RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/donald-trump-and-the-standard-of-evidence/

The headline on the New York Times story of ex-President Trump’s indictment is a wonderfully unintentional guide to the topsy-turveydom of American life in the Biden era: “US Justice System Put on Trial as Trump Denounces the Rule of Law”. To start with, the front-page piece is not a simple factual report—“Trump Indicted on Thirty-Seven Counts”, say—but “news analysis” which signalled Schumpeter’s definition of Marxism (“preaching in the garb of analysis”) even before Wokedom tightened its grip on US journalism.

It’s worse now, of course, and relentless too. An accompanying report inside warns in another headline that “Trump Backers Unleash Wave of Violent Threats, Worrying Some Analysts”. The worries of analysts don’t usually make it into headlines, and we don’t learn about the reactions of “other” analysts. Presumably, if quoted in the NYT, those complacent fellows would argue that the threats—one of which is the simple word “Retribution”—were religious and military metaphors used by all parties at times but, when employed by Republicans, more worrying than the actual if “largely peaceful” riots of the Left.

To revert to the front-page headline, though, Trump did not in fact “denounce the rule of law” unless every indicted man who proclaims his innocence is held to be denouncing it. He said that law enforcement had been “hijacked” by the Democrats, including elected Democratic prosecutors, to take out the most formidable opponent they face in next year’s presidential election, namely himself.

In a few paragraphs I’ll deal with the thirty-seven charges levelled against the former President by the Special Prosecutor looking into, inter alia, his retention of classified national security documents in insecure conditions in his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. These are serious charges and pose a real threat, namely a long prison sentence. But his claim that the Democrats had hijacked law enforcement to take him out of the 2024 election is largely true.

Largely? Well, Trump is probably not the most formidable challenger Biden could face next year. He may be the strongest candidate in the GOP primaries, but his negatives are so high with the full electorate that he would probably lose to the President where a challenger like Florida’s governor, Ron de Santis, would enter the race as the favourite.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/07/13/and-just-like-that-its-no-longer-an-insurrection-n1710334

And just like that, the January 6 insurrection is no more. And the deconstruction story is really something. At the center of this narrative switcheroo is non-other than Ray Epps.

Before we get to that, let’s remember how we got here. It took only moments for the Democrat media complex to anoint the January 6 breach and riot at the U.S. Capitol Building an “insurrection.” As if beckoned by an unseen force, narrative builders dutifully lined up to receive the official wafer on their tongues, and voilà! “Trump supporters” who had never committed an act of violence at years of peaceful and crowded rallies were eligible for a 20-year prison stretch.

Shortly thereafter, the insurrection became a deadly insurrection when the same media reported, wrongly, that police officers were killed by rioters on January 6.

The only ones who died on January 6 were killed by police.

Awful it was, but insurrection? No.

Now, however, insurrection is just passé.

And you can thank Ray Epps

https://www.frontpagemag.com/affirmative-action-battle-moves-on-to-the-military/

One of the Biden administration’s big arguments for racially discriminating against white and Asian students in college admissions was the need for military diversity. More than half of the ‘national interest’ section in its amicus brief argued that the military “depends on a well-qualified and diverse officer corps” which requires that colleges select for diversity over merit.

“It is not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions, including at the nation’s service academies,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court.

The Roberts decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard shot down affirmative action as a legal practice, but punted on the question of racial discrimination within the military and its service branch academies. A footnote briefly stated that, “no military academy is a party to these cases, however, and none of the courts below addressed the propriety of race-based admissions systems in that context. This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”

The idea that racial discrimination should be illegal at colleges, but still legal at service branch academies like the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy, is a loophole. Justice Sotomayor argued that the exception proves that “the Fourteenth Amendment does not categorically prohibit the use of race in college admissions.” And it’s hard to deny her reasoning. Either racially discriminating against students is legal or it’s illegal. National security can only go so far to justify an illegal practice especially when it’s a social element with an indirect effect.

Democrats quickly attacked Justice Roberts for seemingly leaving the carveout on military diversity that the Biden administration had demanded as a matter of national security.

“Adding insult to injury is that the Court exempted military service academies, like West Point and the Naval Academy, from its own ruling,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin complained. “So the majority on the Court does in fact recognize the inherent importance of a diverse military and that diversity makes our country not only more fair, but more stable and secure — but they refuse to allow our colleges and universities to hold the same values.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/12/ten-reasons-why-affirmative-action-died/

The end of affirmative action was inevitable. The only surprise was that such intentions gone terribly wrong lasted so long.

First, supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goal posts for the program’s success. Was institutionalized reverse bias to last 20 years, 60 years, or ad infinitum? Parity became defined as an absolute equality of result. If “equity” was not obtained, then only institutionalized “racism” explained disparities. And only reverse racism was deemed the cure.

Second, affirmative action was imposed on the back end in adult hiring and college admissions. However, to achieve parity, remediation early at the K-12 school level would have been the only solution. Yet such intervention was made impossible by teachers’ unions, the rise of identity politics and government entitlements. All were opposed to school choice, self-help programs, critiques of cultural impediments, or restrictions on those blanket entitlements,

Third, class, the true barometer of privilege, was rendered meaningless. Surrealism followed. The truly privileged Barack and Michelle Obama and Meghan Markel lectured the country on its unfairness—as if they had it far rougher than the impoverished “deplorables” of East Palestine, Ohio.

Fourth, affirmative action supporters could never square the circle of proving that racial prejudices didn’t violate the spirt of the Declaration of Independence and the text of the Constitution. What they were left with was the lame argument that because long ago the 90% white majority had violated their own foundational documents, then such past bad unconstitutional bias could legitimately be rectified by present-day “good” unconstitutional bias.

Fifth, supporters never adequately explained why the sins of prior generations fell on their descendants who grew up in the post-Civil Rights era. Nor could they account for why those who had never experienced institutionalized racism, much less Jim Crow apartheid or slavery, were to be compensated collectively for the suffering of long-dead individuals. No wonder 70% of the American people in many polls favored ending affirmative action including a half of African-Americans.

Sixth, there never was a “rainbow” coalition of shared non-white victimhood—a concept necessary to perpetuate the premise of white privilege, supremacy, and rage, so integral to race-based reverse discrimination. More than a dozen ethnicities earn more per capita than do whites.

Asians have been subject to coerced internment, immigration restrictions and zoning exclusions. Yet on average they do better than whites economically and enjoy lower suicide rates and longer life expectancies. The arguments for affirmative action never explained why Asians and other minorities who faced discrimination outperformed the majority white population. As a result, affirmative action ended up discriminating against Asians on the premise they were too successful!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pride-vs-shame/

Perhaps America needs its own walk of shame. If we had one, the traffic would likely be pretty heavy, but the results might be the redemption of our corrupt and tainted souls.

DUBROVNIK, Croatia – Twenty-one episodes of the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones” were filmed in this city of 16th-century high walls and complicated history. One of them was shot along a section of St. Dominic Street, known as the walk of shame.

The very concept of shame seems foreign to us today, like the stockades of the American Puritan era which were designed to humiliate those who violated what were then cultural norms and serve as a warning to others not to tread similar paths.

After Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was recently censured by the Republican House for promoting the Russia collusion fiction in the 2020 election, Democrats chanted “shame, shame, shame.” It’s nice to know they have some standards besides the double standards they usually display.

At the end of the LGBTQIA+ community’s celebration of “Pride Month,” it might be worthwhile to consider some of the downsides of pride and its opposite — shame, or humiliation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/loving_dad_joe_engages_son_in_life_of_crime.html

The propaganda ministry is in full spin mode, trying to explain why Joe Biden is parading around the world with Hunter in tow.  The two are together for state dinners, overseas junkets, and weekends at Camp David.  As the narrative goes, Hunter is a troubled man, victimized by the demon of addiction.  Any appearance of presidential impropriety is simply a loving father concerned about his son, holding him close to keep him out of trouble.

I say hogwash.

Organized crime bosses protect themselves from legal jeopardy by insulating themselves from the dirty work.  They use underlings to sell their product, collect the money, launder the money, and if necessary take the fall.  If a legal price is to be paid, it’s paid by the expendables.  The boss keeps them quiet with hush money, legal assistance, and witness intimidation.

Does anyone believe that a cartel boss helps an arrested underling out of love?  Nope.  He does it in service to his own selfish interests — which brings me to Hunter Biden’s loving father, Joe.

We’ve learned a great deal about the Biden family business in the last three years from abandoned laptops, congressional investigations, and federal whistleblowers.

We know that Hunter was working on a deal with a Chinese energy company in which 10 percent would go to the “big guy.”  We learned from Hunter’s business partner, Tony Bobulinski, that the “big guy” was Hunter’s code name for his dad, Joe Biden.  Oddly, Bobulinski was never interviewed by Biden’s consigliere or his crew, the Department of Justice.

What was Hunter selling to the Chinese?  We’ve learned that from WhatsApp text messages to Henry Zhao, the group chairman of China’s Harvest Fund Management.  He texted:

The Bidens are the best I know at doing exactly what the chairman wants from this [partnership].

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/12/56-of-voters-agree-biden-likely-took-bribes-in-office-ii-tipp-poll/

Whistleblowers allege President Joe Biden and his family have taken up to $30 million in illicit bribes and payments from foreign sources tied to China, Russia and Ukraine. Biden denies it. Do Americans believe him? No. By more than 2-to-1, they say they believe the whistleblowers, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The online poll of 1,341 adults, taken July 5-7, asked respondents how likely is it that the claims are true? The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

The results weren’t close. Americans, by 56% to 27%, called Biden bribery charges “likely,” rather than “unlikely.” Further broken down, the “likely” responses included 34% who called it “very likely” compared to 21% who called it “somewhat likely.” Among the “unlikely” responses, only 12% said it was “not at all likely,” while 15% termed it “not very likely.”

Among the remainder, 18% overall said they weren’t sure.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/10/biden-widely-criticized-after-admitting-to-military-shortages-in-televised-interview/

On Sunday, Joe Biden admitted during a televised interview that the United States is low on 155 mm artillery ammunition rounds, leading to widespread backlash for an act that essentially revealed classified military information to the entire world.

As Fox News reports, Biden made the remarks in an interview on CNN with Fareed Zakaria, while the subject of the Ukraine war was being discussed. Biden was defending his administration’s controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, which he called a “transition period” until more munitions can be produced and sent to the war-torn country.

“This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” Biden told Zakaria in the interview. “And so, what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to – not permanently – but to allow for this transition period while we get more 155 weapons, these shells, for the Ukrainians.”

The crucial line from the exchange – “and we’re low on it” – has led to criticism, mockery, and warnings that a major national security secret was just leaked live to the entire world, including America’s adversaries.

“Love when the president of America goes on CNN to tell everyone we’re low on ammo,” said political operative Logan Dobson on social media.

“Joe Biden broadcasting to the world that the US is low on 155mm shells. Moron.” tweeted Steve Guest, a conservative commentator. “Does Biden not care that our adversaries in China are listening?”

Meanwhile, Biden’s main challenger in the 2024 Democratic primaries, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., criticized the decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine at all, highlighting the White House’s past statements condemning the use of such weapons.

“Last year, WH Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the use of cluster bombs a ‘war crime.’ Now President Biden plans to send them to Ukraine. Stop the ceaseless escalation! It is time for peace,” Kennedy tweeted.

“Biden was opposed to cluster bombs in 1982 as well, when he opposed their sale to Israel,” Kennedy pointed out in another tweet, before rhetorically asking: “What happened to his conscience?”

In response to the backlash, an Administration official was forced to do damage control by walking back Biden’s remarks, claiming that “everything we send to Ukraine is in excess of that. So, the U.S. is not running out of ammunition ourselves.”

“We are authorizing cluster munitions to ensure that Ukraine is not left defenseless while we wait for our own domestic production of ammunition to ramp up substantially, which we are in the process of doing as are our allies and partners,” the official added. “These cluster munitions are a bridge as we significantly increase production of ammunition over the coming months – and will have much higher production levels soon.”

https://victorhanson.com/awakening-the-snoring-conservative-dragon-part-four/

What can we do to resist Woke? Here are steps 7-10.

7. Continue demanding changes at the university—the incubator of the entire woke revolution. The point is not to harm but to save America’s once premier institution. Conservatives should insist on a program to save higher education to ensure our national preeminence. So:

A. Tax endowment income, given the universities are not just partisan but hyper-partisan and activist. Knowing their enormous income is not tax-free might sober up presidents to eliminate the costly commissars of the DEI industry that only audit and monitor but never teach, create, or advance research.

B. Get the government out of the $2-trillion student loan racket. By the government backing these enormous loans, students more likely default, universities more likely jack up their annual costs above the rate of inflation, and school years bloat from four years to six to eight, as teen-agers become twenty- and thirty-something drifters, with 3 units here, 6 there, going into fatal debt for a major that is often pushed down their throats but ultimately worthless. Again, financial sobriety and reality would check most of the current commissar excess.

C. Cut off all federal funds to universities that will not ensure Bill of Rights protections to their faculty and students. If speakers are shouted down and attacked, or if students are not provided due process when accused of thought crimes or sexual harassment, then universities should simply self-fund and not count on the taxpayers to subsidize their unconstitutional excesses. Why do universities customarily get away with violating the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights acts by systematically segregating safe spaces, dorms, and graduation ceremonies on the basis of race?

D. Eliminate tenure and replace it with 5-year contracts that spell out required teaching performance, scholarship, and university service. Such requirements might curb politicking and put faculty back into the classroom and library.