RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/31/confessions-of-a-recovering-neoconservative/

The realignment of the political Right has prompted a public confessional of sorts, a raw acknowledgement that millions of us were led astray by Republiican leaders we trusted, we voted for, and we defended during times of war. We only have ourselves to blame, of course, because we did it with our eyes wide open. But the Trump era is forcing many Republicans to reexamine what we once believed and reassess what actually is true.

In a fiery speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C., Fox News host Tucker Carlson talked about purging his “mental attic” to dust off the ideas that he had accepted as legitimate over past few decades.

“The Trump election was so shocking . . . that it did cause some significant percentage of people to say ‘wait a second, if that can happen, what else is true?’” Carlson said. “Just look around . . . who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? A lot of the people we’ve been told are good guys are not. Some of them are the worst guys. I’ll let you figure out who.”

Carlson didn’t need to name names because the conservatives in the room, I assume, envisioned pretty much the same collection of bad guys—and they aren’t on the Left.

For the most part, the list would include Republican villains such as Bill Kristol, Carlson’s former boss at the now-defunct Weekly Standard, and a number of other conservative commentators still clinging to the mantras that afford them their sinecures; Bush family members and certain administration officials; former Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and the late John McCain; former Republican congressional leaders such as ex-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; and an assortment of well-heeled donors.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/08/robert-mueller-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain/

Robert Mueller, decorated Vietnam veteran, distinguished lawyer, two-term director of the FBI and, more recently,  Russiagate special counsel, recently testified for some seven hours before two select committees on Capitol Hill. What the world witnessed was sad, pitiful and largely farcical as the vague and mentally adrift champion of those who long hoped he would bring down an elected President saw their ambitions not merely dashed but pulverised. For Mueller it was bad; for Democrats it was much worse.

As soon as Donald Trump announced his presidential aspirations and entered the Republican primaries an almighty deluge of derision and ridicule was unleashed from all quarters. He was known primarily as the brash, domineering central character in the TV program The Apprentice, and less so as a very wealthy, successful property developer. Neither persona would serve to endear him to the masses, the elites of the punditocracy opined,  speaking mostly for themselves as it turned out. All forms of the media were especially savage. They branded him a vulgar buffoon and much worse. Comedians mockingly encouraged him to ‘run, please run, and let us enjoy your humiliation of failing’. By the time he looked like winning the nomination a nascent fear was rippling through the Washington swamp the candidate had pledged to drain. True, Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the Oval Office was accepted by the Left and like-minded as an inevitability, yet the signs were ominous. ‘Regular, everyday Americans’, the trans-Pacific counterparts of John Howard’s battlers, liked much of what he was saying and did not mind the way he was saying it. After he was confirmed as the Republican candidate for the presidency, the camp of Trump’s followers grew rapidly and Clinton’s supporters became concerned that the “unimaginable” might just possibly come to pass. In the top layers of this cabal a  strategy to prevent it or, failing that, to destroy it took root and flourished. The plan’s objective was no less than a fully fledged, bloodless political coup to unseat a duly elected president. Much of the conspiracy is well known already, including the identities of the plotters in the top tiers of the FBI, the CIA, other security organisations, in the Justice and State departments, among prominent politicians of both major parties.

What we do know — and Mueller did not at his marathon testimonies — is that the Clinton campaign paid a British ex-spy to gather (manufacture?) fallacious information from dubious Russian sources about Trump having engaged in salacious conduct involving prostitutes while staying years earlier in a Moscow hotel. This was disseminated throughout Washington and passed to tame reporters, the specific intention being to drive Trump from the office should he be elected. This plot was “the insurance” and involved American and British individuals and, though he laughs it off as a joke, the curious involvement of Alexander Downer.

People have long misunderstood and misrepresented Baltimore, my cherished hometown, but much of what President Donald Trump said this past weekend about Charm City was right on the nose. The president categorized Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” which sparked ire among his always-vocal choir of critics but offered no untrue information.

The president was responding to longtime Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district includes Baltimore, who had issued an incendiary attack on acting Department of Homeland Security head Kevin McAleenan for conditions on the U.S. southern border. Cummings yelled at McAleenan during a House Oversight hearing, claiming he possessed an “empathy deficit” about migrant families at the border.

An Unfiltered Look

Disparaging remarks about Baltimore are not new. Politicians, celebrities, and even residents of the city have easily mocked the soaring crime rate, rodent infestation, and never-ending parade of local government scandals. The three most recently departed mayors have left in disgrace. One was convicted of fraud that involved stealing gift cards from needy families, and another is under active investigation for embezzling government funds.

A local Baltimore Fox affiliate even attempted to shine a light on their own problem in 2018 using an “unfiltered” look at the city with recently ousted Mayor Catherine Pugh. “Whoa, you can smell the rats,” Pugh said during the program as a camera crew followed her around the streets of the decaying city.

Trump critics, of course, called him a “racist” for shifting the spotlight from the southern border to the troubled, predominantly black city only 40 miles away from the nation’s capital.