RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/28/the-adolescent-progressive-mind/

One of the strangest things about the series of psychodramas that surround the ongoing effort to remove President Trump before the 2020 election is progressive schizophrenia. In teenage fashion, one moment a player in the Trump removal intrigue is deemed by the media-progressive nexus a demigod. The next moment, he’s a devil. It depends solely on his perceived sense of utility.

Robert Mueller, Saint to Sinner
When Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate alleged Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, he was practically canonized as a secular saint. The media was giddy over his “all stars” and “dream team” of almost all liberal lawyers who shortly would prove the supposedly obvious: sure winner Hillary Clinton lost only because the vile Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to sabotage her campaign by leaking John Podesta’s emails.

As the Mueller investigation lumbered along over the last 22 months, the media periodically announced that their newfound hero had inside information, privileged but unnamed sources, and high-ranking anonymous officials who confirmed “the noose was tightening,” the “walls were closing in,” and “a bombshell” was about to go off. It was as if pre-teenagers had group-talked themselves into seeing witches and goblins.

Mueller was just about to ensure Trump’s impeachment, indictment, or voluntary exile. More direct leaks apprised us that Mueller supposedly was sealing Trump’s fate by flipping the alleged sell-out Michael Flynn. Or was it the dastardly Carter Page? Or perhaps the supposed wannabe George Papadopoulos was Trump’s true nemesis. Or again, maybe the deified Mueller had so leveraged Stormy Daniels, or Michael Cohen, or Roger Stone, or Jerome Corsi that Trump would all but confess and slink off into infamous oblivion.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/24/25-questions-for-robert-mueller/

Much like the Steele dossier, the FISA application on Carter Page, and most of the news media’s coverage of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, the Mueller Report reads more like political propaganda aimed at harming Donald Trump than a sober collection of facts and evidence.

The 448-page document is filled with innuendo that has nothing to do with collusion (the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape is mentioned a few times for no apparent reason); it cites irrelevant articles planted by Trump foes as evidence, including this egregious National Review hit piece on Carter Page from April 2016; and it intentionally omits material facts, including key details about the Russian lobbyists involved in the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

The culmination of a probe that cost taxpayers at least $30 million and consumed the attention of our political leadership for nearly two years raises plenty of questions about how Robert Mueller approached his heretofore unchecked investigation. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) wants Mueller to testify before his committee next month; this is an excellent idea. Republicans should welcome the opportunity to reverse roles with the special counsel.

Here are 25 questions that GOP lawmakers can ask Robert Mueller, if he complies:

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/24/mueller-investigation-was-driven-by-pious-hypocrisy/

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.

Despite compiling private allegations of loud and obnoxious Trump behavior, Mueller also concluded that there was not any actionable case of obstruction of justice by the president. It would have been hard in any case to find that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of an alleged crime.

One, there was never a crime of collusion. Mueller early on in his endeavors must have realized that truth, but he pressed ahead anyway. It is almost impossible to prove obstruction of nothing.

Two, Trump cooperated with the investigation. He waived executive privilege. He turned over more than 1 million pages of administrative documents. He allowed then-White House counsel Don McGahn to submit to over 30 hours of questioning by Mueller’s lawyers.

Three, anyone targeted by a massive investigation who knows he is innocent of an alleged crime is bound to become frustrated over a seemingly never-ending inquisition.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/04/101269/

It is nearly twenty years since 9/11, and yet the media coverage of the events of a few weeks ago in Christchurch, and now in Sri Lanka, suggests journalists and politicians still have little to no understanding of Islam and what it is all about. Politicians, I can understand, but it would appear that journalism courses no longer extend to basic research. On that basis I have felt compelled to write a brief introduction to Islam which I present here. My apologies to long term Quadrant readers, who probably would have picked all all this up in around 2001.

To really understand Islam it is only necessary to understand three things.

Firstly

Muslims openly — go Google it, it’s no secret — divide the world into the Dar al Islam and the Dar al Harb. “Dar al Islam” translates as “The region under Islamic control”, or more literally since “Islam” translates as “submission”, “the region that has submitted (to Islam).” “Dar al Harb” translates literally as “The region of war”, that is, the region that has yet to submit to Islam. It is the duty of every Muslim to advance the cause of Islam, that is, advance the cause of submission in the Dar al Harb. Australia is part of the Dar al Har, and so, to those who take their creed as seriously as the sacred texts urge, Islam is quite openly, and quite literally, “at war” with Australia and will remain so until it too “submits” and becomes part of the Dar al Islam. Verse (ayat) 29 from the Sura 9 (Repentance) of the Qur’an pretty much spells that out:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-report-trump-opponents-governing-class/

Despite decades of egregious errors, a group of “leaders” remains steadfastly in place, waiting to take charge again.

The release of the Mueller report this week was a revelatory moment for me. I realized that, some time ago apparently, I crossed a political Mendoza line, where I am now more disgusted by Donald Trump’s opponents than I am by Trump himself.

This is no insignificant development for me. Regular readers of mine will recall that, just three years ago, I was calling on the delegates to the Republican National Convention to deny Trump the GOP nomination, arguing not only that it was prudent but also well within their rights. That feels like an eternity ago to me.

It was not the Mueller report per se that moved me, but rather its organization into two parts­ — the investigation into possible collusion with the Russians and the investigation into obstruction of justice — that was like a light bulb going off in my head.

Let’s start with the obstruction of justice. I do not think what Trump did was criminal or meriting impeachment. I do think it demonstrates that he is a nincompoop whose tendency to shoot from the hip has done more damage to his public standing than his political opponents ever could.

Put yourself in Trump’s shoes in January 2017. You know that you did not collude with Russia. You also know that high-level officials in the government think you did, pushing some bogus document in close conjunction with the mainstream press. The obvious inference about these people is either that they are credulous morons who will believe any silly claim or that they’re vicious partisans who want to end your administration before it begins.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/prison-anyone

Just a few months ago, in an article entitled “Still the Smartest Guy in the Room,” I wrote the following about President Trump:

Well, whaddaya know? In the midterm elections of November 6, 2018, the American people rewarded the president—for only the third time in almost a hundred years—with a net gain of three and possibly four Senate seats, lost half the House seats that his predecessor lost, and left the radical leftwing Democrats not rejoicing at their meager gains, but still chomping at the bit to bring down the president who has effectively destroyed everything they believed in, worked for, and thought they achieved over the past 75 years..Yes, President Trump posed a mortal threat to the Left’s very raison d’etre—a globalist one-world order controlled by them!

And so way back in 2015, when he announced his intention to run for the presidency, the “connected” guys of the D.C. swamp—to use the vocabulary of the mob—decided to pool their formidable resources to “clip” the billionaire business mogul, if not physically (although I wouldn’t put that past them), then by proving that their manufactured fiction of candidate Trump’s collusion with Russia to win the presidency was, in fact, true and therefore impeachable.

In that article, I listed all the fanatical Detectives Javert—the top dogs at our top-secret intelligence agencies (and many of their wives who also played central roles)—and elaborated on their impressive credentials, privileged educations, vast experience, and, oh, their appointments to high office by the former occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama.

https://quadrant.org.au/

Robert Mueller’s long-awaited Russiagate report, finally available for public consumption, makes interesting reading, as does the coverage of its ho-hum revelations by news organisations which, for the most part, aided and abetted what even Inquisitor Mueller admits (no doubt through gritted teeth) to there being no “there” there. The New York Times, which repeatedly compromised its credibility by promoting every breathless aspersion leaked by investigators, has done something to redress those sins by posting a searchable version of the full text.

Local visitors to the document may be somewhat disappointed however. A search on “Australia” reveals no mention whatsoever, with similar nothingness the reward for anyone in quest of “Downer”.

As to “Fusion” — the lobbying outfit which compiled and promoted the dossier used as the trigger to set the feds on a just-elected president — that, too, is missing, as is evidence of any curiosity on Mueller’s part as to the Clinton campaign’s motives in funding that compendium of salacious furphies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/progressive-effort-delegitimize-william-barr/

The current progressive effort to demonize attorney general William Barr is creepy, but then again not so strange. He came into the office with singular experience and an excellent reputation from past service. As attorney general, he has followed the law to the letter in handling the release, redactions, and dissemination of the Mueller report. His summaries of the report proved factual. They were not contested by Robert Mueller or his team. His decision not to pursue “obstruction” was not just his own, but logically followed from the Mueller report that did not find enough evidence to make such a positive recommendation. His congressional testimony that there was “spying” during the 2016 campaign is, of course, factually undeniable, and Barr added the qualifier of being interested in finding whether such surveillance was warranted or not.

As for the charge that Barr, a former Bush appointee, is Trump’s “hand-picked” choice –how odd, given that all attorney generals are presidents’ hand-picked selections. How could they not be?

It is not as if Barr has referenced himself, in Eric Holder’s partisan fashion, as Trump’s “wing-man.” Nor has he ordered surveillance on, for example, a Fox News reporter, or had the communication records of 20 Associated Press journalists seized, as happened during the Obama administration in efforts to stop leaks of unwelcome news stories. Nor has he been held in contempt of Congress for failure to turn over subpoenaed documents under the cover of a presidential order of executive privilege. There is no suggestion that Barr has abused the perquisites of the office, for example, by using a government jet to go to the horse races with his family. He has avoided controversial value judgements about the nature of the American people and polarizing rhetoric.

So, more likely, the effort to delegitimize the professional Barr is the opening, preemptory salvo in the second and quite different round of investigations.

Soon Mr. Barr will be tasked with collating and adjudicating criminal referrals and arguments for indictments coming variously from Inspector General Michael Horowitz, possibly special counsel John Huber, Devin Nunes the ranking Republican and former chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and perhaps later even from Lindsey Graham, Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, along with any conclusions arising from federal attorneys within the Justice Department itself.

In toto, these sources variously may present evidence to Barr on matters of lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and abuse of government surveillance — and the charges could, in ironic fashion, involve top-ranking former administrative state investigators during the Obama administration, who for the last two years have been quite prominent as cable news analysts and, in their memoirs at least, as self-described ethicists. Add that there will be a completely different sort of news cycle as it intensifies in approach of the 2020 election. In such investigations, no one has any idea what possible defendants may do or say to federal prosecutors in efforts to lessen their own criminal exposure.
3

In sum, the progressives’ preventative efforts to destroy Barr’s reputation take on a certain sort of sick partisan logic, especially as he is neither the sort to recuse himself during cycles of journalistic hysteria nor to appoint a special counsel, after the ill-starred odyssey of the Mueller all-stars and dream team. Given his age, past tenures, reputation, and professional demeanor, Barr does not seem to be much worried over transient unpopularity, partisan criticism, political pressure, or making tough decisions that might adversely affect his future career.

So the fear is not that Barr broke or will ever break the law, but rather just the opposite: He seems the sort who will follow the law wherever it leads him and without worry over the consequences — and that reality is now apparently seen by some as quite scary indeed.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/is-the-mueller-report-the-son-of-the-steele-dossier_2887555.html
Hesitant about working my way through the Mueller report, I found myself gratified to hear Rep. Devin Nunes’s assessment of the thing.“The Mueller report ignored a wide range of abuses committed during the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. And now, with the revelation that the Special Counsel was authorized at the outset to investigate Carter Page for allegedly colluding with Russians to hack the election, it’s clear that false allegations from the Steele dossier played a major role not only in the FISA warrant application on Page, but in the appointment of the Special Counsel as well.” (Emphasis added.)

As numb as we are to the machinations of the anti-Trump conspiracy, this is a crowning outrage.

According to Nunes, there is only one item of relevance in the entire 450-page document. While it is an item of significance, it confirms something many have long suspected.

Nunes explained that on page 11 there is a veiled disclosure to the effect that the “scope memo,” the directive Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave Special Counsel Robert Mueller in August 2017, included “the Steele dossier, the Clinton dirt, the Clinton-paid-for dirt as part of the memo for the special counsel that directed the special counsel what to do.”

Nunes elaborated on the implications:

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22578/america-and-the-family-business-rule

There is an old saying in family businesses, “The first generation starts a business. The second generation runs it. The third generation ruins it.”

Metaphorically, our American family business is in the third generation.

Our Founding Fathers rejected monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, theocracy, and formed the United States of America as a Constitutional Republic – the greatest experiment in individual freedom and upward mobility anywhere in the world. What happened?

To answer that question we must examine the historical context of the three generations.

Our Founding Fathers lived at a time in history when “We the people” had little value. Societies were structured along binary feudal lines and divided between the ruling elite and the enslaved population who served them. Slavery was a matter of degree – from physical chains and ownership of another human being, to caste systems that predetermined social position, to social structures where populations were subjects of ruling monarchs, oligarchs, or subjects of the tyranny of religious theocratic rule.

Our Founding Fathers had a different idea. They decided to build a more perfect union, a representative democracy that valued the people of society and entrusted them with the responsibility of elections to choose their own leaders. It was a radical experiment in social policy that reflected a seismic shift in social attitudes.