss is a real problem when U.S. companies are unable to compete. Free market economics often overlook the plight of a steel worker – to cite one example – whose company cannot compete against foreign rivals. This individual may be less interested in efficiency than job protection. On the other hand, an unfavorable balance of trade may have a salutary effect on the economy. The allocation of resources based on products from abroad allows the U.S. economy to concentrate on sectors likely to be most productive. Were it not for this internal market allocation, most Americans would be farmers today.

Clearly the free market is imperfect. Many are left behind in the process of rewards and penalties or what Schumpeter described as creative destruction. As I see it, mature economies must put an emphasis on retraining. The idea that an employee will hold the same position throughout his working life is anachronistic. In fact, while trade has resulted in some job loss, the real culprit in this matter is technological advancement. Yet most Americans are not Luddites and any referendum on the matter would favor advancement.

A lawyer who ran a $550 million Social Security disability fraud scheme cut off the ankle bracelet monitoring his movements and is now on the run, according to the FBI.

Eric C. Conn (yeah, that’s his real name) pleaded guilty last month to bilking the government out of a potential $550 million in Social Security disability benefits. He has left in dire straits hundreds of his clients who will now have to reapply for benefits.

This was no nickel-and-dime operation. Conn had a stable of dozens of doctors who made the false determinations of eligibility and had a Social Security law judge in his pocket to approve the cases.

Washington Times:

“I’m very concerned for Eric,” said Scott White, Mr. Conn’s lawyer, in a statement to The Washington Times. “It’s a defense attorney’s worst nightmare as not only has he placed himself at very real risk, but law enforcement and the public.”

“Its tragic because by accepting responsibility and being willing to testify he had the opportunity to restart his life,” Mr. White said. “Just very sad and we pray he snaps out of it and turns himself in. Its not too late to fix this if he does.”

Conn was expected to testify against Alfred B. Adkins, a psychologist who would rubber-stamp the disability application medical reports that Conn would then send to the administrative law judge, David B. Daugherty.

Daugherty pleaded guilty last month and is also awaiting sentencing.

Conn was well known throughout eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, where he called himself “Mr. Social Security” and promised an uncanny ability to win disability benefits for his clients. He even had a crew of “Conn Hotties” — young women he dispatched to community events in skin-tight T-shirts that advertised his law firm and its phone number, 1-800-232-HURT.

After the scheme was reported in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, Conn began to destroy documents detailing the fraud, and even had one of his law firm employees falsify a video to try to get a whistleblower fired by discrediting her, according to court documents.

Courts have ordered Mr. Conn and his law firm to pay more than $36 million in restitution, damages and penalties.

As Conn was indicted, fear spread through the Kentucky and West Virginia communities that had relied on him, as Social Security sent out notices canceling benefits. CONTINUE AT SITE

New York – Muslims continued on with their civilization Jihad as they took over the street in front of Trump Tower during ‘Iftar’ or ‘breaking their Ramadan fast’.

There is no reason for this other than Muslims letting the infidels know that they here and working on their Islamic takeover.

Of course Hamas-linked, Linda Sarsour was also there spewing more lies about her intentions as a Muslim activist. She claims Trump is full of hatred and divisiveness which of course is untrue. The real hate and divisiveness comes from Islam and Sarsour knows it.

Muslim countries are the most bigoted places on earth. Several Muslim countries don’t even allow Israeli Jews to enter, yet Sarsour acts like a victim. Saudi Arabia prohibits Christian churches and Jewish Synagogues from being built, so save us the crocodile tears, Sarsour.Below is video of the Muslims ‘praying’ as they take over the street in front of Trump Tower:http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/muslims-take-street-start-praying-front-trump-tower-new-york-ramadan-video/

On November 28 last year, Abdul Razak Artan — a student at Ohio State — launched a terror attack on campus by attempting to run over fellow students and to stab others. He was shot and killed by campus police. Artan was hailed by the Islamic State as one of their “soldiers.”

But an attorney for the family says they are “mystified” about what drove him to commit this terror attack.

Information from the investigators’ case file shows a note written to his family pledging allegiance to the Islamic State and chastising them for being “moderate Muslims”:

The Associated Press reports:

A man responsible for a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University last year left behind a torn-up note in which he urged his family to stop being “moderate” Muslims and said he was upset by fellow Muslims being oppressed in Myanmar, The Associated Press has learned.

Abdul Razak Ali Artan also told his parents in the note, reassembled by investigators, that he “will intercede for you in the day of Judgment,” according to the investigative case file of the attack obtained through an open records request.

“My family stop being moderate muslims,” says the handwritten note transcribed by investigators and found by Artan’s bed in his family’s apartment.

Artan also wrote: “In the end, I would like to say that I pledge my allegiance to ‘dawla,’” an Arabic word that means state or country and a likely reference to the Islamic State group. “May Allah bless them.”

He concludes by saying he’s leaving his property to his beloved “but yet ‘moderate mother.’”

Artan’s family was baffled by that note, which caused them a great deal of anguish, said Bob Fitrakis, a Columbus attorney representing the family. To this day, the family has no idea why Artan took those actions, he said Thursday.

“The family is mystified by what happened. They’re absolutely clueless,” Fitrakis said.

It should be noted that on the day of the attack, a Facebook post on an account attributed to Artan said he was “willing to kill a billion infidels”:

Here is what Americans this week were told counted as “news”: Jared Kushner’s past meetings. Russians. James Comey’s upcoming testimony. Russians. Hillary Clinton’s latest conspiracy theories. Russians. Bob Mueller’s as-yet-nonexistent investigation (into Russians). Kathy Griffin, Mr. Met and, of course, “covfefe.” Total words printed on these subjects? At least a duodecillion.

Here’s what actually happened this week, the “news” that holds real consequences for real Americans:

• Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order to begin reopening Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas exploration, reversing the Obama administration’s ideologically driven 2013 shutdown. The order even aims at opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to production—a move that is decades overdue. This could not only buck up the listless Alaskan economy but cement the U.S. as an oil and gas powerhouse.
• In related news, the Dakota Access Pipeline finally went live.

• The Fish and Wildlife Service took steps that may stop the Obama administration’s last-minute endangered-species listing for the Texas Hornshell, a freshwater mussel. That listing, based on outdated science, threatens significant harm to the Texas economy and was done over the protest of state officials and local industry.

• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross surprisingly said that he was open to completing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, a far-reaching trade agreement being negotiated with the European Union.

• Sen. John Thune, the upper chamber’s third-ranking Republican, said his caucus had moved beyond meetings and on to “drafting” the base language of an ObamaCare replacement. The No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn, vowed the Senate would “absolutely” have a bill by “the end of July at the latest.”

And on and on. The Environmental Protection Agency stayed crushing regulations. The U.S. tested the first ground-based system for intercepting ballistic missiles. New numbers showed the private economy adding a rip-roaring 253,000 jobs in May.

Who is to blame for this real-news blackout? The press, obviously. But the co-culprit: Donald Trump.

Americans know that much of the mainstream media is biased in how it presents stories. The dirty little secret is that journalists’ far greater power rests in what they choose to—or not to—report. The country is no better informed about exactly how Russia interfered in the election than it was in October, when intelligence agencies issued a statement expressing their belief that Moscow had helped hack emails. Not a single useful fact has since been added, nor a single investigation completed, nor a single official report produced. Until those inquiries are completed, we will have no new real facts. Yet every day, a new Russia story.

Few expect better from today’s ratings-obsessed media. Especially given its new mission of working with Democrats and Never Trumpers to take down a presidency. That means spewing strategic leaks and suppositions, which create new controversies, which are spun into yet more distant scandals. We are these days reading exposes about former national security adviser Mike Flynn’s work for a Turkish businessman, which is utterly removed from the original question of Russian “collusion.”

The result is a surreal situation in which the near-hysterical press coverage of Trump the man (and potential Russian operative) is utterly divorced from the substantive actions his administration takes or the progress it makes. Mr. Trump’s cabinet, which includes some of the best reformers in the conservative world, is methodically implementing a far-reaching deregulatory agenda. Congress is moving ahead on key promises. CONTINUE AT SITE

The next time President Donald J. Trump thinks about national-security leakers, he should shout this four-letter word:

“Jail!”

Washington has become riddled with leaks. They far exceed gossip whispered to journalists to hamper political rivals. Breaking news that Steve Bannon oversalts his eggs or Reince Priebus blasts his speaker phone would be distracting and foster strife, not harmony. Such infantilism merits discipline or, ultimately, dismissal.

Relentless leaks of state secrets are something completely different.

When reports of President Trump’s combative discussion with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull emerged in February, they reflected poorly on Trump. This may have been what senior officials intended when they peddled these secrets. These leakers also sent world leaders a simple message: Whatever you tell Trump may be in the papers within hours. So, watch your words. Or avoid his calls.

This obstructs U.S. diplomacy.

Likewise, one or more leakers gave the Washington Post secrets about Trump’s discussions with Russian diplomats about ISIS’s plans to bomb jets with weaponized laptops. Reports that Israel uncovered this plot seemed designed to portray Trump as reckless with foreign intelligence. But the leakers, not Trump, blasted the Israeli angle worldwide.

Notorious leaks about ISIS’s deadly attack on Ariana Grande’s concert in Manchester, England, appeared crafted to humiliate him during his European tour. This leak earned a public rebuke by British prime minister Theresa May and a high-profile, albeit temporary, suspension in Anglo-American intelligence sharing.

Not good.

Washington’s blabocracy pre-dates Trump. Soon after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, word spilled on how America tapped Dr. Shakil Afridi to pay a house call on a Pakistani residence and confirm that it was bin Laden’s home. Perhaps some Obamite wanted the world to know how clever the previous administration was. Alas, this leak outed Dr. Afridi. He now is serving a 33-year prison sentence for cooperating with Washington. The enemy now knows this technique. Pro-U.S. physicians who might want to help America fight radical Islamic terrorism now will think thrice before doing so.

Under G. W. Bush, some idiot revealed that America had intercepted bin Laden’s satellite phone in Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Bin Laden’s line soon went dead.

Not helpful.

A former Green Beret, Lt. Colonel Michael G. Waltz, explained on Tuesday’s Fox & Friends: “ISIS, al-Qaeda, and these other groups have English-speaking cells that scour American newspapers and look for leaks, so that they can react and change their tactics.”

President Trump must lead the charge against these scoundrels.

“I believe when you leak the kind of information that seems to be routinely leaked, at a high, high level of classification,” homeland-security secretary John Kelly told NBC’s Meet the Press, “I think it’s darn close to treason.”

“The main felony that can (and should) be charged in this situation is the Espionage Act (18 USC 793),” former U.S. attorney and counter-terrorism specialist Andrew McCarthy told me. “Subsections (d) and (f) call for a penalty of up to ten years in prison. It is really essential to prosecute some people, to stop these leaks.”

When did the definition of “leadership” in America become “the courage and foresight to ignore the United States Constitution”?

The fact that the sun rose again this morning was less predictable than the media-Democrat hysteria over President Trump’s entirely reasonable decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Convention on climate change. The decision was clearly right on the merits: The pact, which would do nothing meaningful to address global temperatures, is an exercise in progressive preening, touted by hypocrites who zip to and from climate confabs in their private jets — the kind of “Do as I say, not as I do” lovers of humanity (but loathers of people) who never take one plane when two are available.

To anyone but a zealot in the Church of Climate, it is obvious that carbon emissions are best reduced not by central planning but by a private sector free to innovate and respond to the market demand for environmentally responsible products and practices. That is how the United States leads, how it is already driving down emissions, and how it can promote the generation of wealth and know-how that — far better than dubious statistical models and rose-tinted crystal balls — would enable 22nd-century Americans to address their environmental challenges.

All that aside, however, President Trump’s decision should have been obvious and indisputable, not momentous. That it was not is a measure of detachment from our constitutional moorings.

The Paris Convention is a treaty. Under the Constitution, a treaty does not become law binding on the United States unless the president submits it to the Senate, obtains two-thirds approval there, and then ratifies the treaty. (Contrary to popular belief, the Senate does not ratify treaties; the president does the ratifying, but only if the Senate has consented.) That never happened to the climate agreement. It never had a chance of happening.

In this instance, as in others, President Obama conspired with his fellow transnational progressives to defeat the Constitution he had sworn to preserve, protect, and defend. He waited until late 2016, the eleventh hour of his presidency, to sign the agreement. As with the Iran deal, he had no intention of submitting it to the Senate, because there was no way it would be approved there. Because the pact would have punished American companies and workers, Obama knew that pushing Democratic senators into a vote, and boxing Hillary Clinton into a high-profile campaign debate, would have been a body blow to his party’s hopes of retaking the Senate and winning the White House.

The Left’s objective was to impose the Paris agreement without making Democratic office-seekers accountable for it. That is exactly what the Constitution is designed to prevent.

Here is the basic problem for transnational progressives: If the U.S. Constitution remains vital, their ultimate goal of global governance is unattainable.

Their premise is that the Westphalian model, a world ordered by nation-states pursuing their interests, is passé. History, they tell us, has refined us into a single world community, united by common values — eerily like sharia-supremacists’ claim that the ummah is a single world community of Muslims, united by Allah’s law.

By contrast, the Constitution is designed to enable the United States to secure its prosperity, interests, and security in a world where we hope for the best but prepare for the worst — hostile countries and other alien threats. The goal of the Constitution is to protect our nation against the globe’s many troublemakers, not to tame our nation in the name of global stability.

The perfect exemplar of the Constitution’s approach is the treaty clause (art. II, sec. 2, cl. 2). Its requirement of supermajority Senate consent is a presumption against international agreements.

The perfect exemplar of the Constitution’s approach is the treaty clause. Its requirement of supermajority Senate consent is a presumption against international agreements.