RUTHFULLY YOURS

Andy Puzder withdrew his nomination for Labor Secretary Wednesday after a ferocious union and media assault, and is President Trump paying attention? This is what happens, sir, when a White House starts losing, losing, losing.

Mr. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, was a rare business executive willing publicly to support Mr. Trump during the campaign. As an expert in labor management, he was ideal to reform a Labor Department that was run for eight years as a wholly owned subsidiary of the AFL-CIO. He would also have been a much-needed advocate for free markets in Mr. Trump’s senior economic councils.

Mr. Puzder’s reward was to get caught in a cross-fire between the union left and the anti-immigration right. Unions rolled out a misinformation campaign broadcasting worker grievances at his Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants, though the number and nature were politically concocted and his corporate stores are business models.

Mr. Puzder was also targeted by some on the right because he supported more legal immigration to meet the needs of a growing U.S. economy, which is a mortal sin on the restrictionist right. Mr. Puzder had once employed a housekeeper he didn’t know was undocumented, and though he fired her and paid back taxes, restrictionists wanted to punish him for supporting immigration reform. Heaven forfend he’d help farmers address their severe labor shortage. Did White House aides Stephen Bannon or Stephen Miller give the word to Breitbart and other Trumpian news outlets that they could unload on Mr. Puzder?

Certainly the White House did little to defend the businessman. His small nomination team had to rebut the false charges more or less on their own. While outside groups spent millions of dollars to bolster nominees Scott Pruitt,Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos, almost nothing was spent to help Mr. Puzder.

The White House should be especially concerned that Republican Senators dumped Mr. Puzder so easily. As many as a dozen were worried about the left-right assaults and asked the White House to spare them from a vote to confirm by withdrawing the nomination. So much for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise that all Trump nominees would make it. This is what happens when Republicans begin to feel they must distance themselves from an unpopular President.

The White House will compound its mistakes if it responds by trying to appease the union left or restrictionist right with its next nominee. Mr. Trump needs a Labor secretary who can help workers prosper in a competitive world, not treat labor economics as a zero-sum game of political redistribution.

Former President Obama is waging war against the Trump administration through his generously funded agitation outfit, Organizing for Action, to defend his monumentally destructive record of failure and violent polarization.

It is a chilling reminder that the increasingly aggressive, in-your-face Left in this country is on the march.

Acclaimed author Paul Sperry writes in the New York Post:

Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.

In what’s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn’t just staying behind in Washington. He’s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular “America First” agenda.

What is Organizing for Action? It is a less violent version of Mussolini’s black shirts and Hitler’s brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Castro brothers used to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents.

OfA isn’t, strictly speaking, a new group. After the 2008 election, the group, then known as Organizing for America, was a phony grassroots campaign run by the Democratic National Committee that sought to replicate the community organizing techniques Obama learned from the teachings of his fellow Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky. OfA was created in large part because the White House could not legally use the 13 million e-mail addresses that the Obama campaign compiled in 2008.

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Penn.), sounded the alarm about OfA in 2013, suggesting the group was dangerous to democracy. “If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors,” he said as president of the left-wing group Common Cause. “Access to the President should never be for sale.”

The person Craig S. Karpel mentioned in this interesting history is a dear friend for decades …..who would have thunk that his interest led to “Apple” even though he has been the apple of my eyes for years…..rsk
The writer talks about his eerily prescient 1971 Esquire classic about “phone phreaks,” and how it inspired Steve Jobs (who later said, “If we hadn’t made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.”)http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/annotation-tuesday-ron-rosenbaum-and-the-secrets-of-the-little-blue-box/

Some writers work for decades before one of their pieces gets widespread attention. Ron Rosenbaum managed to pull it off with his second long-form magazine article.

Rosenbaum’s 1971 Esquire piece, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” tells the story of an underground network of telephone hackers – dubbed “phone phreaks” – who devised a small box that enabled them to control the long-distance phone network. Rosenbaum’s article quickly became a cult classic and made overnight celebrities of the phone phreaks, especially a character named Captain Crunch, who made the phone network dance to his tune by blowing a toy whistle given away in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal.

It touched a nerve maybe because it combines old-fashioned underground sci-fi intrigue vs. the tech surveillance state. And everybody likes the band of little guys taking on the Big Money Goliath using brains instead of tanks.

Rosenbaum’s article is the rare magazine story that not only chronicled history, it also shaped it. A tech enthusiast named Steve Wozniak read Rosenbaum’s piece, and then showed it to his friend Steve Jobs. Before long, the two collaborated on building and selling their own blue boxes. It was the first product release of what would eventually become one of the world’s most valuable companies – Apple.
The piece also would turn out to be remarkably prescient, revealing how some of the phone hackers were already turning their attention to an even more tempting target – computer networks.

With the apparent Russian hack of the U.S. presidential election dominating headlines worldwide, it seemed a perfect time to revisit this 46-year-old gem, which helped launch a career that has included the publication of several books, including “Explaining Hitler,” “The Shakespeare Wars,” “How the End Begins” and a collection of his longform essays and reporting, “The Secret Parts of Fortune,” with nonfiction from The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Slate and The New York Observer, among others.

I chatted with Rosenbaum about “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” which wasrecently republished as part of the Amazon Singles Classics series. His answers have been slightly edited.

What was the genesis of this piece?

It came from Esquire. Just for context, this was during the last couple years of the editorship of the late Harold Hayes, part Marine sergeant, part avant, avant gardiste. A great editor on all levels who, more than anyone of the other claimants, deserves credit as a founder of what we now think of as “The New Journalism.” There was no such name or aesthetic doctrine written down when I was there, just a lot of writers given freedom to tell their stories in sometimes unconventional ways. But it was still at its heart about intensive reporting, immersive storytelling, not stylistic tricks. Read Terry Southern’s knockout hilarious evocation of the place in the short story called “Blood of a Wig.” I advise every journalist to read it. It’s in one of his collections, “Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes.”

The Blue Box piece was only my second magazine story. I had been writing for the Village Voice for a year and a half after the prospect of a snoozy academic career drove me out of the study of English lit at Yale graduate school, where they were grinding literature into theory. I thought journalism offered adventure and excitement to a kid from a relatively sheltered background. I wanted to hang out with cops and criminals. I stumbled into a couple of lucky breaks – right place at the right time – and got to do it.

A friend and colleague from the Voice and Esquire, Craig S. Karpel, had spent the summer in Northern California and met a lawyer named Metzger who was repping the blue box maker and dealer I called “Al Gilbertson” (the real person wanted anonymity). Craig sent a memo to the East Coast about this underground network of phone phreaks.

Blacks, women, Millennials – liberals in each sub-group are now led by an uncompromising cadre of the hard left, who through their “mass actions” are attempting to turn the country against Donald Trump and brand him an illegitimate president.

Most Americans are concerned about unvetted refugees from jihadi countries. Those who are Democrats have no say in their party anymore. Obama yanked the party hard left. He personally championed the jihadi movement, be it by trying to install the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or giving the pariah state Iran billions of dollars and the obsequious Iran deal.

Obama’s legacy: Hard-left Muslim-Americans are rising to positions of prominence in the Democrats’ grassroots organizations. This alliance between Western socialists and Islamists dates back to the Cold War, but it has gained traction in America since 9/11.

One case, among countless others: The anti-Trump women’s march was co-led by an Islamist in a hijab. It is well worth reading the front-page exposé on Linda Sarsour, because she is a leader of so many of the causes that Obama promoted as president: Occupy Wall St., BDS, Black Lives Matter, the Muslim Brotherhood.

After 9/11, Sarsour rose in power by promoting the jihadi fiction of “Islamophobia.” The Democratic Party uses this accusation to fight Republican national security measures and accord itself unmerited moral superiority.

Sarsour’s Islamic group was a big success. It prevented the New York Police Department from conducting surveillance of Muslim groups and mosques the police suspected of promoting terrorism.

For her work, Ms. Sarsour was honored by President Obama as a “White House Champion of Change” and was invited to the White House seven times. She was a delegate to the Democrat National Convention.

Sarsour is a radical Palestinian who supports international terrorism and the destruction of Israel. There are photos of her on the web flashing the ISIS sign.

Sarsour is, as the New York Times puts it, “deeply involved in the Black Lives Matter movement,” a movement founded by three self-identified Marxist revolutionaries who revere the convicted cop-killer and longtime Marxist fugitive Assata Shakur.

Sarsour supports sharia law in America.

You’ll know when you’re living under Sharia Law if suddenly all your loans & credit cards become interest free. Sound [sic] nice, doesn’t it?

There are outstanding Arab-American women fighting the jihadi threat here at home, having suffered firsthand from Muslim barbarism in their native countries. Most prominent are Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brigitte Gabriel. President Obama and the Democrats consider them enemies.

A friend of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., terror attack agreed to plead guilty to a terrorism conspiracy charge and to lying about his purchase of the weapons used in the mass shooting, federal officials said Tuesday.Prosecutors said Enrique Marquez Jr., 25, bought the assault rifles used by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, in the Dec. 2, 2015, attack on an office holiday party. The couple killed 14 people and wounded more than 20.

On Tuesday, Mr. Marquez admitted to making false statements in connection with his purchase of those weapons. Prosecutors have said Mr. Marquez served as a “straw buyer” of the guns.Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik died later that day in a shootout with police.

Authorities have said the married couple were Islamic extremists, and that Mr. Farook introduced radical Islamic teachings to Mr. Marquez, his friend and former neighbor.

Mr. Marquez also admitted to conspiring with Mr. Farook in 2011 and 2012 to attack Riverside City College, in Southern California, and target commuters on a Los Angeles-area freeway. Those plots were never carried out. Mr. Marquez’s federal public defenders didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Marquez was arrested following the San Bernardino shooting and has been in federal custody ever since. Mr. Marquez wasn’t involved in the shooting itself. He told authorities that he didn’t know about the San Bernardino attack and had distanced himself from Mr. Farook several years earlier.

“This defendant collaborated with and purchased weapons for a man who carried out the devastating December 2, 2015 terrorist attack that took the lives of 14 innocent people, wounded nearly two dozen, and impacted our entire nation,” said the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Eileen M. Decker.

Ms. Decker added, “While his earlier plans to attack a school and a freeway were not executed, the planning clearly laid the foundation for the 2015 attack on the Inland Regional Center.”CONTINUE AT SITE

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.
The effort, said to include former Obama administration adviser Ben Rhodes—the architect of a separate White House effort to create what he described as a pro-Iran echo chamber—included a small task force of Obama loyalists who deluged media outlets with stories aimed at eroding Flynn’s credibility, multiple sources revealed.
The operation primarily focused on discrediting Flynn, an opponent of the Iran nuclear deal, in order to handicap the Trump administration’s efforts to disclose secret details of the nuclear deal with Iran that had been long hidden by the Obama administration.
Insiders familiar with the anti-Flynn campaign told the Free Beacon that these Obama loyalists plotted in the months before Trump’s inauguration to establish a set of roadblocks before Trump’s national security team, which includes several prominent opponents of diplomacy with Iran. The Free Beacon first reported on this effort in January.
Sources who spoke to the Free Beacon requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the situation and avoid interfering with the White House’s official narrative about Flynn, which centers on his failure to adequately inform the president about a series of phone calls with Russian officials.
Flynn took credit for his missteps regarding these phone calls in a brief statement released late Monday evening. Trump administration officials subsequently stated that Flynn’s efforts to mislead the president and vice president about his contacts with Russia could not be tolerated.
However, multiple sources closely involved in the situation pointed to a larger, more secretive campaign aimed at discrediting Flynn and undermining the Trump White House.
“It’s undeniable that the campaign to discredit Flynn was well underway before Inauguration Day, with a very troublesome and politicized series of leaks designed to undermine him,” said one veteran national security adviser with close ties to the White House team. “This pattern reminds me of the lead up to the Iran deal, and probably features the same cast of characters.”

If Donald Trump doesn’t understand now, he will eventually. Integrity and truth ultimately do matter, and if he wants to be a successful president, he’s going to have to appoint people to high office who won’t violate the public’s trust.

That means appointing more men like Neil Gorsuch and James Mattis. And it means keeping David Petraeus out of the White House.

This is a painful thing to say. I served under General Petraeus (far, far under, I was a lowly captain in an armored cavalry squadron deployed roughly 100 miles from Baghdad) during the Surge, and I saw with my own eyes the power of effective leadership, the right strategy, and the proper application of force. He came into Iraq at a time of maximum chaos and was instrumental in transforming an emerging and bloody defeat into a stunning battlefield victory.

It’s no understatement to say that by the September 2008 — when he turned over command in Iraq to General Raymond Odierno — he was an American hero, one of the great generals of modern times. Then he betrayed his family, violated the law, and established a precedent for prosecutorial favoritism that haunted America during the 2016 presidential election.

The facts of his case are simple and disappointing. Petraeus had an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, and provided her with notebooks containing highly classified information. Compounding his offense, he apparently initially lied to the FBI when they confronted him in 2012, denying that he had provided any classified information to his mistress.

Lest anyone think the disclosure was harmless — more the by-product of overclassification than an action that risked national security — consider the information he shared with Broadwell. As the Washington Post reported, the notebooks “contained code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and information about war strategy and deliberative discussions with the National Security Council.”

This was a serious offense, but rather than serve the prison time that virtually any service member would receive under similar (or lesser) circumstances, Petraeus received a sweetheart plea deal. In exchange for pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information, Petraeus was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.

It pays to be powerful.