RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/17/america-at-the-intersection-of-woke-and-incompetent/

We may have never had such a poisonous combination of partisanship and incompetence at the highest levels of government as we do today.

For as long as most of us have been alive, there have been declarations that America’s best days are behind us and that we are in a slow, steady decline. Against this backdrop, there is a growing sentiment that our present leadership in Washington is something altogether different, and worse. 

We are still getting familiar levels of government waste and inefficiency, but along with those come seemingly unprecedented levels of radicalism and incompetence. This noxious combination was on full display with the recent Senate testimony of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Washington is filthy with dogmatic bureaucrats, but Mayorkas stands out. He is willing to parrot the most absurd and provably false statements, such as his repeated insistence that the border is closed. When called before Congress, he defends this administration’s indefensible border policies with shameless diversions and obfuscation. 

At the heart of this administration’s border policy is a zealous adherence to far-Left ideology that flies in the face of common sense and traditional American principles. When Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked if the border is more under control now than during the Trump years, Mayorkas replied, “We have more control [of the border] that is consistent with our values as a nation.” 

This was a reference to the White House’s favorite talking point that Trump was “cruel” by instituting a zero-tolerance policy that temporarily separated parents from their children. But in its attempt to be all things anti-Trump at the border, this administration has empowered ruthless human trafficking cartels, enabled greater quantities of fentanyl and other illicit drugs to be brought into the country, and allowed untold numbers of children to be sexually assaulted as they are stockpiled into overcrowded detention centers. Isn’t that cruel? In what way is any of that consistent with our values as a nation?

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/17/can-the-fbi-be-salvaged/

The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.

In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news—and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.

The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton’s email leaks. In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton’s own private computer contractor, CrowdStrike, to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike’s point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.

During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.

It was also under Comey’s directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.

The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy—the Clinton-bought dossier—to Obama government officials and the media.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussman.

Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/stumbling_bumbling_kamala.html

Ooh-la-la!, oui, oui!  Kamala Harris has finally gone to Europe — and at taxpayers’ expense.  Yet despite CNN’s glowing description of the “chumming chemistry” between the vice president and France’s President Emmanuel Macron that “signaled a relationship back on track” after the canceled submarine contract crisis, the meeting did little by way of burnishing the vice president’s image.

Of course, nobody who has seen Kamala hovering behind the president like a straddle-legged, uniformed prison guard would expect her to sweep onto the continental scene with the same panache as, say, a Jackie Kennedy or Princess Di — and certainly not swathed in the same head-turning, headlining haute couture.  Nor does Kamala, pantsuits notwithstanding, generate the same interest as someone like Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps the intention of her boringly severe tailored “look” is to make her appear to be a no-nonsense woman of business.  The only problem is that thus far, Kamala has come across as all nonsense and very little business.  As for the outcome of the Paris meeting, Harris summed it up eloquently by saying, “We have a lot of follow-up stuff.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/adam-schiff-steele-dossier-death-shame-jonathan-turley

The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” The problem with shame is it assumes a sense of guilt over one’s actions. In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics. 

Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier. While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier.

Schiff’s interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” may be the final proof of the death of shame in American politics.

Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims. However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source.