RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-5-17-what-are-the-three-worst-things-you-could-possibly-imagine-the-federal-government-of-president-ever-doing

The recurring themes at this blog all concern one or another badly misguided government policy that ends up being counter-productive or even greatly destructive of the welfare of the people. Examples include: undermining a functioning energy system in a delusional attempt to control the weather; spending vast sums on “anti-poverty” programs that never reduce poverty even a little; or indoctrinating young children and university students with idiotic and failed Marxist dogma.

All of these themes (and many others that I have covered) are individually important, even very important, measured by potential harm to the well-being of the people. But, however bad government actions in each of these areas may have been, there are even worse things that the government and/or the President can do.

So let’s step back from the news of the day, and consider in the abstract what could be the very worst possible things that the federal government or the President might do. Granted, that category could include things highly unlikely to be tried, like commandeering the military to execute a coup installing the President as dictator, or having the military drop nuclear bombs on U.S. cities. So I’ll impose as a condition to today’s challenge that we limit ourselves to things that a President or bureaucracy might actually try. Still, to qualify for the category of “very worst,” the potential actions must go beyond things that merely immiserate and impoverish the people — which after all could be reversed by a subsequent Congress and President — and reach the level of undermining the entire basis for our republic.

With the stated limitations, here are the three worst possible things that I can think of that the government or President might try:

The forces of law enforcement and national security could be enlisted into the political process on behalf of one political party, to undermine the ability of any opposition ever to win an election.

The President and/or his family could take massive payments from major geopolitical adversary powers, thus essentially making the President a paid agent of the nation’s adversaries.

The President or members of the government could engage in explicit efforts to foment racial strife based on false accusations.

I solicit any ideas that readers may have for things that may be even worse than the ones I have enumerated. But these are the three worst that I can think of.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/18/fbi-dropped-probes-into-claims-clinton-accepted-foreign-bribes/

The FBI had at least four open criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were suddenly dropped in the months before the 2016 presidential election, special counsel John Durham’s recently released report shows.

The bombshell report released by Durham — which concluded that the bureau’s probe into former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” — also shed light on the quashed probes.

The feds had been looking into claims that foreign countries and other individuals were trying to influence the Clintons through donations to their namesake non-profit and Hillary’s presidential campaign.

Three of the FBI’s four investigations that were launched in early 2016 were looking into allegations that the Clinton Foundation has a hub of “criminal activity.”

Those federal probes originated from field offices in Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, DC and New York — all of which opened audits into the charity as Hillary was in the midst of her presidential run.

The Little Rock and New York offices were investigating a claim that an outside commercial industry “likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence,” according to the Durham report.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-john-durham-report-robert-mueller-donald-trump-russia-collusion-bf7023c8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Special counsel John Durham’s report on the Russia collusion fiasco deserves more attention than it is getting, and its critics are dismissing it for one big reason: The 306 pages describe the great failure of original special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mr. Mueller was named special counsel in May 2017, after Democrats and media claimed Donald Trump fired FBI director Jim Comey to stop the bureau’s investigation into the Russia collusion tale. Mr. Mueller hunted for evidence that Mr. Trump was a Russian mole but couldn’t find it. Now the Durham report makes clear that the Mueller team failed to investigate how the collusion probe began as a dirty trick by the Clinton campaign and how the FBI went along for the ride.

The report includes evidence that those engaged in the FBI’s initial Crossfire Hurricane probe and Democratic attorneys used their positions on the Mueller investigating team to cover up the FBI mess. Among Mr. Mueller’s initial hires were FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI analyst Brian Auten and FBI lawyer Lisa Page—all at the epicenter of the Crossfire fiasco.

Of Mr. Mueller’s 18 attorneys, several worked in the Obama Justice Department during the Crossfire probe, including Andrew Weissmann—a highly partisan Democrat who attended Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election night party. They had a strong incentive to hide the truth.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-fbi-trump-durham-report?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

For the last seven years, conventional wisdom has told us a singular story about the FBI and Hillary Clinton. That story had a clear headline: the FBI was out to get her. 

Let’s go back to 2016, when the FBI was investigating both major presidential candidates in the run-up to the election. 

At the time, the bureau was looking into Donald Trump’s campaign’s ties to Russia as well as Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

In July of 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that no charges would be brought against the Democratic nominee. Then, eleven days before the election, he said that in light of new information having surfaced, the Clinton investigation had been reopened. Finally, on November 6, two days before Election Day, Comey announced that the matter was closed—again.

To this day, Democrats remain convinced that Comey’s second to last announcement—which, we can all agree, was ham-handed—cast a pall over the campaign, tipping the scales in favor of the Republican nominee.

It’s a neat story. But it’s only half of it.

That’s the big reveal in Special Counsel John Durham’s 306-page Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns, which came out late last week. 

If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect Clinton’s campaign while launching a full investigation into Trump’s campaign on the thinnest of pretexts. In other words, the FBI was not really the Clinton campaign’s persecutor, as so many insisted over the past few years, as much as its protector.

“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the Durham report observes, referring to the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, “reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.” 

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/reflections-on-the-revolution-in?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Reflections on the revolution in the west

In the 1990s, I managed to secure for myself entry to an inner circle of hell by arguing that, in general, children were best served by being brought up by their own father and mother. Of course, I said, some marriages would always fail; and of course, many lone parents did a heroic job in bringing up their children. But surely it was best to avoid such disadvantage wherever possible. This was denounced as heartless, cruel, anti-feminist and, of course, right-wing.  

Somewhat to my surprise, therefore, I was approached by a TV producer to make a film about my views on the destruction of the nuclear family. Since I was already cancelled in the best circles, I asked the producer why he wanted to publicise my views. “You’re so reactionary, you’re now in the very vanguard of progress”, he replied.

Given what I went on to say in subsequent years about the destruction of education, multiculturalism, the demonisation of men, Islamisation and anthropogenic global warming theory, I obviously became so progressive I managed to advance to the very end of time itself and met myself coming back.

The onslaught on the traditional family was an early example of a world turned upside down, in which certain kinds of disadvantage became a human right; victim status weaponised bullying and bigotry against those who were denied this status; and untold numbers of children were sacrificed on the altars of mass fatherlessness, the wilful promotion of ignorance in the classroom and the infantilisation of adults.

This all-out onslaught on the nation and its core social and moral norms has created our age of unreason. Language has been hijacked and evacuated of meaning.  Anti-racism means people are now judged, and damned, not for the content of their character but for the white colour of their skin. People with male genitalia are said to be women and are indeed hailed as female role models. Dissent means vilification, character assassination and intimidation.