RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/15/strzok-interviews-reveal-fbis-disgrace/

Can constitutional democracy continue to coexist with a lawless secret police that targets innocent people?

By his smartly dressed appearance, one would never know Peter Strzok wasn’t still a senior FBI agent. He looked to be straight out of central casting as he began his “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday with this book-promoting slander, “I think it is clear, I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe, that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians. And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security ahead of his own.”

Nothing is more sleazy and corrupt than a current or former FBI agent implicitly claiming to have access to secret evidence of a target’s guilt when the time to produce such evidence has long since passed.

Imagine that you’ve just weathered four years of an FBI investigation during which the press consistently published character-assassinating falsehoods attributed to “people familiar with the investigation.” Your enemies, who personally hate you, launch the investigative team with unlimited manpower and money and staff it with political opponents. Federal agents entrap your allies in process crimes, coerce a plea by threatening a man’s family, repeatedly deceive a court to conduct intrusive surveillance, steal thousands of emails without a warrant, and deliberately prolong the investigation despite knowing from day one that you are innocent. 

When the day finally comes for the persecutors either to put up or shut up, they do neither, publishing a slanted report full of smears without ever giving you the chance to rebut the charges in court. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16337/self-censorship-in-the-us

The US nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Yet the average number of Americans who self-censor is slowly beginning to approximate that of Germany, where… “Nearly two-thirds of citizens are convinced that ‘today one has to be very careful on which topics one expresses oneself’, because there are many unwritten laws about what opinions are acceptable and admissible”.

It is, however, not surprising. American campuses have steered a “leftist” course for decades. The tilt has had familiar consequences: the proliferation on campus of “safe spaces”, trigger warnings, de-platforming of conservative voices and a “cancel culture” aimed at professors and students who do not conform to an on-campus political orthodoxy that has become increasingly totalitarian. Most recently, the dean of University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Nursing, Leslie Neal-Boylan, was fired by the school after writing “Black lives matter, but also everyone’s life matters” in an email to students and faculty.

When citizens stop voicing their concerns in public about current events, policies and ideas out of fear that they will lose their livelihoods and social standing, it is — or should be — a huge problem in a democracy.

A democratic society of fearful citizens who dare not speak about what is on their minds — often important issues of their time — is doomed to succumb to the will of those who bully the hardest and shout the loudest.

A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by Cato Institute/YouGov found that 62% of Americans say “the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive”. This is up from 2017, when 58% agreed with this statement. “Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-police-heroism-in-compton/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Last Friday, when we marked the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one thing that did not get enough attention was the sacrifice of the police, firefighters, and other first responders, hundreds of whom were killed that day. First responders is an apt term for them. They are the people who show up. They knowingly charge into the dangers from which most of us flee.

Then on Saturday came the atrocious attempted murder of two Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs in Compton, by an assassin who is still at large. Once again, what is striking is the heroism of the police. It is awesome to see, but it is routine heroism if, like me, you’ve spent lots of time around cops.

One of the deputies who was shot was Claudia Apolinar, a 31-year-old former librarian, the mother of a six-year-old boy and on the job for a year, saved her 24-year-old partner (who has not been publicly identified at this time). Deputy Apolinar had been shot in the jaw area and the upper torso, and was bleeding profusely. Yet, she had the presence of mind, and the courage under circumstances where she could not be sure the attack was over, to lend medical aid — apparently including application of a tourniquet to her fellow deputy.

What do we see on the other side of the equation? A sneak attack on two law-enforcement officers who were simply protecting a community rife with anti-police hostility. More of those precious “peaceful protesters” blocking the entrance to the nearby hospital to make it difficult for ambulances to get through, with some of the “peaceful protesters” chanting, “We hope they die!” And other locals celebrating the deadly ambush of police.

Pure evil.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/california-forest-fires-taxes-homelessness-same-old-fall-problems/#slide-1

Tech titans and Bay Area Bourbons grow rich, the middle class flees, forests burn.

F all is almost here in California. So we know the annual script.

A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will all be ignored as right-wing nuts or worse.Environmentalists will sneer that the new forestry sees fires as medicinal and natural, and global warming as inevitable because of “climate deniers.”

Late-summer fires will then consume our foothills, mountains, and forests. Long-dead trees from the drought will explode and send their pitch bombs to shower the forest with flames.

Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future. Billions of dollars will go up in smoke. The billowing haze and ash will cloud and pollute the state for weeks if not months. Tens of thousands will be evacuated and their lives disrupted — and those are the lucky.

California’s deer-in-the headlight progressive officials will blame “climate change” for the conflagrations. The accompanying power brownouts, tardy responses, and official blame-gaming will follow as a prelude for still more solar-panel farms and still less forest management.

There could be a long answer to explain why California for years abandoned dead drought- and insect-stricken trees — over some 60 million of these withered, towering time bombs in their coastal and Sierra forests — to rot. But the short of it was that the kindling and tinderboxes were seen as perfect green mulch for flora and fauna.