RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/the_american_status_quo_as_we_edge_from_summer_to_fall.html

As we segue from the Month of the Autumn Leaf into the Month of the Pumpkin, let us contemplate a brief sketch of the status quo we face, in national defense, internationally, and domestically. And if some of these strike you as far-fetched, remember that, a mere decade ago, all of them would have struck you as far-fetched.

(1) National defense:

(a) We are at war with Russia, using Ukraine as our proxy.

(b) We are at war with China, although it has not yet become kinetic.

(c) China is preparing to invade Taiwan.

(d) China and Russia both have hypersonic missiles. We do not:

These weapons can attack with extreme speed, be launched from great distances, and evade most air defenses. They can carry conventional explosives or nuclear warheads. These weapons combine speed with the ability to fly at low altitudes and maneuver in flight, making them more difficult to spot by radar or satellite. That makes them almost impossible to intercept with current anti-missile systems. In a battle in the South China Sea, Beijing could use hypersonic missiles to more than double its reach, leaving U.S. ships in the region nearly defenseless, and could even strike Guam, home to thousands of U.S. troops and key military installations.

https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-downfall-of-ibram-kendi

During the height of the debate on critical race theory, Ibram X. Kendi, the Boston University professor of “antiracism,” attacked my work on MSNBC and other outlets. In response, I penned an op-ed for the New York Post warning that Kendi was the “false prophet of a dangerous and lucrative faith.”  

Now, a prediction I made—that Kendi’s unpopular ideology and bogus research would fail—has proven true. According to news reports, Kendi accumulated more than $40 million for his Center for Antiracist Research at BU, produced virtually no research, and then laid off nearly half of his employees, who accordingly accused him of mismanaging funds, failing to deliver key projects, and mistreating his team. In the wake of these allegations, Boston University announced an official investigation.

As I explained to John Roberts on Fox News:

This is part of a pattern that we saw in 2020. We saw record donations to groups like Black Lives Matter, to groups like Ibram Kendi’s so-called Anti-Racism Center, and now fast-forward three years and what we have seen is the BLM organization, the leaders looted it and headed to the hills. They decamped to their mansions and left the organization in shambles. And now we have Ibram Kendi’s Antiracism Center, which is the most spectacular academic failure in many years. They hoovered up $40 million and produced almost no research.

This really is at the heart of this movement. It’s empty. It’s nihilistic.

https://unherd.com/2023/09/will-hollywood-strike-back/

In the Fifties, television destroyed radio, many of whose stars were themselves survivors of the death of vaudeville, and persisted through radio and into film: The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields. And many of the first movie stars had come first from the music halls, such as Chaplin; Will Rogers became a movie star after his pre-eminence in vaudeville.

But the movie stars were contemptuous of the New Form, and hung back until the dam broke. (I recall casting discussions in New York in the Seventies themed: “Do you think he would consider doing a Movie of the Week…?”) Still, television and film rubbed on, misharnessed, until the current amalgamation. In 2013, I wrote and directed an HBO film, Phil Spector. On hearing of it, my young son said: “Dad, you’re doing a Made-For-TV Movie. That’s shameful.”

Now the new technology has, again, upset the applecart. Streaming has forever disrupted the old means of distribution, which, after all, is the determining factor in disseminating information — and, so, in determining content. Industrial production requires and rewards economies of scale and expenditure. The corporation buys in bulk, with neither time nor interest in that which one might call artistic integrity, which a comptroller, looking at numbers alone, could only understand as insubordination. The actually talented — those disposed and able to bring their idiosyncratic vision (art) to manufacturing — are as much of an obstruction as Chinese devotees of Feng Shui would be to the Hyundai production line. (To disrupt a production line is the original meaning of sabotage.)

There is a hopscotch effect in show business — it may be universal, but this is the only racket I know. The entrepreneurs and adventurers jump on the new thing. Some become successful, and the creators, actors, hucksters and thugs may exist in some sort of equilibrium until the tide turns.

With the coming of television, producers searched out the famous, to draw the viewers, but also hired the unknowns to work cheap. Early TV scripts were farmed out, one or several at a time, to individual writers (previously known as “writers”). There was a writers’ room, generally, only in comedy shows. No writers’ rooms were required for horse operas, and Warner Television churned them out on their lot, distinguishable only by their theme-songs. With the success of The Industry, land values increased. The movie lots — belonging to Paramount, Warners, Universal, Fox — cut down or eliminated the backlots where the films were made, turning them into cash. (Century City was the backlot of 20th Century Fox.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scale-of-alleged-biden-foreign-influence-peddling-unprecedented-in-history-of-d-c-corruption-impeachment-witness-testifies/

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, testifying during the first House impeachment inquiry hearing into President Joe Biden, said Thursday that while Washington, D.C., is “awash” with influence peddling, the “size and complexity” of the allegations against Biden and his family are unprecedented.

House leaders, he said, have a “duty” to determine if the president was involved in a pay-to-play scheme.

Turley was one of four witnesses — three Republicans and one Democrat — who testified during the hearing. None of the people who testified were direct fact witnesses to any crimes or to an alleged Biden-family scheme.

Republicans claim that there is a mountain of evidence that Biden’s family members, including his son Hunter and brother James, enriched themselves by selling the “Biden brand,” access to Joe Biden when he was vice president and a candidate for president, to foreigners.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio called it a “tale as old as time” and the “oldest story in the world.”

Turley, who previously testified in the impeachments of presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, said that comments by Hunter Biden and the “labyrinth of accounts and companies” used by the president’s family members to transfer money make the inquiry credible.

“The question is, did the president know? Did he encourage this type of corruption?” Turley said during questioning by Representative Glenn Grothman (R., Wis.). “You have to begin with the recognition that what Hunter Biden and his associates were doing was corrupt.”

Grothman asked Turley whether there was any precedent for the scale of foreign influence peddling Biden is alleged to have participated in.

“Influence peddling is the favorite form of corruption in Washington, D.C., and this city is awash in it,” Turley responded. “But have I seen anything of this size and complexity? No.”

https://victorhanson.com/joe-bidens-so-called-successful-and-effective-presidency/

So, we are assured by David Ignatius that Biden has had such “a successful and effective” presidency that he must now step down, deprive us of his genius, and rest upon his laurels?

All of Biden’s initiatives now poll below 50 percent. Biden himself struggles to poll above 40 percent. That is no surprise given his record of governance.

Candidate Biden by design had told illegal aliens to come into the U.S. during the 2020 campaign. And they immediately took him up on it. Nearly eight million have now swarmed in, without background checks, medical exams, COVID vaccinations and testing, or any examination at all. We will deal with that disaster for decades to come.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was appointed to lie that the border was secure, on the expectation that his erasure of it altogether would not be impeachable, given political realities. So egregious were the arriving numbers and annihilation of U.S. immigration law, that even Democrats and leftists in Chicago and New York now want illegal aliens to go back to Texas (but not to Mexico), as they de facto redraw the U.S. border on Texas’s northern state boundaries.

We don’t dare call the Biden invitation to eight million, “The Great Replacement Theory” of altering the demography to ensure future leftwing voters. “They,” however, boast of just that agenda with slogans and book titles like “The New Democratic Majority” and “Demography is Destiny.”

Look at the interest rate, the inflation rate, and the price of gas and diesel since Biden took office and the squeeze explains why he does not poll 40 percent confidence on the economy. Ditto crime. The administration smiles as Soros-elected prosecutors downgrade felonies to misdemeanors, and misdemeanors to nothingness. The embarrassing lunacy of defunding the police is now rarely mentioned because police forces nationwide have been virtually defunded and even the Biden people are not happy with the scary results.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-kruiser/2023/09/27/senate-forces-fetterman-to-wear-big-boy-pants-passing-a-formal-dress-code-n1730465

Our seemingly long national nightmare is over: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will no longer be able to dress like a homeless crackhead at work.

After Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a unilateral decision to relax the unwritten dress code to accommodate Pennsylvania’s most notorious outpatient, his colleagues decided to get it in writing.

CBSNews.com:

The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution formalizing business attire as the proper dress code for the floor of the chamber by unanimous consent.

This comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer chose to stop enforcing the unwritten requirement, and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman’s casual dress became a flashpoint in the Capitol.

The bipartisan bill from Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney requires that members abide by a real dress code – rather than an unwritten custom – when on the Senate floor, that includes a coat, tie, and slacks for men.

“Though we’ve never had an official dress code, the events over the past week have made us all feel as though formalizing one is the right path forward,” Schumer said. “I deeply appreciate Senator Fetterman working with me to come to an agreement that we all find acceptable, and of course I appreciate Sen. Manchin and Sen. Romney’s leadership on this issue.”

Savor the moment, my fellow Americans, this may be the last reach-across-the-aisle, Kumbaya vote we see on either side of Capitol Hill for a while.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-booby-trap-for-a-republican-president/

The Biden administration is setting a booby trap in case a Republican wins the presidency in 2024.

Last Friday, the White House unveiled a proposed rule that would make it even harder than in the past for an incoming Republican president to wrestle control of the left-leaning federal bureaucracy and actually implement the conservative policies promised to voters.

Of the 2.2 million federal civil workers, only 4,000 are presidential appointees. The rest stay in their jobs, from one administration to the next, protected by rules that make it nearly impossible to discipline or replace them.

They overwhelmingly favor the Left. A staggering 95% of unionized federal employees who donate to political candidates give to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Only a tiny 5% support Republicans.

Some federal workers in high positions slow-walk or even derail a Republican president’s agenda — and get away with it.

Why bother to vote if the left-leaning deep state stays in charge no matter who wins the presidency?

GOP candidates Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis are vowing to conquer this obstructionism.

Everett Kelley, union president of the American Federation of Government Employees, claims GOP contenders want to “politicize routine government work.” Nonsense. We’re not talking about mail carriers. It’s time to make lawyers, PhDs and other top-level career bureaucrats implement the president’s agenda, not their own.

After Trump won in 2016, they went to town neutralizing him on almost every policy front, explains James Sherk, special assistant to the White House Domestic Policy Council under Trump.

Career lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division flat out refused to challenge Yale University’s discrimination against Asian American applicants. Trump had to recruit lawyers from other divisions. After Joe Biden became president, the DOJ dropped the case. But the same career lawyers who refused to sue Yale made the losing argument in support of affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/28/biden-menendez-and-michelle-birds-of-a-bribery-feather/

Q: What is the difference between what Sen. Bob Menendez is charged with, what President Joe Biden is being investigated for, and the speech Michelle Obama gave in Germany on Monday?

A: Only the dollar amounts.

Just as Democrats were ramping up calls for Menendez to step down over bribery charges filed against him, and as House Republicans started their impeachment inquiry into whether Joe Biden used son Hunter to bribe foreign officials, Obama was reportedly getting paid an obscenely large amount of money for a one-hour talk on “diversity.”

These are all variations on a theme. Call it bribery, or extortion, or abuse of power, or whatever you want. This is how Democrats get rich these days. They expand the size and power of the federal government, then sell access and favors to the highest bidders.

Think about Michelle’s speech for a minute. According to the Daily Mail, she was paid $741,000, which means that by the time she was six minutes into her speech, she’d made more money than 50% of households in the United States make in a year.

This reported fee is also more than three times the already criminally large amount she normally gets paid to read words someone else wrote for her.

So, what makes Michelle suddenly three times more valuable? Did she discover a cure for cancer? A limitless, free, source of clean energy? An end to world hunger? Did she unlock the secrets of faster-than-light space travel? Or announce a plan to bring world peace?

Hardly. She is a talentless woman who happens to be married to a former president. The organizers of the event and 5,000 people in attendance most likely have already forgotten whatever it was she said.

The one and only reason she commanded that price is because of the current buzz that she might run for president next year, given that Biden seems unlikely to last until November 2024, let alone January 2029. The organizers of the event were buying political influence, not insights.

How is this different from what Biden was doing when he was selling access through his drug-addled son?

How is it any different from what the money-grubbing Clintons were doing with their bogus “Clinton Foundation,” which saw donations skyrocket when people thought she might be the next president. As we reported when we were with Investor’s Business Daily, donations to the Clinton Foundation cratered as soon as Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/philadelphia-looting-target-store-closing-retail-theft-crime-1ee6de3c?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

You may have heard that a mob of teenagers looted stores in downtown Philadelphia on Tuesday night, and Target said the same day it is closing nine stores in four states because of rampant crime. Rack up more victories for progressive prosecutors.

The mobs in Philly hit Apple,Lululemon and Foot Locker stores in Center City, which ought to be a safe space for civilized commerce. The Foot Locker store was “ransacked in a coordinated attack,” said police. Police have made more than 50 arrests and are investigating property damage and theft elsewhere in the city. Some 76 incidents have been reported.

and Foot Locker stores in Center City, which ought to be a safe space for civilized commerce. The Foot Locker store was “ransacked in a coordinated attack,” said police. Police have made more than 50 arrests and are investigating property damage and theft elsewhere in the city. Some 76 incidents have been reported.

Interim Police Commissioner John Stanford said police are looking into whether “there was possibly a caravan of a number of different vehicles that were going from location to location.” He added, “Everyone in the city should be angry.”

Anger is justified in particular toward District Attorney Larry Krasner, who waves away property crime. His office reports 424 retail theft charges so far in 2023—compared to more than 1,500 by the same date in 2017, the year before he took office. Reports of retail theft in Philly have increased by more than 30%—to 13,330—compared to a year ago, according to the city’s latest weekly crime report.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/michelle_obama_got_750000_for_a_single_speech_in_munich.html

Debate is raging about whether Michelle Obama will step in to save the day for Democrats if both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are yanked from the top of the ticket. Meanwhile, though, Michelle isn’t letting any grass grow under her feet. Instead, she jetted off to Munich to give a single speech, in exchange for which she collected 700,000 euros, which is equivalent to over $740,000. Given how rich the Obamas are, one has to wonder about her price tag…although I have some guesses.

I’m not a Michelle Obama fan. She came from an affluent black Chicago family; got into the Ivy Leagues (probably through affirmative action, given the childishly poor quality of her bachelor’s thesis); obtained jobs for which she was not qualified and that required no work but nevertheless paid her very, very well; and ended up as America’s First Lady for eight years. Along the way, she and her husband amassed at least $70 million, a wealth package that includes three mansions, one in D.C., one in Martha’s Vineyard, and one in Hawaii.

That level of wealth is impressive when you consider Barack Obama’s considered opinion that “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” But of course, for leftists, enough is never really enough. The richest people in the world are leftists who squirreled away a bit of money for themselves—e.g., Hugo Chavez, Yasir Arafat, every Soviet dictator, Fidel Castro, and, now, the Obamas. Oh, and let’s not forget Bernie Sanders, who used to inveigh against millionaires and billionaires until he became a millionaire. Then, he only had a problem with billionaires.

But back to Michelle. Here’s the reason I don’t like her: Despite her wealth and prestige, Michelle Obama is a woman who feels that life has done her wrong. She’s a race hustler who waves her skin color around like an angry flag. If you don’t worship at her feet, it’s not because you dislike her values or her personality. It’s because you’re part of a systemically racist, capitalist, American system that offends her to the core, despite her having benefitted from that same capitalist, American system in a way few people ever have or will.