RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/columnists/timgraham/2021/01/27/susan-rice-and-the-factchecker-farce-n2583762

The new White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, came to the briefing room on Tuesday with domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. This came two days after CNN’s Brian Stelter celebrated the “refreshing” arrival of “transparency and truth” at the briefings.

Rice is best remembered in conservative circles for spewing falsehoods on five Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, when she was White House national security adviser: She claimed the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans was a “spontaneous reaction” to an Islamophobic YouTube video, not a terrorist attack. “Protesters” showed up with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, but the attack was somehow “spontaneous.” CBS later reported Team Obama knew on Sept. 11, the day of the attack, that it was a terrorist attack.

Seeing Rice at the White House podium this week, a friend of mine suggested Rice has never been “fact-checked.” Well, that can’t be, I thought. Then I went to the PolitiFact website, which strangely had a Susan Rice page … but not a single “fact-check” of Rice, even though PolitiFact was founded in 2007 and Rice worked for then-President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. It never put her on its tilted “Truth-O-Meter.”

It turns out PolitiFact gave then-press secretary Jay Carney a “Mostly False” rating in 2013 for saying there was no effort by Rice to “play down” the terrorism angle in interviews. But Rice evaded a rating.

As PolitiFact did for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claims of having Cherokee ancestry, it addressed Rice’s unmasking controversy in April 2017 with an article “in context” (avoiding the Truth-O-Meter). The headline read, “In context: Did Susan Rice lie about unmasking Trump associates?” On “PBS NewsHour,” anchor Judy Woodruff asked Rice “whether Trump transition officials, including the president, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration.” Rice said, “I know nothing about this.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/01/24/the-assault-on-greatness-n1407826

EXCERPT

“It is not only that we cannot see the forest for the trees; our vision is so low to the ground that we cannot see the trees for the underbrush. The contemporary intent is to attach minds of ivory to feet of clay, strong wills to weak inclinations, and sterling qualities to commonplace attributes. Greatness grates. Or in Johnathan Swift’s terms from Gulliver’s Travels, we need to shrink the Brobdingnagian down to the size of the Lilliputian.

Today, we see this species of libelous truncation carried out by the media, the political echelon and a significant portion of the electorate against Donald Trump, one of the truly great presidents in the national pantheon. Obviously, Trump did not possess the gravity of Lincoln or the folksy humor of Reagan. But presidents should be judged by their deeds.

This was a president who did not accept a salary, whose love of America was undeniable, and who strove might and main to Make America Great Again. He created a prosperous economy, brought jobs and industries back to the homeland, slashed the unemployment rate to its lowest figure in the last fifty years, lifted between 6 and 7 million people off food stamps, oversaw record stock market gains, eliminated strangling business regulations and bureaucratic overreach, gave tax relief for the middle class, cut the capital gains tax, rebuilt the military, renegotiated trade deals in America’s interests, established energy independence, imposed tariffs to protect vital industries, brought high-speed broadband infrastructure to rural America, lowered the price of vehicles, passed the Navigable Waters Protection Rule providing relief to farmers, modernized the Department of Agriculture’s biotechnology sector, brought the Space force into being as the sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Services, and much much more.

The fact that Trump accomplished what he did in four short years despite the veritable barrage of political obstructions, slander, disinformation, fraudulent investigations, frivolous impeachments, media mendacity and mantic contempt—in effect, a campaign orchestrated by a rabid group of ideologues to discredit and literally belittle him—beggars belief.

Trump built towers; his enemies dug trenches.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/01/26/only-five-republicans-side-with-democrats-to-proceed-with-impeachment-trial-n1411862

Despite Senator Rand Paul’s point of order arguing that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional, the Senate voted 55-45 not to dismiss the impeachment trial, with five Republicans joining the Democrats. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/01/26/gabbard-sounds-the-alarm-leftists-are-plotting-kgb-style-surveillance-of-conservatives-n1411860

On Tuesday, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) issued another important warning about the Democrats like former CIA Director John Brennan who appear to have seized on the Capitol riot as an excuse to crack down on dissent from the Left’s orthodoxy. Democrats seem to be mulling a new domestic “War on Terror” complete with surveillance of American “insurgents” like… Libertarians.

In a short video posted on Twitter, Gabbard began by condemning the mob that stormed the Capitol but went on to issue an important warning about the budding new “War on Terror.”

“The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance, are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Gabbard declared.

She then played a brief clip of Brennan warning against an “unholy alliance” including “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, and even Libertarians” that “looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas.”

Gabbard, a former presidential candidate, ended her clip by calling on President Joe Biden and all members of Congress to condemn Brennan’s remarks, which suggest a threat to Americans’ civil liberties.

https://redstate.com/michael_thau/2021/01/25/report-cdc-change-in-covid-criteria-that-inflated-fatalities-10-fold-also-broke-federal-law-conclusion-n316252

Imagine if President Trump had managed to squeeze out $38 billion to fund a border wall by scaring the bejesus out of Congress with some incredibly alarming stats about illegal alien crime.

Now try to imagine that the mainstream press completely ignored the question of whether those stats might have been ginned up out of thin air precisely to get Congress to turn over all that dough.

Unless you’re on some pretty crazy hallucinogens, you can’t.

Heck, even if every single word of Trump’s story were true, not a week would pass before some New York Times reporter would be all over the news quoting her mentally defective brother-in-law as a “source familiar with the matter” who claims that Trump had not only lied about the criminal propensities of illegal aliens—whom everyone knows are better Americans than you or I and especially Donald Trump could ever hope to be—but that the dreaded Orange Man had also viciously mocked our founding fathers, flag, and Jesus Christ himself along the way.

Yet, somehow, hardly anyone in America is even aware that the CDC managed to get their initial $8 billion budget for 2020 increased by a factor of six to a whopping $46 billion by relentlessly honking the COVID-19 panic-horn. (H/t, RedState reader, Kurt Schulzke.)

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/27/yet-another-trump-impeachment-sorry-but-this-one-too-is-a-sham/

he Democrats are racing ahead with their third effort to impeach former President Donald Trump. Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the impeachment articles to the Senate on Tuesday, and the now evenly-split Senate will take it up on Feb. 8. It’s a waste of time and taxpayer money for one simple reason: It’s not even legal.

No, that’s not a mere assertion or our opinion. It’s based on the only document we know that guides how impeachments should take place. It’s called the Constitution.

We still live in a constitutional republic, which means we are bound by its laws. So is Congress.

So here’s what the Constitution says:

When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

So the impeachment now being moved to the Senate is not legal, based on the clear wording and intent of the Constitution.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/26/meet-joe-biden-the-job-slayer/

When running for office, President Joe Biden repeatedly proclaimed that his policies would create 18 million jobs. But on his first day in office, Biden took actions that will put millions out of work.

One of the very first executive actions Biden signed was to kill the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that President Barack Obama had blocked for years, which President Donald Trump finally approved. Biden’s reason? To combat the “climate crisis.” While canceling the pipeline won’t have any impact on global temperatures, it will kill thousands of (mostly union) jobs.

As the plumbers and pipefitters union noted: “The Biden administration has now put thousands of union workers out of work. For the average American family, it means energy costs will go up and communities will no longer see the local investments that come with pipeline construction.”

Some estimates said the pipeline would employ 11,000 American workers in 2021 and create more than $1.6 billion in wages.

The same day, Biden imposed a 60-day moratorium on oil and gas leases on federal lands. The American Petroleum Institute calculates that, if made permanent, Biden’s ban will cost nearly 1 million jobs over the next two years and cut the nation’s economic output a total of $700 billion by 2030. Oh, and it will make the U.S. more dependent on oil imports.

As ABC News reported, Biden’s “moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits is prompting widespread concerns in New Mexico, where spending on education and other public programs hinges on the industry’s success.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/the-senates-impeachment-trial-is-illegal-and-a-sham

Democrats claim to want to unify the country, but impeaching a former president, a private citizen, is the antithesis of unity. This impeachment is nothing more than a partisan exercise designed to divide the country further.

They have brazenly appointed an openly pro-impeachment Democrat to preside over the trial. This is not fair or impartial, and it hardly encourages any kind of unity for the country.

If we are about to try to impeach a president, then where is the chief justice? If the accused is no longer president, then where is the constitutional power to impeach him?

Private citizens don’t get impeached. Impeachment is for removal from office, and the accused here has already left office.

Hyperpartisan Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol, the likes of which have never been seen in our nation’s history. Instead of doing the nation’s work with their new control of the House, Senate, and executive branch, Democrats are wasting the people’s time on a partisan vendetta against a man no longer in office. It’s almost as if they have no ability to exist except in opposition to Donald Trump. Without him as their boogeyman, they might have to legislate, and actually convince the public that their policy prescriptions are the right ones.

Democrats are about to do something no self-respecting senator has ever stooped to. They are insisting the election is actually not over, and so they insist on regurgitating its bitterness. In the past, calmer heads have typically prevailed in our history and allowed public opinion to cast blame where blame is deserved.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/25/does-joe-know/

For those of us watching this made-for-TV special in which a totalitarian cabal at the core of the Democratic Party takes over America while we are locked at home, one question arises: Does the mentally impaired Joseph R. Biden know that he was put into the presidency by a small committee* of hard Left operatives, and is currently serving as a figurehead, as all decisions about policy and personnel are made by others? 

Or does he think that he really is “the president,” with all that usually entails? 

Does he believe that 81 million adult American citizens voted for him after he failed to answer basic questions about what he would do in office, while hiding in his basement all summer? When he thinks about his support across this great continent, does he see the faces of those who showed up to signal assent? The crowds? The four or six or 11 people in tiny yards, in random places? How could he not know, you wonder . . . ? But, ego.

Does Joe know that he is, effectively, a hologram—a 3D projection in space, retaining outward signs of being a sentient human— whose mental processes have been taken over by the committee? That earpiece he wears, who is speaking into it? Remember, he wore it at the debate, too. How does that work? It’s hard to just repeat words as they come into your ear, with anything like normal inflection. Those dark contact lenses he is wearing—what does he see?

When he sits at the Resolute desk, with a stack of executive orders to sign for the cameras, and the sheets of paper he is signing are blank… surely he knows. Unless he sees something else. 

And let’s discuss the content of those EOs for a second: Joe Biden is an unprincipled panderer, but he is not personally hard Left. He swore up and down at his second debate that he would not end fracking or shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, putting tens of thousands of American union members out of work, thus ensuring a steep rise in energy prices. Yet he signed that order on day one. Would the real Joe Biden have signed EOs allowing China to meddle in the U.S. energy grid?  Or agree to destroy women’s sports?

The key question is, does Joe know the timeline for his departure? We can’t be sure, but the satirical news site the Babylon Bee gives him 100 days, as of January 22.  

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/25/gop-election-fraud-deniers-face-reckoning/

So here’s the official company line promoted by establishment Republicans to defend the outcome of the 2020 presidential election: Of course the election had some irregularities like all elections but nothing that would change the result and, by the way, the country needs some major election integrity reform before this happens again.

The doublespeak designed to refute what election fraud deniers call “the big lie” was best expressed over the weekend by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, failed presidential candidate, and now paid ABC News shill. While attempting to shame fellow Republicans for bolstering Donald Trump’s complaints about how the election was handled in states that flipped to Joe Biden in 2020, Christie falsely claimed there wasn’t any evidence of vote fraud. “I don’t think there’s any question that the country needs to focus on in terms of our elections is making sure we have some effective electoral reform . . . we need to make the system better for 2022,” Christie told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “But this election was not stolen.”

Others have set up a similar trap for themselves. Just hours before the so-called “insurrection” began, ex-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) slammed his GOP colleagues planning to protest the results and demand an election audit. Like Christie, McConnell defended the integrity of the election while supporting election reform at the state level. “Last year’s bizarre pandemic procedures must not become the new norm,” McConnell lectured January 6.

Which raises the question—why not?

If the 2020 election was legitimate and, as McConnell and others insist, featured no evidence of decisive fraud outside the normally acceptable level of illegalities, then why should anything change?

Tens of millions of mail-in ballots without signature verification or documented chain of custody or other legally required proof should indeed be the “new norm” if their analysis is to be believed. Election Day will last not weeks but months; every voter will receive an absentee ballot, even those who didn’t request one, and it can be returned past Election Day without a postmark or delivered to drop-boxes manned by partisans in deep blue counties and cities.