RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/michael-sussmann-hillary-clinton-james-baker-fbi-durham/

Michael Sussmann, a senior lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, is currently on trial for lying to the FBI. The allegation is straightforward. As the election approached, Sussmann texted his old friend and fellow attorney, James Baker, requesting a brief, urgent meeting. Baker was the FBI’s top lawyer and Sussmann was a partner at Clinton’s election-law firm. They were friends from their days together at the Department of Justice and continued to know each other socially. According to the indictment, Sussmann told Baker he was coming solely to help the Bureau and not on behalf of any client.

To prove his case, Special Counsel John Durham and his team must show two things:

Sussmann lied when he said he wasn’t representing a client in that meeting; and
Sussmann’s lie had the “potential” to affect the FBI’s investigation. (According to the law, the lie need not actually affect the investigation; it need only have the potential to do so.)

Sussmann’s defense is to toss back the ol’ kitchen sink. “I didn’t lie. You can’t prove I lied. I had no reason to lie. And even if I lied, it really didn’t matter to the FBI.” That defense has two aims: create confusion for the jury and drag in the name of Donald Trump, for jurors in a city that voted almost unanimously for Hillary and undoubtedly loathe the former president. What Sussmann hopes for, in other words, is “jury nullification,” where the jury believes the crime has been proven but disregards the evidence and votes “not guilty.” That’s really Sussmann’s only chance.

What happened in court on Thursday should clinch the case for Durham, if the jury is fair-minded. The prosecution put on its star witness, James Baker. Baker’s obvious reluctance to testify against Sussmann makes his testimony all the more convincing. And that testimony is damning. With Baker on the stand, the prosecution introduced a text message he received from Sussmann, asking for a meeting the next day. The message is catastrophic for Sussmann’s claim he told Baker he had a client. He said, in writing, that he didn’t have one.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-york-city-drops-charges-against-rapper-accused-of-shooting-police-officer/

The New York City Law Department announced Friday that charges against a 16-year-old rapper accused of shooting a police officer have been dropped, saying the teen “cannot be prosecuted.”

Camrin Williams, also known by his stage name “C Blu,” allegedly shot a police officer who responded to reports of an unruly crowd at Lorillard Place near East 187th Street on January 18. The teen would not remove his hands from his pockets and a struggle with police ensued. A gun Williams was holding discharged during the struggle, striking and wounding 27-year-old NYPD officer Kaseem Pennant and hitting the teenager in the groin.

The law department did not say why the charges had been dropped, according to the New York Post.

“Just because the city cannot prosecute doesn’t mean this individual should have been carrying an illegal weapon — a weapon which contributed to both him and an officer being shot,” the Law Department said in a statement obtained by the outlet. “Pursuant to Family Court Law, the case is now sealed and we are unable to say more about the matter.”

Before the alleged shooting, Williams already had a gun possession arrest on his record from 2020 and was placed on probation as a juvenile in the case last year.

Williams made headlines in January when he used an advance on his contract with Interscope Records to post his $250,000 bond, according to the New York Post.

However, shortly after posting bail Williams found himself back in juvenile court. A family court hearing found he had violated probation in the earlier case by allegedly possessing a firearm and shooting Officer Pennant, the report added.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/21/signs-and-portents-elon-musks-growing-political-maturity/

A few weeks ago, Exxon announced that it was banning the display of Pride and BLM flags at its headquarters in Houston. There was a ripple of unhappiness, but nothing was burned down, the media attention was muted, and the world went about its business as before. 

Across the country, school board elections are tossing out woke ideologues and partisans of critical race theory and replacing what amounts to gay pornography in the curriculum with more wholesome fare. The Biden Administration keeps running into roadblocks, most recently a judicial order halting its efforts to rescind Title 42, a Trump-era emergency order that turned away would-be immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. A few days ago, Biden’s absurd Disinformation Governance Board was shuttered and its pathetic director, Nina Jankowicz, sucked back into the memory hole whence she came. 

On Friday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robbie Mook, testified that, what do you know, his former boss knew all about and in fact approved the spurious efforts to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset, contrary to what she and her handlers have said ever since before Hunter Biden took his laptop to be repaired. 

Then there is Elon Musk. I have long been a fan of this Rocket Man, notwithstanding his mantras about “sustainable transport” and other sops from the green agenda. Hitherto, my enthusiasm was for his technological prowess, his hard work, and his amazing products. Now I find myself applauding his political savvy and efforts on behalf of free speech. Princeton University and other one-party bastions of conformity and self-congratulation should ponder Musk’s central observation about free speech: “When it’s someone you don’t like saying something you don’t like, that’s when it actually matters.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/the_metoo_movement_has_claimed_a_brilliant_scientist.html

The #MeToo movement, which thankfully seemed to have peaked in 2018, is still managing to do significant damage by allowing a cadre of malicious women to destroy men’s reputations with ludicrous assertions about alleged sexual harassment or abuse. One case may have long-lasting repercussions for Americans’ health and well-being: Biologist David Sabatini, a brilliant cancer researcher, is unemployable thanks to laughable accusations and a seeming workplace witch hunt,  and now finds himself unemployable.

Here are the facts of the case, all gleaned from Suzy Weiss, who wrote at Bari Weiss’s Common Sense about Sabatini’s travails:

Sabatini was doing sophisticated, highly important cancer research at MIT. He seemed like a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize in science and was receiving huge government grants to keep his research going. Suzy Weiss writes that “his colleagues have described him to me with words like ‘genius,’ ‘one of the best scientists alive,’ and ‘a pillar.’ However, thanks to a truly risible sexual harassment claim, he is unemployable.

In April 2018, when he was 50 and in the process of getting divorced, Sabatini began a relationship with another scientist, Kristin Knouse, who was then 29 years old. They worked in unrelated labs at the Whitehead Institute and he had no supervisory role over her work. Sabatini thought they were friends with benefits because Knouse left him with the impression that she was also having sex with other men.

In August 2018, the Whitehead Institute announced a new policy banning any consensual or sexual relationships between coworkers. Sabatini ignored it because not a lot was happening between him and Knouse. Nevertheless, even after he’d started a relationship with another woman, Knouse still wanted him. In January 2020, she was still trying to keep the relationship going.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/05/20/blm-supporters-got-what-they-paid-for/

More details recently emerged about epic payouts to, and property purchases by, the leaders and family members of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, one of the main organisations formed under the banner of Black Lives Matter to raise awareness about police brutality against black Americans. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, BLMGNF raised $90million, $12million of which has been spent on property. One of the leaders of BLMGNF, Patrisse Cullors, came under fire for purchasing four high-end homes herself, and BLMGNF also paid nearly $1million to a company owned by the father of Cullors’ child, while her brother received $840,000 for ‘security services’, according to tax filings.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Into America podcast, Cullors admitted to making mistakes, describing a steep learning curve that began with surprise at the millions in donations that came pouring in. ‘It was a major shock’, Cullors said. ‘That was a lot of white guilt money. There’s a lot of white folks being like, “We just got to put the money”.’

Here’s the thing: Cullors is right. It was white guilt fuelling these donations. BLM has become the recipient of liberal white indulgences, laundering the supposed sin of whiteness out of woke progressives, dollar by dollar. And it’s this that makes any wrongdoing on the part of BLMGNF a victimless crime.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/on-the-banality-of-inflation?s=r

Just like Jimmy Carter did 45 years ago, Uncle Joe and his merry band of wokesters are learning the hard way that Americans hate inflation.

Even a recession isn’t as politically damaging.

And guess what? We’re right to hate it.

I’ve been writing a technical piece on the causes of inflation and what it means economically (before I covered Big Pharma, I wrote about Wall Street – never thought I’d miss bankers, but at least bankers are honestly greedy).

I’ll come back to that piece. But I’m putting it aside for now to focus on an aspect of rising prices that I’ve never seen properly discussed – how they make people feel. Even when jobs are plentiful, even when wages are rising, even when the economy is generally strong, people have a visceral reaction to price shocks.

Up up and away!

(Note that the chart below understates the real impact of what’s happened in the last year; annual inflation would be closer to 15 percent if we calculated it now as we did in the 1970s.)

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So why? Why do we hate inflation so much?

Because – and I will spare you the details of the reasons why, if you want them you can read the other piece – INFLATION IS AVOIDABLE. Inflation is a tax on the poor and a warning of potential supply shocks and economic imbalances that must be corrected. But most of all it is avoidable with proper government policy.

Almost always. Recessions are not avoidable (and efforts to avoid them too strenuously can lead to inflation), but inflation is. How do I know? In part because we avoided it for a very long time. Which is why I think the current shock is particularly frustrating to anyone over 40.