RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-fbis-documents-1544398491

Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to rage about “Leakin’ James Comey, ” claiming the former FBI director lied to Congress. We can understand his pique, since we advised Mr. Trump in January 2017 to fire Mr. Comey as soon as he became President. But fuming in frustration now won’t do any good. The way to expose the truth about the FBI’s behavior in the 2016 presidential campaign is to declassify and release all the relevant documents.

Mr. Trump promised this fall to release many of these records only to renege under FBI and insider pressure. After the election the President again threatened to release them if Democrats went ahead with their multiple investigations into the 2016 campaign.

Well, what are you waiting for, Mr. Trump? Every Democrat in range of a microphone is promising to investigate your every Presidential decision, plus your taxes, business and family.

Meanwhile, New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who will chair the House Judiciary Committee in January, said Friday he will shut down the investigation into FBI and Justice decision-making. He called it “a waste of time to start with.” If Mr. Trump really wants Americans to know about the FBI’s 2016 political machinations, he’ll have to be the agent of transparency.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wrap-it-up-mr-mueller-1544398545

Last week was supposed to be earth-shaking in Robert Mueller’s special counsel probe, with the release of sentencing memos on three former members of the Trump universe—Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. Yet Americans learned little new and nothing decisive about the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion that triggered this long investigation.

The main Russia-related news is the disclosure, in Mr. Mueller’s memo on Mr. Cohen, of a previously unknown attempt by an unidentified Russian to reach out to the Trump presidential campaign. “In or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’” the memo says.

The Russian also offered the possibility of a meeting between Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin. Alas for conspiracy hopefuls, Mr. Cohen “did not follow up on this invitation,” the memo says, because Mr. Cohen says he was already talking to other Russians about a Trump Tower hotel project that has been previously disclosed. Mr. Trump has said he shut down that hotel negotiation in 2016 because he was running for President.

So a Russian wanted to insinuate himself into the Trump orbit but nothing happened. Why drop this into a sentencing memo? The press is breathing heavily that it signals Mr. Mueller’s intention to promote a narrative that the Trumpians were all too willing, for commercial and political reasons, to hear Russian solicitations.

This would make Trump officials look dumb or naive, as Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were when they took that famous meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016. Such a narrative would be politically embarrassing, but it’s not conspiring to hack and release the email of Democratic Party officials.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/12/09/rep_jim_jordan_comey_said_245_times_dont_remember_dont_recall_dont_know.html

Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, blasts former FBI director James Comey for answering more than 200 questions at Friday’s closed-door hearing with, “I can’t recall.”

“245 times he said ‘don’t remember, don’t recall, don’t know.’ The biggest takeaway for me was the ‘don’t know’ part. Specifically, he didn’t know much about Christopher Steele, the guy who used his work product, the dossier, to get the warrant to spy on the Trump campaign,” Jordan explained. “Here’s the key player, the guy who wrote the document that was the basis for getting the warrant, and he didn’t know anything about it.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/08/there-is-no-such

Americans are really beginning to sour on Obamacare, misleadingly titled the Affordable Care Act. Every year premiums go up, out of pocket costs go up, and care is only marginally better and in some cases worse, due to the influx of the sickest people into the healthcare system seeking generous, subsidized insurance.

Obamacare hasn’t delivered, even on its own terms. The most productive and enterprising Americans—small business owners and independent contractors—must foot monthly premiums of $1,000 or more in order to have the privilege of shelling out even more thousands in the event they get seriously ill.

In light of this debacle, some have resorted to magical thinking. Our favorite magician, young congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), tweeted the following in favor of “Medicare for All”:

While conservatives have generally rejected solutions like this, the impulse that drives the desire is understandable. Medical inflation is enormous and grossly disproportionate to improved outcomes. Medicare is a generous and expensive program, but one that mostly serves its clients well. The elderly, who often need substantial medical care, are generally able to partake with minimal personal expense.

Medicare costs incurred by patients are certainly a fraction of what self-employed, the young, and others pay for healthcare. And medicare remains more or less solvent because lots of healthy and younger people are paying into the pool. In other words, there are multiple payers for each recipient. The same is true of Tricare, the medical insurance plan for military service members and their dependents.