RUTHFULLY YOURS

Try to imagine the metaphysics of a deadly snake.

Existence exists. Youknow that. But does a snake?

On May 18th Tucker Carlson on Fox Insider News delivered what must be one of the most poignant and hard-hitting warnings voiced by a newscaster about today’s trend to settling political disputes with violence. It was a delivery that reflects a cogent, thinking mind, a virtue we don’t usually associate with TV newscasters:

“’We Are in Danger’: Tucker Says Progressives Must Condemn Political Violence.”

The modern left is no longer an ideological movement. Instead it’s an organized movement around identity politics,” Tucker said on tonight’s show.

He warned that dividing Americans into “sub-groups” and promoting “tribalism” is dangerous for our democracy.

He said that modern progressives don’t want to argue and have a reasonable discussion. They want their “team” to win, and some of them are willing to use violence to do so, as we’ve recently seen at protests across the country.

“Violence is what separates politics from war,” Tucker said. “It’s when hurt feelings become dead bodies, the point at which countries become ungovernable.”

He noted that he’s recently had progressives on his program, and when pressed, they refused to condemn political violence.

He concluded that “we are in danger” as long as that’s the case.

In truth, the Progressives and Antifa thugs have no “identity” to speak of. It could be an amalgam of disparate groups. I am “anti-Trump” and violence is what I do. As Greg Gutfield writes, also on Fox:

On its ever changing face, identity politics seemed pretty innocuous. It’s simply a way of unifying your demands among a similar group of people.

We’ve seen it take all shapes: There’s identity politics based on race, gender, disability and religion. There are loads of others — some so unusual they beggar belief (there are people who now identify as animals, for example. Sometimes, I feel that I am one of them).

But as identity politics expanded, infecting campus life, political agendas and self-absorbed acceptance speeches at award shows, we saw something strange and wonderful happen….

2017 may have been that year when identity politics hit a brick wall, and slumped limply on the pavement.

But what prompts Progressives and their “foot soldiers” – the ones who riot, destroy property, shout down speakers with impunity, and physically assault anyone who dissents – to close their minds to any rational, civil discourse on the issues that seem to excite them to foam-flecked madness?

I have taken to characterizing Progressive/University behavior to that of cobras or rattlesnakes. Snakes do not think; in terms of teleology, they are “programmed” to respond to stimuli such as heat or a moving body, at which they will strike, to kill and/or consume. To a predator snake, all moving bodies pose a threat or an opportunity for a meal. Snakes do not pause to think about the body; there is no appraisal of it at all. The consciousness of a snake is not volitional. A snake cannot, by its nature, have values. Progressives champion no fixed ideology but chaos. They are prime candidates for herpetological study.

If police believe bank robbers were hoping for inside help on a heist, they don’t hold a press conference to smear the bank manager with their suspicions about “collusion.” They go about the quiet police work of building a conspiracy case. Unless and until they find concrete evidence and are ready to file formal charges, they keep their big mouths shut.

Those rudimentary rules of the road are worth remembering when we consider the transparently political testimony of former Obama-administration CIA director John Brennan before the House intelligence committee on Tuesday.

Brennan’s story can be summed up as follows: The Russians are insidious, and they plot to manipulate Americans into helping them, wittingly or unwittingly. The Russians interfered with the American election by orchestrating the publication of unflattering information (mainly, Democrat e-mails), hoping either that Donald Trump would win, or that the likely winner, Hillary Clinton, would be badly damaged. While carrying out this plan, Russian operatives reached out to some people who were connected to the Trump campaign. Brennan supposes that the Russians must have attempted to “suborn” those people because . . . well . . . um . . . that’s “what the Russians try to do.” But he can’t say whether they actually did.

More to the point, Brennan has no idea whether these suspected but unproved Russian entreaties actually worked. When he left the government at the end of President Obama’s term, Brennan said, “I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons involved in the [Trump] campaign or not to work on their behalf.”

That’s a weasel’s way of saying he’s got nothing.

Brennan, the hardest charger in Obama’s patently politicized intelligence community, spent goo-gobs of energy on this, throughout the closing months of the 2016 campaign. And he’s got nothing.

The “Russian collusion” scandal is manufactured. Like all good subterfuge, it is premised on a kernel of truth: The Russian regime is always on the look-out for Americans willing to betray their country. Sometimes it works. So, when our security services detect such Russian outreach, of course they must investigate it.

But the fact that the Kremlin wants to flip an American does not mean the American in question will play along. The fact that an American ends up speaking to a Russian operative — just as Democratic lawmakers and administration officials regularly speak to Russian operatives — does not mean the American is a traitor. To establish that an America is doing Russia’s bidding, you need to prove that the American is doing Russia’s bidding.

Brennan apparently can’t even prove that Russia beseeched Trump associates to do anything related to influencing the election outcome, much less that any particular Trump associate agreed to do anything, and less still that anything was actually done.

Oregonians deserve a safe space from government manipulation, propaganda and bloated contracts.

Remember, Cover Oregon? A national laughing stock with over $3 million spent on this ad and cited in ‘Wastebook 2013’ by then-U.S. Senator Tom Coburn.

State government, agencies and commissions are shelling out hundreds millions of dollars to public relations firms. Eighty-seven state agencies spent $278 million dollars to convince citizens to spend more taxpayer or gaming dollars on bigger government, higher taxes, more regulations, or more gambling from 2012 through 2016.

Here’s how the numbers breakdown. Since 2012, taxpayers paid $110 million to employ 303 public affairs employees, spokespeople, advertising, video, print, web, graphic designers, marketing and communications managers. But, it wasn’t enough. The state shelled out an additional $168 million to outside PR and advertising firms. Some of those firms charge fees up to $260 per hour and one company reaped total payouts of $34 million – convincing Oregonians to gamble.
The Oregon Public Relations Machine Overview

OpenTheBooks.com

Oregon Public Relations Machine Overview

In Oregon, the public relations industry is a favor factory for insiders. Thebiggest agencies are doling out extremely lucrative PR contracts.

Since 2012, the Oregon State Lottery Commission awarded contracts and payments of $34.5 million (from gaming dollars) to one vendor: Borders Perrin and Norrander (BPN). During this period, data at OpenTheBooks.com shows that BPN gleaned $34.5 million of the $55.9 million paid to outside PR/advertising vendors at the lottery. BPN handled the Lottery’s sponsorship of the Portland Trailblazers, ‘Wheel of Fortune’ television ads, Jackpots Scratch ads, and other campaigns.

In 2013, Borders Perrin and Norrander signed two major contracts with the Lottery. First, a ‘Price Agreement’ contract allowed BPN to charge up to $260 per hour for their ‘Creative Director.’ The contract was then amended or extended four times without competition until May 2017. In fact, BPN billed $200 or more per hour for five additional positions (see graphic).

Thank you Deroy Murdock…..Some events in New York City are unforgettable…..watching the elephants crossing the street to enter Madison Square Garden and then going to the circus was one. Getting hot dogs and a pickle from a deli on Hoe Avenue in the Bronx was memorable. Making the hot dog last for two blocks was Olympian. Going to the movies on Grand Concourse in the majestic Loews Paradise, now closed, and arguably, the most luxurious movie house in New York City, was another. Outdoor concerts in Lewisohn Stadium of City College were fabulous even with the noise of airplanes overhead. And the best of all, was a performance by the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Last summer, with a friend I attended their summer performance which included dancing in the rain onstage with parasols shaped like flowers. For an immigrant like myself those events ” only in America”were awesome and they are all disappearing swiftly….rsk

Uniondale, N.Y. — Send home the clowns.

After 146 years, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus rolled up the net. Sunday evening’s performance was its last.

My friend Neal K. Carter and I attended Friday night’s presentation of the Greatest Show on Earth. I went to say goodbye to a part of America’s heritage and compare the current show with the production I attended about eight or nine years ago and what I recall from my first such encounter as a little boy.

This was the first Ringling Bros. experience for Carter, a pentalingual Manhattan attorney, free-market activist, and performing cellist.

The crisply renovated Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum — now called NYCB Live — was the last stop for what Ringling Bros. CEO Kenneth J. Feld called a traveling “town without a Zip code.” On Friday, this legendary act showcased visual wonders, daring feats, and constant surprises.

Neal K. Carter and the author at the circus, May 19, 2017.

The often-stunning highlights included a half-dozen giant, silky balls that dangled from the ceiling like Christmas-tree ornaments. The silken cloth suddenly fell away and revealed a contortionist inside each plastic globe. These incredibly flexible young women twisted themselves into knots while cracking the plastic containers like eggs. They then hung by their ankles from the two clear hemispheres, perhaps 30 feet from the ground. Naturally, they made it look easy.

Before long, seven motorcyclists zoomed inside a see-through sphere of cross-hatched steel bars. Within this structure, their paths swiftly crisscrossed, but never collided. The slightest miscalculation would have made this look like a pileup at the Superbowl of Motocross, but inside a space smaller than a one-car garage. The effect resembled electrons hurtling within a nucleus, rather than outside of it — the laws of chemistry be damned.

Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election.

There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers.

Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration.

Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as incapable of properly vetting travelers to the U.S.

The first lady did not work for an elite escort or prostitute service. She never said that she and young Barron Trump would not be moving to the White House. Barron does not have autism.

Trump’s father never ran racist ads as a supposed candidate in a purported political campaign. Kellyanne Conway denies that in a private conversation between segments on MSNBC, she privately remarked to hosts that she had to take a shower after working for Trump.

Donald Trump never suggested to the Mexican president that the U.S. was going to invade Mexico. Nor did Trump plan to mobilize the National Guard to send back illegal aliens.

He did not remove a Martin Luther King bust from the White House.

There was no evidence that he ever promised to ease Russian sanctions (much less that he promised the Russians he would be “flexible” after he was elected). He did not short the FBI of resources to conduct an investigation into supposed Russian collusion. He did not go to Moscow and watch prostitutes in his bed urinate where Barack Obama had previously slept.

His deputy attorney general did not threaten to resign over the Comey firing.

We have no idea whether Trump really gets two scoops of ice cream while limiting his guests to one.

And we have no idea whether Trump really gets two scoops of ice cream while limiting his guests to one, or pads around in a bathrobe in the early evening, or cannot find the light switch in the White house.

Yet all that is what daily we hear and read.

President Clinton lowered the bar on accepting terrorists. The fact that vermin, terrorist Arafat was such a frequent visitor to the Clinton White House, and now terrorist Mahmoud Abbas is treated so cordially, make the presence of Oscar Lopez predictable…..rsk
The announcement that the 2017 Puerto Rican Day Parade would honor seditionist and Puerto Rican independentista Oscar López Rivera as a “National Freedom Hero” has led several sponsors of the parade to withdraw their endorsements. López Rivera was a leader of FALN, which conducted a campaign of deadly bombings around New York City and Chicago in the 1970s, and he was recently released from prison after having his 75-year sentence commuted by President Obama. Goya Foods, a significant backer of the parade for its entire 60-year history, has backed out, as have the NYPD Hispanic Society, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, and the other police unions representing the NYPD senior ranks. NYPD commissioner James O’Neill announced this afternoon that he will not march in the parade because he deems Lopez Rivera a “terrorist.”

In response, city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito today held a “rally to defend the parade,” though the parade itself is not in need of defense, its only sticking point being the inclusion of a convicted terrorist as guest of honor. About 50 ardent supporters of Rivera assembled in a meeting hall at the headquarters of 32BJ, the building-service workers local of labor powerhouse SEIU, where they displayed banners and chanted, “We stand with the Puerto Rican Parade/Oscar López is our hero today!”

A number of speakers addressed the press and the few supporters of the rally who were not already on the dais. Estela Vazquez, executive vice president of SEIU 1199 (the nation’s largest union local), explained that “George Washington fought for his country, and Oscar López Rivera fought for his country. He should be celebrated just as George Washington is celebrated.” This parallel might hold up if López Rivera were being celebrated in his homeland of Puerto Rico, but it stretches credulity to demand that New York City celebrate the man who actually blew up Fraunces Tavern (where George Washington bade his officers farewell), and who in fact murdered and mutilated New Yorkers.

Much of the rally consisted of similarly flaccid historical comparisons. Supporters chanted, “Oscar López Rivera/Puerto Rico’s Mandela,” and speakers drew a connection between the fight against apartheid and Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence. The trouble with this parallel, however embarrassing it may be for the Puerto Ricans, is that black South Africans voted overwhelmingly to overturn the apartheid system, while the independence movement in Puerto Rico has virtually zero support. In four referenda held since Oscar Lopez Rivera went to prison, the “Independence” line has received between 2 percent to 5 percent of the vote.

He has come to America’s college capital this weekend to watch two of his grandsons walk across finely appointed stages to collect their degrees: a pair of life’s milestone moments that Andrew Burian will treasure like none other.

Commencement season is a time of hugs and handshakes and high-fives. Everywhere you look there is a story. Under every cap and gown, through the sometimes glistening eyes of every mom and dad, there are personal tales ranging from utter relief to absolute triumph.

Andrew Burian, now 86, has a story like that. Except his is stunning, horrific, and life-changing.

And even though his body and his memory are not what they used to be, as he cheers his beloved grandkids’ academic accomplishments on Sunday, his mind will doubtlessly carry him back to those darkest of days when a future of sunshine and splendor — any future at all, really — seemed beyond imagination.

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“It’s extremely powerful,’’ said Jordan Anhalt, 23, who will receive his bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Brandeis on Sunday. “I grew up with the duality in which other people recognized him as a survivor. He is a hero. But to me, he’s always been my grandfather. I’m so grateful he’s here.’’

He’s here.

It’s such a simple thought. But it belies an unspeakable, awful history that makes Burian’s presence all the more powerful. The blue-ink tattoo on his arm — B 14611 — helps tell his story.

He grew up in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains in a small town in Czechoslovakia, where his father ran a lumber company and young Andrew lived an idyllic childhood surrounded by cousins, aunts, and uncles, and a loving extended family that circumscribed his little world.

And then a madman named Hitler, whose maniacal voice blared from loudspeakers, tightened his grip. Burian’s family home was confiscated and converted into a police station. Curfews were enforced. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars that made them targets.

What followed, recorded on the pages of history books, is forever seared into Burian’s memory.

At the tip of a bayonet, his family was deported to a ghetto in Hungary. Ahead lay cattle cars with barbed-wire windows, the brutal searches of women, the screams of small children — and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

His mother, grandfather, and great-uncle were murdered immediately upon arrival. Young Andrew’s survival would depend on wit and courage in the face of German soldiers who shot into the ranks of concentration camp crowds just for the sport of it.

In his memoir, “A Boy from Bustina. A son. A survivor. A witness,’’ Burian recalls the moment when he was separated from his father and brother.

“My blood drained to my feet as I realized that I was left alone in Birkenau without parents and without a sibling,’’ he wrote. “All I could do was attempt to stifle my sobs and hold my hand across my mouth as I called for my mama, papa, and Tibi” — his brother.

Before he was forced to leave his son, Ernest Burian gave instructions to him that the boy remembered for the rest of his life:

“My child, I have three things to say to you: Keep yourself clean so you don’t get sick; be a mensch and don’t let them make an animal out of you; and remember, whoever lives through this inferno goes home and waits for the others. God willing, we will all meet at home.’’

Andrew Burian, who was reunited with his brother and their father, after the camps’ liberation, arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor in the spring of 1948. He was 17 and had $10 in his pocket.