RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2021/01/07/portland-activists-harass-punch-mayor-ted-wheeler-restaurant/

Ted Wheeler may be the 2nd worst mayor in America (after Bill de Blasio) but he still shouldn’t be assaulted in public by Portland’s far left activists. That’s what happened last night as the mayor was dining outdoors on a date.

Wheeler and a dinner companion had just arrived at Café Nell in the Nob Hill neighborhood about 8:30 p.m. when a group of people confronted the pair, who were seated in an outdoor dining area, according to a City Hall official who asked not to be named.

Wheeler took out his phone to snap a photo of the hecklers, the official said. That’s when, according to Wheeler, a woman in the crowd “swatted” at him and struck his shoulder, the official said.

Again, I’m not a fan of Wheeler but having these goons show up and scream that he’s a “war criminal” in a restaurant is over the line. I didn’t like it when the mob did this to diners in DC and I don’t like it here either.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/06/2020-election-mistrust-commission-prove-or-disprove-fraud-column/4132191001/

EXCERPTS:

I hate federal commissions. I have always hated federal commissions. Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.

That is not what we need. There are three reasons why the need for a real commission is needed: 

►First, and most important, this was an unprecedented election in the reliance of mail-in voting and the use of new voting systems and procedures. We need to review how that worked down to the smallest precincts and hamlets.

►Second, possibly tens of millions of voters believe that this election was rigged and stolen. I am not one of them. However, the integrity of our elections depends on the faith of the electorate.

Roughly 40% of that electorate have lingering doubts about whether their votes actually matter. Most of the cases challenging the election were not decided on the merits. Indeed, it seems they haven’t even been allowed for discovery. Instead, they were largely dismissed on jurisdictional or standing groups or under the “laches” doctrine that they were brought too late. Those allegations need to be conclusively proven or disproven in the interests of the country.

►Third, there were problems. There was not proof of systemic fraud or irregularities, but there were problems of uncounted votes, loss of key custodial information and key differences in the rules governing voting and tabulations. 

Nothing has changed. The stakes are too high to allow even a dust particle to tip the difference on the ultimate findings. The dust-free option requires a dependent, not independent, commission. Otherwise, the public will be the loser.

So, let’s have a commission, but let’s make it a real one.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-coup-of-pelosis-own-11610148740?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

We scoured the U.S. Constitution Friday afternoon and it’s definitely not there: the provision allowing the Speaker of the House of Representatives to intervene in the military chain of command to protect the world from President Trump.

Mrs. Pelosi told her Democratic colleagues that she spoke Friday morning to Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” She posted the “Dear colleague” letter on her website to make sure the world got the message. A spokesman for Gen. Milley told reporters the chairman “answered her questions.”

The press and left-wing Twitter (we repeat ourselves) love the idea of the Speaker inserting herself into the chain of command as a rebuke to an erratic President. But it’s an abuse of her own power, which is limited to leading the legislative branch unless both the President and Vice President are incapacitated or removed from office. In that case she is third in line for the Presidency.

But in the meantime she has no business telling the Joint Chiefs not to follow the President’s orders. Gen. Milley hardly needs the lecture, as he has been dealing with Mr. Trump for 15 months and isn’t about to indulge an unlawful order, much less an effort to launch nuclear weapons.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-1-6-china-starts-collecting-on-its-investment-in-the-bidens

You have to hand it to China for one thing — they play a long game.

Remember back a few months to October. That’s when the infamous Hunter Biden laptop became public information through the diligent reporting of the New York Post. The biggest revelation on the laptop was the formation in 2017 of a joint venture between Biden family members and a Chinese-government-affiliated energy company called CEFC (10% for “the big guy”). According to emails on the laptop, sums changing hands included at least a $5 million “forgivable non-interest-bearing” loan. There was discussion in the laptop emails about much larger sums also moving from China to the Bidens, but since nobody has ever been able to get a Biden to answer any questions about the subject, the full extent of the payments remains a state secret.

But why, you ask, was China paying that kind of money to the Biden family in 2017 — a time when Joe had left office as Vice President, and was just one of many potential candidates for President in 2020? That question was answered by Tony Bobulinski, the guy the Bidens had recruited to be the CEO of their joint venture with CEFC. Bobulinski’s name was all over the laptop emails, which suddenly made him a very public guy, and led him in October 2020 to give interviews to the (NY) Post and others. He also gave a written statement to the Post with the answer to the question of China’s motive:

I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/08/ashamed-of-what/

People ask me if I feel “ashamed” about what Miranda Devine describes as “the clueless insurrection” in the Capitol on Wednesday. My response? I am about as ashamed as Joe Biden, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Juan Williams of Fox News were about the riots and shootings that the Democratic Party subsidized and even justified last summer.

Unlike those violent riots, which the Democrats and national media attributed to white racism, and which came from Democratic voters, the turmoil in the Capitol on Wednesday did not result in burning and looting. There were no white or black policemen shot and the only shooting victim (which the media don’t seem to care about since white Republican lives don’t matter) was a female protestor, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, by a Capitol police officer.

I also heard our Democratic constitutional expert on Fox News, Jonathan Turley, telling us Wednesday evening that pro-Trump thugs had “lost their faith” in our constitutional system. It was for this reason that they “desecrated” our sacred space. I don’t recall similar talk about desecration when the “peaceful protesters” tried to burn down St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House last summer. 

Of course, there was a storm of media abuse afterwards when President Trump spoke before the historical site that had been saved from “peaceful protestors.” Nor do I remember anything more than whispered protest, even on Fox News, when the Democratic Party got howling banshees to invade the Senate chamber to protest the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice and to hassle his supporters. It seems that there are big-time desecrations, for example, when people with MAGA hats commit them, and then there are the entirely excusable ones that transpire when feminist Democrats invade the sacred precinct. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mob-on-the-hill-was-far-from-a-coup-11610061914?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Insurrections are common but Wednesday’s aborted insurrection on Capitol Hill was unique. The usual purpose of mobilizing a mass of people and deploying their sheer momentum against the edifices of power, a royal or presidential palace, or a parliament is to seize power—through the act of seizing that iconic building. But that is logically impossible when the ruler is not the enemy to be replaced but rather the intended beneficiary of the insurrection.

What happened was certainly not an attempted coup d’état, either. Coups must be subterranean, silent conspiracies that emerge only when the executors move into the seats of power to start issuing orders as the new government. A very large, very noisy and colorful gathering cannot attempt a coup.

There have been quite a few cases around the world of what is best described as mass intimidation directed against parliaments. But in all such cases it was some specific law that was wanted or not wanted, which legislators under the gun might then vote for or against. For that to happen, the legislators have to be all gathered in the legislature and kept there to be coerced. Most recently in Beirut last August, Lebanon’s Parliament was besieged by a crowd demanding and forcing the government’s resignation. This conspicuously did not happen in Washington on Wednesday because it was a crowd that invaded the building, not snatch teams sent to seize individual legislators to be cajoled or forced into their seats.

Given all these exclusions, only one description remains: a venting of accumulated resentments. Those who voted for President Trump saw his electoral victory denied in 2016 by numerous loud voices calling for “resistance” as if the president-elect were an invading foreign army. These voices were eagerly relayed and magnified by mass media, emphatically including pro-Trump media.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-fight-isnt-in-congress-11610061953?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

On Wednesday the Capitol of the most powerful nation the world has ever known was stormed by an angry mob. Americans surely never thought they’d see such a scene: members of Congress barricaded inside the House chamber, Capitol Police trampled, and four Americans dead. A woman was shot near the elevator I use every day to enter the House floor. It was a display not of patriotism but of frenzy and anarchy. The actions of a few overshadowed the decent intentions of many.

Why?

Perhaps we should ask our Founders. They were not oracles, but they were borderline prophets. In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton lays out the purpose of the Electoral College, arguing that an independent and decentralized body of electors should elect the president. “The choice of several, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements.” According to Hamilton, the only people in America who should not be allowed to be named an elector would members of the House and Senate and any “other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States.” Electors would “exclude from eligibility to this trust, all those who from situation might be suspected of too great devotion to the President in office.”

Our Founders thought it crucial to entrust a temporary body with electing the president for the simple reason that a standing body like Congress would face enormous pressure from voters, officeholders and interest groups. That could be, for example, pressure from a president or from 10,000 protesters outside the Capitol. For this reason, the Founders opted to diffuse responsibility to electors from each state.

They sought to avoid the exact situation we saw on Jan. 6. Millions of Americans were falsely led to believe that the final say in the election of our next president lay with a single body, Congress. And so it was no surprise that thousands showed up to make their voices heard. But the belief that Congress has any say whatever in the “certification” of electoral votes has never been true. It has always been unconstitutional and against our Founders’ intent, as it was when Democrats attempted the same stunt in 2005.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/what-one-party-oligarchy-means-going-forward-lloyd-billingsley/

“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th. I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted. While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”

President Trump issued that statement early Thursday, and Democrats were quick to follow.

Joe Biden said those who stormed the Capitol were “domestic terrorists. It’s that simple.”

Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer called for Trump’s immediate removal under the 25th Amendment, calling Trump “a very dangerous person” who committed an “act of sedition.”

Joining Schumer and Pelosi was Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, on the grounds that Trump is unfit for office and to “ensure the next few weeks are safe for the American people.” Pelosi also supports a resolution by Democrat Cory Bush to expel from Congress unnamed Republicans who allegedly enabled Trump.

He had the temerity to interrupt the previous president’s plan to transform America into a one-party oligarchy, and that launched the left’s jihad against him. In four years, in the face of furious opposition, President Trump achieved more than anybody thought he would, and Trump’s middle-east peace accords drew widespread praise.

Trump never got his day in court, so by all indications the president of the United States has no standing to present evidence of election fraud. The illegitimate Joe Biden now reprises the ancien régime of 2008-2016, and that should have 74 million Trump voters appraising the forces arrayed against them.

Long before they caved to election fraud, federal legislators were representing the Washington establishment to their districts, not the other way around. As the late Frank Zappa put it, those folks up in Washington just look out for number one. And number one ain’t you. You ain’t even number two. Powerful precincts of the establishment deployed against Trump supporters, and that will surely ramp up under Biden.