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March 2024

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bobulinski’s Testimony: Unraveling Allegations of Biden Family Influence Peddling Joe Biden has repeatedly denied ever talking to his son about his business dealings. Bobulinski shows that it was an outright lie. By Roger Kimball

By on March 24th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/24/bobulinskis-testimony-unraveling-allegations-of-biden-family-influence-peddling/

The entertainment committee never sleeps.  Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski came to Congress a few days ago to testify before the House Oversight Committee about Hunter, his uncle Jim Biden, and the “Big Guy,” Mr. 10 percent, Joseph R. Biden himself.  It was an extraordinary performance. Calm. Deliberate. Detailed. Deadly. Mr. Bobulinski’s written statement shows what care he took in marshaling facts and evidence.

But it was his in-person testimony that made popping the corn worthwhile.  Tony Bobulinski and Congressman Jay Raskin. Tony Bobulinski and Congressman Dan Goldman.  He called both liars to their faces. It was delicious. It was also true.  Representative Raskin spluttered, stalled, and looked like he might burst into tears. He later, out of the line of fire, pouted about Mr. Bobulinski’s “outlandish and baseless accusations,” but that was just a feckless face-saving gambit.

Maybe the most entertaining moment of the afternoon came when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did her best Minnie Mouse impersonation and demanded to know what crimes, if any, Mr. Bobulinski was accusing Joe Biden of having committed. “RICO is not a crime!” she squeaked.  It was priceless.  The “greatest deliberative body in the world” in action, ladies and gentlemen. The country’s in the very best of hands.

But, as the old song said, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” In any normal polity, Mr. Bobulinski’s testimony would have been devastating to its targets. But in our polity, it was just entertainment.  If Congressmen Raskin and Goldman were capable of embarrassment, they would be squirming with shame.  But they are not so endowed, which means that they will emerge unscathed by any pangs of conscience. After all, they are still in office. Perhaps they will even be reelected and continue suckling at the public teat for the rest of their adult lives.

There will be a lot of tongue-clucking. You’ll see many columns rehearsing the details of Mr. Bobulinski’s testimony. At the end of the day, though, it won’t matter what evidence Mr. Bobulinski adduced.  The Justice Department is run by the State Party, aka the Democrats, and the DOJ is going to do exactly nothing about what Rudy Giuliani colorfully baptized the Biden Crime Family.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation by Victor Davis Hanson

By on March 24th, 2024

A New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time

War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction.

In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Administration’s Jitterbug with Iran’s Regime When Crime Does Pay – Spectacularly by Majid Rafizadeh

By on March 24th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20515/biden-administration-jitterbug-iran

The recent decision to shower Iran, the “leading state sponsor of global terrorism,” with yet another $10 billion in sanctions waivers, “freeing up $10 billion elsewhere to spend on terrorism, missiles, nuclear weapons and the repression of Iranian women,” defies logic and morality.

Despite galactic evidence of Iran’s atrocities — such as, since October 2023, more than 165 attacks by its proxies on American assets, which include the murder of three US service members; its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis; its brutal crackdown on dissent at home, and its massively destabilizing actions across the Middle East — the Biden administration continues to court Iran and further enrich its regime, which thrives on chaos and bloodshed, especially against the country throwing the money at them.

“The FBI believes Iran is capable of a variety of attack options against US targets, to include cyber operations intended to sabotage public and private infrastructure …. [I]t’s clear the Iranians are determined to carry out attacks in the United States….” — Robert Wells, assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI, March 20, 2024.

“The mullahs give up nothing but get a windfall nonetheless… For [Senate Majority leader Chuck] Schumer, apparently, regime change in Israel is the national-security priority — not stopping billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” — Former National Security Council official Richard Goldberg, New York Post, March 14, 2024.

Former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s assertion that the Biden administration’s actions has already enriched Iran by “closer to $60 billion” is nothing short of chilling. This staggering sum undoubtedly enabled Iran to further enrich its uranium to near weapons-grade level; to help Hamas attack Israel, and to torment its own people.

It is high time for the Biden administration to send a clear and unequivocal message to Iran, China, Russia and North Korea that the days of impunity are over.

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