RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/06/28/john-bolton-trump-book-profit-over-patriotism-column/3256625001/

Rep. Adam  Schiff, D-Calif. District 28, is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Bolton provides new evidence that Trump flagrantly abused power and confirms our central impeachment charge that he put his interests above America’s.

Last week, we witnessed the reemergence of John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, and the release of his book. In it, Bolton describes his personal experiences with Donald Trump and his great alarm at Trump’s incompetence, his dangerous subordination of our national security to his own personal interests, and his fundamental indecency.

In short, Bolton is telling Americans what we already know. That the president is exactly what he appears to be: petty, self-serving, ignorant and utterly supplicant to autocrats in China, Turkey, North Korea and Russia.

We proved during the impeachment trial that Trump withheld hundreds of millions in military aid to Ukraine to coerce that country into announcing a sham investigation of his political rival. Bolton confirms our case and provides additional evidence of that flagrant abuse of power by providing a firsthand account of how Trump confirmed this illicit quid pro quo during a conversation they had. Moreover, Bolton also corroborates the testimony of Gordon Sondland, the former U.S. ambassador to the European Union who testified that “everyone was in the loop.” Indeed they were, including the secretary of State, the Defense secretary and Attorney General William Barr.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/26/north-portland-looks-like-war-zone-after-antifa-allowed-to-rampage-for-hours/

Parts of Portland Oregon look like a “war zone” after a mob of about 200 antifa militants went on a destructive rampage late Thursday night into early Friday morning.

While the police stood by and watched, according to Portland-based journalist Andy Ngo, the antifa rioters tried to set up an “autonomous zone” outside the Portland Police North Precinct using barricades and stolen property.

“They’re occupying the space & trying to recreate another autonomous zone like the one they did outside Ted Wheeler’s condo,” he reported on Twitter. “A separate mob is demonstrating downtown.”

Throughout the early morning hours, the agitators started fires, smashed windows, looted and vandalized buildings. Militants also broke into a bank and also set fire to the Portland Police Bureau’s North Precinct, according to Oregon Live.

After the antifa militants fired mortars and paintballs at officers, resulting in multiple injuries, Portland police finally administered CS gas to disperse them, KATU News reporter Dan McCarthy reported. Only four people were arrested.

The radicals were allowed to do an extensive amount of property damage before they were shut down.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/27/a-coup-against-our-institutions/

Matthew Spalding, a scholar of the Constitution and dean of Hillsdale College’s Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C., has written an important essay on the troubling possibility that the treatment of General Michael Flynn by the Obama administration and, later, by holdovers in the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA, represents not just a personal disaster for Flynn—who was, for a week or so, President Trump’s national security advisor—but also a brewing constitutional crisis for the United States.

Many commentators, myself included, have described the whole “Donald-Trump-was-a-Russian-Asset” caper as the biggest political scandal in U.S. history. We were ridiculed or condemned by the Left and the NeverTrump fraternity alleged to be on the Right for saying that, but time has proven us right. We were right, too, that this scandal was less a “hoax,” as it was sometimes called, than an attempted, if slow-motion, coup. It was an attempted coup because it aimed to disrupt the peaceful transition of presidential power from one administration, and one party, to another.

That sounds pretty dramatic, I know—aren’t “coups” things that happen in South American banana republics, not the United States? But as I wrote in May 2019, “coup” 

accurately expresses the deliberate effort by actors in the Obama Administration, including by President Obama himself, to assure Hillary Clinton’s victory by destroying the reputation of Donald Trump. “Most Presidents leave office,” the commentator L. J. Keith recently wrote, “and essentially step back from public life. Not Barack Obama. Shellshocked by Hillary Clinton’s loss, Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Clinton set in motion a series of events that will forever tar his presidency, and decimate the concept of a peaceful transition of power.”

I returned to Keith’s point last September, noting that “the Obama administration’s actions threatened not just Trump and his presidency, but the very processes and protocols by which the peaceful transition of power has been effected in the United States.”

This troubling truth is Spalding’s theme, and he brings together the threads of the argument in masterly fashion. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/it_turns_out_that_putting_homeless_people_in_luxury_hotels_in_san_francisco_isnt_such_a_good_idea.html

Who could have predicted that serious problems would follow upon housing homeless people — often with criminal backgrounds, drug problems, and mental health issues — in San Francisco luxury hotels? Actually, it looks like the city officials responsible for making this decision predicted it, because they have kept the practice confidential. Erica Sandburg writes an eyebrow-raising report in City Journal:

One recent morning a disheveled, visibly disturbed man ran frantically around the lobby of the Mark Hopkins Hotel, the historic and elegant property located at the crest of tony Nob Hill. As one of San Francisco’s designated Front-Line Worker Housing (FLWH) hotels, it’s reserved for health-care and public-safety employees working on Covid-19 related matters. But San Francisco is surreptitiously placing homeless people in luxury hotels by designating them as emergency front-line workers, a term that the broader community understands to mean doctors, nurses, and similar professionals.

“Do I look scary to you?” the man demanded. “They’re trying to evict me because I wanted more towels but I’m homeless! They called the cops on me.” He dashed out the door and around the grand circular entrance, where two police officers attempted to resolve the situation. Soon a cab pulled up and an inebriated couple emerged, holding full plastic trash bags. They fought, screaming at each other until the woman entered the lobby and her partner lit a meth pipe in the garage area. More “front-line workers.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/then_they_came_for_jesus.html

In the Theater of the Absurd that passes today for Western culture, the issue of complexion is paramount. It now appears that “white” is bad, pale skin a sign of endemic bigotry, race hatred and colonial violence. Iconoclasm has become all the rage, quite literally. Statues and representations that connote the alabaster heresy have become anathema and must be torn down, toppled or replaced by more acceptable versions of cultural appropriateness and politically correct convictions. Cultural, political and religious emblems and symbols that betoken “whiteness” must be rinsed clean of their chromatic aberrations or cast into the wells of oblivion.

The chorus of righteous vituperation against the existence of a “white Jesus” is only the latest instance of such prejudice. No less an arbiter of religious taste than the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has just joined the campaign to scour and sublimate effigies of Jesus long in place in the interests of universal justice. The Daily Mail has a fairly good coverage of his comments that he would be reviewing statues at Canterbury Cathedral, urging the West “to reconsider its prevailing mindset that Jesus was white,” and determining whether all the monuments “should be there.” The statues “need[ ] to be put in context. Some will have to come down.”

According to a spokesperson for Canterbury Cathedral, “All of the Cathedral’s items are being reviewed to ensure that any connected with slavery, colonialism or contentious figures from other historic periods are… presented in a way that avoids any sense of aggrandisement.” This would go some way to “acknowledging any associated oppression, exploitation, injustice and suffering connected with these objects.” Such monuments would thus be cleansed of their destructive impact and allow aggrieved and dissenting voices to be heard.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2020/06/26/a-grateful-nation-thanks-man-who-tears-apart-seattles-chop-and-delivers-stinging-lecture-to-blm-n579854

An angry and ranting man began singlehandedly tearing apart the barricades and overturned the tables at Seattle CHOP’s so-called autonomous zone this week.

And a nation applauded.

The man, who is black, shouted “I’m sick of this!” and began grabbing the stolen objects used for the so-call “autonomous zone’s” barricades.

It was a glory to see.

The Blaze reports that the man was confronted by a BLM squatter from the encampment who held a knife. The man appears to have pulled his gun in reply.

The unidentified man, clad in a red jacket and red shoes, grabbed orange cones and launched them into a debris pile while surrounded by a smattering of CHOPistanis who hurled insults at him and told him to go home. He replied, “You go home. I’m so sick of this sh*t.”

Turning Over Tables at the Seattle Left’s ‘Temple’

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2020/06/27/the-good-news-about-covid-19-the-corporate-media-keeps-hidden-n583317

As the pandemic panic porn continues because identified cases are rising, Dr. Fauci is back on television, and the media is once again demanding a national response. However, there is news they don’t share with you that could help reduce the already unwarranted levels of fear. Obviously, that doesn’t fit their partisan agenda.

Many commentators have noted that rising case numbers are not necessarily a reason to sound the alarm. The fear with COVID-19 was always of overwhelming the hospital system. The correct numbers to look at are COVID-19 hospitalizations, the percent of positive tests, and the age breakdown for severe disease.

COVID-19 Severity

A doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center said in a press conference Wednesday that people who are testing positive do not appear to be getting as sick as they did earlier in the pandemic. Dr. Donald Yealy also noted this trend was being seen in the wake of massive protests.

He suggested the country is focusing too much on rising COVID-19 case counts.

“We need to change our mindset and focus not exclusively on the number of cases, but on the severity of illness. We shouldn’t just be counting those who have a diagnosed infection,” Yealy said. “For the vast majority of people testing positive, their illness is mild, or they don’t even know they have any symptoms of COVID-19 infection.”

Dr. Yealy also noted that the positive case rate was about one in 400, which has remained steady for weeks. He also noted improved treatment protocols and some success with Remdisivir and other medications. Effective treatment is in addition to some success protecting the elderly and a much younger patient load testing positive.

“In summary, what our experience shows is that fewer people are being admitted, and when they are, they tend to be much less sick than at the beginning or at the peak phases of the pandemic.”

https://thejewishvoice.com/2020/06/blm-protesters-storm-beverly-hills-neighborhood

Police made several arrests after a group of Black Lives Matter protesters marched through a Beverly Hills residential neighborhood Friday night.

“Videos and photographs of the mob flooded social media as they shouted various messages throughout the residential neighborhood and tore down American flags,” the Daily Wire reported.

Human Events Managing Editor Ian Miles Cheong shared footage of protesters shouting “Eat the rich!”:

Ian Miles Cheong
@stillgray
Black Lives Matter mob shouts “eat the rich” as they march down a residential area in Beverly Hills. They’re coming for your homes.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/06/15/the-new-iconoclasm-down-with-jefferson-up-with-sharpton/
Rarely a week passes without dramatic pictures on TV and in the press of sledgehammers taken to heroes of the Old Confederacy, along with new “replacement” sculpture and statuary to Black Lives Matter (like the formidable slab within full view of the White House itself) and already on the list of Places to See in Washington, DC. We will, no doubt, soon see statues of Rev. Al Sharpton alongside of, or even replacing, those of Martin Luther King, Jr. The Reverend Sharpton is the titular and also unchallenged leader of Black Lives Matter, now turning the country upside down to express its indignation over the murder in Minneapolis and its (supposed) epitome of police brutality towards black Americans.

The Rev. Sharpton was a constant presence in the White House during the presidency of Barack Obama, and has been treated with oily sycophancy by every major Democratic candidate for that party’s nomination. (When Sharpton’s acolytes in Black Lives Matter shouted down Bernie Sanders at a Seattle rally, the candidate reacted with instant compliance, and surrendered the microphone to them.) He has taught leading Democrats, at nearly all levels of the party, to view crime as a problem of prejudiced and brutal police, not of ruthless and pitiless criminals.

Do Americans know much about Sharpton, the unquestioned leader of Black Lives Matter, an organization now carrying all before it, including governors of states and mayors of cities? He first came to prominence for his central role in the assaults on Jews in 1991 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. It has been called by historian Edward Shapiro “the only antisemitic riot in American history.” This has not prevented Senator Elizabeth Warren from calling Sharpton a paragon who has “dedicated his life to the fight for justice for all” or ex-candidate Kamala Harris from exuding about how much he “has done … for our country.” And so on ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/police-reform-and-the-making-of-a-racism-narrative/

This narrative is driving the nation to ruin.

Have you seen that mountain of evidence that Derek Chauvin is a racist? Me neither.

In that regard, I’m like the Wall Street Journal’s fearlessly fact-driven Jason Riley. Did some shred of racial animus motivate the since-fired Minneapolis police officer’s killing of George Floyd? For the moment, we have no proof of that — just a racialist narrative built on the happenstance (no reason to believe it’s more than that right now) that Chauvin is white and Floyd was black.

These days, alas, mere happenstance is enough to tear this nation asunder.

As an old investigator, I am intrigued by the fact that Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison has refused to disclose police body-cam video of the moments leading up to Chauvin’s disturbing neck hold. Ditto the fact — highlighted in my analyses of the charges filed against the arresting officers (here and here) — that the state’s minute-by-minute recitation of probable cause omits whatever went on between Floyd and police inside the squad-car. Surely, if they helped the prosecution’s police-brutality allegations, those gaps in the complaint would have been filled.

Similarly, the fact that Minnesota police procedures permitted the use of neck holds for suspects resisting arrest has disappeared from the reporting. No chatter permitted, either, about the facts that Floyd (a) had a significant criminal record (though no new charges in recent years), (b) was suspected of passing a small amount of counterfeit money at the time of his arrest, and (c) was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine — a toxic combination whose ingestion was particularly dangerous for a person with his heart conditions.

Silence on these matters is partially explained by the admirably widespread desire not to besmirch a tragic victim, as well as the Left’s more-narrow determination to martyr Floyd for purposes of their police-racism narrative. The subject is also verboten, though, because the police were inconveniently recorded discussing their fear that Floyd might be experiencing excited-delirium syndrome. When police suspect that dangerous condition, their training calls for restraining the arrestee until emergency medical personnel arrive.