RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/22/2024-americas-year-of-living-dangerously/

Lame-duck presidencies, especially in the last six months of their final term, in general can offer opportunities for America’s enemies to take advantage of a perceived vacuum as one government transitions to the next.

But these normal changeover months are especially dangerous when a perceived weak or appeasing lame-duck president is likely to be replaced by a strong deterrent successor that will likely serve as a corrective to his disastrous policies.

James Buchannan (1857-1861), a northern but pro-South president, was a particularly anemic chief executive. He had done little if anything to try to deal with the growing rift between North and South, especially the furor over the Dred Scott decision and Bloody Kansas. Even when warned, Buchannan did little to beef up the U.S. Army or increase its weapon stockpiles to deter any potential secessionist state.

After Buchannan declined to run for a second term, the South understood that the abolitionist and anti-slavery Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln might well be elected in 1860—given the North/South split within the Democratic Party. And they understood that President Lincoln might well use force to stop secession.

Therefore, in the waning days of the Buchannan administration, after Lincoln’s victory, seven southern states seceded during the presidential transition, a confused North reacted little, more would follow, and a terrible Civil War became inevitable.

During the waning days of the crippled second term of Richard Nixon in summer 1974, communist North Vietnam saw a once deterrent president fatally weakened by Watergate. It was encouraged by a renewed antiwar movement, a likely soon anti-war Congress, and the next president, Gerald Ford—a probable caretaker soon to be replaced by an anti-war Democrat. And so in late 1974 and 1975, the communists renounced ignored peace accords, judged correctly that the directionless US would not help South Vietnam stop a massive invasion from the North, and thereby won the 12-year-long war.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/traumatic-brain-injuries-iran-militias-ad061562?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Iranian-backed militias launched another missile and rocket barrage at U.S. forces in Iraq on Saturday, and several Americans may have been injured. Will Iran pay any price for this latest assault?

U.S. Central Command said in a statement that “most of the missiles were intercepted by the [al-Assad Airbase] air defense systems while others impacted on the base. Damage assessments are ongoing.” It added that “a number of U.S. personnel are undergoing evaluation for traumatic brain injuries. At least one Iraqi service member was wounded.”

This appears to be one of the largest of the 140 or so attacks by Iranian-backed militias since Oct. 7 against the U.S. in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has responded a few times against the militias inside Iraq and Syria, as it has against the Houthi militia targeting commercial ships and U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The attempt to restore deterrence hasn’t worked.

That may be because the instigator of all this is Iran. None of these militias would stage these attacks without knowing they have the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If Iran thinks the U.S. won’t put Tehran’s military or commercial assets at risk, it has no incentive to stop the militias from attacking American targets.

The U.S. Commander in Chief is supposed to protect U.S. troops from having to risk “traumatic brain injuries” from enemy assault. Where is President Biden?

https://thespectator.com/topic/fani-willis-romance-keeps-get-trump-nathan-wade/

Some enterprising entrepreneur ought to find a way of collecting a cover charge for the entertainments that the Get Trump concession is currently offering the public free and for nothing.

At the moment, the first of my two favorite forays into the twilight zone are the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Trump. Carroll claims that sometime, she cannot remember exactly when, but it was about thirty years ago, Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the swank department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. A New York jury found Trump guilty of defamation and sexual abuse (but not rape) and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million of the crispest. Now she is back asking for more. Who knows whether she will get it. Stand by and pass the popcorn. 

Then down in Georgia, site of one of the four major lawfare assaults to damage Trump and make him radioactive to the electorate, Fani Willis, the district attorney, is after the former president because — it is alleged — he tried to overturn the 2020 election. How did he do this? By telling the secretary of state Brad Raffensperger that “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The conversation was taped and the New York Times went to town with it, claiming that Trump “pressured” Raffensperger to manufacture the votes. 

Vocabulary quiz: what is the difference between the words “find” and “manufacture?” Use each in a sentence. 

That’s not the sort of test the Times is likely to pass. Remember back during the 2016 presidential election campaign when Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s “lost” emails, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” The Times instantly accused him of “essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.” It reminded me of the passage in The Pickwick Papers when Pickwick’s landlady, Mrs Bardell, brings suit for breach of promise because of a couple of letters like this: “Dear Mrs. B. — Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.” “Gentlemen,” said the lawyer for the plantiff Bardell, “what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick! Chops! Gracious heavens! and tomato sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female to be trifled away, by such shallow artifices as these?” Ha, ha, ha. 

The anti-Trump legal fraternity needs lawyers like that chap.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/grammy-nominated-artist-releases-10-7-protest-song-we-are-not-ok/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Grammy-nominated recording artist John Ondrasik, known by the stage name “Five for Fighting,” released a protest song condemning skyrocketing antisemitism across America and the glorification of Hamas and its atrocities committed on October 7.

“We are not all right,” the song opens, “When we see young girls pulled from their homes, and dragged to the streets; when we see grandmothers being pulled away to children shot in front of the family.”

“We are not all right when right here in the city of New York you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place,” the music video continues showing footage of violent pro-Palestinian protesters spliced with Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.

“This is a time for choosing,” Ondrasik sings against bodycam footage of Hamas terrorists committing atrocities on October 7. “This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing,” the song continues.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/violent-pro-palestine-demonstrations?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself.

These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.”

What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause?

At the forefront of these demonstrations are various Islamic organizations often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as fringe Jewish anti-Zionist groups championing progressive causes such as climate justice and women’s rights. These groups find common ground in an ideology, ostensibly influenced by works of the French Martinican psychiatrist and post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon, that sees “liberation” and “decolonization” as a global revolutionary struggle and perceives their disruptive actions as a vital component of it. They believe that by obstructing crucial social services and public spaces, they effectively challenge superstructures deemed oppressive. This worldview is predicated on the notion that any inconvenience caused to innocent individuals is justified in the pursuit of societal transformation; their obstructive protest methods aren’t a defect, but a requirement of this worldview.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-bidens-laptop-real-joes-guardians-press-working-hard-truth

After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, last year many in the media belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. 

Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in congressional hearings. The Department of Justice has now again confirmed the authenticity of the device and added details on why these denials are unsupported.

This week, the Department of Justice confirmed that the laptop had been authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the cloud and the DOJ said that “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

That is only the latest such confirmation, but many continue to desperately cast doubts about the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop.

Goldman suggested that Hunter’s infamous laptop may have been “manipulated,” while speaking at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. 

Goldman attacked journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared:

“You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.”

https://thespectator.com/topic/course-american-empire-biden-trump/

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.” The skies are dark now, the people besieged by ravening hordes, the monuments broken and burning. A distant full moon presides over “Desolation,” the last canvas. The scene is populated by shaggy, shattered remnants of human ingenuity, vast blighted columns and porticos half overgrown by vegetation, not a human soul in sight. Ozymandias would be at home.

I have thought often about Cole’s painted morality tale these past months. Where do you suppose we are on the itinerary he traced? I’d say somewhere between “Consummation” and “Destruction.” Is the process inevitable, as Cole seems to have believed? There are heartening signs to suggest not.

Unfortunately, few of those signs are patent in the United States at the moment.

But just look at Argentina. As I write, Javier Milei, the new “anarcho-capitalist” president of Argentina, has embarked in earnest on a regimen of “shock therapy” for his troubled country. You think we have runaway inflation in the US? Well, we do. But it will soon be nearly 200 percent in Argentina.

Milei had barely taken office in December before he cut the government payroll by 5,000 jobs. He has abolished whole departments. He introduced a law legalizing the use of force for self-defense and decreed that welfare benefits would be stripped from anyone blocking traffic while protesting in the streets. He also banned the use of the word “free” to describe government largesse since the services are not “free.” On the contrary, they are paid for by the taxpayer. One commentator described this as “the most sensible law in world history.” Were it implemented in America, he noted, “the Democrat Party would literally not be able to campaign anymore.” Don’t hold your breath, though. Magical thinking obviates a multitude of unpalatable realities.

https://victorhanson.com/houthis-terrorists-trump-chasers-and-rare-moments-at-davos/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/the-strange-resurrection-of-a-failed-plagiarism-hit-on-neil-gorsuch/?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=article

The seriousness of plagiarism depends not only on the facts but also on the field of endeavor in which it occurs.

One of the more desperate efforts made in defense of Claudine Gay as she was toppled from her position at Harvard for plagiarism was to dredge up a failed hit from 2017 on Neil Gorsuch. During the battle over Gorsuch’s confirmation, John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett of Politico wrote that Gorsuch “copied the structure and language used by several authors and failed to cite source material in his book and an academic article.” Ed Whelan responded at the time.

Both noted that there were academic experts, including the “outside supervisors for Gorsuch’s dissertation” and “the general editor for Gorsuch’s book publisher,” who saw no issue with Gorsuch’s writings under the standards for writings on legal philosophy. To my eye, Gorsuch should nonetheless have been more careful in his citations in the examples offered by Bresnahan and Everett. Yet, even they conceded that the handful of challenged passages were “a small fraction of published works by Gorsuch, which include hundreds of legal opinions, academic articles, news articles and his book.”

Are these distinctions without differences? No. Plagiarism is generally bad, but the degree to which it is bad — and the reasons why — can vary greatly by the facts and the setting. As with many things, assessing whether it’s just a minor infraction or a serious firing offense requires judgment and standards.

Is it bad to pass off someone else’s words as your own? Generally, yes. But in some contexts, it’s the norm. Young lawyers are often asked to draft memos, briefs, and complaints. Even when there’s a certain amount of style involved, it’s encouraged to copy from somebody else’s prior work in order to save on time and costs, so long as you’re careful to make sure the research is up to date and you don’t inadvertently leave in facts from a prior setting. It’s the better practice to tell your boss — who often signs the thing before a court or client — that you used a prior precedent in drafting, but nobody gets judged for doing it whether or not they disclose that. Getting the final product done right, on time and on budget, is what matters. That’s quite a different context from journalistic writing, in which giving credit to the writer is important and people get fired for copying the work of others.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-great-jackass-terrorist-alliance

This weekend marked 100 days since Israeli civilians were brought as captives into Gazan tunnels: girls raped, men tortured.

Here, in hip New York, an unending series of escalating demonstrations hamper the city’s functioning and citizens’ general sense of trust and stability. What are the protesters calling for? An immediate Israeli ceasefire. Whom do they represent? An enormous coalition of jackasses.

If the thousands of Gothamites who pretend to care about Arabs (except when other Muslims oppress and slaughter them) really wanted a ceasefire, they would demand that Hamas release innocent civilians and renounce terrorism.

But they don’t actually want a ceasefire. What they want is to be jackasses.

In 2024, New Yorkers need to stop tolerating those who think the fun of disrupting the system is more important than everyone else’s daily lives.

Like cities nationwide, the Big Apple has been sliding down a slope from tolerating jerks to letting them ruin the joint. Since 2014, the post-Ferguson police-shooting moment has blurred the lines between protesters genuinely concerned with how police respond to lawbreakers and those who think lawbreaking is pretty groovy. The more civil faction (the non-jackasses) has been scared to resist this great stand against authority. So, when the most strident voices in the coalition insisted that minor offenses should not be policed, the non-jackasses indulged them, thinking it a necessary sacrifice, even if, deep down, they valued quality of life and public order.

But low-level offending matters. And while we should work to balance community and law-enforcement responses to bad behavior, pretending that such infractions are no big deal is to let the jackasses win. And winning they are: multiple overlapping policy and political shifts, each diminishing our seriousness about low-level crime, have enabled New York City’s masked, belligerent, solipsistic demonstrators to get away with mayhem.