RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/new-post-trump-consti
The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability …

T he Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office.

What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era.

1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a “resistance.” Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration.

2) Impeachment is now a casual affair. It requires no report of illegal or unethical behavior by a special counsel or special prosecutor. It will not be bipartisan but solely the action of the opposition party in the House when it is in the majority.

Public support will not matter. Much less will it be needed. Impeachment will be applied equally to a first- or second-term presidency. And it will become useful in a reelection year to help drive down an incumbent’s popularity.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/13/unequal-fates-a-real-obama-era-whistleblower-vs-the-trump-whistleblower/

As the Trump impeachment drama continues to unfold on Capitol Hill, the so-called whistleblower in that case enjoys hero-martyr status on the Left and in the news media. Lt. General Michael Flynn has enjoyed no such treatment.

The whistleblower, speaking to internal investigators, pulled no punches in his assessment of the government’s mishandling of the war in Afghanistan.

“As intelligence makes its way up higher, it gets consolidated and really watered down, it gets politicized,” he explained. “It gets politicized because once policymakers get their hands on it . . . they put their twist on it. The policy decisions and the operational decisions, I don’t think matched what the intelligence was saying.”

The 33-year decorated Army officer—with a lengthy career in military intelligence and service in both Afghanistan and Iraq—blasted the “rosy” scenarios promoted by top officials, including the White House, that contradicted what was actually happening on the ground.

“This sense that we are doing great permeates all the way up to the top,” he continued. “As a senior intel officer for many years, my assessments were not good. [I] said it was not at all going well. Never. We are basically fighting the wrong way. We are participating in conflict, we are not really here to win.”

http://acdemocracy.org/

Senator Tom Cotton ((R-AR), important speech on the Alarming Rise of Anti-Semitic Attacks — And How to Stop Them, on the floor of the U.S. Senate on January 8, should be read by all. 
 
The Senator’s warning should have been praised in the headlines of all major media outlets in the U.S., and Israel. But it was mentioned only in a few Jewish and Israeli newspapers, mostly Left-leaning. Though the Senator did not mention George Soros, the headline of the Israeli Left-leaning daily – and New York Times’ partner, Haaretz – screamed: “Sen. Tom Cotton accuses Soros-funded think tank of fostering antisemitism,” implying – as they, and most other progressive radical-Left outlets who act as Soros’s bandogs – that anyone critical of any of many Soros initiatives, is an anti-Semite. 
 
What did Sen. Cotton say to anger Haaretz?  
 
“Anti-Semitism is the ancient hatred, but today it can appear in new disguises. It festers on Internet message boards and social media,” said the Senator. He then had the Chutzpa pointing out that anti-Semitism, “festers in so-called Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, [emphasis added] an isolationist blame-America-first money pit for so-called “scholars” who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money.” 
 
The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was founded and funded last year by Charles Koch and George Soros. Koch, the isolationist libertarian billionaire, funder of mostly ultra-right causes critical of U.S. foreign policy, is known, like Soros, for sponsoring academicians and events denouncing alleged Israeli influence in Washington. Koach, who isn’t Jewish, did not make it to Haaretz’s headline. 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/13/ben-rhodes-attacks-trump-to-obscure-obamas-complicity-in-irans-forever-war/

Despite Rhodes’ propaganda, America is in a far stronger position to deal with Iran’s provocations under Trump than at any time since Obama entered office.

Peevish Obama national security official Ben Rhodes of “we can tell journalists anything and they’ll believe it” fame recently published an editorial in The Atlantic ripping the president’s recent dealings with Iran. Rhodes’ ripostes flow from the president’s game-changing retaliatory strike on the Obama administration partner — and leading terrorist of the leading terror force of the world’s leading terror regime — Qassem Soleimani.

Rhodes’ Atlantic retorts to Trump’s foreign policy have been as mendacious as his tweets are manic.

As he did with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Rhodes is again working to manipulate the press — who, in his words, “literally know nothing” — by farcically contrasting the Obama Iran policy with the Trump one. The media seems a willing partner, what with the wake-like atmosphere it has created over a genocidal jihadist’s demise, and the irresponsible war hysteria it has ginned up.

In spite of Rhodes’ cynicism, disingenuousness, and demonstrable Trump hatred, his arguments demand countering, since he and his minions lead the Democrats’ progressive foreign policy wing.

The Iran Deal Strengthened the Mullahs

Rhodes’ first major contention is that the Iran nuclear deal rolled back its program, and Iran was complying with it. Both elements of this argument are at best highly misleading. To make the case, Rhodes commits sins of omission and commission about the deal, its context, and purpose.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/12/remembering-the-farming-way/

We need to pause sometimes and remember who these dinosaurs were and what they have contributed. For a while longer, a few are still with us, a sort of collective keyhole through which we can look back into a now unremembered American past, whose codes and mores we simply abandoned—and to our great and present loss.

Almost all the pragmatic agricultural wisdom that my grandparents taught me has long ago been superseded by technology. I don’t anymore calibrate, as I once did when farming in the 1980s, the trajectory of an incoming late summer storm by watching the patterns of nesting birds, or the shifting directions and feel of the wind, or the calendar date or the phases of the moon. Instead, I go online and consult radar photos of storms far out at sea. Meteorology is mostly an exact science now.

Even the agrarian’s socio-scientific arts of observation that I learned from my family are seldom employed in my farming anymore. Back in the day, when a local farmer’s wife died, I was told things like, “Elmer will go pretty soon, too. His color isn’t good and he’s not used to living without her”—and tragically the neighbor usually died within months. Now I guess I would ask Elmer whether his blood tests came back OK, and the sort of blood pressure medicine he takes. I don’t think we believe that superficial facial color supersedes lab work. Farmers did because in an age of limited technology they saw people as plants, and knew that the look and color of a tree or vine—in comparison to others in the orchard or vineyard—was a sign of their viability.

I grew up with an entire local network of clubs and get-togethers, and ferried my grandparents to periodic meetings of the Walnut Improvement Club, Eastern Star, the Odd Fellows, Masons, the Grange, and Sun-Maid growers. They exchanged gossip, of course, but also vital folk and empirical information on irrigation, fertilizers, and machines.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/useful_idiots_on_the_right_nevertrumpers_.html

One could perhaps have excused them their earlier indiscretions of November 2016.  He was, after all, an unknown quantity, an outsider of questionable conservative pedigree.  Indeed, Donald Trump had been a fairly typical New York liberal Democrat for much of his life.  And he had led a less than stellar moral life.  And so the pile-on at the time by National Review and others could perhaps have been forgiven, although not really, when one considered the alternative.  As I had written at the time:

Do we not grow weary of the sanctimonious ones?  The Never Trumpers that endlessly hector and scold, and hold themselves up as paragons of moral virtue? They display their good taste by showing contempt for Trump and his supporters.  Some of them claim they will vote down ballot, skipping the Presidential slot, or vote for Evan what’s his name (McMullin).  Some will write in a candidate or go Libertarian, neither of who will have any chance of winning.  Other pious Republicans will even cast their vote for Hillary.

But how much more compelling is the argument today, three years later, in light of the horrendous behavior of the Left, their naked will-to-power and demonic “rule or ruin” ethos?  And what of Trump, his incredible and unexpected victory in 2016, and then his very favorable performance as president and conservative standard-bearer?  What accounts for the odd and self-immolating behavior of the Never Trump crowd, most if not all of them former card-carrying members of the right?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/new-racism-walter-williams/

A voter may dislike a black, homosexual or female candidate, but it’s not likely that he would openly admit it. However, diversity-crazed leftist/progressive Democrats have openly condemned the physical characteristics of some of their 2020 presidential candidates. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are leading the polls despite the fact that they have been condemned as old white men. While Pete Buttigieg is homosexual, something that pleases diversity crazies, he is also a white man, young and religious. With Kamala Harris’ departure from the race, the Democratic field has lost one of its persons of color. Another, Senator Cory Booker, stands at 2% in the polls; his days are numbered. That means the only Democratic candidates polling high are those condemned as old white people — two men and one woman, Elizabeth Warren.

LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said she was initially eager for Joe Biden to enter the race but now has second thoughts. Brown said: “I’m over white men running the country. I don’t know if him [sic] getting in changes the field. He has name recognition, but his strength is also his weakness.” Former presidential candidate Howard Dean lamented, “If we have two old white guys at the top of this ticket, we will lose.” The newest entry into the presidential sweepstakes, Michael Bloomberg, had to apologize for what some see as his diversity insensitivity, namely that of calling fellow presidential candidate Cory Booker “well-spoken” in a TV interview. The New Jersey senator said he was “taken aback” by what he saw as Bloomberg’s racist “trope.”

Michael Moore gave us his racist warning: “Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump. That means anytime you see three white guys walking at you, down the street toward you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bailout-for-criminals-11578865016?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Label something “criminal-justice reform” these days and it’s likely to be whisked into law in left-leaning states with little thought to the consequences. Witness the fiasco of New York’s bail reform that took effect Jan. 1 and is already producing ill effects across the state.

The reform that passed last year eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and certain nonviolent felonies. The idea was that people who were no threat to the community were locked up only because they couldn’t afford bail, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo pitched it as a victory for fairness.

It turns out that some of those now going free aren’t as harmless as promised. Strict new timelines for evidence prosecutors must provide defendants means folks who otherwise should be locked up are also going free, especially on drug offenses.

In New York City, a woman was arrested three times in a week after initially assaulting Jews. After the third arrest she was finally detained in a psych ward—but only after the intervention of an embarrassed Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had said when the bail measure passed that he was “thrilled.”