RUTHFULLY YOURS

Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russian collusion back in May. A new year is upon us.

The warm May temperatures have been replaced by a deep freeze and snow is falling in Tallahassee. But after blowing through around $7 million and putting on an exciting show of surprise raids, gag orders, leaks and the varying pleas and indictments; Mueller still hasn’t produced a single collusion indictment.

It’s much easier to pick Manafort’s lock than to prove Hillary Clinton’s conspiracy theory.

What Mueller did was harass a bunch of already shady characters into pleading guilty on minor charges, some, like lying to the FBI, created by his own investigation. All he had to do was get his team of Obama and Clinton supporters in front of Obama and Clinton judges who would rubber stamp anything.

And the grand jury allegedly looked like a “Bernie Sanders” or “Black Lives Matter” rally with some participants wearing left-wing shirts. There wasn’t a single white male among the 20 jurors. That’s a convenient way to screen out likely Trump supporters and bring in likely Trump opponents.

Blatantly rigging it to a low bar is an admission by Mueller and his team that their case is too weak for prime time. Even now Manafort is suing the DOJ. His lawsuit may go nowhere, but the odds are good that Mueller’s tactics and evidence won’t stand up to serious scrutiny. That’s what happened with key Mueller team member Andrew Weissmann’s assault on Arthur Andersen. It’s also been happening to Preet Bharara’s more recent takedowns of top New York political figures. This is how political prosecutors score fast headlines and fame. It’s not how they win enduring victories in a court of law.

And so Mueller is talking about indicting Manafort again. It’s been done already. And even the media can only pay so much attention when like an aging rocker, Mueller lip syncs to his greatest hits.

Despite all the media cheerleading, Mueller can’t get too close to Trump without his rigged investigation being subjected to serious scrutiny that it can’t withstand. Getting lefty judges and a lefty grand jury to give you whatever you want may fly with the vulnerable and isolated targets he’s been going after.

Governor Andrew Cuomo began his 2018 State of the State address 19 years to the day—and hour—that Kendra Webdale was pushed to her death in front of a subway train by Andrew Goldstein, a man with untreated serious mental illness. Before Cuomo finished his speech, something similar had happened again: mentally ill Andrew Cordero pushed Jacinto Suarez onto the subway tracks in Brooklyn. Suarez, too, died. Kendra’s death led to the adoption of Kendra’s Law, which empowers judges to mandate treatment for the mentally ill who are a danger to themselves or to the community. The death of Jacinto Suarez should lead to further reforms.

While Cuomo didn’t mention Webdale or Kendra’s Law, he did talk about mental illness and the homeless. “Homelessness is on the rise in our cities and worse than ever before,” the governor said. “It pains me personally to acknowledge this reality.” As well it should: Cuomo’s unapologetic embrace of the long-standing bipartisan policy of closing state psychiatric hospitals is increasing both homelessness and incarceration.

The governor recounted his own history on the issue, recalling that he headed Mayor Dinkins’s homeless commission in 1992. I arranged for parents of the seriously mentally ill to testify before that commission. The parents wanted New York to adopt policies that would allow them to get care for their seriously mentally ill children before they became a danger to themselves or others. Cuomo rejected their pleas, siding with the mental health establishment, which has never been willing to take responsibility for the most seriously ill. As Cuomo wrote in the commission’s report, “The Commission considered and rejected a lowering of the standard for involuntary institutionalization as . . . inappropriate and unnecessary.” He noted that sick people could be sent to state hospitals “for months” to be stabilized. But during his tenure as governor, he has closed state psychiatric hospitals, effectively taking that option off the table.

The governor spoke eloquently about the plight of people incapable of taking care of themselves. “While we aggressively protect an individual’s civil liberties, we believe in helping people in need.” Leaving the sick to “fend for themselves is not progressive, charitable or ethical or legal.” Cuomo emphasized the need for more outreach, proclaiming that “some jurisdictions say case law prevents them from helping mentally ill street homeless. If that is their excuse, they should tell us what law stops them from helping sick homeless people and we will change the law this session.” But the governor is being disingenuous: the changes needed are the same ones that Democrats have refused to support in the past, and that he blocked when he headed the mayor’s homeless commission. These proposals have been made multiple times in recent years by State Senator Catharine Young, and more recently were included in the campaign platform of Assembly Member Nicole Malliotakis when she ran for mayor of New York City.

The United States sits on more than a decade’s worth of oil and natural gas offshore. In another reversal of President Obama’s policies, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke proposed Thursday to open up more than 90% of America’s Outer Continental Shelf for potential energy development.

The Interior Department’s plan would expand the areas under consideration for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It would also open up the Pacific Coast from Washington to California, the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and nearly all of the waters surrounding Alaska. The proposal will go through two more rounds of public comment, and no doubt some revisions, but when finalized the expanded lease sales could begin as early as 2019.

The proposal would enhance U.S. energy security while raising billions in federal revenue. In the past decade, thanks to the fracking revolution, the U.S. has surpassed Saudi Arabia in oil production and Russia in natural gas. America and its allies are now far less dependent on energy from international disruptors and despots.

The Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, law enforcement officials and a witness tells The Hill.
FBI agents from Little Rock, Ark., where the Foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation and have interviewed at least one witness in the last month, and law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in coming weeks.
The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.
The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the Foundation complied with applicable tax laws, the officials said.
One witness recently interviewed by the FBI described the session to The Hill as “extremely professional and unquestionably thorough” and focused on questions about whether donors to Clinton charitable efforts received any favorable treatment from the Obama administration on a policy decision previously highlighted in media reports.

President Trump is demanding former top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin be imprisoned for violating national security protocols and that an investigation be opened into former FBI Director James Comey.

At 7:48 a.m. Tuesday President Trump tweeted:

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid[e], Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailor[’]s pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dep[ar]t[ment] must finally act? Also on Comey & others[.]

With the connivance of the Obama administration, Abedin and Clinton also purloined call logs, scheduling documents, and files described as “Muslim Engagement” from the Department of State when they left their jobs there. They labeled the government-owned documents “private.” Clinton also took with her a physical file of what has been described as “the log of the Secretary’s gifts with pictures of gifts,” which may contain proof of bribes provided to Clinton.

Although it is unusual for a president to seek prosecution of his defeated enemies, the Clinton crime family is so corrupt and so sinister that failing to act against these reprobates is to commit a grave injustice. The brazen criminality of Hillary Clinton and those around her in the previous election cycle is utterly unprecedented in modern American politics, far surpassing the relatively minor-league shenanigans of President Richard Nixon in seriousness. To ignore Clinton’s unlawful activities would be to discard the rule of law and affirm that powerful elites are not held to the same standards as ordinary Americans.

Clinton’s campaign aggressively sought out new frontiers in unethical conduct, funding the Russian dossier compiled by Fusion GPS, a tainted political opposition research paper that Comey’s FBI apparently relied on during its investigation. In the discredited dossier based in part on Kremlin-provided information, it was claimed Trump hired Russian prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed.

The dossier was just one of many outrageous dirty tricks by Clinton’s campaign. Clinton used the Democratic National Committee to snuff out Bernie Sanders’ bid for her party’s nomination, and personally authorized the illicit efforts of socialist felon Bob Creamer and organizer Scott Foval who fomented violence at Trump campaign rallies, as James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group revealed in undercover videos.

Trump’s comments came after the Department of State released classified emails located on the laptop computer of Abedin’s now-imprisoned sex offender husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). The document dump came last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by good government group Judicial Watch.

The FBI’s announcement that it was probing the emails gave Trump an extra line of attack against Clinton in the final days of the 2016 election campaign. For her part, Clinton herself can’t stop whining about what the FBI did and blaming the agency that exposed her wrongdoings for her humiliating electoral defeat.

Unprecedented social and political conflict was laid bare in 2017, the likes of which have seldom been seen before. Our American social fabric is in tatters. We are looking less enlightened and more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Progressives on both seaboards are in a battle for political supremacy over old-school thinkers. Boundaries are analogous to a resurrection of the Mason-Dixon line, except it’s now the East and West Coasts versus the rest of America. Comparing more recent history, we look even less unified than we did in the 1960s – which says something painful about our current political climate. What’s it all about?

It’s about cognitive dissonance and the hatred of one prominent man: our courageous president, Donald Trump. Because of a startling election victory and the president’s penchant for keeping promises, hideous lies, innuendo, and insults fly from liberal and conservative mouths alike. Mainly powered by vitriolic progressive henchmen, this election was largely misunderstood by the over-privileged and their cronies. Zero tolerance for opposing opinions has been widespread. Meanwhile, the world laughs at the comedic chasing down of an imaginary Russian menace.

As parents, we have sacrificed to put our young people through college and graduate school only to have them emerge with damaged attitudes and socialist beliefs. Some poorly advised students unwisely shouldered huge college loans. When they failed to make good on their promissory notes in a fashion commensurate with their earning power, they believed that society should rescue them from their irresponsible choices. Bernie lost the primary, their socialist ideals crumbled, and they turned to his opponent for consolation.

In the previous century, American citizens would have graciously accepted the election results and moved on with their lives. Instead of raucous protest, they went back to raising their children and quietly making positive changes within their communities. Generally, only a few kooks dove off the deep end to lead marches against the establishment. In bygone days, none acted out like the maniacal banshees currently screaming at the heavens over their lost election. This achieves nothing, but it demonstrates how foolishly self-involved they are in their attempts to derail this president.

A new spin-off from the #MeToo Movement, which brought awareness to sexual harassment allegations in the workplace, reveals once again how feminism today isn’t pro-woman or pro-justice; it’s anti-man at the core and seeks power, not equality under the law.

The “Time’s Up” campaign was created by Hollywood actresses who want to expand their fight against “systemic sexual harassment” in the entertainment industry to “blue-collar workplaces nationwide.”

Thousands of actresses and industry insiders have been meeting since the fall to promote solidarity among women and bring about change in the workforce through the following initiatives, as reported in The New York Times:

— A legal defense fund, backed by $13 million in donations, to help less privileged women — like janitors, nurses and workers at farms, factories, restaurants and hotels — protect themselves from sexual misconduct and the fallout from reporting it.

— Legislation to penalize companies that tolerate persistent harassment, and to discourage the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence victims.

— A drive to reach gender parity at studios and talent agencies that has already begun making headway.

— And a request that women walking the red carpet at the Golden Globes speak out and raise awareness by wearing black.

“Now, unlike ever before, our access to the media and to important decision makers has the potential of leading to real accountability and consequences,” the Time’s Up campaign states. “We want all survivors of sexual harassment, everywhere, to be heard, to be believed, and to know that accountability is possible.”

To every woman employed in agriculture who has had to fend off unwanted sexual advances from her boss, every housekeeper who has tried to escape an assaultive guest, every janitor trapped nightly in a building with a predatory supervisor, every waitress grabbed by a customer and expected to take it with a smile, every garment and factory worker forced to trade sexual acts for more shifts, every domestic worker or home health aide forcibly touched by a client, every immigrant woman silenced by the threat of her undocumented status being reported in retaliation for speaking up and to women in every industry who are subjected to indignities and offensive behavior that they are expected to tolerate in order to make a living: We stand with you. We support you.

Acceptance has morphed into transphilia: the culture is pushing it as cool or trendy.
A recent study of adolescents in the state of California by researchers at UCLA found that an eyebrow-raising percentage now identify as “nongender conforming.”

“We found that 27 percent of youths age 12 to 17 in California, or about 796,000, are GNC,” the study stated.

The study grouped the kids into three definitions: “gender conforming,” “androgynous,” or “highly nongender conforming.” They found that 20.8 percent were categorized as “androgynous,” and an additional 6.2 percent as “highly nongender conforming.”

This is a huge number that does not align with any prior studies, such as the 4.1 percent of the population of the country that Gallup found identify as LGBT — and only a fraction of that 4.1 percent were “T.”

How could the UCLA researchers possibly come up with such a result? Could one state have such a disproportionate percentage of the nongender conforming population? Further, could a massive percentage of that population happen to be kids aged 12-17?

Sorry, I’m not buying that. So what gives? CONTINUE AT SITE

The Trump administration’s recently unveiled National Security Strategy is an excellent and overdue statement of intent. But unless it is ruthlessly prioritized, political and budgetary realities will make it little more than a wish list. And in regard to nuclear weapons, it hardly departs from the insufficient Obama -era policy of replacing old equipment rather than modifying each element of the nuclear triad to meet new challenges.

National survival depends on many factors: the economy, civil peace, constitutional fidelity, education, research, and military strength across the board. Each has a different timeline and resiliency. Nuclear forces, on the other hand, may have a catastrophically short timeline combined with by far the greatest immediate effect.

Alone of all crucial elements, the failure of America’s nuclear deterrent is capable of bringing instant destruction or unavoidable subjugation, as the deterrent’s unarrested decline will lead to either the opportunity for an enemy first strike or the surrender of the U.S. on every foreign front and eventually at home.

Believers in total nuclear abolition fail to recognize that if they are successful, covert possession of just a score of warheads could mean world mastery. And though they, like everyone else, are routinely deterred (from telling off the boss or driving against the flow of traffic), they fail to extend their understanding to nuclear deterrence. They seem as well not to grasp that whereas numerical reduction from tens of thousands of warheads would reduce the chances of accident, below a certain point it would tempt an aggressor by elevating the potential of a successful first strike. Nor do they allow that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—which have through their conduct of war and in suppressing their populations callously sacrificed more than 100 million of their own people—subscribe to permissive nuclear doctrines and thresholds radically different from our own.

The Obama administration understood nuclear rejuvenation to mean merely updating old systems rather than changing the architecture of the deterrent to match Russia’s and China’s programs, as well as advances in technology. Given that short of abject surrender the sole means of preventing nuclear war is maintaining the potential to inflict unacceptable damage upon an enemy and/or shield one’s country from such damage, what are our resources, and against what are they arrayed?

The “nuclear triad” commonly referred to is rather a pentad, its land, air, and sea legs joined by missile defense and the survivability of national infrastructure. America’s land leg comprises static, silo-based missiles, which (other than in the potentially catastrophic launch-on-warning posture) are vulnerable not only to nuclear strike, but, with soon-to-come millimeter accuracy, even to conventional warheads. Russia, China, and North Korea have road-mobile missiles (and Russia, additional rail-based ones), making their land legs more survivable and in the case of tunnel systems—of which we have none and China has 3,000 miles—unaddressable and uncountable.

The U.S. air leg consists of ancient bombers and outdated standoff cruise missiles, both vulnerable to Russian and Chinese air defense, along with only 20 penetrating bombers, the B-2. To boot, the planes are concentrated on only a handful of insufficiently hardened bases.

Our sea-based nuclear force, the least-vulnerable leg, for many years included 41 ballistic-missile submarines, SSBNs. These dwindled to 18, then 14, and, with the new Columbia class set to enter service beginning only in 2031, a planned 12. A maximum of six at sea at any one time will face 100 Russian and Chinese hunter-killer subs. At the same time, the oceans are surrendering their opacity to space surveillance and Russian nonacoustic tracking. Even a deeply running sub disturbs the chemical and sea-life balance in ways that via upwelling leave a track upon the surface.

Russia is moving to 13 SSBNs with high-capacity missiles that carry many maneuverable warheads; China, with 4 SSBNs, is only beginning to build. A possible new dimension is Russia’s announced, but as yet unseen, autonomous stealth undersea nuclear vehicle, capable of targeting the high percentage of U.S. population, industry, and infrastructure on the coasts. We have no such weapon and Russia presents no similar vulnerability.

American ballistic-missile defense is severely underdeveloped due to ideological opposition and the misunderstanding of its purpose, which is to protect population and infrastructure as much as possible but, because many warheads will get through, primarily to shield retaliatory capacity so as to make a successful enemy first strike impossible—thus increasing stability rather than decreasing it, as its critics wrongly believe. Starved of money and innovation, missile defense has been confined to midcourse interception, when boost-phase and terminal intercept are also needed. Merely intending this without sufficient funding is useless. As for national resilience, the U.S. long ago gave up any form of civil defense, while Russia and China have not. This reinforces their ideas of nuclear utility, weakens our deterrence, and makes the nuclear calculus that much more unstable. CONTINUE AT SITE