RUTHFULLY YOURS

Those against Gina Haspel being confirmed utter the word “torturer” yet refuse to say “Islamist jihadist.” They have a problem with her involvement in the enhanced interrogation program, but are willing to overlook the fact that she has been acting director ever since Mike Pompeo has been confirmed as secretary of state. If she is so horrible, how could they let her be in that position even for a day? The answer, according to 9-11 families, is that she was the shield that kept Americans safe during the turbulent times right after September 11.

David Beamer lost his son, Todd, after United Flight 93 crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside. He expressed the sentiment of all the other 9-11 families interviewed, supporting Gina Haspel as CIA director. “She has given the prime years of her life in service to protect us. Her performance, intellect, dedication, and skills have been recognized in many assignments.”

His answer to those who criticize the enhanced interrogation program: “Unlike my son, none of the enemy died during interrogation. The plans that they executed caused the death of many free and innocent people, just as they intended, as much collateral damage as possible that was their objective. If some uncomfortable questioning leads to uncovering further attacks and lives saved, so be it.”

Gordon Haberman concurs: “Our beautiful, vibrant, loving Andrea was subjected to torture. She was alive after the building was hit and then brutalized in a desperate attempt to escape the inferno. She was then ripped apart as she died. It haunts me till this day. I only hope she was dead before being dismembered in this manner. In seventeen years, they have recovered and identified eleven pieces of her. Do I worry about how those who perpetrated this act were treated after being caught alive and are still alive? No.”

Democrats have made a political calculation to delay or challenge every Donald Trump nominee, no matter the merits, and one egregious episode is playing out now. The left is smearing a nominee for CIA Director as a queen of torture, but the White House can win this argument if it rebuts the charges head on.

On Wednesday Gina Haspel will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing, and her critics are gearing up for a mugging. Ms. Haspel is largely unknown to the American public: Only recently did the CIA declassify some of the details of her 33-year CIA career. Ms. Haspel started as a case officer in Africa and after assignments around the world in its operations directorate became deputy director in 2017.

Ms. Haspel is the first CIA officer in more than five decades to reach the top position. She won the confidence of former director Mike Pompeo as his deputy, so the agency’s leadership transition would be straightforward.

The problem is that Democrats and Rand Paul of Kentucky are painting her as an unrepentant torturer. The specific rap is that Ms. Haspel in the early 2000s “ran a secret center in Thailand where prisoners were tortured,” as Mr. Paul put it in an op-ed. She is also branded for involvement in destroying tapes of CIA waterboarding.

Americans can disagree about the merits of enhanced interrogation after 9/11, but there’s no debating that the CIA’s interrogation program was legal at the time. The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel produced memos making the legal case. The memos were withdrawn some years later, and Congress has also since changed the law to ban some of the techniques that were used in the immediate wake of 9/11. But Ms. Haspel is not responsible for any legal errors. Her job was to protect the country.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is used to getting kid-glove treatment. That changed Friday in a federal courtroom in Virginia, where Judge T.S. Ellis directed a blunt challenge to the Mueller team prosecuting former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on charges of tax and bank fraud, some of which date back to 2005.

“I don’t see what relation this indictment has with what the special counsel is authorized to investigate. You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Judge Ellis told Michael Dreeben, who was representing Mr. Mueller in court. “What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

Judge Ellis won’t win a diplomacy-in-judging prize, but his sharp words expose a central problem with the evolution of the Mueller probe. Though he was appointed to investigate collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016, Mr. Mueller’s indictments thus far have concerned other matters—lying to the FBI, or in Mr. Manafort’s case actions relating to his business with Ukraine.

Mr. Manafort’s team wants Judge Ellis to throw out the charges on grounds they exceed Mr. Mueller’s original mandate. And the judge’s questions leave the Mueller team in a difficult position. Essentially Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors now have to argue that even if they violated the Justice Department’s rules, it shouldn’t matter.

Mr. Dreeben of Team Mueller responded that the indictment doesn’t exceed the special counsel’s mandate, but the judge wants to see specifically the full and unredacted August 2, 2017 memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying what Mr. Mueller could pursue. The judge put it this way: “What we don’t want in this country, we don’t want anyone with unfettered power. It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special counsel has unlimited powers to do anything he or she wants.”

https://www.openthebooks.com/
The federal government doled out 560,771 grants in fiscal year 2016, totaling $583 billion. On average, each grant exceeded $1 million.
Research shows pork-barrel spending is bipartisan, as the top 50 grant-receiving districts are represented by 27 democrats and 23 republicans. The top 10 congressional districts are evenly split: 5 democrats and 5 republicans.

Consider just a few examples of taxpayer abuse:

*Virtual Reality Platform to Teach Children in China How to Cross the Street – $183,750 from the Department of Health and Human Services funded a virtual reality platform in China to teach safe pedestrian techniqueNew *

*Condom Design with More Lubrication – $200,601 in taxpayer money funded a new condom design that lowers the chance of breakage and increases “satisfaction between partners.”

*Cigar Taste Test – $114,375 funded a study to determine whether cigar flavor affected its addictiveness.

*Sex Ed for Prostitutes in California – $1.5 million funded “safer sex and needle” education for prostitutes in California even though prostitution is illegal in the state.

*Space Racers: An Animated Children’s Cartoon – $2.5 million in NASA funding supported the production of two seasons of a children’s cartoon series about galactic adventures.
These grants flowed to state governments ($505 billion); higher education institutions ($35 billion); for profit organizations including Fortune 100 companies ($2.5 billion); nonprofit organizations ($19.8 billion); and more.

Fortune 100 companies received $3.2 billion in federal grants between fiscal year 2014 and 2016. Boeing can’t argue it needed $774 million in federal grants while reporting nearly $95 billion in 2016 annual revenue.

How can we rein in this insanity? The people must bring the heat, so the politicians see the light on fiscal restraint.

Imagine if a right-wing version of Robert Mueller, backed by a properly pro-Trump legal team, had sent former President Barack Obama the same sort of questions that Mueller allegedly delivered this week to President Trump. The special counsel might dress them up in legalese, innuendo, and with perjury-trap IEDs, thereby casting suspicion with the mere nature of the questions.

If so, the interrogatories might run like the following—

President Obama:

What did you mean when you were heard, by accident, on a hot mic, providing the following assurances to outgoing Russian Prime Minister Medvedev: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space . . . This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility”?

Did you and the Russian government have any private agreements to readjust Russian-American relations during your own 2012 reelection campaign? Were there other such discussions similar to your comments to Prime Minister Medvedev?

If so, do you believe such Russian collusion had any influence on the outcome of the 2012 election?

Did your subsequent reported suspension of, or reduction in, some planned missile defense programs, especially in Eastern Europe, have anything to do with the assurances that you gave to the Russian Prime Minister?

Did the subsequent Russian quietude during your 2012 reelection campaign have anything to do with your assurances of promised changes in U.S. foreign policy?

Did you adjudicate U.S. responses to Russian behavior on the basis of your own campaign re-election concerns?

More specifically, what exactly did you mean when you asked the Russian Prime Minister for “space”? And further what did you intend by suggesting that after your 2012 election you would have more “flexibility” with the Russian government?

Would you please define “flexibility” in this context?

What do you think Prime Minister Medvedev meant when he replied to your request for space, and your promise for flexibility after the election, with: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you . . . I understand . . . I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

Did you hear subsequently from the Russians that Prime Medvedev had delivered the message that you had intended for Vladimir Putin?

An antifa group in Los Angeles celebrated May Day by holding a small march, hanging a Trump effigy, and advocating for “revolutionary violence” against the “capitalist state” in order to “create real political power.”

“We must carry out military actions against the enemies of the people!” a member of the L.A. cell of the Red Guards said in a speech published on their blog.

The Red Guards is a Maoist group that hopes to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The group also identifies as “antifascist” and has cells throughout the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of leftists throughout the world mobilized for the annual “International Workers; Day” on May 1 to advocate for various social justice causes and celebrate communism.

While May Day protests in France, Turkey, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere turned violent, Wednesday’s protests in the United States tended to be relatively calm. As PJ Media reported, 22 police cruisers in Portland were vandalized yesterday. Additionally, three Red Guards members in Charlotte, North Carolina, and four Red Guards members in Kansas City, Missouri, were arrested for protest-related shenanigans. However, most American May Day protesters conducted their far-left activities in a peaceful manner.The same cannot be said for the rhetoric of the protesters. CONTINUE AT SITE

No matter how much sane Democrat strategists desperately want her to go away, Hillary Clinton refuses to leave the stage.

“As the 2020 presidential race ramps up, plenty of top Democrats we talk to would prefer new energy and faces to Clinton nostalgia/redemption,” Axios reports.

That’s an understatement.

Eighteen months after the American people told Hillary exactly where to go, the soulless political operative the great William Safire called a “congenital liar,” is everywhere. Promoting her whiny What Happened memoir and hurting her party by keeping her almost innumerable misdeeds front and center. Likening Republicans to Klansmen and Nazis. Supporting the left-wing Resistance to President Trump. Embarrassing her fellow Democrats with her abusive rhetoric aimed at half of America.

In recent travels overseas, Hillary has been badmouthing President Trump and her fellow Americans. During a March visit to India, Hillary viciously unloaded on her enemies – in particular, the 63 million Americans who voted for President Trump in 2016. Ordinary Americans are pessimistic, racist, sexist hicks, she said.

“If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won,” she said. “I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards.”

“‘You know you didn’t like black people getting rights,” she said. “You don’t like women getting jobs. You don’t like seeing that Indian Americans [are] succeeding more than you.”

Special Counsel and former FBI boss Robert Mueller is on record that President Trump is not a target of his investigation, yet the questions he wants to ask the president have now been leaked to the media. Since the questions are fully predictable and totally without significance, President Trump should not waste his time. On the other hand, the president, and all Americans, might pony up a few questions for Herr Mueller his own self.

Investigations normally pursue a crime. What crime, exactly, are you investigating? Given the time and money you have put in, the people have a right to know.

Special Counsel Mueller, if you operate in search of collusion, what statute, exactly, would you use to prosecute collusion? Please supply the numbers in the U.S. code.

Special Counsel Mueller, you have been called a man of great integrity. Why did you front-load your investigative team with highly partisan supporters of Hillary Clinton? Were independent, non-partisan lawyers not available?

If your target is Russian influence in general, Special Counsel Mueller, why are you not investigating the Clinton Foundation and its dealings with Russia? Have you consulted the book Clinton Cash?

Special Counsel Mueller, what is your understanding of Fanny Ohr? She is the Russia expert, wife of demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who worked for Fusion GPS on the Steele dossier. In your expert opinion, why might Fanny Ohr have acquired a short-wave radio license about that time? Was it to communicate with Russian contacts and avoid detection? Did the FBI monitor any of Ohr’s communications?

During his first 15 months as president, Donald Trump has postured as the bad cop.

He railed about NATO members welching on their promised contributions to the alliance. Trump rhetorically reduced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to “short and fat” and “rocket man.” He ordered the dropping of a huge bomb on the Taliban and twice hit Syrian chemical weapons sites. He talked of trade wars and hitting back at China.

Through all the bombast and follow-ups, Trump’s supposedly more sober and judicious appointees—especially former National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, along with Defense Secretary James Mattis—played good cops against the outnumbered lone-wolf Trump.

This script was well known from the days of Richard Nixon and his national security adviser and then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Nixon often postured as if he were eager to bomb the North Vietnamese to smithereens, to go to Dr. Strangelove levels to stand down the Soviets, or to unleash Israel to do whatever it took to defeat its enemies.

Then Kissinger was sent over to reassure both troubled allies and tense enemies. He pleaded for modest concessions to ward off what might be far worse. He confided to leaders that Nixon was a madman who terrified Kissinger as much as he did the world abroad.

Former first lady Michelle Obama surfaced at a Reach Higher 2018 College Signing Day event at Temple University in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Speaking on behalf of her Better Make Room initiative, Michelle was gussied up in a black jumpsuit and a denim jacket and sounded a bit like rapper Common.

During her keynote speech, the former FLOTUS paused in all the right places and used ghetto-talk and hip-hop hand gestures to keep with the flow of her sing-songy exhortation to 8,000 Philadelphia high school students signing up for college. After sharing sad experiences from her childhood, the former first lady officially announced that despite the discouragement of “haters,” she became America’s “forever first lady.”

In other words, despite Melania Trump being the current “first lady,” much as Michelle’s husband Barack fancies himself “forever president of the United States,” according to Mrs. Obama, she is, and always will be, America’s “forever first lady.” Based on the cheering coming from the audience, the kids agreed.

Here’s what Rapping Michelle had to say: