RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/bombgate-political-theatre/

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review Online a couple of days ago, was certainly correct that it would have been outrageous and irresponsible to have suggested, at that early juncture of this still-unfolding episode, that the pipe ‘bombs’ were hoaxes devised by leftist activists to make it appear that nebulous right wing activists are targeting famous critics of Donald Trump, from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, all the way down the food chain to Senator ‘Spartacus’ Booker and Mad Maxine Waters.

But the fact that McCarthy’s column is titled ‘Why No One Trusts the Media’ tells you that his prudent restraint is redolent of that device rhetoricians denominate apophasis or praeteritio. ‘After all,’ quoth McCarthy, ‘there is no evidence that the atrocious but thankfully unsuccessful targeting . . . was carried out by political leftists. There is no proof that any Democrat was hoping to cast suspicion on Republican supporters, to suggest to voters, less than two weeks before the midterms, that Trump and GOP rhetoric incites violence. To intimate, in the absence of any proof, that left-wing agitators may be responsible would be a condemnable smear.’ And it is surely premature, not to say unjustified, to say that Mark Antony pimped his wife, had unnatural relations with Octavian, and is guilty of bribery, extortion, and desecration.

Here’s what we know as of Friday morning, October 26 2018, at about 10:30. A dozen, apparently make-believe bombs, none of which has detonated, and at least some of which could not be detonated, have been sent by nobody knows whom to an A and B list of prominent Trump haters. This has precipitated round-the-clock, flood-the-zone coverage. ‘Hundreds’ of journalists have signed a letter condemning President Trump’s ‘attacks on the press.’ CNN even ran a chyron referring to recipients of the fantasy bombs as ‘Trump’s targets.’ And a man in Florida called Cesar Sayoc has just been arrested in connection with the envelopes.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271751/chelsea-clinton-saving-planet-shorter-showers-daniel-greenfield

Don’t you care about the planet?

While you wallow lasciviously in your shower for a whole 5 minutes or 600 seconds, the noble heroes of the Left are sacrificing their shower time to save the planet.

Here’s a heartbreaking interview with Chelsea Clinton, possible presidential candidate in 2024.

Q. What changes have you made in the past five years in your family life to be environmentally conscious?

A. I’ve always recycled and used smart light bulbs and tried to take short showers. The things that seem small are the things that if we all did would make a profound impact.

And the really small things, like taking smaller private jets.

Chelsea Clinton opted to travel to a “clean energy” roundtable in this week in a private jet to campaign on behalf of her mother Hillary Clinton.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271753/non-functioning-bombs-and-double-standards-matthew-vadum

Political terrorism is almost exclusively the province of the Left in America, so naturally, conservatives find the timing of the delivery of non-functioning, vaguely scary-looking replicas of letter bombs this week to opponents of President Trump suspicious to say the least.

Remember that the Democratic National Committee has officially endorsed the violent Black Lives Matter movement and that more than a few Democrats support the Antifa terrorist movement. Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 running-mate, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), whose son Woody is an Antifa terrorist, said recently that Democrats need to “fight in the streets” against Republicans.

Intended recipients of the packages include former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Trump critic and actor Robert DeNiro, and leftist billionaire George Soros, CBS News reports.

Some of those targeted are the worst purveyors of violent rhetoric targeting Republicans.

Hillary Clinton embraced violence against Republicans when she said Oct. 9, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate that’s when civility can start again.”

So did Maxine Waters when she said June 23, “And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore anywhere”

Eric Holder said Oct. 10 that Democrats need to get physical with Republicans. “Michelle [Obama] always says ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them,” he said to a cheering crowd at a political rally.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/413019-president-trumps-war-on-federal-wa

Recently, President Donald Trump declared war on federal waste. The president pledged to cut spending and asked his agency heads to cut five percent of their budgets. It’s a great first step and an achievable goal.

Under the previous two administrations, the federal debt has tripled. The last Bush administration began with a $5.7 billion national debt and ended with $10.7 trillion. By the end of the Obama Administration, the debt had reached $19.5 trillion. Today, our national debt exceeds $21.5 trillion.

Economists differ on how much of a threat the debt poses to our economy. We share the view of President Obama’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen who said the debt is a our greatest national security threat. However, everyone can agree that misallocating tax dollars for activities that produce no benefit keeps tax rates artificially high and deprives investors and innovators of scarce capital.

Our recent investigations and oversight reports show that the president has a target-rich environment. Here is a small sample of our findings:

The federal government doled out more than $600 billion in grants last year; many produced little value for taxpayers. A $1.4 million grant funded sex-education for California prostitutes, another one studied “where it hurts the most to be stung by a bee.” And a $1 million grant sought to prepare religions for the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Lastly, NASA spent $2.5 million to produce “Space Racers,” an animated children’s cartoon. The American taxpayer paid for a $9.2 million grant to the airport on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Even America’s most elite universities and successful corporations received plenty of taxpayer subsidies. In a six-year period, the eight schools of the Ivy League received $22 billion in federal grants — despite having $120 billion amassed in their endowments. Over the last three years, Fortune 100 companies received $3.2 billion in grants. Boeing can’t argue it needed the $774 million in federal grants while reporting nearly $100 billion in annual revenue.

https://www.steynonline.com/8943/bombs-a-weighed

Me yesterday:

I shall hold off further comment until more facts are known.

No such circumspection stayed Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney, who reacted instantly to the “suspicious packages” mailed to the Clintons, Obama, George Soros, CNN and others, and weighed in with boundless confidence:

Hate acts follow hate speech. It is past time for us to turn down and tune out the rabid rhetoric.

This is a nitwit statement even by Mitt’s recent standards, and doubtless a preview of the role he intends to play in the Senate. It is also an object lesson in the perils of Tweet-speed insight. “Moderate” “reasonable” “centrists”, like all other politicians, should take a deep breath and be mindful of the old adage: Don’t just say something, stand there.

“Hate speech” is not a notion a supposedly “severe conservative” (as Mitt once styled himself) would sign on to. “Hate speech” is free speech – because the concept of free speech exists for the speech you hate. In the modern world, “hate speech” is the enforcement arm of identity politics: Once an approved victim group is designated – Muslims, transgenders – “hate speech” is a pseudo-legal concept for shutting people up: Unpersuaded by the benefits of mass Muslim immigration? Concerned that seven-year-olds should not be hustled into “transitioning”? Hate speech, hate speech, hate speech…

Until you reach the stage that most of the western world is at – where polite society has ruled anything worth talking about out of bounds. At which point the masses turn to impolite society – Trump, Brexiteers, Salvini, Orbán…

Is it true that “hate acts follow hate speech”? To lazy types like, alas, “severely conservative” Republican Senate candidates, the logic is self-evident. As I wrote almost a decade ago:

Ever since this magazine attracted the attention of Canada’s “human rights” regime, defenders of the system have clung to a familiar argument. In a letter to Maclean’s, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., Canada’s chief censor, put it this way:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271720/anniversary-shameful-us-surrender%E2%80%94-cuban-missile-humberto-fontova

Those who think “Fake News” started with Trump’s term and the media’s “slobbering love affair” with a U.S. president started during Obama’s should have seen John F. Kennedy’s term.

Imagine Obama’s term with no Fox News, internet or talk radio. That’s about what JFK enjoyed. And tragically, the fairy tales Kennedy’s court scribes (with their media cohorts of the time) concocted about JFK’s Pattonesque handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis prevail in media/academic circles even today.

In fact, that Khrushchev swept the floor with cowed Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainstream conservative conclusion throughout much of the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, for instance, represented opposite poles of the Republican establishment of their time.

“We locked Castro’s communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal,” growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”

“Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” complained Richard Nixon. “Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard.”

Generals Curtis Le May and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment.

“The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!” bellowed Air Force chief Curtis Lemay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/papadopoulos-told-fbi-informant-in-2016-there-was-no-russian-collusion-in-trump-campaign/

For months, Republicans have been claiming that classified documents revealed exculpatory evidence that should have been included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Carter Page — and now The Hill’s John Solomon has the scoop.

In mid-September of 2016, weeks after the Russia counterintelligence probe was launched, then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told an FBI informant there was no collusion going on between the campaign and Russia that he knew of, and that such activity would be “treasonous.”

Papadopoulos told Solomon that he made the comments to London-based professor and FBI informant Stefan Halper.

“He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else,” Papadopoulos said. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, it’s great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?’”

Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails that summer. “I think I told him something along the lines of, ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,’” Papadopoulos recalled.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271728/senator-hirono-trumps-opposition-caravan-anti-daniel-greenfield

I may be misinterpreting her.

But when you spew an incoherent word salad of random talking points, that’s inevitable.

There are a lot of crazy House members. But there’s usually less competition for craziest senator. These days it’s a cage match between Senator Cory Booker, who isn’t really crazy, just a bad actor, and Senator Mazie Hirono, who seems to only have a casual relationship with her brain.

You can speculate whether she means that Trump is anti-Semitic because opposing an illegal alien caravan of MS-13 gang members is anti-Semitic, or because nationalism is, or because speculating about middle eastern migrants is, or because she doesn’t know what anti-Semitic means.

My money is on the latter.

The Democrats keep posing with Farrakhan, but can’t be bothered to learn what anti-Semitism means.

https://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/official-school-records-support-claims-that-rep-ilhan-omar-d-mn-married-her-brother/

Minnesota state Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-60B) currently leads the race to fill the federal House seat being vacated by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). Immediately after being elected to her current seat in 2016, Omar faced allegations — soon backed by a remarkable amount of evidence — that she had married her own brother in 2009, and was still legally his wife. They officially divorced in December 2017.

The motivation for the marriage remains unclear. However, the totality of the evidence points to possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud.

Rep. Omar has stated that she did marry “British citizen” Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, though the allegation that he is her brother is “absurd and offensive.”

Below, exclusive new evidence — from official archived high school records and corroborating sources — strongly supports the claim that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is indeed her brother.

As this implicates Rep. Omar in multiple state and federal felonies, I have contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota to submit all other information uncovered during our investigation.

———————

According to official student enrollment records archived by St. Paul Public Schools and the state of Minnesota, an “Ahmed N. Elmi” was enrolled as a senior in the Class of 2003 at Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, MN, from September 6, 2002, until June 10, 2003. He graduated and received a diploma.

The enrollment record states that “Ahmed N. Elmi” was born on April 4, 1985.

Both Ilhan Omar’s 2009 marriage documents and her 2017 divorce proceedings state that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was born on April 4, 1985. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-dont-like-trump-just-his-results-1540241748

There’s a school of thought that the economy is only a political issue when it’s bad and that prosperous times allow people the luxury of prioritizing other issues. That’s not the message in the latest poll from The Wall Street Journal and NBC News.

The consensus among professional economists is that this Friday’s third-quarter GDP report from the Commerce Department will show another strong period of growth in the U.S. economy after a blowout performance in the second quarter. Voters don’t seem to be taking it for granted. WSJ/NBC survey respondents call “the economy and jobs” the most important factor in deciding their votes in this year’s elections for the U.S. Congress. Since June, this issue has overtaken health care as the top concern for participants in the poll.

Could this mean that despite all the recent positive economic data, survey respondents actually think the economy is lousy? Not likely, because voters are giving high marks to the party that is currently in charge of the nation’s economic policy. When it comes to dealing with the economy, survey participants say that Republicans “would do a better job” than Democrats by a 15-point margin. This appears to be the largest Republican advantage recorded by this survey, which has been asking the question since at least 1991.

This doesn’t mean that voters particularly like the nation’s chief economic policy maker. In fact 68% of respondents say they don’t like President Trump. But Mr. Trump appears to be setting a modern record in the share of the electorate saying that they don’t like the President personally, but approve of most of his policies. This category of voters currently stands at 20% of the electorate. For most recent Presidents such readings were generally in the low-to-mid single digits, though Bill Clinton’s share did climb into the teens.

The Journal reports that survey results show overall approval of President Trump is increasing, and so is enthusiasm among those in his party:

Hand in hand with Republicans’ increased election interest is a rise in Mr. Trump’s job-approval rating to 47%, the highest mark of his time in office, with 49% disapproving of his performance. That is an improvement from September, when 44% approved and 52% disapproved of his performance.

If a significant number of Americans are giving the President what might be called their grudging approval, you can’t say he’s not working hard to earn it. This is not a reference to his tweeting but to the results of two of his signature initiatives on economic policy.

This column has written at length about the encouraging spike in business investment following the December enactment of his tax cuts. Recently the Trump administration provided a progress report on the other pillar of his pro-growth agenda—reducing federal regulation. This is affectionately known as swamp-draining to those outside the D.C. metropolitan area.

It seems Team Trump is exceeding its own expectations. At one point the administration was aiming to cut about $10 billion in regulatory costs during the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on September 30. Now the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs reports the elimination of $23 billion in “overall regulatory costs across the government” during the fiscal year just ended. CONTINUE AT SITE