RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/california-progressive-policies-hurt-working-and-middle-class

The recent California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco exposed the divide between the state’s progressive and working-class voters. Progressives, in their militant certitude, support left-wing policies that often don’t affect them; it’s the working class that suffers the consequences of these proposals. But the Green New Deal, widely embraced by party leaders, pushed too far, triggering a backlash at the convention. The state’s private-sector labor unions, notably the building trades, organized a “Blue Collar Revolution” protest against the Democrats’ climate legislation.

The Democrats are calling for the elimination of fossil fuels by 2030, which would result in California’s immiseration, especially for workers in the state’s energy-production sector, the nation’s fourth-largest. In 2012, the oil and gas industry employed over 400,000 Californians, but these workers—unionized and well-paid—can expect pink slips with the green package. California’s renewable mandates also threaten the building-trades unions, which count 400,000 members statewide—a sizable contingent, though considerably below the industry’s 2007 numbers.

While new wealth drives demand for expensive housing, building restrictions that stymie expansion into suburbia limit the sector’s growth. Not long ago, building-trade union members were considered part of California’s aristocracy, but they can no longer afford median-priced homes in any of the state’s urban counties. Residential sales have dropped statewide, and California’s rate of new housing permits has fallen behind the national average, making construction workers’ economic prospects even dimmer. And the manufacturing sector has stagnated—this despite a 4 percent national expansion, along with 5 percent and 14 percent growth in neighboring Arizona and Nevada.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/06/10/it_started_with_a_lie_bruce_ohrs_linchpin_role_in_russiagate.html

Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr was perfectly positioned to advance the Russia collusion narrative. He had a rare set of relationships — ties to opposition researchers and the FBI — and would use his links to both in 2016 to connect federal law enforcement to those advancing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.

A mystery remains: To some in his narrow circle, Ohr was upfront about the compromising nature of his connections, yet he hid that fact from officials charged with overseeing ethics at the Justice Department. Why, then, did Bruce Ohr admit to the FBI that his wife worked for opposition researchers Fusion GPS while failing to disclose it to the DoJ? The answer speaks volumes not just about how the Trump-Russia affair gained traction but about the way Washington works.

Christopher Steele: “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family,” he wrote to Bruce Ohr (top photo).
Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd.

Ohr has since confirmed to Congress who the conspiracy theorists were: “Chris Steele, as I understand it, was hired by Fusion GPS to do research or gather information. He provided information to me,” Ohr has testified. “Glenn Simpson, who is, as I understand it, a principal of Fusion GPS, on a couple of occasions, he provided information to me. And on one occasion my wife, who was a contractor with Fusion GPS, provided some information to me.”

The average opposition researcher would be hard-pressed to get the attention of an associate deputy attorney general, let alone his cooperation. But the Fusion GPS crowd had the right connections. Steele and Ohr are close enough that Steele could sign an email to his old friend with “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family.” Simpson is an acquaintance of long standing. Nellie is, well, Ohr’s wife.

Fusion GPS didn’t just get Bruce Ohr’s valuable attention, the firm used it to make an ask. Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her own congressional interview what Fusion GPS had in mind when Steele invited her and her husband to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. “Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow up on the information in some way.” He did just that.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/11/another-media-fueled-collusion-narrative-falls-apart/

It’s a familiar pattern in the Trump era: A partisan figure tasked with thwarting the president—say, Special Counsel Robert Mueller or former FBI Director James Comey—is portrayed as a fair-minded arbiter of truth and justice, a vanguard of our highest democratic institutions, bravely taking on the Bad Orange Man. Such figures are cast as heroes impervious to political bias. Every move they make, we are told, is for our own good. We are not to question their unimpeachable integrity, their stellar reputation or their motives.

Such was the case with Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier that served as the raison d’etre for the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In order to legitimize the dossier’s dubious claims, the media characterized Steele as an objective player in the nascent Russian collusion plotline, a former British intelligence officer leveraging his long-time Kremlin connections to root out a corrupt scheme between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal an American election. His work was a profile in courage, we were told; he was a highly-regarded compatriot in America’s fight to make sure our new president was not in fact a covert Russian stooge.

But now that Steele faces questioning by a federal prosecutor assigned to investigate the corrupt origins of the FBI’s probe into the Trump campaign, it’s obvious that the early hype about Steele was just one more example of the media’s complicity in the Russian collusion coup.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/steeles-shoddy-dossier/

Its claims were absurd, its evidence unconvincing — why did government officials ignore so many red flags?

Could former Obama-administration intelligence chiefs run any faster from the Steele dossier? “Pseudo-intelligence,” scoffs former national intelligence director James Clapper in his new memoir — after having arranged for the dossier to be included in a briefing of then-president-elect Trump, ensuring it would be published by the media. John Brennan, the former CIA director, belittles the dossier as uncorroborated reporting never refined into an authentic intelligence-agency product — and hopes we don’t notice his behind-the-scenes stoking of the dossier’s explosive allegations during the 2016 campaign. “Salacious and unverified,” sniffs former FBI director James Comey — after his bureau repeatedly relied on the dossier to obtain surveillance warrants from a federal court.

Even the principal author himself, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, no longer stands behind his work. He touted it plenty ahead of the election he told colleagues he desperately wanted Trump to lose. Later, though, when he was sued for libel in Britain and had to answer questions under oath, the dossier disintegrated into “unverified” bits of “raw intelligence” that he had passed along because they “warranted further investigation” — not because they were, you know, true.

By any objective measure, Steele’s dossier is a shoddy piece of work. Its stories are preposterous — the “pee tape,” the grandiose Trump–Russia espionage conspiracy, the closely coordinating Trump emissaries who turn out not even to know each other, the trips and meetings that never happened, the hub of conspiratorial activity that did not actually exist. Steele gets basic facts wrong. There are undated and misdated reports. The putative Russia expert repeatedly misspells the name of Alfa Bank (“Alpha”), which is among the country’s most important financial institutions. In the antithesis of good spycraft, Steele tried (unsuccessfully) to corroborate his sensational claims by using dodgy information pulled off the Internet, including posts by “random individuals” who were as unknown to Steele as most of Steele’s vaunted sources are unknown to everyone else. No wonder Steele’s former MI6 superior, Sir John Scarlett, scathingly assessed the dossier as falling woefully short of professional intelligence standards: The reports were “visibly” part of a “commercial” venture, unlikely ever to be corroborated, and patently suspect due to questions about who commissioned them and why they were generated.

Yet the Obama administration made the dossier the centerpiece of its Russia investigation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/fbi-tragedy-elites-above-law/

After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas.

One of the media and beltway orthodoxies we constantly hear is that just a few bad apples under James Comey at the FBI explain why so many FBI elites have been fired, resigned, reassigned, demoted, or retired — or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public affairs Mike Kortan, Comey’s special assistant Josh Campbell, executive assistant director James Turgal, assistant director for office of congressional affairs Greg Bower, executive assistant director Michael Steinbach, and executive assistant director John Giacalone. In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved.

We are told, however, that the FBI’s culture and institutions are exempt from the widespread wrongdoing at the top. Such caution is a fine and fitting thing, given the FBI’s more than a century of public service. Nonetheless, many of those caught up in the controversies over the Russian-collusion hoax were not recent career appointees. Rather, many came up through the ranks of the FBI. And that raises the question, for example, of where exactly Peter Strzok (22 years in the FBI) learned that he had a right to interfere in a U.S. election to damage a candidate that he opposed.

And why would an Andrew McCabe (over 21 years in the FBI) think he had the duty to formulate an “insurance policy” to take out a presidential candidate? Or why would he even consider overseeing an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of emails when his wife had been a recent recipient of Clinton-related PAC money? And why would McCabe contemplate leaking confidential FBI information to the press or even dream of setting up some sort of operation to remove a sitting president under the 25th Amendment? And how did someone like the old FBI vet Peter Strozk ever end up at the center of the entire mess — opening up the snooping on the Trump campaign while hiding that fact and while briefing the candidate on Russian interference in the election, interviewing Michael Flynn, preening as a top FBI investigator for Robert Mueller’s dream team, right-hand man of “Andy” McCabe, convincing Comey to change the wording of his writ in the Clinton-email-scandal investigation, softball coddling of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, instrumental in the Papadopoulos investigation con — all the while conducting an affair with fellow FBI investigator and attorney Lisa Page and bragging about his assurance that the supposedly odious Trump would be prevented from being elected. If a group of Trump zealots were to call up the FBI tomorrow and allege that a member of Joe Biden’s family has had unethical ties with the Ukrainian or Chinese government, would that gambit “alarm” the FBI enough to prompt an investigation of Biden and his campaign? How many career-professional Peter Strozks are still at the agency?

http://www.wnd.com/2019/06/british-ann-coulter-to-speak-in-u-s/

Katie Hopkins, the British media personality whose unabashed defense of European civilization makes her a constant target of scorn, is scheduled to speak in central Connecticut on June 19.

A documentary filmmaker, author and columnist, she warned at a forum last year at CPAC that American is in danger of becoming like Western Europe.

“Do not become us. Do not let yourselves fall as the U.K. has fallen,” she said.

There is no cost to attend the event, but registration is required. Due to security concerns, the venue, near Hartford, will be disclosed on June 18 or the morning of June 19 to those who register.

It will begin at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19.

Seats can be reserved by writing to act4ourcountry@cox.net or by phoning (475) 331-2650 [voice only – no texts].

Registrants are asked to provide the full names of each guest planning to attend and a telephone number or email address.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/10/america-experiencing-europes-growing-anti-semitism/

It all started on the campuses, and we did nothing because they were students. We did nothing when they joined the party because it was just the left-wing fringe, and now they’ve taken over.’

Is America experiencing Europe’s growing anti-Semitism? That was the central question at the Hudson Institute last Tuesday afternoon. As Hudson Institute CEO Ken Weinstein noted in opening remarks, it’s a question we never thought we’d have to ask.

Yet, in 2019, it’s an unavoidable, even urgent question. After deadly attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, along with openly anti-Semitic rhetoric in the U.S. Congress and anti-Semitic imagery in The New York Times, the climate has clearly changed.

The world’s oldest hatred, which began a resurgence in Europe at the turn of the century, has begun rearing its ugly heads here. Heads plural because, as the various speakers agreed, contemporary anti-Semitism is a three-headed monster: it exists on the far-left, the far-right, and among Islamists.

Europe has long had a problem with anti-Semitism. For Jews, one of the best things about emigrating to the New World was leaving behind centuries of pogroms, forced conversions, and general mistreatment. In America, Jews have always been a tiny minority. But here, we’re free to practice (or not practice) our religion, and we can be treated like everybody else. So, should we expect things to follow a European-like trajectory?

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/07/ig-report-fisa-abuse-will-unleash-barrs-investigation-spygate/#.XPpim5iGxak.twitter

The closing of the final inspector general investigation into the Russia collusion investigation promises to open the flood gates for previously undisclosed information and indictments.

The forthcoming report from the Office of Inspector General on potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse will finally unleash Attorney General William Barr, and when it does, watch out.

For the last month, conservative pundits have predicted the ever-imminent dropping of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on his investigation into the circumstances surrounding FISA surveillance of former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. Horowitz’s report will likely provide new and damaging details surrounding the FBI’s use of the FISA court to spy on Page. More importantly, the conclusion of Horowitz’s probe frees Barr to conduct a broader and more exacting investigation into all aspects of the Russia collusion hoax.

Barr revealed this during his interview last week with “CBS This Morning’s” Jan Crawford. In his hour-long interview, Barr made several points clear. First, Barr confirmed that Horowitz’s investigation focused on a discrete aspect of the Russia collusion investigation—the electronic surveillance of Page. (Barr had previously stated that he anticipated receiving Horowitz’s conclusions concerning the propriety of the FISA process targeting Page in May or June, which makes the fevered predictions that Barr already had the IG report less impressive.)

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/30/scorched_earth_lives_upturned_muellers_targets_speak_out.html

Veteran journalist Art Moore was editing a story on the Trump-Russia probe last October when he heard a knock at the door. He saw a couple of men in suits on the front porch of his suburban Seattle home and thought they were Jehovah’s Witnesses making the rounds. But they weren’t missionaries there to convert him; they were FBI agents there to interrogate him, sent by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The G-men wanted to talk about WikiLeaks, specifically whether the Trump campaign had any connection to the hacktivist group’s release of thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 election.

The two FBI agents – cyber-crimes experts Jared Brown and Aleks Kobzanets, the latter of whom had a Russian accent – grilled Moore, an editor for the news site WND.com, for about 90 minutes. Among other things, they asked about former WND correspondent Jerome Corsi and whether he had any advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ dumps of Clinton campaign emails. Corsi, who is friendly with the president, had used Trump confidante Roger Stone as a source during the campaign.

“They were clearly on a fishing expedition,” Moore said, recounting the incident to RealClearInvestigations publicly for the first time.

“They seemed desperate to find something to hang onto the narrative” of Russian collusion, he said.

A former Associated Press and Christianity Today reporter who co-authored a best-selling book on homeland security, Moore said he believed the special counsel secretly looked through not just his personal emails and text messages, but also his phone records, even though the agents assured him he was not a target of investigation.

Weeks earlier, two other agents had shown up — also unannounced — at the suburban Virginia home of his boss, WND.com founder and editor Joseph Farah, asking similar questions about WikiLeaks. They focused on staff editorial conference calls Corsi had joined in August and October 2016. They asked who normally edited the stories filed by Corsi. Farah mentioned Moore, and another team of agents was deployed to Gig Harbor, Wash., where Moore works from home.