RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/confederate-statue-in-arlington-cemetery-to-stay-for-now-federal-judge-rules/

A federal judge intervened on Monday to stop the removal of an Arlington National Cemetery monument commemorating national reunification after the Civil War.

U.S. district judge Rossie Alston issued a temporary restraining order shortly after work began Monday morning to remove the Civil War landmark, which the Defense Department ordered to be removed by January 1.

Alston’s ruling was delivered in response to a lawsuit that sought the restraining order. A preservation group called Defend Arlington, which is tied to Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed the suit Sunday in Alexandria, Va. The judge will hear opinions from both parties on Wednesday before deciding whether to extend the restraining order.

The plaintiffs alleged the U.S. Army, which runs the cemetery, is violating regulations by seeking a quick removal that will possibly “desecrate, damage, and likely destroy” the monument “as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places,” according to the lawsuit. An attorney for the plaintiffs reportedly said they have evidence that the hasty deconstruction project would disturb grave sites.

Over the weekend, Arlington National Cemetery said it will ensure the protection of “the surrounding landscape, graves, and headstones,” while announcing tentative plans to remove the Confederate memorial by December 22. The cemetery intends to comply with a congressional mandate that was issued after an independent commission recommended its removal last year, as part of a larger effort to rename military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/why-a-formal-impeachment-inquiry-is-now-necessary/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

To make the serious allegations against the Bidens penetrate the public consciousness, Republicans must stage their own show.

Since the prospect was first raised, I have been of the view that the Republican Party would be better off moving too slowly than too fast in its inquiry into the Biden family’s peculiar business dealings. James Comer and Chuck Grassley have done sober and sedulous work over the past couple of years, and I have worried that, if they were to run out over their skis, they would fatally undermine their own efforts. As National Review’s editors correctly observed this week, impeachment is ultimately a political question, not a legal question, and it is thus subject to the slings and arrows of demagoguery and the vicissitudes of public opinion. Hitherto, my advice to the GOP has been to keep up the good work and wait for the right moment. An inquiry was already ongoing. What need could there be to formalize it?

I have changed my mind. Naturally, I still consider it imperative for the Republicans to remain diligent and shrewd and for all involved to stick assiduously to the facts. But, having watched the brazen manner in which both the White House and the press have continued to stonewall, I have come to the conclusion that a more ceremonial investigation is, in fact, necessary. In theory, the media ought to be keenly interested in informing the country of where things stand. In practice, its leading lights have effectively been working for the president. If the GOP is to have any chance of conveying what it has found thus far — and, despite the foot-stamping and gaslighting, what it has found thus far is extremely interesting — it will be obliged to do so under its own steam. We are a long, long way away from Woodward and Bernstein. To break through, the Republicans will need to stage their own show.

Thus far, the White House’s response has been to deny everything in the hope that the questions will go away. And, thus far, that has worked. Why? Certainly, it is not because President Biden’s denials have been proven reliable. Far from it! Asked recently whether he had done anything wrong, Biden was categorical: “I did not,” he replied. “It’s just a bunch of lies.” Perhaps so. But one cannot help but notice that this is exactly how President Biden has spoken about all of the other allegations, too. “I have never talked with my son or my brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period,” Biden said in 2019. Actually, he had. “My son has not made money, in terms of thing about, what are you talking about — China,” Biden insisted in 2020. The records show that his son’s firm made $11 million there. “That’s not true,” Biden said this year, when asked whether “Hunter Biden’s business associates sent over $1 million to three of your family members.” As it happened, it was. Now, President Biden is claiming that he was not financially involved with his son’s business — or, as CNN is putting it, that that he was not “improperly” involved with his son’s business. This may turn out to be true — we’ll see. Given how the rest of his denials have panned out, however, it ought at least to be treated with skepticism.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/18/we-are-well-beyond-hypocrisy/

The abject narcissism of the insular Left is startling. They apparently believe the American public is amnesiac enough to forget what leftists once did, now that they’re doing the utter opposite. And they assume we are to discount their hypocrisy and self-absorption simply because they self-identify as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.

Impeachment

The Left is saturating the airwaves with outrage over the current House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry. They allege that formally investigating Joe Biden’s role in the family grifting operation is somehow a poor constitutional precedent, if not out-of-bounds entirely.

So we hear further arguments that it will be unwise to impeach a first-term president when he loses his House majority, that there is no reason to “waste” congressional time and effort when Biden will be automatically acquitted in the Democratically controlled Senate, and that the impeachment is cynically timed to synchronize with president’s reelection efforts.

All of these are the precise arguments many of us cited when Donald Trump was impeached in December 2019 (as his reelection campaign began, and immediately after being cleared of the 22-month, $40-million-special-counsel Russian-collusion hoax).

The Democrats tried to remove an elected president over a phone call without a special counsel’s report. So Trump was impeached only after the 2018 election led to a Democratic House majority, which went from eating up nearly two years of his administration in the Russian-collusion hoax straight into the impeachment farce. There was no concern about the cost to the nation of putting an elected government into a continual state of siege.

There is one difference, though, between the Trump impeachment and the Biden impeachment inquiry. Donald Trump was impeached because he accurately accused the members of the Ukrainian government of paying Hunter Biden, with his zero fossil fuel expertise, an astronomical sum to serve on the Burisma board—as the costly quid that earned the lucrative quo from his dad Vice President Joe Biden.

No one now denies that Joe Biden got prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired by threatening to cancel legislatively-approved U.S. aid. Shokin knew about the skullduggery through which the Biden family eventually received $6.5 million from Ukraine—and so Biden ensured his firing, and publicly bragged about it in performance-art fashion.

In sum, Trump had a perfect right as commander in chief to delay (he did not cancel) aid to Ukraine, to ensure that its government was not still paying off the Bidens for their lobbying efforts on its behalf.

https://www.cfact.org/2023/12/13/the-u-s-strategic-petroleum-reserve-only-has-a-20-day-supply-for-the-country/

In 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo against the United States, triggering a crude oil crisis that sent the U.S. economy into a recession. To mitigate any future shortages of oil, President Gerald Ford signed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, which established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

The SPR is centrally located along the Gulf Coast, where the oil can be distributed to nearly half of all U.S. oil refineries using interstate pipelines or barges.

Interestingly, California, the 4th largest economy in the world, has no access to the SPR as there are no pipelines over the Sierra Mountains to reach the “California Energy Island”.

A few years after the SPR was authorized, in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis in 1977, the Department of Energy was established to lessen our dependence on foreign oil.

Today, California, the 4th largest economy in the world, California is importing almost 60 percent of its crude oil demands from foreign countries to support the state’s 9 International airports, 41 Military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in America!

Now, after 50 years, the Department of Energy (DOE) is comprised of approximately 14,000 federal employees, over 95,000 management and operating contractors, 83 field locations, and a $48 billion dollar budget, the United States remains a net crude oil importer. Although exports increased in the first half of 2023, the United States’ demands have also been increasing, resulting in imports exceeding exports, meaning the U.S. remains a net crude oil importer.

The United States, as a net crude oil importer, continues to rely on foreign countries to run the 118 international airports in the United States and the 500 Military airports in the United States.

Despite efforts from a group of Republican lawmakers, a Confederate statue in the Arlington National Cemetery will be removed in the coming days.

The Reconciliation Monument, known as the Confederate Statue, is part of the push to remove military installations named after the Confederacy in the wake of the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

According to a press release from the national cemetery, the statue will be removed from the cemetery by Dec. 22.

The move to remove the statue is in compliance with the Congressional mandate to remove all Confederate memorials by Jan. 1, 2024.

The Congressional mandate, passed in 2020, declared that the Department of Defense must remove all “names, symbols, displays, monuments, and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America” by Jan. 1, 2024.

An Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson confirmed to Fox News Digital that safety fencing has been installed around the Confederate Memorial as preparation begins to deconstruct the memorial, which was erected in 1914.

While the work occurs, the surrounding landscape, graves, and headstones will be protected, the cemetery said.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2023/12/16/us-relies-on-china-drc-abusive-labor-for-key-mineral-n4924807

Net zero’s dirty little secret is the African child labor and China’s forced labor for mining cobalt. But what that also means is that the United States is heavily dependent on our existential enemy and child labor for one of the most important minerals in modern society.

Even NPR recognizes the problem. “Right now, most of the cobalt the US and its allies use comes from mines that are owned or controlled by China or the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the outlet reported. Of course, NPR did not explain that those supposedly wonderfully eco-friendly electric cars, besides being unreliable, are a lot dirtier than environmentalists admit, precisely because of that cobalt mining for their batteries. But our phones also require cobalt. The need for lithium ion batteries made relatively unimportant cobalt a highly desired substance within the last few decades. The U.S. was set to have one cobalt mine in Idaho, but it closed before starting to operate. We need these mines — not to chase the Biden administration’s impossible “net zero” dreams, but because the electronics that form such a key part of our society require cobalt.

I previously highlighted the ethical concerns around cobalt mining for electric vehicle (EV) batteries. According to “Ethical Consumer” in 2022: “70% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.” But there’s a massive child labor problem in the DRC. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), child labor is involved in Congo’s cobalt ore, copper, diamond, gold, tantalum ore, tin ore, and tungsten ore mining. Despite the smug smile on your hippie uncle’s face as he drives his Tesla, his toxic EV battery is dependent on exploitation of kids.

It gets worse. Much of the DRC’s cobalt is under the influence or control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which also has a modest little goal of taking down America and dominating the world. As of March, “China’s share of cobalt production is expected to reach half of global output, up from 44 percent currently. China’s cobalt refining reached 140,000 metric tons in 2022–77 percent share of the world’s refining capacity.” So your phone quite possibly depends on our worst enemy for its cobalt. That’s not exactly what we’d call an encouraging state of affairs. Oh, by the way, Hunter Biden was part of a venture that helped the Chinese buy one of the world’s biggest cobalt deposits.

https://www.aol.com/im-not-progressive-fetterman-breaks-120000771.html

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is breaking with progressives on hot-button issues with his fiery support for Israel and calls for Democrats to engage on tougher immigration laws, disappointing some on the left [who want more potential Democratic voters] as he shows an independent streak.

He’s also continually scolding Democrats for not pushing Sen. Bob Menendez out of office after he was indicted on federal charges of taking bribes and acting as a foreign agent for Egypt, which the New Jersey Democrat denies.

In the 2022 campaign, Fetterman’s ties to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., prompted GOP opponent Mehmet Oz to tell voters he’d be a mere “sidekick” for the democratic socialist. But Fetterman’s recent stances point to an unorthodox brand of blue-collar liberalism, with a dash of outsider populism, in a purple state that is expected to be hotly contested again in the 2024 elections.

In an interview, the first-term Pennsylvania Democrat said his critics shouldn’t be surprised.

“I’m not a progressive,” Fetterman told NBC News. “I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right [not wrong] side of that. And immigration is something near and dear to me, and I think we do have to effectively address it as well.”

Fetterman insisted he can be pro-immigration while also favoring policies to restrict the flow of migration to manageable levels, disagreeing with progressives who oppose new limits on asylum and bash some of the ideas in the negotiations as cruel.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/multi-culti-reckoning/

The explosion of support for Hamas’s assault on human decency could well turn out to be the high-water mark of the progressive Left. The authoritarian multicultural ideology generated on campuses and transmitted dutifully by the established media has reached its apex and may now begin to descend.

The signs are tentative but some are unmistakable. Corporate and university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments are being slashed, and increasingly seen as both burdensome and discriminatory toward whites, Jews, and Asians. One-third of DEI professionals lost their jobs in 2022. Brands that posted Pride month messages in 2022, such as Lego and Miller Lite, have abandoned such posturing. Even the Navy deleted Pride-related messaging from Instagram and Twitter.

Perhaps more significant may be the rebellion of donors to the leading universities, prime movers of the ideology that drives everything from the DEI establishment. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and universities and foundations alike. The overt hostility toward Israel on campuses, and the resulting feeling of threat among Jewish students, makes Jewish and non-Jewish donors wonder where their money is going.

Even liberal Jews, such as Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky, have been shocked by the rise of racialized and antisemitic politics at prestigious institutions. A possible loss of Jewish voters matters little at the presidential level but could prove relevant in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Unlike their French, Canadian, and British co-religionists, they may function as a rearguard in reining in the far Left.

But the biggest loss may be financial, as well as intellectual. As William Domhoff pointed out in his 1972 book Fat Cats and Democrats, wealthy Jews have been, since the New Deal, major leading donors of the Democratic Party. Jews provide roughly half of all donations, and comprise many of Biden’s top contributors.

This shift, however, extends well beyond Jews, as many long-time Democrats recoil from the party’s embrace of an ideology—propounded by influential leftist intellectuals such as Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, and Michel Foucault—that justifies criminal violence if committed by an oppressed identity group, a policy calculated to spark ever more ethnic turmoil.