RUTHFULLY YOURS

I started watching Miss America and Miss Universe competitions when I was a little girl, mostly because I loved the gowns. To this day, I still tune in, especially toward the end, when all the gowns are on display. A couple of years ago, I saw my all-time favorite! As the expression goes: TDF––to die for!

I also love the Country Music Awards shows because it’s the only time I hear genuinely thrilling voices without the caterwauling and preposterous over-production that camouflages the dearth of talent in the pop-music industry.

But with rare exceptions, I never tune in to the orgies of self-congratulation, self-importance, and self-indulgence known as the Golden Globes, the Emmys, and the Academy Awards, not only because the presenters and winners are so insufferably narcissistic and vapid but because movies and TV shows have devolved to such a point—with notable exceptions, of course—that this past summer, according to The Los Angeles Times, Hollywood suffered its worst-attended summer movie season in 25 years!

Apparently, this is because the moguls who now run Hollywood and TV and the print media are so out of touch with mainstream America—unlike their bête noire, President Trump, who has his finger on the very pulse of America’s wants, needs, and desires—and so obsessed with leftwing politics, and so hysterical that all their efforts to undermine and sabotage and defeat and impeach him have utterly failed, that they’ve done what millions of losers have done in the past, i.e., doubled down on their efforts.

Who are these desperate people? They are not just the moguls, but all the lefties, including the pussy hat women who have now given up that symbol because it’s too pink and not sensitive enough to perhaps darker colors of the female sex organ and not transgender enough to be “fair” to all women. Can’t make this up!

CHOOSING COLORS

When our Founding Fathers chose the colors of the American flag over 240 years ago, they chose white to signify purity and innocence, red to signify hardiness and valor and the blood they spilled in the cause of freedom, and blue to signify vigilance, perseverance and justice.

On Israel’s flag, the blue lines symbolize the stripes on a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and the Star of David is the widely acknowledged symbol of the Jewish people and of Judaism.

If we are to believe the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, released unexpectedly by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the search for a smoking gun in the dossier scandal may lead us to a dead body, at least according to Simpson’s lawyer:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in August 2017, Glenn Simpson was questioned about whether he tried to “assess the credibility” of sources behind information uncovered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who compiled the dossier.

“Yes, but I’m not going to get into sourcing information,” Simpson said.

Asked again what “steps he took to verify their credibility,” Simpson declined to answer.

His lawyer, Joshua Levy, then intervened and said Simpson was just trying to protect his sources.

“Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work,” Levy said.

The interview didn’t pursue the line of questioning further.

Well, maybe somebody should pursue this hand grenade tossed in the middle of the room. Whoa! Somebody’s already been killed as the result of the dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele from questionable Russian sources and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, and possibly used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the campaign of Hillary’s opponent, Donald J. Trump?

As shocking as this revelation may be, it dovetails nicely with fear expressed for her safety by former DNC chair Donna Brazile. In a stunning interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about her new book, Hacks, Brazile made cryptic references to murdered DNC I.T. staffer Seth Rich and revealed that afterward, she took the precautions one takes when one fears for his life.

George H. W. Bush gave up power quietly and turned to charity work and occasional ceremonial speaking after his reelection defeat in 1992. George W. Bush — like Jerry Ford in 1977 and Ronald Reagan in 1989 — did the same when Barack Obama assumed power in 2009.

Unending Presidencies

Recent Democrats emeriti — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — apparently had a different vision of the post-presidency, unlike the quiet retirement of Lyndon Johnson back to his ranch in 1969. The three saw politics in more Manichean terms, as an existential struggle far too important to cease at the end of a presidential tenure.

Carter freelanced abroad for 30 years in successful quest for a Nobel Prize, but he often undercut presidential diplomacy. He regularly weighed in on the shortcomings of his successors — in a way he would have deeply resented had either Ford or Richard Nixon done the same.

No sooner had Bill Clinton left the presidency than he and Hillary Clinton began the grand plan for a return to the White House in 2009, and, after a setback, then again in 2017. Theirs was a two-decade long post-presidency of glad-handing, politicking, and, to use a euphemism, quid pro quo fund raising.

Barack Obama has already weighed in, including while overseas, on the shortcomings of his successor. His aides, led by Ben Rhodes, are at the forefront of the “Resistance” to thwart the Trump administration. Susan Rice and John Kerry comment regularly on supposed Trump foreign-policy blunders, as do James Clapper and John Brennan — usually in proactive fashion to deflect news accounts that may reflect poorly on their own past tenures.

Resistances

But all that said, we have never quite seen anything like the opposition of the so-called Resistance to the elected presidency that followed the Obama tenure.

There were the initial false charges that pro-Trump Russians had shut down power grids in Vermont. There were frivolous suits claiming that voting machines in three states were rigged. There was an organized, anti-constitutional effort to subvert the Electoral College so that it would not reflect the vote tallies of individual states. On Inauguration Day, there were congressional boycotts of the swearing-in ceremony. There were demonstrations at which, to take one example, Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House.

An entire genre of assassination chic followed. Politicians, celebrities, actors, academics, and wannabees variously reenacted beheading Donald Trump, stabbing him to death, shooting him, torching him, hanging him, or, in the words of Robert DeNiro, dreaming of punching Trump in the face. Few in the media were bothered by the imagery or threats. Yet sometimes the hysteria became real violence — as when Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s shot prominent Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Republican House whip Steven Scalise, or when libertarian senator Rand Paul (present at the Scalise shooting) was attacked and injured by a disturbed neighbor and proponent of socialized medicine.

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.

When the 2016 presidential election ended, the media somehow found the time to expose one of the greatest scandals of that or any other election cycle: active efforts of the Democratic National Committee favoring Hillary Clinton’s nomination and undermining the campaign of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Now it appears that former interim DNC Chairman Donna Brazile’s revelations about her party’s interference in the primaries may only have been a small taste of what really happened. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee may also have been part of a broad effort to undermine Trump that involved the FBI, the Department of Justice, intelligence agencies, and—irony of ironies!—Russian spies. This anti-Trump cabal has escaped public notice almost entirely, given the media’s obsession with the transparently false narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.

This is all the more reason why Attorney General Jeff Sessions needs to shine a light on this outrageous and potentially criminal conduct.

Although there are many indicators of election meddling on the part of the Left, the most important is the existence of the so-called Steele Dossier, a compilation of unflattering facts, pseudo-facts, and blatant fabrications designed to undermine the Presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The dossier was the work of British spy-for-hire Christopher Steele, paid for initially by anti-Trump conservatives. Later, the DNC and the Clinton campaign bankrolled Steele’s efforts, and the dossier, to the tune of millions of dollars. The dossier was shopped around to various media outlets, which, to their credit, mostly scoffed at its contents.

The FBI, however, took the dossier seriously enough to use it to begin an investigation of the Trump campaign and to obtain a warrant against Trump associate Carter Page. The FBI even offered to pay Steele to continue his work. And from where did the most salacious and bogus claims in the dossier come? Russian spies supplied these tidbits, in exchange for cash from Steele, who ultimately received funding from Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

Now, opposition research is perfectly legitimate. Paying the agents of a foreign state to reveal and/or concoct damaging information about one’s political adversary, however, is manifestly unethical, and it remains an open question whether the Democrats or the Clinton campaign committed crimes in the course of their effort to discredit and defeat Trump. That the party which engaged in this outrageous behavior would then turn around and baselessly accuse its opponents of doing the same thing is, well, breathtaking in its audacity.

Patagonian Toothfish, the rejected ugly, oily, bottom dwelling toothy fish was rebranded Chilean Sea Bass and became an expensive delicacy for gullible millennials.

So it is with Socialism, a rejected, ugly, oily, bottom dwelling ideology that enriched the elite and enslaved the masses was rebranded Social Democracy and became a rallying cry for naive 21st century millennials.

It is often useful to look backward to move forward so let’s review. Karl Marx, author of The Communist Manifesto, stated unequivocally, “Democracy is the road to socialism.” Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist Party, affirmed, “The goal of socialism is communism.” Social democracy began in the late 19th early 20th century as a political ideology advocating an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes to effect the transition rather than the revolutionary processes of Marxism.

The Socialist Party of America had been unable to field a successful presidential candidate for decades so in 1972 the Socialist Party of America officially rebranded itself and changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. “The name ‘Socialist’ was replaced by ‘Social Democrats’ because many Americans associated the word ‘socialism’ with Soviet Communism.” Anyone familiar with Marx and Lenin correctly associated the two which is why rebranding was necessary to eliminate its negative image and conceal its identity.

The thing about rebranding is that it does not change the product itself – only the name changes and its psychological associations.

Rebranding Toothfish as Chilean Sea Bass was a successful marketing strategy designed to sell a rejected fish in the food industry. Similarly, rebranding the Socialist Party of America as Social Democrats was a successful marketing strategy designed to sell a rejected ideology in the political sphere. Both were highly successful.

The democratic socialism currently embraced by the left-wing radicals that dominate the Democrat Party in America has embraced identity politics to increase its membership with inclusive promises of “social justice and income equality.” These slogan promises disguise the reality of socialism because, like the Patagonian Toothfish, changing its name does not change what socialism is.

Is Trump an Island?

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . .
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
— John Donne

The pathological hatred of Donald Trump — from impeachment votes to the emoluments-clause suits to assassination chic to talk of invoking 25th Amendment to sexual-harassment writs — would grind down almost any 71-year-old man. Trump may be ego-driven and have a proverbially thin skin, but even a rhino would finally chafe under the 24/7 media detestation of his person, his family, and his presidency.

Someday soon now, we will look back at the Russian-collusion psychodrama, the strange transference of his transition team’s emails to Robert Mueller, the Clinton role in the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier, the destruction of journalistic integrity, and the slant of the Mueller investigation team and appreciate that we were living through an effort to swing the 2016 election and, failing that, a veritable slow-motion effort to remove an elected presidency.

The ubiquitous Lisa Bloom, we learn, was attempting to arrange payments for, or at least merchandise the testimonies of, supposed Trump harassment victims in the waning days of the 2016 campaign. Both liberal and conservative surveys of the media reveal that at least 90 percent of Trump coverage has been negative. Those who once held positions now held by Trump disown them; what they used to oppose, they now embrace — the only constant being whatever Trump is against, they are for.

Fake news will not stop. The rewards among peers and the media profession for getting a whack to Trump are felt worth the costs of largely betraying the cannons of journalism. A generation ago, a Brian Ross — twice now caught trafficking in untruths — would have been through as a journalist. Today, he is merely suspended as a temporary casualty in the noble war against Trump evil.

Some of Trump’s current isolation is unavoidable, nearly half of the voting public backed a Steppenwolf Trump to do what he is doing: drop the Sunnybrook Farm rules of past failed Republican nominees, brawl with the identity-politics Democrats, and smack the swamp Republicans. The deplorables wanted strong chemotherapy to excise Washington malignancies and had no illusions that such medicine, to work, can always be pleasant.

In addition, voters may talk grandly of wanting change, but they recoil when it actually begins. And if once wanting the Obama agenda to fail was considered proof of near treason and racism, working to ensure that the entire Trump presidency is aborted just months after the election has been recalibrated as patriotic progressive activism.

The result is that Trump is now an island in Washington. Fewer Republican officeholders want on his team. In the past, even beleaguered presidents could turn to a network of stalwarts in and out of politics. Not Trump.