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July 2024

The End of Joe Biden—and the Democratic Establishment For both the king and what was once his court, a terrible reckoning has arrived. By Martin Gurri

https://www.thefp.com/p/end-of-joe-biden-democratic-establishment?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Joe Biden entered the Senate in 1973, at the tender age of 30. He looked like a president, he felt like a president, and he fully expected to rise to the top. His formula for success was that of every ambitious politician deprived by nature of directing principles or opinions: find the meandering mainstream of his party’s establishment, where the big fish swim, then wade in and drift. Biden was in turn strongly against and stridently for abortion, a righteous Vietnam dove and then a stern Iraq hawk, a friend of racist Democratic senators before becoming a promoter of compensatory quotas for racial minorities. 

Virtually every time a vacancy arose, Biden, by his own admission, considered running for the presidency. In 1988, at the age of 44, he actually did so—and failed. Biden may look and feel like a president, but he has never sounded like one. Long before old age turned him into a bleary-eyed mutterer, he tended to get lost in his own verbiage. He told fantastic stories about his personal life that could be easily disproved. He plagiarized bits from Bobby Kennedy and parts of a speech by British Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Biden, it seems, was as needy as he was ambitious. His campaign resembled a prolonged pratfall. He dropped out before the first primary.

Thanks to a few very big, very lucky breaks, this human weathervane eventually found himself in the White House. Just a few years later, however, President Biden’s luck looks to be running out. A disastrous performance in last month’s presidential debate pulled back the curtain, in the style of The Wizard of Oz, to reveal the president as the sad, confused old man most of us already knew him to be. Then the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, and the former president’s courageous reaction in the moments following the incident, cast Biden’s shortcomings and infirmities in an even more glaring contrast. Biden is now increasingly alone, abandoned by the very establishment that created him. For both the king and what was once his court, a terrible reckoning has arrived. 

How Biden Became a Magnificent Replica of Himself

Biden spent 36 years in the Senate but never rose to any kind of power or influence there. His hour in the sun came in 1991 when, as chair of the Judiciary Committee, he was charged by Democratic Party grandees with the destruction of Clarence Thomas as a nominee to the Supreme Court. He failed. Thomas’s eloquence and intellectual firepower easily overwhelmed the woodenly partisan Biden.

The shameful treatment of veterans in Canada and America Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/the-shameful-treatment-of-veterans-in-canada-and-america/

You have perished; but, Oh! Not in vain! Through your sacrifice an ideal was maintained, a cause was saved, freedom is still a reality, the dreams of your brothers and sisters, perhaps the child who will not know you, are still possible.

We who have returned and who knew you-we are grateful From the Book “Burma” from the 435 Squadron

Not anymore.

What kind of country devalues their veterans in favour of paying off student loans and housing illegal immigrants? What kind of country provides state delivered death to veterans as a way of taking care of them?

We have devolved.

Veterans, the men and women, who fought for freedom are not even second class in Canada and America.

How did we get to a place where military and political leaders prioritize sexuality over bravery and merit? Why does Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau spend time and money placing tampons and sanitary napkin dispensers in military men’s rooms?

Thirty days to celebrate being gay! Wow. What an accomplishment!

WATCH

One day to celebrate our veterans.

Says it all.

WWII was the greatest exhibit of courage and bravery after the horrific trench wars and devastation of WWI.

International ‘Hostage Diplomacy’: Kidnapping for Fun and Profit by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20789/hostage-diplomacy-iran

That Iran can, through hostage-taking and extortion, force countries such as the United States, Belgium and Sweden to hand over a convicted criminal who has clearly violated international law shows that gangster methods, used by the Iranian mullahs and others, evidently carry more weight than international law.

This blackmail essentially teaches rogue states that through violence and extortion they can get Western states to make concessions, massive payments, and to de-prioritize and deviate from international law.

If a state takes foreign visitors hostage, and all power then lies with those who kidnap the most, threaten the most and have the largest capacity for violence — including the imminent probability of nuclear weapons — then international law will soon mean nothing.

Apart from effectively having a public budget to support terrorism, Iran’s regime acts as lawlessly as the regimes of Russia or North Korea, and behaves in general as terrorists.

It seems clear that hostage diplomacy is a deliberate strategy for Iran and Russia’s current regimes. Why should it not be? It works!

Countries in the West might do well to communicate this situation and disclaim responsibility for anyone who, despite that lawlessness, chooses to travel to Russia, Iran or other such states. Hostage diplomacy must be stopped.

On June 15, the Swedish government announced that it had conducted a prisoner exchange with Iran’s regime. An Iranian citizen, Hamid Noury, was exchanged for two Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi.

Noury stood convicted by a Swedish court of the torture and mass execution of political prisoners he had committed in Iran’s Gohardasht prison in the late 1980s, following a fatwa from Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The lawfare against Trump is falling apart A Florida judge has seen right through the Democrats’ legal overreach. Jenny Holland

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/16/the-lawfare-against-trump-is-falling-apart/

It has been a truly crazy few days in the American political news cycle. While nothing could quite top former president Donald J Trump dodging an actual bullet, which clipped the top of his ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, on Monday he dodged a huge legal bullet as well.

Florida judge Aileen Cannon dismissed perhaps the most serious federal charges that Trump faced – 40 felony counts for possession and destruction of classified documents. This included crimes under the Espionage Act and the ‘willful retention of national-defence information; conspiracy to obstruct justice; false statements and representations’. ‘Each of the more than 30 willful-retention counts carry a maximum 10-year sentence’, the Associated Press reported back in April.

Judge Cannon’s bombshell ruling was a rebuke to the Biden Justice Department and attorney general Merrick Garland. Her decision centred around funding and oversight of the Special Counsel, an office originally constituted by congressional act following Watergate.

‘Cannon chose to dismiss the federal case because Garland unlawfully appointed [special counsel Jack] Smith, whom the president did not nominate nor did the Senate confirm for his prosecutorial position. Moreover, Congress did not appropriate funds to Smith’s investigation as required under federal law’, the National Review explains. At the heart of the matter is who has the authority to investigate federal crimes. By law, they must be ‘officers of the United States’, and that designation can only be given two ways – by being ‘nominated by the president and then confirmed by the Senate’ or ‘appointed to a position that “shall be established by law”’ – which is to say, by congressional statute’, as Andy McCarthy notes. Smith was not appointed via either of these democratic procedures.

The Republic Is Asleep The civic ignorance of American young people is vast, but the tide may be turning. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/17/the-republic-is-asleep/

The scale of America’s civic ignorance is staggering. In June, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) conducted a national survey of college students that delved into their basic knowledge of American history and government and found that significant numbers of college students graduate without even a rudimentary grasp of America’s history and political system.

For example, 60% of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress, and 63% were unable to identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Importantly, these were multiple-choice questions. Hence, students didn’t have to recall John Roberts’ name, only recognize it. The same is true for the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, whose name was only known to 35% of students. More than two-thirds didn’t know that impeachment trials occur before the Senate. A majority of students believe that the Constitution was written in 1776 rather than 1787.

On the other hand, 89% know that Jeff Bezos owns Amazon, and 75% are aware that Jay-Z is married to Beyoncé.

While the above numbers are distressing, they are not surprising, as fewer than 20% of American colleges and universities require a course on U.S. government or history to graduate, according to ACTA.

The ACTA report is hardly a one-off. The Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey, released late last year, found that 34% of Americans could not name all three branches of government, 10% could name just two, 7% knew only one, and 17% didn’t know any. Additionally, when respondents were asked to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, 77% named freedom of speech, but just 40% knew that freedom of religion is included, 33% named the right to assembly, 28% knew freedom of the press, and a paltry 9% mentioned the right to petition the government.

As Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, points out, a U.S. citizenship test has been in place since 1986. The exam consists of 100 questions about American history, our system of government, and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.

Unanswered Questions About the Trump Assassination Attempt By Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/unanswered_questions_about_the_trump_assassination_attempt.html

Donald J. Trump didn’t have to run for president in 2015, or in 2020, or in 2024. He had a magnificent life. Why subject himself to the barbs and arrows of a political class and their media allies well-versed in the politics of personal destruction?

Only one reason: because he loved his country to the extent he was willing to sacrifice his wealth, livelihood and even his life to serve it.

Donald Trump is the only president to have left the White House poorer than when he took office.

I believe God himself protected Donald Trump on Saturday. Just a few millimeters in either direction, and the many bullets his would-be assassin fired at him would have blown his brains out.

I believe that God sends His guardian angels to protect those He chooses. Don’t ask me why or how He chooses whom to protect. But in my own life, I know I have been saved in so many times of great peril by a higher force, certainly not by my own hand. I have recounted some of those “close calls” in my book, And the Rest is History. After a while, saying you have been lucky is just not enough.

God extended a hedge of protection around Donald Trump. He saved him from a would-be assassin’s bullets for a purpose – His purpose. And that purpose can only be to turn His people back to Him.

The morning after the assassination, a blogger I have never met sent me Isaiah 54:17, which reads: 

No weapon that is fashioned against you shall prosper, and you shall confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, says the Lord.

It’s remarkable to watch leading Democrats preach to the nation about forgiveness and tolerance and coming together, when the hate-filled rhetoric they have employed non-stop since Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower in July 2015 has engendered the very intolerance they now berate.

Just days before the assassination attempt, Joe Biden himself told donors, “we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

Pro-Palestinian Group with Alleged Terror Ties Ordered to Provide Donor Lists to Virginia AG by Zach Kessel

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-group-with-alleged-terror-ties-ordered-to-provide-donor-lists-to-virginia-ag/?utm_

A Virginia court ordered the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) organization to produce documents detailing organizational structure, employees, and donors, among other pieces of information, state attorney general Jason Miyares (R.) announced Tuesday.

Miyares and his office opened an investigation into AMP in October 2023. The attorney general hopes to determine whether AMP has solicited contributions without having registered with the necessary state agencies, as well as the veracity of allegations that AMP has offered support to terrorist organizations.

In the civil investigative demand Miyares issued to AMP in October, the attorney general’s office wrote that, based on its investigation, it has reason to believe the organization may have “knowingly used or permitted the use of funds raised by a solicitation of contributions to provide support to terrorists, terrorist organizations, terrorist activities, or family members of terrorists.”

AMP has received attention for its role in supporting the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization, which has established chapters on college campuses across the country. Those chapters, in turn, have been behind waves of anti-Israel, pro-terror protests in higher education and on American streets since October 7.

Secret Service Director Claims She Couldn’t Stop Assassination Because of Sloped Roof “That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point.” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secret-service-director-claims-she-couldnt-stop-assassination-because-of-sloped-roof/

There’s one school of thought that says the federal government is run by evil monsters. Another that it’s run by bureaucrats who have no clue about what their organization actually does. Or how anything works.

And Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle strikes me as having absolutely no clue.

Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle says she has no plans to resign, even after the stunning revelation that the agency decided not to guard the roof from which Thomas Crooks opened fire on former President Donald Trump because it was too slanted.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she told ABC News in a startling admission.

“And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” she told the outlet.

Social media is full of memes of sloped roofs.

Secret Service personnel obviously do deploy, and in that particular setting, did deploy on sloped roofs. This is a dumb excuse by a dumb person told to a dumb media which is eager to accept any excuse that it’s given. But the only question is whether Cheatle knows she’s lying or her ample experience at PepsiCo and sucking up to Jill Biden left her with little time to figure out how anything in the field actually works.

“The Shooting of Donald Trump – Identity Politics and the Hatred that Ensues” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtottd.blogspot.com

Identity politics have divided us into warring camps. While it is terrible to accept the fact that we live in a time of such hatred, we do. The attempted assassination of Mr. Trump was the most recent and most violent. The intention of those who promoted identity politics may have been well-intentioned, but the consequences have been disastrous. Where division is sown violence is reaped.

I write as a conservative. I believe in family, tradition, the rule of law, limited government, free markets, a balanced budget in time of peace, and the freedom to follow one’s dreams, so long as one does no harm to others. I believe that government has a responsibility to keep us safe, our borders secure, to educate youth, and to provide for those unable to care for themselves. As well, we live in a global world; we cannot hide in isolation. Mr. Trump has never been my preference, but he served as a good President – at least in my opinion – for four years, and he did so under circumstances that would have undone most politicians. Elected President in 2016, he was deemed illegitimate by mainstream media and by most Democrats. With the help of a weaponized justice department, he was falsely accused of colluding with the Russians, with investigations interrupting his Administration. Four years later the intelligence community deliberately ignored the fact of Hunter Biden’s laptop, accusing Mr. Trump of being a Putin puppet. While never tarred and feathered, he has been investigated, denigrated, penalized, impeached and indicted. And now some nut has tried to kill him. He has been called a liar, fraudster and a threat to democracy – by those who misuse instruments of democracy to destroy him. Hollywood and social media elites have called for his death. The hypocrisy has been breathtaking, especially by those who inflict division, but then claim it is their desire to unite the country. While most politicians go to Washington and see their wealth increase, Mr. Trump saw his net worth decline by over a billion dollars during his four years as President.

American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation–And Could Again Yuval Levin

“The most important voice in the political culture” (Ben Shapiro) reveals the Constitution’s remarkable power to repair our broken civic culture, rescue our malfunctioning politics, and unify a fractious America

Common ground is hard to find in today’s politics. In a society teeming with irreconcilable political perspectives, many people have grown frustrated under a system of government that constantly demands compromise. More and more on both the right and the left have come to blame the Constitution for the resulting discord. But the Constitution is not the problem we face; it is the solution. 
 
Blending engaging history with lucid analysis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin’s American Covenant recovers the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines. Uncovering the framers’ sophisticated grasp of political division, Levin showcases the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society. Clear-eyed about the ways that contemporary politics have malfunctioned, Levin also offers practical solutions for reforming those aspects of the constitutional order that have gone awry. 
 
Hopeful, insightful, and rooted in the best of our political tradition, American Covenant celebrates the Constitution’s remarkable power to bind together a diverse society, reassuring us that a less divided future is within our grasp.