RUTHFULLY YOURS

Social engineers have a knack for destroying history, then self-servingly reshaping it to align with political agendas for consumption by the masses.

The results of their skill are no better exemplified than we are currently witnessing. Confederate history is quite literally being destroyed, as monuments to Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes are being defaced by ignorant vandals who know nothing more than the legend of how Abraham Lincoln and his brave Union army crushed Jefferson Davis’ and Robert E. Lee’s Southern hordes in the name of liberating enslaved blacks.

That this is legend is in no way true makes it no less pervasively believed by those who wish to remain ignorant. If you don’t believe me at my word that Lincoln did not wage his war in the name of freeing Southern slaves, perhaps you might believe his? In a letter to Horace Greely in August, 1862:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

Documents released include physician’s declaration of her health along with tax disclosures

Hillary Clinton released a flurry of documents Friday that included a physician’s declaration of her personal health and a batch of financial information, in a bid to rebut accusations of secrecy surrounding her presidential campaign.

The financial documents showed Mrs. Clinton and her husband earned $139 million in adjusted gross income over the past seven years, including $28 million last year, when they paid an effective tax rate of more than 35%. The release coincided with a voluminous release of Clinton emails from her time as secretary of state.

The disclosures helped illuminate both her personal finances and some lingering questions regarding her health. According to a Clinton aide, they were designed to demonstrate the campaign’s commitment to transparency, at a time when Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism over secrecy.

In a statement accompanying the tax release, Mrs. Clinton noted that she and her husband have now made public the details of their personal finances going back to 1977. Mrs. Clinton also became the first candidate to release a personal health summary.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton sharply attacked one of the top Republicans in the presidential race, saying Jeb Bush’s “Right to Rise” slogan is empty given his policy positions.

“I don’t think you can credibly say that everybody has a ‘right to rise’ and then say you’re for phasing out Medicare or for repealing Obamacare,” she said Friday morning. “People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care. They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on.”
Her remarks came at a conference for the National Urban League, a group that advocates on behalf of African-Americans, shortly before Mr. Bush addressed the same audience. Mrs. Clinton enjoys strong support from African-American voters, but Mr. Bush is working to expand his support among minorities and to put himself forward as ready to broaden the Republican Party’s tent.

“I’m working for every vote,” Mr. Bush told the group. He didn’t reply to Mrs. Clinton’s critique, but a spokeswoman called her comments “more false, cheap political shots” meant to distract from Mrs. Clinton’s lack of accomplishments.

The Obama Administration insists there’s nothing secret about the Iran nuclear deal, even as it claims not to have read two crucial side deals Tehran has struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “Confidential agreements, but no secrets” is the way top U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman describes the deals, which are thought to concern the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programs.

Try parsing that distinction. And while you’re at it, consider that there might be additional separate agreements we haven’t heard about. We raise the possibility after speaking with Rep. Mike Pompeo, the Kansas Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, and who more-or-less stumbled on the two side deals when the deputy director of the IAEA disclosed their existence to him and Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) in a meeting in Vienna.

There’s nothing like a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to keep body and soul together while one is having visions about changing the world. I wouldn’t know the pleasure.

Powell’s Books is an Oregon bookstore chain with an affiliated store in Chicago. Its main store is in Portland. It is New York City’s Strand Bookstore of the West. Each of these stores boasts miles and floors of new and used books. It is easy to spend a whole day in one of these stores, once lured inside. I visited the Portland store once, but spent many happy hours in The Strand.

Powell’s recently posted a promotional ad on its site, “25 Women to read before you die.” The list was prefaced with:

Below you’ll find our list — compiled following lively debate by Powell’s staff — of 25 women you absolutely must read in your lifetime.

Climate-change ‘deniers’ are accused of heresy by true believers. That doesn’t sound like science to me.

Are there any phrases in today’s political lexicon more obnoxious than “the science is settled” and “climate-change deniers”?

The first is an oxymoron. By definition, science is never settled. It is always subject to change in the light of new evidence. The second phrase is nothing but an ad hominem attack, meant to evoke “Holocaust deniers,” those people who maintain that the Nazi Holocaust is a fiction, ignoring the overwhelming, incontestable evidence that it is a historical fact. Hillary Clinton’s speech about climate change on Monday in Des Moines, Iowa, included an attack on “deniers.”

The phrases are in no way applicable to the science of Earth’s climate. The climate is an enormously complex system, with a very large number of inputs and outputs, many of which we don’t fully understand—and some we may well not even know about yet. To note this, and to observe that there is much contradictory evidence for assertions of a coming global-warming catastrophe, isn’t to “deny” anything; it is to state a fact. In other words, the science is unsettled—to say that we have it all wrapped up is itself a form of denial. The essence of scientific inquiry is the assumption that there is always more to learn.

Samuel “Sandy Stocking Stuffer” Berger is a cur…from 2004WASHINGTON – Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger – under criminal investigation for sneaking top-secret documents out of the National Archives in his pants legs and, possibly, his socks – abruptly quit yesterday as an adviser to John Kerry.

http://nypost.com/2004/07/21/stocking-stuffer-berger-quits-kerry/

A former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton wrote an email to Hillary Clinton in 2009 advising the then-secretary of state how to deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he continued to “be the obstacle” in negotiations with Palestinians.

The email from Samuel Berger advised Clinton on how to navigate the waters with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Abu Mazen.

Many more classified emails identified as Congress is notified
The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.

The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.

A U.S. official directly familiar with the notification, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the notification of possibly hundreds of additional emails with classified secrets came from the State Department Freedom of Information Act office to the Office of Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence.

Republicans who oppose the deal will be tarred as traitors.

Obama has decided that two wildly unpopular policies, one foreign and one domestic, will be the final legacy of his wildly unpopular administration. The domestic policy is gun control. The foreign policy is Iranian nukes. While Americans will be disarmed, Iran will be getting ready for its ballistic missiles.

Ramming through wildly unpopular policies is what this administration does best. More than anything else, this administration will be remembered for the mix of bullying, smears, pop culture distractions, outright lies, bureaucratic sabotage and blatant lawbreaking with which it achieved its policy goals.

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday to answer questions about the Iran nuclear deal, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said he couldn’t determine whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had religious motivations to destroy the Great Satan and the Little Satan.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) first asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, “Do you believe the Iranians have been trying to build a bomb or a nuclear power program for peaceful purposes all these years?”

“I believe they have a militarization aspiration,” Dempsey carefully replied.

Then:

GRAHAM: Who’s the commander in chief of the Iranian armed forces, Secretary Carter? Who calls the shots?