RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pity those poor Americans in this presidential election year. In one corner, the bizarre figure of Donald Trump. In the other, the woman who excused her husband’s sexual predations, achieved nothing in the Senate and made cowardice her guide as Secretary of State. Some choice, eh?

Listening to one of Hillary Clinton’s stump speeches as she pursues the Democrats’ presidential nomination, you could be forgiven for suspecting that, taken at her word, she has been personally responsible for the liberation of women. In truth, her vapid and dismissive response to Bill Clinton’s history of abusive affairs likely set the women’s movement back many years. Hillary’s citing of a fabled “vast right-wing conspiracy” somehow, according to a compliant press corps, made Bill’s appalling history seem a mere side issue, all the allegations presented as no more than mere excuses to bring him down. Lies under oath, innovative uses for cigars and interns — even rape if you accept the word of at least two alleged victims and the late Christopher Hitchens, who wrote of having spoken at length to a third.

But none of this bothered Mrs Clinton, who has continued to present herself as the essence and hope of womanhood’s advancement. What she ignores are the key advances that have made life better for women and enabled them to take up opportunities previously un-achievable or forbidden. Legislation for compulsory school education for all children in the late 19th Century arguably opened the way. Those educated women would grow up to demand the vote, more control of money, and less back-breaking domestic drudgery.

The story has it that during the George H.W. Bush administration, James Baker proposes to his boss an idea that would go against Israeli interests. “The Jews aren’t going to like it,” President Bush says. Mr. Baker replies: “They don’t vote for us anyway—screw ’em!” Fast forward 15 years, when Rahm Emanuel proposes a different idea to his boss that would also go against Israeli interests. “The Jews aren’t going to like it,” President Obama says. Mr. Emanuel replies: “They vote for us anyway—screw ’em!”

Such, one might say, are the advantages of bloc voting for ethnic groups. Just as Democratic politicians assume the support of black voters, the Jews have been in the pocket of the Democratic Party at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and though there are few Jews alive today who were old enough to have voted for FDR, they, the Jews, are still in that pocket. This despite the fact that we now know that FDR was not such a grand friend to the Jews, for he did nothing to stop or even slow the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II, and instead, when told by Rabbi Stephen Wise of the death camps, counseled silence on the subject. CONTINUE AT SITE

‘In the House and the Senate, we own the budget.” It was August 2014, the stretch run before the midterm elections, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was making promises to voters about how he and his party would face down Barack Obama’s lawless presidency. Put us in charge, he explained, and a Republican Congress would defend Americans by using the main tool the Framers gave them, the power of the purse:

That means we can pass the spending bill. And I assure you that in the spending bill, we will be pushing back against this bureaucracy by doing what’s called placing riders in the bill. No money can be spent to do this or to do that. We’re going to go after them on health care, on financial services, on the Environmental Protection Agency, across the board. All across the federal government, we’re going to go after it.

But wait, couldn’t that lead to a government shutdown? Weren’t Republicans supposed to be the grown-ups in the room who would “restore regular order” and “make Washington work”? Locked in his own reelection battle, McConnell was having none of it. President Obama “needs to be challenged,” he thundered, “and the best way to do that is through the funding process.” Republicans would place scores of spending restrictions on the president — “that’s something [the president] won’t like,” he told Politico, “but that will be done. I guarantee it.” A GOP-controlled Congress would dare Obama to veto bills in order to preserve spending on his transformational agenda. If a shutdown happened, that would be the White House’s problem.

In other words, McConnell and his fellow Republican leaders talked the brave talk when courting voters who wanted the financing plug pulled on Obama policies that are crushing ordinary Americans — the impeachable non-enforcement of our immigration laws that costs Americans jobs, depresses American wages, and stresses American communities; the unfolding Obamacare debacle that deprives ordinary Americans of the doctors and insurance they had, corralling them into plans with premiums and deductibles so high that the “coverage” is illusory.

Alas, when voters trusted them to follow through, when it came time to walk the walk . . . the GOP went AWOL.

In the blink of an eye after the historic Republican victory — solid control of the Senate with McConnell safely ensconced as leader, a hammerlock on the House — they gave away the store: fully funding Obama’s final years in office, including Obamacare, including the unconstitutional executive decrees that eviscerate immigration law; forfeiting the considerable leverage they had to “challenge” Obama “through the funding process” as McConnell had committed to do.

A source close to the FBI investigation into the use of Hillary Clinton’s private email server says that the IT specialist who worked for Clinton and who has been granted immunity by the Justice Department is revealing key details about how and when Clinton and her aides accessed the server.

The source characterized Bryan Pagliano as a “devastating witness.”

Fox News:

“Bryan Pagliano is a devastating witness and, as the webmaster, knows exactly who had access to [Clinton’s] computer and devices at specific times. His importance to this case cannot be over-emphasized,” the intelligence source said.

The source, who is not authorized to speak on the record due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, said Pagliano has provided information allowing investigators to knit together the emails with other evidence, including images of Clinton on the road as secretary of state.

The cross-referencing of evidence could help investigators pinpoint potential gaps in the email record. “Don’t forget all those photos with her using various devices and it is easy to track the whereabouts of her phone,” the source said. “It is still boils down to a paper case. Did you email at this time from your home or elsewhere using this device? And here is a picture of you and your aides holding the devices.”

Tonight, as I watch protesters in the streets of Chicago squash the free speech rights of those they do not agree with I exist ashamed of my hometown. I have understood for years that Chicago had arrived at being the epicenter of Progressive intolerance, even more so than the grounds of UC Berkeley or Columbia University. But listening to one of the “protesters” being interviewed after the announcement that they had succeeded in effecting the cancellation of a political rally featuring Donald Trump (of whom I am not necessarily a huge supporter), I have come to the conclusion that the brown shirt-jackboots of fascist regimes past have been resurrected; inhabiting the liberal bastions and college classrooms of the Windy City.

One giggling female protester said, “We are protesting inequality, we’re protesting everything.” And a self-anointed community activist (where does one go to get certified as a community activist anyway?), Quo Vadis, said the goal of the protesters – numbering in the high-hundreds, if not thousands – was for, “Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.” In other words, the protesters who consider themselves champions of “equality for all” executed a plan to affect the total censorship of a political figure. By any consideration, these “protesters” annihilated Donald Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech. Correct me if I am wrong, but censorship is antithetical to equality for all. But maybe these protester’s civics instructors haven’t covered the Bill of Rights yet.

Fascism, by definition, means:

“…a political movement that employs the principles and methods of Fascism, the philosophy, principles, or methods of a governmental system that forcibly suppresses opposition and criticism, and emphasizing an aggressive Nationalism and often racism.”

Censorship is a tool of Fascism, serving to suppress opposition and criticism. This is exactly what we witnessed in the streets of Chicago tonight: censorship at the hand of the “enlightened” Progressive movement. So it is that it is fair to characterize these “enlightened” people – young and old, male and female, Black, White, Latino and otherwise – as modern day fascists; individuals intolerant of opinions that exist in opposition to their own; individuals that exist delusional to who they have become; “useful idiots” denying others the right to political free speech in defiance of the Bill of Rights.