RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/russiagate-probe-neither-trump-nor-his-campaign-ever-got-a-defensive-briefing

New disclosure of an FBI report should put this absurd claim to rest.

My column over the weekend was about the Obama-Biden administration’s exploitation of the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus to investigate Donald Trump, who was then the opposition Republican Party’s presidential candidate. The essence of this investigation is palpable from an August 2016 incident: The FBI covertly surveilled Trump by capitalizing on the U.S. intelligence community’s practice of providing a counterintelligence and security briefing to the nominees of the two major political parties.

The exploitation of executive power to monitor the opposition party’s presidential candidate is a Watergate-level abuse of power. That is why Obama and FBI apologists have steadfastly refused to cop to it.

A major element of their story is that the faux briefing given to Trump was actually a defensive briefing. We are to believe its purpose was to warn Trump that his campaign could be infiltrated by covert agents working for Russia.

The significance of the “defensive briefing” canard, and the importance of refuting it, still seems lost on many of Trump’s Russiagate defenders.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/peaceful-riots-and-lefts-reality-avoidance-don-feder/

People ask how Democrats can look at what’s going on in Portland and other urban combat zones and call it “peaceful protest” when on the nightly news they can see fires raging, hear mobs howling, and watch police being assaulted. Are they nuts?

In a way, they are.

It’s not just the anarchy in the streets. The entire progressive worldview is based on a far-reaching denial of reality.

Since at least the Enlightenment, those who embraced objective truth believed it was their responsibility to use empirical evidence and reason to understand the world, so that they didn’t end up getting eaten by tigers they mistook for tangerines.

Leftists work overtime to reshape the public perception of the world around them to conform with their ideology – even when it means denying the obvious. The novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called it “whim-worship.” In other words, this is the way it is because this is the way I want it to be. Because I hate America, I want it to be an inherently racist country, based on oppression and exploitation – and thus it is.

Here are a few examples of reality-avoidance ripped from the headlines: 

Guns cause crime. My city is a shooting gallery because of guns brought here from places with loose controls.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/obama-still-110-percent-trump-who-not-fake-lloyd-billingsley/

“What I saw was he was the kind of person that wants people to worship him. He needs to be worshiped and I don’t do that.”

That was Malik Obama in an August 1 interview with the New York Post. Obama, 62, was promoting his new book, Big Bad Brother from Kenya, and his interview proved enlightening on several fronts.

Malik managed a foundation named after his father, the Kenyan Barak H. Obama. In a telephone call shortly before the 2009 inauguration, the American president-elect “insisted I shut down the website and not continue with the foundation.” If Malik continued with the idea, the president threatened “to cut me off.”

In 2015, Malik Obama made an appeal on behalf of Aunt Hawa, living in poverty and working as a charcoal seller. The president told Malik he was “broke.” Aunt Zeituni Onyango died penniless in 2014 and Malik Obama appealed for $20,000 to transport her remains back to Kenya. The president said that was “too much” and ponied up only $5,000.

As Malik Obama explains,  “I don’t understand how somebody who claimed to be a relative or a brother can behave the way that he’s behaving, be so cold and ruthless, and just turn his back on the people he said were his family.”

Malik Obama also charged that Dreams from My Father, was inaccurate and freighted with “embellishments.”

https://nypost.com/2020/08/05/michelle-obama-blames-trump-for-her-low-grade-depression/?utm_campaign=ipad_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Former first lady Michelle Obama says she’s suffering from “low-grade depression” in part because of President Trump.

“I’m dealing with some form of low-grade depression. Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife and just seeing this administration. Watching the hypocrisy of it day in and day out is dispiriting,” Obama said in her new podcast.

The Obamas still live in DC. Their home is less than two miles from the White House in a quiet neighborhood of mansions. First daughter Ivanka Trump lives around the corner.

The former first lady remains revered by Democrats and said she tries to keep up routines such as working out to feel better.Last week former President Obama delivered a eulogy in Atlanta at the funeral of former Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and encouraged Senate Democrats to repeal the filibuster if they regain control, so they can pass initiatives such as DC statehood. He also has sought to boost the presidential campaign of his former vice president, Joe Biden.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/05/covid-19_lies_go_viral_143878.html

Beware of three widely circulating COVID-19-related lies and the partisan motives behind them. These lies are dangerous to your children and how you cope with this virus.

Lie No. 1: “The United States’ response stands out as among the worst of any country.” House Majority Whip James Clyburn leveled that charge, as he kicked off a hearing Friday into the virus.

Don’t buy it. A staggering 183,639 Europeans have died from the virus as of Monday. Deaths per capita have been far higher in the U.K., Spain and Italy than in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins. After a lull, cases are spiking in several European countries.

That hasn’t stopped New York Times columnist Paul Krugman from asking, “Why Can’t Trump’s America be like Italy?” Is he crazy? A patient with the coronavirus has faced three times the risk of dying from it in Italy as in the U.S., Johns Hopkins data indicate.

Lie No. 2: Clyburn accused the administration of “rushing into reopening the schools” against the ” advice of public health experts.” Sorry, but experts want schools to reopen.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-most-black-americans-want-police-to-remain-in-their-areas/

Most black Americans say they want police to continue their current presence in local areas, even as protests against racism and police brutality sweep the nation, and calls to reform and even defund police departments persist.

Close to two-thirds, 61 percent, of black Americans said they want the police presence in their area to remain the same, while 20 percent said they would like to see police spend more time in their neighborhood, according to a new Gallup poll. Another 19 percent said they would like to see the police presence in their area decrease.

Among the general population, 67 percent of Americans say they want the police presence near them to remain the same, with 71 percent of white Americans saying so. A majority of other minority communities also said they do not want to see fewer police officers patrolling their neighborhoods, with 59 percent of Hispanics preferring the current police presence.

Black Americans said they observe police in their neighborhoods slightly more than other groups, 32 percent saying they see police officers often or very often in their area, above the national average of 24 percent of all Americans who say the same. About 27 percent said they rarely or never see police in their neighborhoods. Only 22 percent of white Americans said they see police often or very often around where they live.

Of black Americans who see police frequently in their areas, only about a third say they think police should curtail their time in the neighborhood, similar to the overall percentage who say so.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/what-to-make-of-sally-yatess-senate-testimony/

The Justice Department has portrayed Yates as something of a dupe. I am not convinced.

Former Obama administration deputy attorney general Sally Yates will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. The Committee chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham, has said her appearance might provide insight into the Russiagate probe — i.e., the Obama administration’s monitoring of Donald Trump and his campaign — as well as into the abuse of FISA-surveillance powers. I suspect the testimony will be a dud, although there is some intrigue to it.

Yates became acting attorney general when AG Loretta Lynch stepped down toward the end of the Obama administration. She was thus present at the important January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, when she and the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, met with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser. The meeting centered around a scheme to withhold from the incoming Trump administration information about the Trump-Russia investigation — what’s now often called “Russiagate” because of its similarity to Watergate-era domestic spying, part of what led to President Nixon’s resignation to stave off impeachment.

Yates stayed on as acting AG in the early days of the Trump administration, but she was quickly fired for insubordination when she declined to enforce the new president’s travel-restriction order. Prior to that, it was she who informed Trump’s then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, that, on January 24, the FBI had interviewed retired Army general Michael Flynn, then Trump’s national-security adviser, in connection with Flynn’s late December 2016 conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.