RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/revolution-by-shenanigan/

EXCERPTS

Democrats propose to do away with the Constitution and impose a new one that none of us has agreed to live under.

Today’s shenanigan is tomorrow’s precedent.

The American constitutional order is a blend of democratic and undemocratic institutions, a result of the compromises that were necessary to create one nation out of 13 very different colonies, with different economic and political interests, different cultures, different religious habits — the genuine diversity of 18th-century American life. We have a federal system in which the states and U.S. government exercise a kind of dual sovereignty, with the states remaining powers in their own right rather than mere administrative subdivisions of the national state. The status of the states is reflected in the Senate, where each state enjoys equal representation regardless of population, and in institutions such as the Electoral College. Other antidemocratic measures in our constitutional order include judicial review and, most important, the Bill of Rights, which are constraints on the powers of temporary democratic majorities.

The Democrats currently are at war with the American Constitution. They believe that it is unjust that on two recent occasions their party has lost presidential elections, which happen in the Electoral College, in spite of winning a greater number of total votes across all the states. They dislike that the Senate gives power to less populated, rural, and largely Western states that are more conservative than are the big, densely populated urban areas in which Democrats thrive. And they are irritated that the First Amendment prevents them from imposing a federal censorship regime on political speech.

The Democrats’ approach to the Senate has been politically incompetent. When they were in power, they resented the effective maneuvering of the minority party, and so eliminated the filibuster in the matter of most federal judicial appointments, an innovation that they are regretting in the worst way right about now. Republicans extended the filibuster-free process to nominations for the highest court.

Now, some Democrats propose to simply create new Senate seats for their party by declaring the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to be states, which would be illegal in the former case and unwise in the latter. But in the matter of Puerto Rico, they have the Texas-annexation shenanigans of the 19th century as precedent.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2020/09/28/nyt-bombshell-trump-paid-millions-in-taxes-owes-no-debt-to-russia-wait-what-n974892

“Trump Paid Millions in Taxes” isn’t nearly as scandalous a headline as “Trump Paid Only $750 in Taxes,” although, to be fair, it does have the advantage of being true.

“Trump Paid Millions in Taxes” isn’t nearly as scandalous a headline as “Trump Paid Only $750 in Taxes,” although, to be fair, it does have the advantage of being true.

Alexandria Brown dug deep into the New York Times‘ story to see if there was any truth to the shrieking headlines:

As Brown further noted, “Trump PAID, as in transferred to the US Treasury, $1 million in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017. Note also that most of the overpayment was rolled forward, not refunded.”

People who own and run businesses take losses in some years, and pay little or nothing in taxes, and make great sums in other years and pay much more in taxes.

They also take advantage of tax breaks, tax credits, and tax incentives — just like you and I do.

Here’s a screencap from the actual NYT report:

The Treasury was millions of dollars richer in 2016 and 2017, thanks to checks signed “Donald J. Trump.” But thanks to our overly complicated tax code, the line-item amount Trump technically paid for those years was $750.

Fact Check: Are you kidding us with this nonsense, NYT?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-unhappy-returns-11601333853?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The New York Times has spun out 10,000 words claiming that Donald Trump paid little or no income tax for many years. The Times says it can’t release the actual tax documents lest this compromise its sources, and Mr. Trump denies paying so little but won’t release his returns.

Voters can decide whom to believe, but one fact to note is that the story doesn’t assert illegal behavior. The IRS presumably signed off on the Trump returns, except in one case in which it is disputing a $72.9 million deduction claimed by Mr. Trump. This is a fight rich people have with the IRS all the time, often ending in Tax Court.

The report makes much of a deduction Mr. Trump took for business consulting fees that match payments his daughter Ivanka reported in separate filings. There may be legitimate reasons for those fee payments, and Ms. Trump ought to clear the matter up.

Is it a scandal if Mr. Trump legally exploited the tax code’s treatment of chronic business losses to pay little tax? Hardly. Mr. Trump admitted this himself in a 2016 debate. Congress littered the code with loopholes aimed at assisting real-estate businesses, among others. Democrats write a tax code to please their corporate donors and then selectively attack CEOs or businesses that use the loopholes.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/theres_a_gamechanger_out_there_that_should_end_the_wuhan_virus_paranoia.html

The 15-day lockdown that Americans agreed to in March to prepare hospitals for a possible influx of Wuhan virus patients has lasted for over half a year in some places. It’s disrupted businesses, education, and family life while harming people’s mental and physical well-being. On Monday, though, a game-changer hit the scene when President Trump announced an affordable rapid test for the Wuhan virus. The new test can be self-administered and will produce a result in around 15 minutes.

The Epoch Times reports:

President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 28 that the U.S. government will start distributing 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests to states this week in a bid to help governors safely reopen K–12 schools and economies.

Of the total, the administration is dedicating 100 million tests for schools and measures to help reopen economies. An additional 50 million tests will target the most vulnerable elderly population in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and home health and hospice sites.

[snip]

There are no restrictions on how the 100 million tests meant for schools and economies can be used, but the Trump administration will urge governors to prioritize for settings that need rapid, low-tech methods of testing, such as schools, first-responder facilities, and areas where outbreaks are detected, [Admiral Brett] Giroir [M.D., assistant secretary for Health, in the HHS] said. The administration plans to ship 6.5 million tests from the school allotment this week.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-barrett-announcement/

It was outstanding. Trump is at his best in such settings, when he really has no choice but to be on his best behavior. As for Amy Coney Barrett herself, she is truly an inspired choice — a distinguished professor and jurist who is a deeply grounded originalist and, everything suggests, a composed and winsome public speaker.

She hit the right notes today. She honored the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, made her judicial philosophy crystal clear, and movingly introduced her incredible family. The high point may have been when Trump brought her family up on the stage with her. Her personal life shouldn’t strictly matter, but in the current context — when confirmations are political wars and there will be a determined attempt to portray her as a moral monster — it obviously does.

Democrats and the Left would be well-served to not wage a campaign of personal destruction against her and instead focus on the process and the supposed threat to the ACA, but they won’t be able to help themselves.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/25/tucker-carlson-names-the-rich-ceos-funding-supplies-bail-for-louisville-rioters/

Tucker Carlson broke the news Thursday evening that a rioter bail organization led by a “pampered group of revolutionaries” was responsible for bringing rioting supplies to downtown Louisville after the charges in the Breonna Taylor case were announced on Wednesday. Sitting on the organization’s board is a former president at NBC and a finance CEO with Princeton University ties.

“These are violent thugs obviously — many of them, by the way, have college degrees from expensive universities. But in the end, they’re all just foot soldiers. There are legions behind them. People you don’t see on camera. It takes legions, it takes money, and it takes organization to stage effective riots for three and a half months,” Carlson stated.

In a viral video from Wednesday, rioters are seen unloading a truck of supplies such as Black Lives Matter and “abolish the police” signs, shields, water bottles, and more just minutes after the verdict was issued.

“It’s worth asking who is funding all of this? That is a central question. Too few have tried to answer it,” Carlson said, as clips of people unloading the truck played.

https://mailchi.mp/bdae29435382/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-orga

On February 20, 2020, just weeks before our country’s economic shutdown, Adam Andrzejewski, OpenTheBooks’ CEO/Founder, presented to the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida — in a packed room of 900 guests.  

Since then, over 840,000 people have watched the speech on YouTube…

WATCH HERE: The Depth of the Swamp.

The American people want to know just how corrupt their government is, whether it’s at the local, state, or federal levels, or all of the above. 

What do you think – is it worse than you thought? 

In the presentation, Andrzejewski covers the federal bureaucracy, improper payments, federal waste and pork, the Ivy League, Rahm Emanuel, Andrew Cuomo, $300,000 LA lifeguards, our San Fran poop map, New York City rats, suing California and Wyoming, and so much more…

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/steeles-dossier-source-was-a-suspected-russian-spy/

On the newly declassified FBI documents.

Your head spinning? Mine too.

See if you can follow this: In an effort to depict Donald Trump as if he were in an espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, the Obama administration used bogus information, from a man the FBI suspected was an actual Russian spy, to brand as a suspected Russian spy a former U.S. naval intelligence officer who had actually been a CIA informant.

And that’s just the beginning. It turns out that Igor Danchenko, the man the FBI suspected of being an actual Russian spy, initially provided the bogus information about the American, Carter Page, through a former British spy, Christopher Steele. Through a couple of cut-outs, Steele had been retained by the Clinton campaign to dig up — or, alas, to make up — Russian dirt on Trump. Through his private intelligence business in London, Steele was known to be working for Russian oligarchs, while Danchenko was on Steele’s payroll. That is, the Clinton campaign, and ultimately the Obama administration, colluded with Russians for the purpose of accusing Donald Trump of . . .  yes . . . colluding with Russians.

Danchenko, who in 2005 reportedly told a Russian intelligence officer that he hoped someday to work for the Russian government, became Steele’s source on Trump. Even before October 2016, when the FBI and the Obama Justice Department first sought a surveillance warrant against Page based on the information Steele was compiling, it was obvious that the information was unreliable — some of it laughably so.

But the story was just too good. Nobody bothered to check the information or press Steele about its sourcing.

For months, Steele had been logged on bureau records as an official FBI informant. Nevertheless, in the most significant investigation in its modern history, the FBI did not identify Steele’s “primary sub-source,” Danchenko, until December 2016 — two months after the bureau, under oath, used the uncorroborated Steele/Danchenko information in what the FBI and Obama Justice Department labeled a “VERIFIED” application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/25/amy-coney-barrett-and-who-we-are-as-a-nation/

We salute Trump for appointing a real believer to the high court. The stakes are nothing short of who we are as a people.

So, it’s Amy Coney Barrett. How great is that? Deo Gratias. For secularists and others out there, that means “thanks be to God.” He is the one who makes all things and keeps all things in existence, even you.

Amy believes that. Maybe that is shocking to you. She also believes that the meaning of her life and work is to see the face of God in the Beatific Vision and live with Him forever.

Once upon a time, these were unremarkable beliefs. They were commonly held. Not at all shocking as they are now.

There have been two competing visions of who we are as a people. One argues that we are a Christian nation and that we were founded that way, that Christianity has pride of place among all faiths, and that the roots of our governmental system are found in the Bible. There is another view: we may be a religious people, but our government may only ever be secular, that is, without God or religion.

Professor Stephen D. Smith of the University of San Diego School of Law calls these the “providentialist” and the “secularist” view. He writes, “Providentialists declare that God works in history, that it is important as a people to acknowledge, and that the community should actively instill such beliefs in children as a basis for civic virtue.” Secularists, on the other hand, “insist that acknowledgments of deity (if there is one) ought to be purely private and that government acts improperly if it enters into religion or expresses or endorses religious beliefs. Thus, what one constituency views as imperative, the other regards as forbidden.”