RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://us20.campaign-archive.com/?u=2cf2a73e6220e59e3c1c4a60c&id=7e453c34e9&e=0c8ccf8e98

The healthcare industry is broken.Both parties want to change the way our nation approaches healthcare… the question is, how?
Here’s the heart of the issue: the industry needs a transparency revolution.

Why is it that you can’t cost compare the price of healthcare services the same way you’d compare any other major financial decision? It’s illogical at best and corrupt at worst. 

Our Honorary Chairman, Dr. Tom Coburn, appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss this exact issue.
He lays out a recommended national policy that could change everything.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/28/jurisprudence-and-the-failed-coup/

The indispensable Victor Davis Hanson recently noted, “Real coups against democracies rarely are pulled off by jack-booted thugs in sunglasses or fanatical mobs storming the presidential palace. More often, they are the insidious work of supercilious bureaucrats, bought intellectuals, toady journalists, and political activists who falsely project that their target might at some future date do precisely what they are currently planning and doing—and that they are noble patriots, risking their lives, careers, and reputations for all of us, and thus must strike first.”

He was discussing what we are now beginning to understand was the attempt to oust Donald Trump begun by officials in the Obama Administration, including certainly former FBI Director James Comey, assistant director Andrew McCabe, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok, former FBI attorney Lisa Page, and quite possibly President Obama himself.

This will, in the long light of history, be regarded as the greatest misuse of governmental power ever to appear in our politics, and yet there has been very little attention paid to how this could occur and why at this particular time in our political development.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/mueller-spokesman-denies-key-claim-in-new-anti-trump-book-by-michael-wolff/

It doesn’t seem so long ago that Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury was promoted so heavily by the media hoping to undermine President Trump. Michael Wolff himself claimed his book would “finally end” the Trump presidency.

What ended up happening instead was that Wolff’s book was revealed to be full of fictions. Wolff would eventually admit that the book was full of lies, but the endless coverage of the book, a media blitz most authors can only dream of getting, contributed to a number of anti-Trump narratives being believed by the left, and the Never Trump right. The book ended up selling nearly five million copies.

While any other author who admitted to making up stories for a non-fiction book might be shamed into never writing a book again, Michael Wolff has written a new book, called Siege: Trump Under Fire, which comes out next week. The Guardian has obtained an advance copy of the book, which makes the explosive claim that “special counsel Robert Mueller drew up a three-count obstruction of justice indictment against Donald Trump before deciding to shelve it.”  Wolff claims that his findings are “based on internal documents given to me by sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/obama-earning-almost-600k-for-speech-in-colombia/

Former President Barack Obama is being paid almost $600,000 to speak at a marketing conference in Bogota, Colombia on Tuesday.

According to a report from El Tiempo, a Colombian news outlet, Obama is earning “2 mil millones de pesos” for a speech and discussion on-stage about leadership strategies at the EXMA Conference in Bogota. When converted from Colombian pesos to U.S. dollars, Obama’s payment for participation in the event is equivalent to $594,000.

According to the Colombian news website Publicmetro.co, conference attendees who want to attend the event with Obama and take a photo with him have to pay 11 million Colombian pesos, which is approximately $3,267.

A report from the Bogota Post indicated that Obama “set the condition” that he would not discuss current U.S. politics during the on-stage conversation.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/28/trump-russias_turning_and_the_knives_are_out_140430.html

Now that the Russia collusion allegations have evaporated, the long knives are out and President Trump’s antagonists are watching their backs. They have moved from accusing him of treason to pushing revisionist narratives that try to shift the blame for the debunked probe onto others.

This effort is expected to accelerate following Trump’s decision Thursday to empower Attorney General William Barr to declassify CIA, Pentagon, and Director of National Intelligence documents as necessary to access “information or intelligence that relates to the attorney general’s review” of the Russia probe.

In other words, he’s gaining the authority needed to investigate the investigators.

CIA sources immediately objected in the New York Times that assets’ lives would be at risk, stunting Langley’s ability to recruit. Perhaps. But the argument is a bit shopworn, raising the question whether intelligence managers are looking to protect their agents and sources, or aiming to protect themselves.

There are a growing number of indicators that the leading players in the 2016 election drama are turning on one another, making a mad dash for the lifeboats to escape being dragged under with the political Titanic that is Christopher Steele and his dossier. These are many of the same people who had been eager to exploit the dossier, that collection of memos paid for by the Clinton campaign and supposedly sourced from Russia. Once treated like the Rosetta stone of collusion, the Steele documents now seem even to Trump antagonists more like the Howard Hughes diaries.

A “former CIA official” has told Fox News that two of Trump’s most high profile accusers – former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Director of the CIA John Brennan – didn’t want anything to do with Steele’s opus. It was former FBI Director James Comey, the source said, who was pushing to use the dossier in the official Intelligence Community Assessment, issued in the final days of the Obama administration. Having failed at that, thanks to Clapper and Brennan’s diligence (or so the story goes), Comey went rogue and confronted President-elect Trump with the salacious highlights produced by Steele.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/28/a_hard_rains_gonna_fall_on_obamas_bad_cops_and_spies_140429.html

The skies are growing dark and increasingly ominous for dirty officials at the top of Obama-era law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Leading the “I’m really worried” list are James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch, and their senior aides, all political appointees. They expected Hillary Clinton to win in 2016 and bury any traces of malfeasance, just as they had buried hers. It didn’t work out that way.

Now they need protection themselves. House Democrats and anonymous leakers are busy providing it. Many are delicately called “current and former senior officials” by the New York Times, Washington Post, and other legacy media. Gee, I wonder who they are?

These defenders of the old guard are sliming Attorney General Bill Barr, who heads the investigation into their actions. They have good reasons, if not clean hands, for their attack. First, they want to keep as much secret as they can. Exposure can only harm them. Their main argument is that any disclosures will damage U.S. national security. Second, they want to paint the disclosures and forthcoming indictments as President Trump’s revenge, the illegitimate use of powerful agencies that should be nonpartisan. That, of course, is precisely what they are accused of doing.

Barr won’t be deterred. He did not return for a second stint as AG to pad his résumé or protect Donald Trump. He returned to clean out the Augean Stables. He needs to muck out the mess left by his predecessors and find the horses that left it.

Barr is determined to do that. He intends to find out how and why the Department of Justice embarked on an all-consuming, two-year project to investigate Trump’s alleged cooperation with Putin’s Russia to win the presidency. The investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no such cooperation (going well beyond saying he simply could not indict). Now, Barr wants to understand the origins of the probe and whether the tools used to launch it were lies or distortions — and were known to be so by DoJ, FBI, and CIA officials. Barr wants to know if U.S. intelligence agencies were used to spy illegally on Americans, or if they outsourced that to friendly foreign services and then recovered the information from them. He wants to know if the investigations really began in July 2016, as the FBI testified, or earlier, and what evidence was used to begin them.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/william-barr-declassification-authority-debate/

The media panic notwithstanding, the buck still stops with the president.

L ast week, President Trump conferred on Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify documents relevant to his inquiry into what we can collectively call “the Russia investigation.” This includes not only “Crossfire Hurricane,” the counterintelligence probe formally opened by the FBI in late July 2016, but all of the relevant investigative threads, including those pursued by other intelligence agencies — such as the CIA’s collaborations with foreign intelligence services, beginning in 2015.

In other words, the public is about to learn a lot more about decision-making during the Obama administration. As night follows day, the Democrat-media complex went apoplectic. Gone are the days when the press always wanted more information because it perceived its role, vouchsafed by the Constitution, to be the public’s eye on government.

Much of the mainstream media is now in an all but openly declared partnership with one of our two major political parties. Consequently, when a Republican administration is in power or being questioned, classified leaks are the order of the day. When a Democratic administration is under the microscope, we get lectures on the wages of compromising intelligence secrets, especially methods and sources.

So, naturally, we are treated to hysterical reports that the attorney general — whose Justice Department cannot enforce the law effectively unless it can entice cooperation from reluctant sources — is going to expose covert operatives gratuitously, ensuring that no courageous spy or foreign intelligence service will ever risk cooperation with the United States again.

It is an absurd narrative.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/27/amazon-is-reportedly-eyeing-office-space-on-manhattans-west-side/

Amazon may have bid farewell to Queens, but it still “hearts” the Big Apple.

After walking away from a deal to build a headquarters on the Queens waterfront in Long Island City, Amazon is back to shopping for office space on Manhattan’s West Side, sources tell The Post.

The tech giant has been in talks with owners of two shiny, new skyscrapers located just one block west of Penn Station: The newly built One Manhattan West and its soon-to-be sister project Two Manhattan West, sources tell The Post.

The online retailer is seeking “at least 100,000 square feet or much more” — just to start, one well-placed source said.

Amazon, which already has 5,000 workers in NYC, had been “seriously” looking at Two Manhattan West prior to choosing Long Island City in November, a second source said. “That interest has returned over the last few weeks,” the source added.

Brookfield, which owns the two Manhattan West towers (and another at 5 Manhattan West where Amazon is already a tenant), denied through a spokesman that it was leasing to the Seattle company. But multiple sources pointed to the company’s strict confidentiality agreements as a potential reason.

“We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” an Amazon spokeswoman said.

At Two Manhattan West, Amazon is eyeing space at the top the tower, sources said. The only issue is the building, to be located on 31st Street and 9th Ave., won’t be ready for tenants until 2022.

One Manhattan West, by contrast, will be ready for tenants to move in this fall, including a 250,000-square-foot space in the middle of the 67-story tower. The 250,000-square-foot space won’t be available long-term, but could satisfy Amazon’s space needs until Two Manhattan is ready, sources said.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/27/comeys-fbi-ignored-sexual-abuse-victims-to-pursue-political-foes/

As the political world anticipates an internal Justice Department review of misconduct by James Comey’s FBI related to the Trump campaign probe, hundreds of American parents await another report: Why Comey’s FBI delayed an investigation into one of the country’s most notorious child sex abusers, former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. The Michigan State University osteopathic physician now is serving a 100-year minimum prison sentence for numerous crimes, including sexual assault of minors, sexual assault, and possession of child pornography.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into how the FBI handled the initial sexual abuse allegations made against Nassar in 2015 and 2016.

“The gymnasts’ complaints languished for at least nine months before an FBI office opened a formal investigation,” the Journal reported. “In their probe of the bureau’s handling of the matter, Justice Department investigators have conducted interviews with several people, including athletes and gymnastics officials. The investigation could lead to disciplinary action and criminal charges.”

Lawmakers also have questions. Senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray with questions related to the agency’s handling of the case in 2015 and 2016. “We have met several gymnasts who expressed concern about FBI delays in responding to their allegations against Nassar,” they wrote in July. “Our staffs have also reached out to the FBI for information related to these requests, but were not provided any information.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/pardons-for-memorial-day/90707/

So much hogwash has been written about the President’s pardon power that it’s hard to know where to start. One place, though, would be the New York Times’ editorial on President Trump’s use of pardons in military cases. It ran last week under a headline suggesting Mr. Trump’s general approach to pardons “may be lawful, but it is in no way normal.” In other words — blam! — before the Times even gets down to business it runs off the rails.

That’s because there is no “normal” way to pardon. If the Framers had wanted to specify norms for using the pardon, they were perfectly capable of doing so. They did that for, say, treason. They laid down so many restrictions in respect of the use of the treason charge that your average prosecutor won’t go near it. When it comes to the pardon, though, the only restrictions are that it can’t be used in cases of impeachment and is allowed only for federal offenses.

Other than that, the president doesn’t have to check with the Justice Department or the Senate. He doesn’t even have to clear his pardons with the New York Times. He could empty the federal prisons, if he wanted, just to save money. He can pardon members of his family (President Clinton pardoned his own brother). He doesn’t have to say why. He can lay conditions (President Kennedy freed Tomoya Kawakita on the condition he leave forever the country he betrayed).