RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/01/trump_from_great_disruptor_to_great_protector_143591.html

Our America First movement faces a fulcrum moment. After achieving the incredible upset of seizing the presidency from the conventional interests that dominated United States politics and media for decades, now President Trump can advance to the next step of his historic quest: transitioning from the Great Disruptor to the become the Great Protector of the American people, particularly the middle class.

The disruption emanated from the profound frustration of working-class citizens witnessing a continual erosion of their political agency and their standard of living. The shock of Trump’s triumph compelled a needed wholesale reshaping of national politics, including a de facto takeover of the Republican Party by believers in American nationalism. In reaction, the media mouthpieces of the established political and administrative classes went to war with the president, and he returned rhetorical fire, with fervor. Simultaneously, the enmity of the entrenched administrative powers of our capital commenced seemingly endless investigations and frivolous prosecutions of Trump allies and, ultimately, the president himself.

Despite the systemic upheaval, tangible policy achievements abounded, particularly a rollback of the regulatory state, smart trade accords, and the confirmations of hundreds of conservative judges. Nonetheless, the consternation and agitation have intensified in this election year, as an increasingly polarized country battles over first principles. As necessary as the disruption was, our nation cannot remain in this embattled space; it’s too chaotic.

Therefore, the next natural iteration of the movement lies in President Trump becoming the Great Protector, a leader promoting a second term agenda that guards the economic and legal rights of the masses.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/steele-testimony-fbi-coordinated-closely-with-state

The Department of State worked closely with the FBI on the bureau’s investigation of the Trump campaign and its work with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier, according to Steele’s recent testimony in a UK court.

Steele told the court he became convinced over the course of the summer and fall of 2016 that the two departments were closely coordinating. By the time he met State Department official Kathy Kavalec in October of that year, it was “very clear that FBI and State Department were both consulting each other and discussing the whole issue of engagement with us and our investigation,” Steele said, according to court transcripts obtained by The Epoch Times.

Steele was questioned at the Queen’s Bench court in London on March 18 as part of a lawsuit against his company, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., brought by three Russian businessmen affiliated with Alfa Bank. One of the installments of Steele’s report accused the men of funneling large amounts of “illicit cash” to then-Saint Petersburg Mayor Vladimir Putin in the 1990s. 

“My understanding was that Kathy Kavalec, who raised I think the Alfa issue with us in this meeting in October, had been closely coordinating with the FBI and the FBI knew that we were having the meeting and so on and so forth and that they were jointly working on this material.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/summer-of-unrequited-love-11593559035?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

City officials on Tuesday began removing the barricades surrounding Seattle’s self-styled Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, or CHOP, potentially spelling the end of that three-week experiment in alternative urban living. Supporters lost no time identifying the malign force responsible for that fledgling nation’s quick descent into lawlessness and violence: “capitalism.”

So declared City Council member Kshama Sawant, in response to four shootings in 10 days within CHOP, a six-block area in Seattle that occupiers had cordoned off and blocked police from entering. The most recent shooting, on Monday, killed a 16-year-old boy and left a 14-year-old in critical condition.

Ms. Sawant explained on Twitter that the “tragic” killing “highlights capitalism’s brutality & endemic violence.” A CHOP supporter, Ms. Sawant declared: “Our movement rejects insinuations & falsehoods perpetuated by corporate & conservative media that this violence is outcome of CHOP or of our movement.” And here we thought CHOP was a demonstration of what was possible when men and women abandoned the evils of democratic capitalism.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/present-moment-has-set-blacks-back-half-century-dennis-prager/

The “protesters” who destroy and loot think their victim status allows them to destroy and loot. The man identified as the president of the greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, recently told Fox News: “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking … figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation.”

In a report yesterday on a police shooting of a robber who resisted arrest and reached for an object in his waistband, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted a protest organizer: “If this young man was robbing, that means his state and his government failed to provide him with the resources he needs.” When you feel you are a victim, you are allowed to rob.

Take the constant, often absurd, charges of racism at the most benign comments. If you say, for example, that you see nothing wrong with the picture of Uncle Ben on a box of rice, you will be accused of racism. As a result, most whites understand they can no longer speak truthfully or from the heart in the presence of a black American. It is hard to imagine a worse recipe for genuine relationships between the races. Whereas the great majority of whites, and even most blacks, thought white-black relations were good and improving when Barack Obama assumed office, a minority of both groups think so today.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/flowers_for_teddy_r.html

As the wacko Evangelical guy across the street from our Defend Teddy Roosevelt rally Sunday afternoon loudspeakered: “It ain’t the color of your skin, it’s the color of your sin,” a clever assonance-rich meme that sounds good and means not that much, except to say that in his considered religious consideration, we were “worshiping a graven image” (!) and had better repent.

Something finally roused the conservatives from their  pandemic poufs and couches. The media were there, certainly, interviewing such firebrands as Gavin Wax, whose NY Young Republicans blast emails  say they spearheaded the rally. Ages were everything from teenagers to hoary-headed, bushy-bearded elders. All ethnicities were represented.

And thanks to social media and  high-temperature-stoked choler, hundreds showed up in the hottest day, at the hottest hour, without a cloverleaf of shade, in front of the revered (until now) American Museum of Natural History, whose high-salaried pooh-bahs had decided, without permission or notification of the city — on whose land the museum has long stood — to remove the equestrian statue of our most popular president, who died 21 years before the statue made its iconic appearance on the noble plinth greeting millions from all corners of the world.

The president of AMNH, Ellen Futter, has become as toxic as a thrice-used face mask.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/u-s-consumer-confidence-posts-biggest-increase-since-late-2011

U.S. consumer confidence rose in June by more than forecast as optimism increased amid business reopenings, though sentiment remained well below pre-pandemic levels.

The Conference Board’s index jumped by 12.2 points to 98.1, the biggest one-month gain since late 2011, according to a report Tuesday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists had called for a reading of 91.5.

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/06/lopsided-joe-biden.html

Biden wants to convert the country, once a free one, into a nation of mask-wearing lepers. The Hollywood Reporter writes:

Soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said he would use his power to require Americans to wear face masks in public.

According to KDKA, Biden said:

“I would go back to making sure that everybody had masks, that you had PPE lined up, making sure we stockpile all the things that we need and we don’t have now. The one thing we do know, these masks make a gigantic difference. I would insist that everybody in public be wearing that mask. Anyone to reopen, it would have to make sure that they walked into a business that had masks.”

The difference is imaginary and specious, as I’ve written before.

Ken Rice of KDKA asked Biden if he could use his federal leverage to mandate it in which Biden responded “yes”.

Rice then pressed Biden if he would use it.

Here’s the exchange:

Rice: Would you?

Biden: Yes, I would from an executive standpoint, yes I would.

Victor David Hanson, on Ruth King, explains Biden’s state of mind better than I can:

“Joe Biden is tragically suffering a mental eclipse and sliding away at a geometric rate. Understandably, his handlers have kept him out of sight. He stays off the campaign trail on the pretext of the virus and his age-related susceptibility to COVID-19 morbidity.

“I say “pretext” without apology. Quarantine should not have otherwise stopped Biden over the past three months from doing daily interviews, speeches, and meetings. But each occasion, however scripted, rehearsed, and canned, would only have offered further daily proof that Biden is cognitively unable to be president or indeed to hold any office.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/elliebufkin/2020/06/30/four-men-charged-with-voter-fraud-in-new-jersey-n2571445

Democrats and their media surrogates have uniformly chosen to reject any notion that voting by mail could result in fraudulent results, despite ample evidence to the contrary. But against their narrative, four men in New Jersey were indicted last week for committing voter fraud related to mail-in ballots. 

Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced on Thursday that current Paterson City Council Vice President Michael Jackson along with Councilman-elect Alex Mendez were being charged along with two others in fraud related to the May 12 election. According to the charges, all four men are facing multiple counts of ballot tampering and incorrect ballot handling related to the election. 

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Paterson election for city council members faced the unique obstacle of being relegated only to vote-by-mail, something President Trump has lambasted throughout the national crisis. On election day, Jackson and Mendez, along with Shelim Khalique, brother of councilman Shahin Khalique, and Abu Razyen allegedly violated several election laws by collecting said mail-in ballots from voters’s homes and incorrectly delivering them to the Board of Elections. 

Jackson is further charged with possessing ballots that were not his nor was he assigned the bearer. One of those ballots was reportedly unsealed and unmarked by a voter but was later turned in to the Board of Elections sealed. Mendez is also charged with registering voters he knew to be ineligible to vote in the municipal election. 

The reported actions of these four men caused one in five ballots cast on the May 12 election to be removed as ineligible. More than 3,000 ballots were ruled by the Board of Election to be unqualified for counting. 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/30/1-week-after-mayor-promises-to-close-chaz-councilwoman-blames-chaz-shootings-on-capitalisms-brutality/

Socialist Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant blamed “capitalism” for yet another shooting in the city’s “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ), also known as the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest,” (CHOP) Monday.

Sawant, a member of the left-wing group “Socialist Alternative,” which advocates for a $15 minimum wage and free college among a litany of other far-left fantasy items, said Monday’s shootings in the anarchist utopia that left a 16-year-old dead and a 14-year-old critically injured “highlights capitalism’s brutality & endemic violence.”

“Our movement rejects insinuations & falsehoods perpetuated by corporate & conservative media that this violence is outcome of CHOP or of our movement,” Sawant wrote. Except that this is at least the area’s fourth shooting within two weeks, and the second to become fatal, according to Seattle’s King5 News.