RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/17/trump-and-tone/

True, the president does not speak or act like other statesmen. But whatever the man has said, he has acted with much greater forcefulness and clarity of purpose than his recent predecessors—with some commendable results.

One of the great difficulties in perfecting technologies like radar and sonar revolves around the problem of distinguishing accurately between noise and the real McCoy. Is that an enemy bomber or missile out there, or is it just a flock of birds?

Donald Trump presents his opponents, and even some of his friends, with a similar problem.  He speaks differently from most other statesmen on the world stage.  He is not beholden to many of the principles of diplomacy (what some cynics like me might be tempted to describe as “nostrums”) that inform the usual script of diplomatic relations. What part of his behavior is noise? What part is the vital signal?

Trump was elected primarily because of what he said about three things: immigration, trade, and international relations. He wanted to check the flow of illegal immigration, revise America’s trade deals with other nations (and with itself by addressing a misguided regulatory environment), and work to make sure that America’s interventions in foreign climes were in the service of its national interest while also assuring that America’s military was as strong and prepared as it could be.

Trump’s “Principled Realism” Revisited

Stepping back, I’d say that Trump’s successes on all three fronts have been mixed, whereby “mixed” I do not mean “poor.” I mean that he has his share—quite a large share, in fact—of successes and some frustrations. But all three issues—like most big things in life—represent on-going processes that are seldom solved all at once and, even then, do not stay solved for long. They require constant attention and flexibility, what Trump himself referred to in one of his greatest speeches as “principled realism.”

It must be difficult to be a paid-up member of the anti-Trump fraternity. Just a few years ago, there were thousands of females skirling about how crude Donald Trump is while parading around the Washington Mall in pink pussy hats. Dark rumors of “collusion” with the Russians to steal the election were gaining traction and crashed on to shore in the shape of Robert S. Mueller III, G-Man extraordinaire, the straightest of straight arrows, who assembled his posse of Hillary-supporting anti-Trump lawyers to perform the world’s greatest legal excavation and bring down the Bad Orange Man. Alas, it turned out that Mueller was really just Andrew Weismann’s Howdy Doody.

The autopsy neither confirms nor rules out foul play. Dr. Barbara Sampson is a highly regarded and reputable medical examiner….rsk

THE FACTS: Epstein’s lawyers asked Baden, a well-known pathologist, to attend the autopsy. He did not perform it. Reports circulated Thursday on Facebook and Twitter suggesting that Baden was chosen to do the autopsy as part of a cover-up to protect important people who have been tied to Epstein, among them President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton.

New York City Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson performed the autopsy Sunday on Epstein, who died Saturday from an apparent suicide, the AP reported. Epstein was found early Saturday in a Manhattan jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Sampson said it is routine for private pathologists to observe an autopsy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-music-woodstock-reunion/you-can-still-sense-the-love-baby-boomers-revel-at-woodstock-50-years-on-idUSKCN1V7087

Thousands of flower-crowned visitors made the journey to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which now owns the original festival site, to hear some of the same musicians including Arlo Guthrie, attend a planned Saturday concert by Santana, and feel the spirit of community that the 1969 festival produced.

“Even though I’m seeing the site 50 years later, I feel like I’m there at the first concert,” said Peter Hadley, 63, who arrived on Thursday. “Everybody greets us, talks to us. It’s the love that started back in ‘69 and it’s present here, now.”

Woodstock, which was held at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in upstate New York from Aug. 15-18 and featured about 30 acts, became a logistical nightmare when more than 400,000 people showed up, causing traffic gridlock for miles.

This weekend, in stark contrast to 1969, attendees found metal detectors, indoor plumbing and abundant food vendors at the Bethel Woods Center, which is hosting several concerts to mark the anniversary.

But those making the return trip said they had been unfazed by the chaos and unsanitary conditions in 1969, and instead remembered the kindness of locals, law enforcement and other concert-goers who offered food and medical aid.

Arlene Seymour, 69, arrived for the weekend wearing the same tie-dye shirt she bought on her way to the 1969 concert. She fondly recalled sharing food with people she had just met and sleeping in the trunk of a stranger’s car to avoid the rain.

“It just wouldn’t happen like that today,” she said. “Because of the environment in the world, people would be worried to have it so loose.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/16/russiagate-probe-empty-threats-broken-promises/

Nearly a year ago, President Trump ordered the declassification of documents related to the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign. The requested trove included several redacted pages from the final FISA warrant issued against Trump campaign aide Carter Page; all FBI reports related to the preparation of that FISA application; and text messages between key officials, including former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.

This week, the government finally released one set of materials—interviews with Bruce Ohr, a top Justice Department official whose wife worked for Fusion GPS on its Trump-Russia dirt-digging project funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. The FBI made the notes public after Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group that does the heavy lifting Congress consistently fails to do, forced the Justice Department to hand over the so-called 302 forms after attempting to thwart the group’s Freedom of Information Act requests since last summer.

The documents confirm that Ohr acted as Fusion GPS’ personal handler in the Justice Department; he continued communicating with Fusion chief Glenn Simpson and dossier author Christopher Steele after the election. “Bruce Ohr, who was serving as the highest ranking-career official in the DOJ in 2016, played a crucial role in passing on unfounded allegations against Donald Trump from . . . Steele . . . and Simpson to the FBI,” according to Epoch Times reporter Jeff Carlson. 

Bruce Ohr is still employed by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Delay, Delay, Delay . . . Deny, Deny, Deny

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-biggest-cities-confront-a-defecation-crisis-11565994160

They say there’s a smartphone app for everything, and doubters should know there are now at least two dealing with excrement on the sidewalks of San Francisco. The city has its official SF311 app, part of its “San Francisco at your Service” program, and last year a private developer introduced Snapcrap, which allows residents to upload a photo of an offending specimen directly to the SF311 website. This alerts the city’s new five-person “poop patrol,” which will follow up, presumably, with a smile.

Then there are the maps. At least three maps charting the location of “poop complaints” in the city have been assembled, the latest and best by the nonprofit Open the Books. Their map shows most of the city covered by brown pin dots, each marking a report to the Department of Public Works.

The website RealtyHop.com dubs San Francisco “the doo-doo capital of the U.S.” They noted that the city’s poop reports almost tripled between 2011 and 2017.

The problem draws attention because the poop increasingly comes not from dogs but from humans. In partial defense of his city, Curbed SF’s Adam Brinklow explains that the reports submitted to the city didn’t distinguish between human and dog excrement, and that there were 150,000 dogs and fewer than 10,000 homeless people within city limits. But he admits that homelessness was probably the leading edge of the problem in San Francisco as well as Los Angeles, where 36,000 people live on the streets, and many do their business there.

https://www.city-journal.org/radical-politics-ny-community-organizations

In September 2018, activist groups around New York rushed to denounce the Trump administration for considering making changes to the “public charge” rule for noncitizens. The changes would add food stamps, Medicaid, and federal housing vouchers to the programs that count against immigrants when the government determines their future status. The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) staged a protest outside the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, joined by the African Services Committee and the Chinese-American Planning Council. Executives of the three organizations were arrested after they sat down in the middle of Delancey Street and blocked rush-hour traffic.

New York City has long been fertile ground for political protest, of course, so these events were not unusual—though the city’s protest culture has gone into overdrive since Trump’s election, with rallies, marches, and demonstrations becoming a frequent backdrop around Manhattan. Civil-society groups, along with elected officials, activists, and unions, typically organize these protests, which run the gamut from standard political rallies to civil disobedience. What most New Yorkers don’t realize, though, is that many of the protests, including NYIC’s action last year, aren’t simply the work of civic-minded private citizens. On the contrary: they are funded, sometimes lavishly, by local and state government—that is, by taxpayers. New York is home to a host of such groups, which, in the Trump era, have expanded their charitable missions to include near-constant political activism. Whether they agree or disagree with these efforts, New Yorkers should understand that they’re paying the bill for them.

New York City spends about $95 billion annually. Not counting Medicaid spending, the city allocates about 13 percent of its outlays to human services—including homeless shelters, senior centers, youth recreation, adult literacy, foster care, and many other programs tailored to the needs of New York’s 8.5 million people, 43 percent of whom live below the city-measured poverty line. The city contracts with nonprofit organizations to provide many of these services. Most homeless shelters, for instance, are run by nongovernmental organizations. Similarly, nonprofits provide public defenders to indigent defendants. Individual contracts with these large groups—such as the Lutheran Social Services of Metropolitan New York, Inc., which deals with vulnerable children—can run to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/14/google-whistleblower-goes-public-something-dark-and-nefarious-going-on-with-the-company/

A Google insider who anonymously leaked internal documents to Project Veritas decided to go public after the San Francisco police, a SWAT team and a bomb squad paid an unannounced visit to his home.

“To have that burden lifted off of my soul–I’ve never felt happier,” he said.

The whistle-blower provided Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe with additional internal Google documents to publish on his website.

“I gave the documents to Project Veritas, I had been collecting the documents for over a year,” Vorhies said. “And the reason why I collected these documents was because I saw something dark and nefarious going on with the company.”

He added, “I felt like our entire election system was going to be compromised forever by this company that had told the American public that it was not going to do any evil and I saw that they were making very quick moves.”

One method Google uses to suppress inconvenient information is to remove mostly conservative news sites from search results. Below is a list of news sites won’t show up underneath the Google search bar when people are searching on their Android phones.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/ball-of-collusion-book-excerpt-hillary-clinton-ruins-the-plan/

Plan A was to exonerate her and get her elected. Plan B, the failsafe, was an ‘insurance policy’ meant to destroy Trump.

Editor’s note: Andrew C. McCarthy’s new book is Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. This is the first in a series of excerpts.

 There really was a collusion plot. It really did target our election system. It absolutely sought to usurp our capacity for self-determination. It was just not the collusion you’ve been told about for nearly three years. It was not “Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia.”

Here is the real collusion scheme: In 2016, the incumbent Democratic administration of President Barack Obama put the awesome powers of the United States government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus in the service of the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic party, and the progressive Beltway establishment. This scheme had two parts: Plan A, the objective; and Plan B, a fail-safe strategy in case Plan A imploded — which all the smartest people were supremely confident would never, ever happen . . . which is why you could bet the ranch that it would.

Plan A was to get Mrs. Clinton elected president of the United States. This required exonerating her, at least ostensibly, from well-founded allegations of her felonious and politically disqualifying actions.

Plan B was the insurance policy: an investigation that Donald Trump, in the highly unlikely event he was elected, would be powerless to shut down. An investigation that would simultaneously monitor and taint him. An investigation that internalized Clinton-campaign-generated opposition research, limning Trump and his campaign as complicit in Russian espionage. An investigation that would hunt for a crime under the guise of counterintelligence, build an impeachment case under the guise of hunting for a crime, and seek to make Trump un-reelectable under the guise of building an impeachment case.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/14/5-big-misconceptions-trump-lgbtq-record/

If you cut through the lies and the false narratives peddled by the media, you’ll find Trump has been one of the greatest presidents for LGBTQ Americans in history.

Recently Ric Grenell, the openly gay U.S. ambassador to Germany, hosted a discussion in Berlin with international LGBTQ activists as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. More than 70 countries have laws against LGBTQ activities. Through economic influence, increasing education, and advocating policy changes, this important new global campaign hopes to change that.

Activists from countries such as Lebanon, Georgia, and Botswana shared their experiences and discussed the harrowing conditions LGBTQ individuals face in their nations. Grenell gave activists from the most affected countries a forum to develop better strategies to fight for LGBTQ policies and made it clear the United States would help in their struggle however it could.

The Trump administration also announced the appointment of another openly gay man, Robert Gilchrist, as the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Gilchrist could play a pivotal role in LGBTQ policy. His challenge will be to do this in a culturally conservative country that lags other nations in affirming LGBTQ desires.

There is a large potential political and cultural impact to our top diplomat in a country like Lithuania being a gay man. It sends a high-profile message that to have a good political and economic relationship with the United States, nations will need to accept LGBTQ individuals and improve treatment of their own LGBTQ citizens. It’s one more example of how the Trump administration is using soft-power and influence to carry out this important global initiative.

However, the dominant narrative weaved by the media and Democrats incorrectly paints the administration’s record on LGBTQ issues. The very same Advocate article on Gilchrist’s appointment still claims that overall, “the Trump administration has taken many anti-LGBTQ actions.” But has it?

As a gay man myself, it’s important to me to know how the facts measure up to these accusations. Below are the most notable allegations of anti-LGBTQ actions supposedly taken by the Trump administration, and whether the media and leftist politicians reported them accurately.