RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/oops_alleged_russian_spy_maria_butina_met_with_obama_officials_in_2015.html

Desperate Trump-haters, searching for something – anything! – to show that the Trump administration is in bed with Vladimir Putin seized on the news a week ago that a young Russian named Maria Butina had been indicted for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), or, in the words of the DOJ, for “conspiracy to act as an agent of the Russian Federation within the United States without prior notification to the Attorney General.”

Here at last was a face – and a red-headed female one, to boot – to attach to the charges of treason being thrown around by the likes of John Brennan.

So intense was the fever that their dream had come true that, as Bre Payton reported in The Federalist:

In the wake of Donald Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, members of the media mistook a Trump administration staffer for a Russian spy.

Emily Singer, a senior political reporter for Mic, tweeted out a photo from inside the White House and claimed that Maria Butina, who was charged Monday for conspiring against the U.S. as a secret Russian agent, was among a gaggle of staffers inside the Oval Office. She later realized her mistake and deleted the tweet, but only after it went viral.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-google-twitter-refuse-to-say-if-china-or-n-korea-tried-to-meddle-in-2016-election/

In a heated House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday investigating charges of anti-conservative bias by Facebook, Google, and Twitter, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) queried representatives of those platforms about whether they have found any evidence that countries other than Russia — namely China and N. Korea — had attempted to interfere in U.S. elections in 2016. The individuals representing the Big Three social media platforms couldn’t — or wouldn’t — say.

Gohmert asked, “You have been asked specifically about Russian use of your platforms. But did you ever find any indication of use of your platform utilized by the Chinese, North Korea, or any other foreign country, intelligence, or agency of that country?”

Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, attempted to evade the question. “I would note, congressman, that we are not in N. Korea or China,” she said, adding that Facebook has a “robust” security team.

Gohmert tried asking his question again. “We have foreign governments, intelligence agencies in this country. It seems to me you were each a little bit vague about ‘Oh yes, we found hundreds,’ or whatever, I’m asking specifically: were any of those other countries besides Russia that were using your platform inappropriately? It should be a yes or no.”

“I don’t have the details,” Bickert replied. “I know we definitely work to detect and repel attacks — ”

“I know that,” Gohmert interrupted, “but were any of them foreign entities other than Russia?”

“I can certainly follow up with you on that,” she said.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/media-beclown-themselves-with-yet-another-bogus-russian-conspiracy-theory

The greatest threat to the press’ credibility is the press.

Consider, for example, the extra-absurd and bogus viral narrative created Tuesday by Mic Senior Political Reporter Emily Singer.

Singer found a Getty Images picture from May 2017 showing Trump meeting in the Oval Office with a delegation of Russian officials, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. If you look at the photo carefully, you can see White House National Security Council staffer Cari Lutkins huddled in the back.

This is where things take a turn for the stupid.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced charges against Russian national Maria Butina, who they say conspired against the U.S. as a secret agent.

Butina has red hair. Lutkins also has red hair. This shared trait was enough for Singer, who tweeted the Getty picture Tuesday morning with the accompanying caption: “I thought this was a photoshop, but it’s not. This is Maria Butina — arrested for being a Russian spy — in the Oval Office with Trump.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/13/fusion-gps-targets-jim

Congress is slowly closing in on exposing the media’s shameful role in perpetuating the Trump-Russia collusion myth on the American people. Prominent news organizations are the accomplices—if not coconspirators—in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history. Now, two years later, there is no sign of surrender: A ludicrous article in New York magazine on July 8 suggested Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset for 30 years.

Fully invested in pushing the phony Trump-Russia plotline in a malicious attempt to destroy Trump’s presidency, the media are intensifying this narrative and creating new villains in the process.

Enter Rep. James Jordan (R-Ohio).

The Ohio congressman has been under a relentless media siege since NBC News reported on July 3 that Jordan ignored “sexual abuse” by a team doctor when Jordan was an assistant coach for the wrestling team at The Ohio State University from 1986 to 1994. The article is short on evidence of sexual abuse but quotes a few of Jordan’s former teammates who insisted the congressmen knew of the inappropriate behavior by Dr. Richard Strauss and did nothing about it. In April, the university announced it would investigate allegations against Strauss, who committed suicide in 2005.

The NBC News report offered mostly innuendo from less-than-credible sources: One accuser is an ex-con who did time in prison for mail fraud, drug possession, and stealing from investors; another is a shady business owner with a “long history of litigation and an apparent bone to pick with the Jordan family” who allegedly sent a disturbing picture to the widow of a former OSU wrestler.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/11/jeffrey-toobins-clueless-supreme-court-meltdowns-embarrass-cnn/

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement has ignited a competition in Big Media for apocalyptic hot-takes on how a marginally more conservative Supreme Court will destroy America. CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin seems bent on taking home the trophy for the most molten meltdown.

Toobin’s most recent rave, to the network’s Anderson Cooper, was that the stakes are higher on judicial confirmations today because “[w]hen the Constitution was written in the late eighteenth century, people were expected to die in their 50s. The framers never contemplated that these terms would regularly go to 30-plus years as they do now.”Toobin is as ill-informed about statistics as he is about the framers’ view on de facto life tenure for federal judges.

Toobin, like many people in the media, seems to have little idea about the difference between life expectancy—a figure including infant mortality—and life span. It also appears he may not grasp the difference between the mean and the median in considering what an “average” number is.
About Life Expectancy in the Eighteenth Century

Modern medicine has greatly decreased infant mortality and thereby increased average life expectancy in America and elsewhere. But after infant mortality is accounted for, the human life span has not changed nearly as much over time. During the late 1700s, males who reached age 20 could be expected on average to live to age 63-66. At age 30, they could be expected to live to age 65-68. At age 50—when Toobin thinks men were being wiped out—they could be expected to live to age 71-73.

Moreover, infant mortality will affect both the mean—which is what most people think of as an average—and the median, the number at which half the population will be above and half below. The median still provides the opportunity for half the population to live well beyond the average.

Of course, the framers were no more expert on these subjects than Toobin is. But James Madison lived to age 85. Ben Franklin lived to age 84. Paul Revere made it to age 83, while John Adams lived until age 90. Thomas Jefferson, while technically not a framer of the Constitution, lived to 83. The first Supreme Court chief justice, John Jay, lived to 83. They likely noticed that their contemporaries were not all keeling over in their 50s.

Jonathan Chait has now spun up an East-Germany-style vision of Donald Trump as Putin’s Honecker, a traitor to the USA since 1987.

Titled “What If Trump Has Been a Russian Asset Since 1987?,” the Chait piece does not even rise to the level of “conspiracy theory,” Chait having presented no conspiracy to theorize about. His technique is to raise, magnify and connect doubts. “How do you even think about the small but real chance — 10 percent? 20 percent? — that the president of the United States has been covertly influenced or personally compromised by a hostile foreign power for decades?” he asks. One answer is, you write a few thousand pointless words.

But only about Trump. Chait takes everything back to Trump’s July 1987 visit to Moscow. That’s because in September of that same year Trump took out a series of full-page ads in prominent newspapers noting that “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.″ In his open letter to the American people, Trump asked, ″Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?”

Classic Trump — or was it really Gorbachev in disguise? As Chait notes, it is the Kremlin’s propensity to seek splits between the US and its allies. He writes: “The safest assumption is that it’s entirely coincidental that Trump launched a national campaign, with himself as spokesman, built around themes that dovetailed closely with Soviet foreign-policy goals shortly after his Moscow stay. Indeed, it seems slightly insane to contemplate the possibility that a secret relationship between Trump and Russia dates back this far. But it can’t be dismissed completely.” (Emphasis added.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270691/pressure-break-facebook-builds-matthew-vadum

America’s largest communications union, the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA), has joined an activist coalition called Freedom from Facebook that seeks to break up the monopolistic social media giant.

So far the groups supporting the Freedom From Facebook coalition are predominantly left-wing. Among them are MoveOn.org and Public Citizen. Facebook has about 2 billion users worldwide.

But the ideological makeup of the FFF coalition could change in a heartbeat if Facebook continues down its intolerant, authoritarian path. That’s because conservatives have long been abused by Facebook and this ill treatment has only intensified since the election of President Donald Trump. Conservatives are getting wise to being used and taken advantage of and they don’t like it.

The Left claims to have only the purest motives for wanting to take action against Facebook.

“We should all be deeply concerned by Facebook’s power over our lives and democracy,” said Brian Thorn of CWA, the newest member of the Freedom From Facebook coalition.

Facebook’s workers are not represented by CWA, but the union does represent more than 100,000 employees at AT&T Inc. Facebook’s contracted shuttle drivers and cafeteria workers reportedly belong to labor unions.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/10/nunes-targets-the-real

Congress is finally closing in on the biggest perpetrator of the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax: the American news media.

After taking an eight-year break from its vital role as the executive branch’s watchdog, the media have been on a frenzied, anti-Trump bender since 2016. Every conspiracy theory, every rumor, every dubious source has been chased down and breathlessly covered by once-credible news organizations. (This shameful interview on CNN with a drunken former Trump campaign aide could be a new low in journalism.)

Despite sanctimonious protestations that the media are not—as President Trump suggests—the “enemy of the people,” their collective conduct before and during his presidency has been disgraceful and borderline subversive. The elite press is complicit in one of the greatest political scandals of all-time: How the Obama administration concocted the tale that Donald Trump’s campaign was working with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) now is asking his congressional colleagues to compel open testimony from several people suspected of working as conduits between the Justice Department and the media to facilitate the Trump-Russia narrative.