RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/prosecutors-targeting-trump-gave-fbis-mccabe-a-pass/

Meet Molly Gaston.

“It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case,” assistant special counsel Molly Gaston wrote in a court document filed Thursday, “in which the defendant — the former President of the United States — is charged with three criminal conspiracies intended to undermine the federal government, obstruct the certification of the 2020 presidential election, and disenfranchise voters.”

You may remember Molly Gaston from passes for Russiagate figures such as these.

In early 2021, Mr. Cooney pressed federal law enforcement officials to turn their attention to people in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including his flamboyant political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., according to The Washington Post. He would eventually work on the successful prosecutions of Mr. Stone and another Trump adviser, Stephen K. Bannon.

He joined Mr. Windom’s team in mid-2022, then moved into Mr. Smith’s office late last year.

The assistant U.S. attorney in federal court on Tuesday, when a grand jury handed up a four-count indictment against Mr. Trump, was Molly Gaston, who has worked closely with Mr. Cooney on the Stone and McCabe cases.

See if you can spot the difference between the handling of the Stone, Bannon, and McCabe cases.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4146449-the-new-york-times-seems-puzzled-by-bidens-low-approval-ratings-let-me-explain/

Peter Baker, White House correspondent for the New York Times, appears genuinely puzzled that President Biden’s approval ratings are not higher.  

He writes recently that many things are heading in the right direction: “Inflation at long last is down. So are gas prices and Covid deaths and violent crime and illegal immigration. Unemployment remains near record lows. The economy, meanwhile, is growing, wages are climbing, consumer confidence is rising and the stock market is surging.”

One negative trend, Baker notes, is Biden’s approval ratings which, in the latest New York Times/Siena poll, are at 39 percent, the lowest of any president at this point in his term but Jimmy Carter.  

In all of Baker’s lengthy exploration of the president’s prospects and standing, he mentions not one word about ongoing investigations into likely Biden corruption. No hint of the fastidious hearings being held by the House Oversight Committee under Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.). No reference to Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s past business partner, who blew up any remaining pretense that Joe Biden was not engaged in his son’s nefarious business activities in China, Ukraine and other countries.

Does Baker think that the Democratic Party’s “hear no evil” stonewalling on credible accusations that Joe Biden took a bribe from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky will erase that charge from the nation’s consciousness? Do supporters of the president think it’s perfectly normal that Hunter Biden used dozens of shell companies to funnel money to family members, and also employed 14 encrypted apps and burner phones? That’s not normal.

The New York Times and Washington Post may not be reporting on these activities, but Democrats must know that the truth is seeping out. Thanks to the openness of Twitter, courtesy of Elon Musk, and to pervasive commentary elsewhere, Americans now know that Joe Biden is not the honest, moderate and likable person he pretended to be while running for president.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/davidhasanyi/2023/08/11/bidenomics-has-been-a-disaster-n1718157

After 40 years of “trickle-down economics,” President Joe Biden says, “Bidenomics is just another way of saying restoring the American Dream.”

It’s not often that a politician openly pledges to bring the country back to a time of crippling inflation, high energy prices and stifling interest rates. But this president is doing his best to keep that promise.

Unsurprisingly, “Bidenomics” is failing to gain traction among voters. This has caused consternation in the media. One thing to remember, though, is that “Bidenomics” isn’t really a thing. Unlike, say, “Reaganomics,” which helped bring about the largest expansion of the middle class in world history, the president does not subscribe to any coherent or tangible set of economic theories or principles. The White House defines its economic policy as being “rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up,” which is just platitudinous gibberish.

“Bidenomics” encompass anything and everything that’s convenient for Democrats. And in this moment, it’s convenient for them to take credit for merely letting people go back to work. Biden, who once claimed that the Democrats $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan cost “zero dollars,” isn’t exactly a math whiz. But when he says stuff like “13.4 million jobs have been added to our economy” under his watch, more than “any other president in a full 4-year term,” anyone with even a passing familiarity with the events of the years preceding 2023 knows it’s a lie of omission.

The notion that presidents “create” jobs is itself a fantasy. In this case, though, Biden supported efforts to shutter private businesses during the pandemic, basically closing the entire economy, not only while running for president but after winning office. When Florida, and other states, attempted to ease some restrictions, Biden told them to “get out of the way” so that people could “do the right thing.” The pressure exerted on states to “do the right thing” was immense.

https://acdemocracy.org/blame-george-soros-for-the-pot-stench-ruining-americas-cities-and-addicting-her-citizens/

A major part of billionaire activist and philanthropist George Soros’s legacy will be the decriminalization of drug use in America. 

In the early 1990s, at the height of the crack epidemic, it was Soros who funded “harm reduction” clinics to distribute drug pipes as part of “safe smoking kits.” Similar “safe user kits” were made available to addicts in 2022 via the Biden administration’s crusade to enable illicit drug consumption throughout America.  

In 1994, shortly after Soros established his Open Society Institute in Manhattan, the mega pollical philanthropist decided to test the American criminal justice system and undermine the public’s resolve to maintain long-held attitudes and moral values. The savvy speculator selectively targeted criminal laws that governed the use of illicit drugs. At the time, using illegal substances was deemed unacceptable by 90% of Americans. But the crafty Soros anticipated that Americans’ attitudes would change once marijuana was legalized, and many would be willing to use drugs. He was right.

In three decades, Soros had managed to flip Americans’ views completely. A Pew Research Center survey in November 2022 found that 88% of the U.S. population supported the legalization of marijuana. His stunningly successful propaganda claimed that the enforcement of laws prohibiting the abuse of dangerous drugs caused “more harm than the drugs themselves.” In 1995, he acknowledged that “Some drugs are addictive,’ but falsely proclaimed “others, like marijuana, are not.”

Using illegal substances was once deemed unacceptable by 90% of Americans. But Soros anticipated that Americans’ attitudes would change once marijuana was legalized, and many would be willing to use drugs. He was right.

https://victorhanson.com/the-u-s-is-in-real-decline-really-part-four-lawlessness-and-corruption/

Corruption and lawlessness destroy civilizations. The 20th-century American ability to curb both, at least on the everyday level, explains in part the American success story. But now?

On the street level, shoplifting is being redefined in blue cities and states as something like parity or equity, or some sort of Orwellian justified adjustment in income.

The attempt to enforce the law can be far more dangerous than breaking it. We have completely politicized the legal system on the violent end, using race and ethnicity as exemptions from full enforcement of statutes—exemptions that fall most heavily upon the inner-city people of color and poor.

Will the lawlessness continue, as carjacking, car-racing in intersections, smash-and-grab, and overt theft reach the suburbs? Are we more afraid of enforcing the law and being libeled as illiberal for it, or the lawbreaking itself that we cannot always any more avoid?

In Oakland, suburbanites of every race, along with inner-city blacks, now march on government to insist on refunding the police and enforcing the law? But is such a reawakening too little and too late, in the sense that industry, business, and the middle classes now choose instead to avoid the Oaklands of America, on the theory life is too short and dangerous to be martyred on the altar of ecumenicalism?

As Livy reminds us, the remedy for our vices is now deemed worse than the malady itself. Would an attorney general attempting to clean up the DOJ have to be hated and ostracized to succeed? Where and how would an FBI director even begin?

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/10/who-will-say-no-more-to-the-current-madness/

Britain slept in the 1930s as an inevitable war with Hitler loomed.

A lonely Winston Churchill had only a few courageous partners to oppose the appeasement and incompetence of his conservative colleague Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

One of the most stalwart truth-tellers was a now little remembered politico and public servant Leo Amery, a polymath and conservative member of Parliament.

Yet in two iconic moments of outrage against the Chamberlain government’s temporizing, Amery galvanized Britain and helped end the government’s disastrous policies.

In the hours after Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, there was real doubt whether Chamberlain would honor its treaty and declare war on Germany.

A Labour Party member, surrogate Arthur Greenwood, got up in the House of Commons to announce that he would be speaking for Labour on behalf of his ill party leader Clement Attlee.

Immediately Amery interrupted, shouting out, “Speak for England, Arthur!”

He was met with overwhelming applause and soon public acclamation.

After all, Amery was a political voice in the wilderness warning that neither his own party nor opposition Labour was speaking or acting for the real interest of the British people.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/evil_never_takes_a_holiday.html

Many good people whom I respect tell me that the Marxist left have already won and that there is no longer any point in fighting.  I disagree for many reasons, but I will list three: 

(1) History is simply saturated with pivotal moments that radically altered what otherwise appeared to be the course of destiny.  In fact, I would say that history is really written only when good men and women find their backs against the wall and realize that the only way to preserve their free will is to fight like hell and buck everything that stands against them.  Suffering has a tendency to focus the mind and strengthen resolve.  Character truly reveals itself only when it is tested.  I’ll take a spirited and courageous insurgency that knows why it is fighting over an army of automatons enfeebled by groupthink.

(2) When fighting evil, there are no half-measures.  There is no point when you kick back, light a cigarette, and say to yourself, “Dang, evil sure did get the best of me this time.”  Huh-uh.  You fight evil even if you find yourself hanging with fingertips from a cliff’s edge while the devil is smirking above and crushing your hand.  It doesn’t matter how compromised you feel; all you have to do is tell the devil to stick it where the sun don’t shine.  Your refusal to submit is your greatest weapon.  Others will find inspiration in your indefatigability and push ahead, too.  

(3) Even if you think things are irreversibly bad, apathy guarantees that they will get only worse.  There will be a time in the future when you are being forcefully herded onto a train car headed for who knows where, and you will think to yourself, “If only I had resisted earlier…”  Now ask yourself, “What would I be willing to do today to avoid that train car tomorrow?”  If fighting back is never going to get any easier, then that makes today the best day to begin kicking and screaming against what’s already barreling down the track.  Your future self will thank you.

I also disagree that it is too late to win.  There is a reason the permanent Deep State now resorts to sham trials, censorship, and political persecution: it no longer has the time to pretend to respect free speech or the rule of law.  A century of slow but steady marching toward a Marxist technocratic super-state has given way to overt public harassment, coercion, and easily recognizable propaganda.  The left’s deceptive veil has been lifted, and tyranny now has a face in all those politicians who openly support punishing dissent and constructing a modern-day Ministry of (dis)Information.  

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/08/09/scared-jurors-intimidation-reporter-andy-ngos-case-against-antifa-shows-how-desperately-lost-portland-is-n1717494

Journalist Andy Ngo was chased, beaten, and chased again when he burst into a downtown Portland, Ore., hotel in May 2021 to get away from his black-bloc-clad Antifa attackers. “They’re trying to kill me,” he told the understandably frightened hotel workers. It wasn’t the first time he’d been attacked by the notorious Portland terrorist gang. If Portland’s criminal justice system wouldn’t stop these guys, Ngo figured, he’d sue them for $1 million.

On Tuesday, a Portland jury decided that two key alleged Antifa conspirators whose cases went to trial were not civilly liable for Ngo’s injuries, both physical and otherwise. The trial was marred by intimidation tactics — not just from the attackers but from their attorney who declared to the unidentified jury members, “I am Antifa” and “I will remember each one of your faces.” We’re talking Godfather stuff here.

Before you dismiss this as “Hey, you signed up for this, Portland, you voted in these knuckleheads who gave Antifa a wide berth,” let’s consider what this case means.

I sat in a Multnomah County courtroom in the trial of another journalist who was beaten by Antifa members and who pulled a pistol to fend off a second attack in 2016. Not a shot was fired, the second attack was thwarted, and instead of prosecuting his attackers, woke politicians went after Mike Strickland for showing his gun. He went to jail. His attackers were never pursued. In fact, they were never identified in court or by any of the undercover cops that had infiltrated the protest crowd that day.

The cops didn’t bother to help Strickland, either. While in the courtroom at his trial, I was threatened by Antifa allies. I also later received death threats that the Portland Police dismissed as no big deal.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/anthony-fauci-defended-nih-culture?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Big-Pharma, Chinese and Russian companies, and nefarious characters from around the world all benefited by licensing tech developed at the National Institutes of Health and paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Newly released NIH documents show conclusively that statements made during congressional hearings to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) by then-NIH leaders Anthony Fauci and Lawrence Tabak were misleading, if not outright false, regarding third-party royalties paid before, during, and after the pandemic.

Tabak, then-acting director of the National Institutes of Health, and Fauci, then-director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, both claimed before Congress that they could not release the names of the companies paying NIH third party royalties.

Last week, however, our OpenTheBooks lawsuit based on our Freedom of Information Act request caused NIH to release new documents.

The newly released documents reveal – for the first time – the names of companies that paid NIH scientists $325 million in third party royalties from 56,000 transactions between September 2009 and October 2020.

Our OpenTheBooks oversight reporting — which led to three congressional hearings during 2022 regarding NIH’s secret third party royalty payments — is available here for review.

Here are some key findings from the new disclosures:

In U.S. Senate hearings during 2022, Dr. Anthony Fauci refused to disclose the companies who licensed his “inventions” and paid his third-party royalties. Finally, now, we know the companies paying him. They are listed below.

Chinese government-owned pharmaceutical companies, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), paid the National Institutes of Health (NIH) third-party royalties to license technologies developed on the U.S. taxpayer dime. One such company neighbors the Wuhan Institute of Virology, collaborates with the lab, and even paid a royalty to Douglas Lowy, a multiple term acting director at the National Cancer Institute, a sub-institute of NIH.

Russian animal vaccine maker – which was allegedly a front for a Soviet bio-weapons lab – licensed inventions and paid royalties to NIH for tech developed with taxpayer dollars.

Purdue Pharma – the makers of the highly addictive and frequently abused OxyContin (oxycodone) – licensed tech developed with public funds and paid royalties to NIH – even after the company pleaded guilty to federal crimes relating to opioids.

Long-serving former NIH director, Francis Collins, received third party royalties on his inventions from four companies that themselves received nearly $50 million in federal contracts and grants since 2008.

During the pandemic, the American people started to worry that Big Government was too close to Big Pharma. Now, because of our oversight investigation at OpenTheBooks.com, we know just how close they are: NIH spends billions on the industry and now we know the industry sends millions back to NIH and its scientists.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/10/welcome-to-bidens-grand-illusion-of-prosperity/

‘You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity, too.”

That was then-Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen back in 1988 arguing that the Reagan boom was a myth because it was bought and paid for with deficit spending, then running about $200 billion a year. 

What would Bentsen say today about an economy that – instead of blasting ahead at more than 4% a year at it was in 1988 – is barely eking out gains and appears headed to a downturn … despite the fact that President Joe Biden is writing $200 billion in hot checks every two months. 

We know what Biden and his legions of sycophants in the “independent” media would say. The economy is doing great thanks to “Bidenomics.”

“The economy is growing and we’re lowering costs for families. That’s Bidenomics at work,” Biden said after the latest GDP numbers came out, which showed the economy growing 2.4% in the second quarter of this year. “This progress wasn’t inevitable or accidental — it is Bidenomics in action, growing the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down.”

One week later, Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The lower rating, Fitch said, “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’-rated peers.”

Fiscal deterioration over the next three years and a high and growing debt burden? Is this “Bidenomics in action”?

Look at the numbers and you see why Fitch is worried.