RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/department_of_defense_official_testifies_that_the_military_must_be_a_safe_space_for_the_nonbinary.html

When a rainbow-colored Navy training video on the proper use of preferred pronouns surfaced last year, many people thought it was a joke. Sadly, many people were wrong.

Recently, a top Department of Defense official offered testimony to Congress that doubled down on the video’s underlying message: the armed services must be a “safe space” in which each and every member feels validated and affirmed on his and/or her journey of self-discovery. Remarkably, the video discussed how to make the Navy a “safe space” for people who wish to explore their gender identity.

People traditionally joined the Navy to explore the world and burnish their character, not to explore their gender identity and sexual preferences. This puts a new twist on basic training. “Am I a boy or a girl?” is really basic. Or perhaps neither or both…or something else entirely would be a better fit. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead with my own personal gender journey!

This has to be good for unit cohesion and operational readiness, particularly when hundreds or thousands of sailors are confined to a single boat, right?

The DOD’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) reportedly told the House Armed Services Committee that the “concerns young Americans have about safety are negatively impacting [military] recruiting.”  The CDIO further claimed that potential recruits do not “feel safe reporting to work for fear of discrimination.”  

Our military now needs to be “a safe space” or no one will join it? This seems oxymoronic and counter-intuitive at best, and potentially cataclysmic at worst.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/05/our-french-revolution/

We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary. 

The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020. 

It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support. 

The American people want affordable power and fuel and energy autonomy. They do not want a Green New Deal that results in dependence on the Middle East. 

They want fiscal sobriety, not a permanent stagflationary economy marked by bank failures, soaring interest rates, crony capitalism, and subsidies for those who choose not to work. 

They know no country can exist without a border, much less while offering blank checks to foreign cartels that kill 100,000 Americans yearly. 

They demand realist deterrence abroad, not the current woke military whose erosion is spelling the end American credibility and global stability. 

Racialists are eerily embracing discredited Neo-Confederate notions of racial chauvinism, discrimination, segregation, and the old-one-drop rule of racial obsession. They are turning America toward a Balkanized war-of-all-against-all. 

To implement such an unpopular program, the new Left must radically alter our institutions. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/chicago-chooses-crime/

Brandon Johnson’s “victory” means that Mayor Lori Lightfoot will be replaced by someone far worse. Lightfoot at least made occasional efforts to fight crime, Johnson’s message is that criminals are the victims.

That is the trend in a party and a political system that goes to extremes.

Johnson’s victory comes as little surprise despite polls that showed Paul Vallas was leading. Like Rick Caruson in Los Angeles, Vallas picked up endorsements from Democrats, including surprising ones, ran as a moderate and seemed poised to win over a city that was tired of the madness. And, like the LA mayoral race it didn’t matter. Johnson and Bass had the same two assets, racial bloc voting and a political machine capable of delivering votes, especially once it understood how many votes were needed to get its candidate over the top.

I’m not even counting the media.

Chicago loves crime, but this isn’t the Capone kind of vote, it’s the solidarity between the Left and the thugs running the streets. The old Chicago machine alternated between tolerating crime and cracking down on it. It cut dirty deals with bosses and busted hoods. The new machine loves street level criminals. And they love it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-indictment-accelerates-americas-race-to-the-bottom-alvin-bragg-new-york-polarization-clinton-edc1d2b2?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
Mr. Penn was a pollster and adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, 1995-2008. He is chairman of the Harris Poll and CEO of Stagwell Inc. Mr. Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94.

The demonization of political opponents is entering its next depressing but predictable phase—the use of the most partisan parts of the criminal-justice system to arrest and prosecute political opponents on flimsy charges. Too much of the public, increasingly divorced from bedrock national values, is cheering it on.

It’s the logical extension of Donald Trump’s claiming he won the election he lost; of Joe Biden’s branding “MAGA Republicans” a “clear and present danger” to “our democracy”; of right-wing groups planning and executing an assault on the Capitol; of the Russia-collusion hoax; of partisan impeachments; of tech companies censoring political and scientific information to promote ideological and partisan agendas; of retired intelligence officials interfering with the 2020 election by making false claims about the Hunter Biden laptop; of law students shouting down federal judges with the encouragement of university administrators.

The routine violation of political norms worsened under the Trump and Biden administrations but began under President Obama. He personally upbraided the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address, falsely characterizing its holdings in the Citizens United case. His administration weaponized the Internal Revenue Service against grass-roots conservative groups and initiated the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interference in the 2016 election.

Most voters in last month’s Harvard CAPS/Harris poll endorsed indicting Mr. Trump—51% of all respondents and 80% of Democrats. When asked if such an indictment would be politically motivated, 59% said yes. When asked if any payments to Stormy Daniels were campaign or personal expenses, 67% said they were personal—the opposite of the theory in the New York indictment. Most expect Mr. Trump to be acquitted, which means some respondents’ answers violate the basic principle that prosecutors shouldn’t bring charges that they can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/04/06/the-morning-briefing-alvin-braggs-insane-clown-circus-adds-a-kangaroo-to-the-court-n1684981

When it was announced that “Bragg’s Folly” would be getting its Manhattan premiere this week, we all knew that would be the dominant story for days. Those of us on the non-rabid side of the political aisle knew that it was going to be a you-know-what show, but it’s even worse than I imagined.

And I have quite the imagination, ladies and gentlemen.

I don’t write about legal matters because I only know enough about the law to avoid breaking it. I have colleagues who are much better equipped to deal with such things and they’ve been doing a splendid job of it these past few days.

My friend Stephen Green wrote about what he called “the most outrageous claim” in the kinda/sorta indictment charges against Trump:

“The charges against Trump do not include any tax fraud offenses,” Josh Gerstein reported on Wednesday, “that some legal experts said they hoped to see to buttress the seriousness of the case.”

I must interrupt myself for a moment to remind you that when someone at POLITICO uses a phrase like “some legal experts said…,” what they really mean is, “group-thinking swamp-dwellers all agree…” That done, let’s get back to Gerstein’s report.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/06/if-rule-of-law-dies-so-does-our-republic/

A number of columns and editorials in recent weeks have openly wondered if the notion of a nation ruled by laws — fair laws reasonably interpreted by well-trained, unbiased, disinterested judges — was dying. Sorry, but it might already be dead.

The overtly political mugging of Donald Trump by a Soros-backed New York district attorney wielding a risible 34-count felony indictment that could put the ex-president behind bars for more than 100 years is bad enough.

But the absurd nature of the accusations make clear the legal charges have nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with Democratic politics.

It’s an obvious example of overreach by a prosecutor, New York’s leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg, solely for political reasons. It’s an embarrassment to the once-great Empire State, and a travesty of law that will have a damaging effect on Americans’ faith in the legal system.

The left has mastered on technique, straight out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” — Rule #13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

That’s precisely what is being done to ex-President Donald Trump.

With 2024 looking grim for the Democrats, their only hope is to make Trump into an arch-villain. This, they seem to think, will unite their party’s dispirited base voters, while depriving MAGA voters and others who see Trump as a bulwark against the left’s virulent socialism with an option on Election Day.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/04/05/why-the-resistance-is-still-so-much-worse-than-trump/

‘Lock her up!’ That was former US president Donald Trump’s unofficial slogan during the 2016 presidential election campaign. His supporters would chant it at rallies, while Trump held forth on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s various dodgy dealings. Elite liberals, for their part, clutched their pearls and spoke darkly about the autocratic threat to America posed by a Trump presidency. Seven years later, Clinton is a free woman, even after four years of Trump in the White House. Meanwhile, Trump is being hauled before a court, on ginned-up charges, while those very same elite liberals wish each other ‘Merry Arrestmas’.

The indictment of Donald Trump in New York has provided yet more proof – though it certainly wasn’t needed – that anti-Trumpism remains a far bigger threat to freedom and democracy than Trumpism itself. The soldiers of the self-styled Resistance – the hysterical, elite-led movement against the Trump presidency – have been out in force again on social media, openly celebrating the charges being brought against Trump. ‘Trump finally got indicted!’, tweeted Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, once dubbed ‘Queen of the Resistance’. Democratic strategist Rachel Bitecofer was similarly giddy. ‘Nice capstone to the best day I’ve had in 7+ years’, she tweeted, next to a lovely photo of a rainbow. It seems these supposed lovers of liberal ‘norms’ haven’t heard of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

What Trump is allegedly guilty of in this case amounts, to use a legal term, to some pretty weak piss. He is accused of falsifying business records so as to covertly reimburse his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. (Daniels claims to have had an affair with Trump and was threatening to go public ahead of the 2016 election.) It’s all very seedy, of course, and on the specific charges of falsifying business records Trump could well be bang to rights. But on their own these would amount to misdemeanours that New York County district attorney Alvin Bragg almost certainly wouldn’t have felt able to pursue in court – not least because doing so would have looked outrageously petty and politically motivated, coming from an elected Democratic official.