RUTHFULLY YOURS

Barack Obama isn’t known for humility, though rarely has his lack of grace been more on display than in his final hours in office. The nation rejected his agenda. The president’s response? To shove more of that agenda down the nation’s gullet.

Notice the growing and many ugly ways the Obama administration is actively working to undermine a Donald Trump presidency. Unnamed administration sources whisper stories about Russian hackers to delegitimize Mr. Trump’s election. These whispers began at about the same time Hillary Clinton officials began pressuring electors to defy election results and deny Mr. Trump the presidency. How helpful.

Trump transition-team members report how Obama officials are providing them with skewed or incomplete information, as well as lectures about their duties on climate change. (No wonder Mr. Trump is bypassing those “official” intelligence briefings.) The Energy Department is refusing to provide the transition team with the names of career officials who led key programs, like those who attended U.N. climate talks. Sen. Ron Johnson recently sent a letter to President Obama voicing alarm over “burrowing,” in which political appointees, late in an administration, convert to career bureaucrats and become obstacles to the new political appointees.

But perhaps nothing has more underlined the Obama arrogance than his final flurry of midnight regulations. With each new proposed rule or executive order, Mr. Obama is spitefully mocking the nation that just told him “enough.”

The technical definition of a midnight regulation is one issued between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president. The practice is bipartisan. George W. Bush, despite having promised not to do so, pushed through a fair number of rules in his final months. But Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more aggressive, and Mr. Obama is making them look like pikers.

Mr. Obama has devoted his last year to ramming through controversial and far-reaching rules. Whether it was born of a desire to lay groundwork for a Clinton presidency, or as a guard against a Trump White House, the motive makes no difference. According to a Politico story of nearly a year ago, the administration had some 4,000 regulations in the works for Mr. Obama’s last year. They included smaller rules on workplace hazards, gun sellers, nutrition labels and energy efficiency, as well as giant regulations (costing billions) on retirement advice and overtime pay.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

This follows Mr. Obama’s extraordinary announcement that he will invoke a dusty old law to place nearly all of the Arctic Ocean, and much of the Atlantic Ocean, off limits to oil or gas drilling. This follows his highly politicized move to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. And it comes amid reports the administration is rushing to implement last-minute rules on commodities speculation, immigrant workers and for-profit colleges—among others. CONTINUE AT SITE

Since Election Day, New York City officials have spoken regularly and emphatically about a rise in hate crimes, particularly those directed at Muslims. Gotham’s political leadership sees an obvious connection between Donald Trump’s victory and an uptick in hateful incidents. Mayor Bill de Blasio asserts that the rise “is documented . . . . It’s generated by the rhetoric that was used in the election. It’s not a surprise.” He also said, just a few days after the election, “some people now, unfortunately, take a signal from Donald Trump’s rhetoric that it’s open season against all the different kinds of people that Trump insulted and denigrated in his campaign.”

The mayor’s racial-hate narrative took an unexpected turn this week when one “victim” confessed that her story was entirely false. Yasmin Seweid, an 18-year-old Muslim woman, had told the police that she was accosted on the subway by three drunk white men who screamed insults at her, tried to pull off her headscarf, chanted Trump’s name, called her a terrorist, and told her to “go back to her country.” According to Seweid, there were many people on the train who saw what happened, but no one said or did anything. “It breaks my heart that so many individuals chose to be bystanders while watching me get harassed verbally and physically by these disgusting pigs,” she wrote on Facebook.

This last detail—that subway passengers in lower Manhattan ignored a young woman being violently assaulted—inspired visceral reactions among credulous New Yorkers who were primed to believe that Donald Trump’s victory had unleashed a flood of violent hate. City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito tweeted, “DESPICABLE! #StandUpNYC!! No more silence. No more hate.” A number of demonstrators from a Brooklyn synagogue stood in the middle of Grand Central Terminal and unfurled a banner reading “#NotInOurCity,” which turned out to be literally true, as the attack had in fact not happened in their city, or any city. Seweid has admitted that she made up the story as a way to keep her strict father from learning that she was out drinking with a Christian boyfriend. She has been arrested for filing a false police report.

In the 28-day period following November 8, the number of hate incidents reported by the NYPD rose from 20 in 2015 to 43 in 2016. Most of these incidents were anti-Semitic: hate incidents against Jews tripled year-over-year, from eight to 24. Anti-Muslim hate increased as well, from two incidents in 2015 to four in 2016 (including the bogus attack on Seweid—three if her case is excluded). There were no anti-Hispanic attacks in the 4-week period in either 2015 or 2016. Anti-black hate crimes dropped from two in 2015 to one this year. Anti-gay hate incidents went from four to five. Curiously, the sharpest increase in hate violence was against a group that is rarely mentioned in these discussions: anti-white hate crime rose from one incident in 2015 to five this year, according to the NYPD.

Brian Mast – U.S. House, Florida, District 18 from DHFC on Vimeo.

Introduction Speaker: What a wonderful event? There’s just such a victorious spirit here. When you look at the huge gains that we made not only in the Presidential, but in the House and in the Senate, I do not believe that any of those three would’ve been possible or even close to possible without everyone in this room, so thank you very much. Tonight I have the wonderful opportunity to introduce to you a true American hero. Brian Mast fresh off his fantastic victory for U.S. House in District 18. Brian served our country for 12 years as a bomb disposal expert for the elite Joint Special Forces Operation Command saving countless lives at great personal cost to himself, but not only did he serve our great country, he then went on after that to serve alongside the Israeli Defense Forces. Let me give you one of the best men I know. He’s going to tear up D.C. Proud to call you a friend.

Brian Mast: Thank you. I’m honored to have the opportunity to address you. I actually had prepared remarks that I was going to give, but some of the remarks that were already given inspired me to tell another story, and it’s one of the most important stories that I have inside of me. I always think it’s important to tell this when I get the opportunity. I think it’s even more so important to tell this now that I’m going to have the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. and serve as a Representative alongside some absolutely great men and women, Representative Gohmert, Representative Desantos. I’m honored to be joining the ranks of you all, but this story actually occurred while I was in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t too long ago. It was shortly after the new year, and as was mentioned I was a bomb technician. I did it in our highest level of special operations. I loved it.

The nature of the work that we did was very similar to the Bin Laden raid. We would only go out under the cover of darkness, as well as after very specific targets that we would’ve been following for days or weeks or months, and it was our job at that point to either kill or capture the individuals that we were out there going after. And so I go up to Washington, D.C., and I’m asked to address a few members of Congress and staffers, some White House staffers, and I’m asked to tell them a little bit about the story about the night that I was injured, and not to speak to them politically, but more so to give them a motivational speech, and so I did my best to do that.

I told these Representatives and their staffers about the night that I was injured, as I’ll tell you a little bit about right now. It was a very normal night for the assault force that I was a part of. It was September 19, 2010. It was working out of Kandahar, Afghanistan. The target that we were after was in the south of Kandahar, and as we went after this target we were out on two Chinook helicopters, and they dropped us off in a very tall marijuana field. There are a lot of marijuana fields there. There are a lot of opium fields in Afghanistan. They dropped us off in a pot field, and as they dropped us off there, it was actually on the wrong side of a river. We had to get onto the other side of this river, and as the lone bomb technician, it was essentially my job to lead and clear the way for our assault force to where we had to go to, and so as I was leading and clearing the way, I told my guys at one point we had to get across this river. There was only one place that we could get across it. If I could figure out there was only one place to get across that river, certainly any enemy that was in that area could figure out there was only one place we could get across it. I was almost certain that there were bombs buried in the ground there somewhere, so they needed to let me check things out.

I’m conservative by most measures, and I’ve long known that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is markedly progressive on most policy issues. But I wasn’t looking for a brawl. I was simply searching for friendship. Relatively new to the Detroit metropolitan area, I was hoping to become more involved in the Jewish community and perhaps as well to partake in interesting discussions about domestic and international topics. That’s why I accepted an invitation from the Glass Leadership Institute, the ADL’s 10-month, nationwide program “designed for a select group of young professionals as an up-close and personal opportunity to expand their knowledge about the nation’s premier human relations organization.”

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/191920/my-adl-problem

The thought of publishing something about the ADL didn’t cross my mind until I attended the ADL’s National Leadership Summit in May, about seven months after beginning the program. And even once the thought had crossed my mind, I hesitated in putting pen to paper. I wanted to give the ADL the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I had been too critical—or just too thin-skinned. I decided, however, that I needed to share.

First, I hope this essay persuades the ADL, which is heavily invested in antibullying (e.g., “No Place For Hate” campaign), to consider that it itself has become a bully to conservatives who remain in its ranks. Shutting out right-leaning individuals through crowd intimidation and derision weakens coalitions, which are vital in advocacy work. This behavior also diminishes the organization’s values, which will turn stale and trite when left unchallenged.

Secondly, I want the ADL to revisit and clarify its mission. “The nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency,” asserts that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry”; not just “all forms of bigotry,” but “anti-Semitism” and then “all forms of bigotry.” Yet as murderous anti-Semitism around the globe has surged in recent years, the ADL has dedicated itself more and more to matters of social justice in America (e.g., immigration, women’s reproductive health, economic “privilege”) that are already being pursued by a plethora of lobbying outlets and activist foundations. This wouldn’t be problematic—or rather, duplicitous—per se. But the ADL loudly and incessantly bemoans the fact that Jews are living in an increasingly dangerous world. “Thirty or forty years ago,” I heard over and over again at the National Leadership Summit, “I couldn’t have imagined that Jews would be getting shot dead in the streets of Europe.”

Well, resources are limited. Is combatting anti-Semitism a “priority” for the ADL? If so, then the organization should put its money where its mouth is. Alas, this outcome seems ever more unlikely as it seeks to enforce group conformity and advance political agendas that have nothing to do with defending the Jewish people.

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Unlike the ADL leadership, or those members of the leadership with whom I’ve had contact, I genuinely believe in diversity of opinion and its ability to generate and nurture progress. Having spent a chunk of the past decade in the Ivory Tower, I have witnessed the stultifying effects of ideological uniformity upon scholarship and society. The most rewarding conversations I had during that period were with individuals on the Far Left. (For instance, I learned a lot about the strengths and weakness of philosophies on both ends of the political spectrum from the Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group.) They forced me to revisit and, occasionally, refine some of my principal notions. As a result, not infrequently, my rivals and I discovered common ground.

Part of my frustration with the ADL stems from its blatant intellectual dishonesty, which may arise from the organization’s fundraising ambitions. It’s difficult to convey just how intellectually insulting, how patronizing it was to be repetitively told by winking staff members that their organization is “nonpartisan.” If the ADL, which possesses 501(c)(3) designation, touts a legislative agenda that mirrors that of the Obama Administration, then what organization is partisan? True, the ADL does not participate in Democratic political campaigns and, therefore, keeps its tax-exempt status. But is it really in the spirit of the law/IRS code for the ADL to laud liberalism and disparage conservatism? And how does this conduct aid Jews in Europe and elsewhere who are literally under fire?

In the Soviet Union, art was just another tool to indoctrinate the masses in class struggle. Everything revolved around class.

In New York City, art is just another tool not just to indoctrinate the masses on class struggle, but also to divide us on race and sexuality. Nowhere is that more evident than in the art installations in the long awaited Second Avenue subway station on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, set to open in early January.

Check out the lady in the photo below. It’s been decades since black people had afros that big.

But in New York, it’s always the 1960s.

See the photo above. Four Hispanics, one black girl (kind of), and a white kid. I’m surprised they have even one white kid. If the other five hadn’t ordered pizza, he wouldn’t even be there. He looks kind of scared. Maybe he doesn’t speak Spanish.

Actually, I’m surprised that black people aren’t up in arms over this one. It has become routine to marginalize white men in art and advertisements, but here we see that Hispanics have a four-to-one ratio on the sort of black lady. Imagine if this installation had four white boys and only one black girl – do you think the black community would be silent then? And what about Asians, the invisible minority? No one ever complains when they are shortchanged. And why no hijabis? The more I look at it, the less and less progressive this piece of art becomes!

Here we have two men, either about to go to work or about to go on a blue-collar honeymoon. You see, it is not enough to have a photo or a painting of a man who is gay; we must have an exhibit of a man who is “caught in the act” of being gay, since people who are gay are defined by their sexual acts, according to liberals who control the art world and mainstream media.