RUTHFULLY YOURS

THIS WAS WRITTEN IN OCTOBER 2016

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/the_art_of_neglecting_veterans.html

AND OPEN THE BOOKS DETAILS THE APPALLING STATE OF A DEPARTMENT WHOSE MANDATE IS TO SUPPORT THOSE VETERANS WHO HAVE SERVED AND SAVED OUR NATION…..RSK

THE VA’S SCURRILOUS ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN EXPOSED BY OPEN THE BOOKS…CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE: http://www.openthebooks.com/about_us/ And http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_snapshot_oversight_report_-_the_va_scandal_two_years_later/

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/so_much_for_things_improving_at_the_veterans_administration.html

Veterans who died homeless, wronged by the V.A. or “on a waiting list,” must be turning in their graves at the thought that those who failed them are receiving congratulations on their “achievements.”  If you happen to grieve for such veterans, the handshake between the V.A.’s past and present will make your blood boil.

While the V.A., VSOs, and the American Legion are discreet about the event, ex-V.A. secretary McDonald brags about the unveiling of his portrait to anybody who will listen.  In his blog post from October 25, 2019, McDonald spares no detail of the ceremony in his honor and rejoices over V.A. secretary Willkie’s “complimentary” and “generous” comments.  And voilà, Mr. Willkie: Donald Trump’s “you are fired!” suddenly has less meaning.

McDonald, who undoubtedly fancies himself as a connoisseur of art (during his reign, the V.A. blew millions on artwork), thanked the artist, Laurel Stern Boeck, but forgot to mention that she had already immortalized him as a CEO of Procter & Gamble.

Suitably named, the EGO (Eliminating Government-Funded Oil-Painting) Act, long promoted by U.S. senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), was signed into law by President Trump in March 2018.  Let’s hope taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab for the VA’s crafty antics this time.

After his theatrical tenure in the V.A., Robert McDonald should still be experiencing aphonia (from countless speeches) and tendonitis (from ribbon cutting), but it seems he hasn’t lost his appetite for compliments.  Between chairing Rally Point Networks and sitting for his portrait, he managed to squeeze a gig on Ukrainian TV.  In the country’s capital, Kyiv, McDonald acted every inch the V.A. secretary — from touring hospitals to meeting local ministers.  The ex-secretary, who describes himself as a Republican, must feel nostalgic about his days as the V.A.’s leader.  Why else would he display his picture with Obama and Biden on the first page of his blog?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/01/rep-john-ratcliffe-adam-schiffs-problem-isnt-that-hes-biased-its-that-hes-running-a-corrupt-process/

“The person who planted fake evidence shouldn’t be the one ruling on the admissibility of fake evidence,” Ratcliffe said of Schiff on Friday.

A former federal prosecutor who sits on the committee tasked by Democrats with removing President Donald Trump from office blasted Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as being unfit to oversee the process. Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Tex., told The Federalist on Friday that Schiff’s problem isn’t mere partisan political bias, it’s that Schiff has a conflict of interest given his secret interactions with the anti-Trump whistleblower before his false complaint against Trump was even submitted.

“It’s more than just bias—it’s an actual legal conflict of interest,” Ratcliffe told The Federalist. “Schiff is using his authority as a Chairman presiding over an impeachment inquiry to prevent the investigation and discovery of facts about his own actions or the actions of his staff.”

“He is essentially a witness in the trial over which he is presiding,” Ratcliffe continued. “He has a conflict of interest because his testimony is relevant to the origins of the impeachment process that he is simultaneously conducting, directing and managing.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-backs-anti-cop-protesters-who-jumped-subway-turnstiles-in-new-yor

“AOC backs anti-cop protesters who jumped subway turnstiles, spewed anti-cop hatred and held signs that said “Punch that cop!” “Don’t let these pigs touch us,” and “Hit em!” — DPS Reaction: NYC’s Democrat gift to America. You really want this to be our political leadership in the future?”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Saturday gave her backing to a New York City anti-police protest, in which demonstrators jumped subway turnstiles and yelled anti-cop slogans to protest a crackdown on fare evasion and allegations of police brutality.

“Ending mass incarceration means challenging a system that jails the poor to free the rich,” the left-wing freshman congresswoman tweeted, retweeting a video of protesters jumping subway turnstiles in Brooklyn Friday night.

In the video, protesters are shown helping each other jump turnstiles without paying the fare, while others are holding signs with slogans like “No cops, no fares.” One straphanger who did choose to pay the fare can be heard being yelled at by a protester.

“How do you spell racist? N-Y-P-D,” protesters in the video chant. But the anti-cop chants heard in the video didn’t prevent Ocasio-Cortez from lending her support to their actions.

“Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no-one safer and destabilizes our community,” she said. “New Yorkers know that, they’re not having it and they’re standing up for each other.”

Other videos and images from the same protest that were not shared by Ocasio-Cortez showed banners that said: “Punch that cop!” “Don’t let these pigs touch us,” and “Hit em!”

The New York Post reported that protesters cited both a planned crackdown on fare evasion and two controversial incidents involving police officers in Brooklyn that they say are examples of police brutality as reasons for the protest.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/02/how-did-democrats-get-here/

Democrats have become the party of thuggery, from the top leaders abusing President Trump as a traitor and criminal, to the Antifa black shirts beating up Trump supporters in Democrat cities. The ginned up hysteria over Trump’s election has grown with Trump’s triumphant successes with the economy and national security.

The Democrats’ motivation for the fake impeachment crisis is obvious—they have no platform and no candidate that gives them a path to the White House. What is less obvious is why three years of ugly, crude propaganda, threatened and actual violence, wearisome agitation and lies is playing so well to previously normal Democrats.

The Democrat Party has veered far left very fast, without any pushback from within the party. Their voters have turned, seemingly overnight, from normal American citizens to a deranged mob after Trump’s blood. This weird transformation is normalized by blaming it on Trump himself, and the shock of his victory. A moment’s reflection shows how superficial that derangement explanation is.

Trump did not make the Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders a powerful political force in 2016. He is not responsible for Elizabeth Warren’s desire to confiscate people’s wealth. Trump did not cause the majority of Democrats to reject freedom of speech and religion, or to prefer socialism to capitalism. How did those radicals become so powerful that they now dominate the party leadership?

There is nothing in what Trump has done as president that explains the unconstitutional attacks against him. It is the reverse—the attempt to frame and entrap President Trump and his team as traitors with Russia, was begun by the Obama DOJ, FBI, CIA and White House before his inauguration. It was the Obama Administration’s actions that necessitated the all-out attempt to delegitimize President Trump before he could expose them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15108/connecticut-ridicule-censorship

Among the most fundamental First Amendment rights is to ridicule — regardless of the reason. The same is true of holding people or groups up to contempt. Were Connecticut’s absurd statute to be upheld — which it will not be — it could be applied to comedians, op-ed writers, politicians, professors and other students.

And what about “creed”? Is being a conservative or a Trump supporter a creed that cannot be ridiculed?… [T]herein lies its greatest danger: selective prosecution based on current political correctness. Precisely the kind of unpopular speech which the First Amendment was designed to protect…

Such hateful expressions [Anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-conservative] are not only tolerated, they are often praised as “progressive” by some of the same students and faculty members who would censor politically incorrect hate speech. Under the First Amendment, such selective censorship is intolerable.

All who care about civil liberties, regardless of race, should now join with the racist students in opposing their criminal prosecution and demanding that the Connecticut statute be struck down as unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the president of the university should lead the campaign against criminalizing speech that ridicules. Now that would take courage in our age of political correctness and at a time when the hard left is demanding “free speech for me but not for thee.” But this is not an age in which courage is widely practiced, especially on university campuses, and most especially by administrators.

Two students at the University of Connecticut have been charged with the crime of ridiculing African Americans by shouting the N-word as part of a childishly inappropriate game. A video of the incident went viral and generated protests on and off the campus.

Outrageous as shouting this racist epithet is, the First Amendment protects it from criminal prosecution or other governmental sanctions. The Connecticut General Statute under which the students were charged is just about as unconstitutional as any statute can be. It is not even a close case. Here is what the statute criminalizes:

Section 53-37 – Ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race.

Any person who, by his advertisement, ridicules or holds up to contempt any person or class of persons, on account of the creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race of such person or class of persons, shall be guilty of a class D misdemeanor.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rbg-deserves-to-be-believed-11572633115

Remarks by former President Bill Clinton this week appear to contradict a 1993 sworn statement from Ruth Bader Ginsburg about their discussions prior to her confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. History suggests readers should be skeptical of the Clinton claim.

Justice Ginsburg was present when Mr. Clinton made the comments on Wednesday evening in Washington, but may not have expected the need to address details of a decades-old conversation as alleged by Mr. Clinton.

The former President and the current Justice were on stage along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Georgetown Law’s second annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg lecture. The three were being interviewed by Georgetown law professors Wendy Williams and Mary Hartnett, who are the Justice’s authorized biographers.

Adam Liptak of the New York Times notes that Mr. Clinton was discussing a 1993 interview with Ms. Ginsburg which occurred while he was considering nominating her to the Court:

“I knew after about 10 minutes that I was going to give her the job,” he said.
They discussed abortion, Mr. Clinton said. Justice Ginsburg, then a federal appeals court judge, had been critical of aspects of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.
The Supreme Court had moved too fast, Justice Ginsburg wrote in 1992. It would have sufficed, she wrote, to strike down the extreme Texas law at issue in the case and then proceed in measured steps in later cases to consider other abortion restrictions.

https://pjmedia.com/video/andrew-cuomo-we-didnt-have-hurricanes-before-climate-change/

On Friday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) said that hurricanes, superstorms, and tornadoes did not occur before climate change. In the same breath, he said that anyone who questions the left’s climate-alarmist hysteria is “just delusional.” He may want to check in a mirror.

After he finished berating President Donald Trump in an interview with MSNBC, Cuomo turned to his latest attempt to enforce climate change orthodoxy.

“You know, anyone who questions extreme weather and climate change is just delusional at this point,” Cuomo said. “We have seen in the State of New York what everyone is seeing. We see these weather patterns that we never had before. We didn’t have hurricanes, we didn’t have superstorms, we didn’t have tornadoes.”

While it is at least plausible that carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels might lead to increasing global temperatures and rising sea levels, it takes a special kind of insanity to think that there were no hurricanes or tornadoes before human beings started burning carbon for energy.

Even interpreting Cuomo’s words charitably, the governor said that New York State did not experience hurricanes, superstorms, and tornadoes until the effects of manmade climate change. It is difficult to assess this claim, because written records do not go very far back, but even this less delusional suggestion is entirely incorrect.

An analysis of sedimentary evidence from New Jersey showed that a major hurricane struck the New York/New Jersey area between 1278 and 1438, long before the internal combustion engine. Another hurricane tracked parallel to the East Coast with impacts on New England and New York in August 1635. On September 8, 1667, a “severe storm” was reported in Manhattan. The Great Storm of 1693 caused severe damage on Land Island in October 1693. In September 1785, ships crashed into Governors Island as a result of powerful waves reportedly generated by a tropical cyclone. In August 1788, a hurricane struck New York City or Long Island, causing severe flooding and leaving the west side of the Battery “in ruins.”

Unless the Iroquois and their ancestors were secretly burning fossil fuels — and cleverly erased the evidence they did so — Cuomo’s statement about there having been no hurricanes and superstorms in New York prior to climate change is flat-out wrong. A simple Google search would have set him straight.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/bill-de-blasio-joker-in-new-york-city-hall/

What Bill de Blasio is doing to the residents of New York is hardly funny.

What happens when the Democratic party gets to realize all its deepest fantasies, with gushers of money to fund them, judges to rubber-stamp them, and the political opposition having melted away? Affix your gaze to the city of New York. In Joker, Arthur Fleck inquires, “Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” Arthur was referring to bedlam in the streets. Today the people of Gotham are well-behaved, but it’s the Joker in City Hall who is firing nutty schemes at those of us who live here.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s many press conferences trumpeting his hideous new plans would make more sense if they were punctuated with long, sustained episodes of harsh and deranged laughter. Consider the city’s stance toward illegal immigrants. De Blasio has for years been issuing official government ID cards to them. Lately de Blasio decided that this wasn’t enough, and he announced that he, or rather we, would be footing the bill for housing for illegal immigrants. Because de Blasio instructed New York’s public-housing system to ditch the requirement that applicants for subsidized housing present their Social Security numbers, an illegal immigrant who arrived yesterday, a legal immigrant who did everything by the book, and a native-born New Yorker all have an equal shot at one of the coveted cheap apartments, which are awarded by lottery. The New York City Housing Authority cannot even house all New Yorkers, as anyone who has ever stepped over a sleeping wino on the way to the ATM has noticed, but now it is in the business of trying to house the world.

Or even to heal it. “You will hear some critics who say we can’t afford to give everyone health care,” de Blasio said at a noteworthy press conference announcing the city would start funding health care for illegal immigrants. He added there’s “plenty of money in this world; there’s plenty of money in this country; it’s just in the wrong hands.” Cue deranged giggling. The taxpayer is also funding the undocumented when it comes time to try to deport him for, say, committing an egregious crime. Sneak into the country illegally, make your way to New York City, and you’ll be treated better than anybody except maybe the mayor’s son, whom he ordered police to drive to Yale when young Dante de Blasio was a student there.