RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/the-failure-of-progressive-criminal-justice-reforms

For the last decade, radical prosecutors and progressive politicians have been proposing and enacting illogical criminal-justice policies, often with little consideration for the real-world effects of these ideas. Enough time has passed for an evidence-based assessment of how these policies have played out in the real world.

Gun Buybacks: Politicians in big cities believe that gun-buyback programs will reduce the violent crime that is spiking in America’s urban centers. But comprehensive research shows no evidence that such programs work. Philadelphia just completed a three-year gun-buyback program that yielded over 1,000 firearms. Not a single recovered firearm was linked to violent crime and, during the course of the program, Philadelphia set new all-time records for homicides. “It’s not reaching the area of the community that’s possessing illegal guns and using them,” says criminologist Joseph Giacalone. “It’s political theater.”

“Violence Interrupters”: Progressive prosecutors tout violence interrupters—former gang members and convicts who mediate disputes on the streets—as a serious weapon against crime. Cities led by “reform” prosecutors, such as Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia have staked a lot on this idea. The results have not been encouraging. Multiple violence interrupters have been murdered in Baltimore. In Indianapolis, the former convict in charge of training violence interrupters was arrested for threatening a woman and had to be fired. In Philadelphia, a violence interrupter shot three people in a bar while he was working his anti-violence job. And a recent research paper states that violence interrupters, despite their tough histories, are suffering from severe trauma, mainly because they are being exposed to the type of violence that police officers face every day (imagine that). The real question for violence-interruption programs is whether they might be adding fuel to the fire of violent crime.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/29/the-short-life-and-amazingly-fast-death-of-the-fbis-mar-a-lago-play/

Our country is far from healthy today, but a collective laugh at the FBI’s joke of an affidavit is a long-needed step in the right direction.

The FBI’s news cycle just ain’t the same as it once was.

Mere moments after the Department of Justice and FBI released the near-completely redacted affidavit they used to justify raiding former President Donald Trump’s home, their super-dooper-secrecy was the subject of widespread ridicule.

They didn’t even catch a full minute’s peace. No Republican senators rushed to their defense (though a few were notably quiet). There was no “let’s wait and see” from the usual deep state apologists.

Instead, both Republican politicians and center-right media were quick to hit back against what they correctly viewed as a middle finger to both the court that ordered the affidavit’s release, and the American people who expect transparency when the state raids its political opponents.

It’s good to see. It’s strong and healthy that not all Americans nod along when the FBI targets former presidents, murmuring that he must have done something wrong. This wasn’t always the case, though.

Just a few short years ago, the Department of Justice would enjoy the benefit of the doubt, from voters and politicians alike. Seven short years ago, we would have wondered what Trump had done that was so bad the straight-shooters at the DOJ couldn’t even tell us.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/moral-equivalence-or-moral-idiocy-bruce-thornton/

“Moral equivalence” is a rhetorical device that equates two phenomena that are or appear to be equally moral or immoral. It generally is used in two ways. The first reflects, like the dying Mercutio’s “a pox on both your houses,” a disgust with both alternatives. Many voters, for example, believe the choice between Democrats and Republicans to be a false one, as both parties at heart serve the corporate and big-government interests of economic and social elites.

The other version of moral equivalence is more dangerous and insidious. It consciously ignores the fundamental differences, both factual and moral, between two contrasting political policies, factions, or ideologies in order to excuse or rationalize the more dangerous and destructive one. The Cold War and the Israeli-Arab conflicts are the most consequential––and dangerous––examples of this trope.

Both uses of “moral equivalence” are impediments to coherent thinking and moral clarity, though the “pox on both your houses” type is sometimes deserved. There are fundamental similarities that define the bipartisan, managerial elite establishment that for many justify rejecting both parties. That sentiment explains why we have a substantial number of voters who register as “independents,” as well as a substantial populist movement––and why Donald Trump was able to get elected president.

The Left’s typical habit of making Nazism and Soviet communism starkly opposed political systems illustrate the second type. This false contrast harmed our foreign policy by diminishing communism’s lethal totalitarianism and inhuman evil. In fact, Nazism and communism, whatever their superficial differences, in foundational terms were morally equivalent in their disrespect for human life, rights, and freedoms. As such, they were clear moral opposites to the liberal democracies that honor those unalienable rights.

This fact contradicts, for example, the Left’s false moral equivalence between the tyrannical Soviet Union and the free liberal democracies of the West. This canard was used to make the U.S. responsible for the Cold War, and to mask the role of Soviet aggression and subversion in fomenting the conflict. Oliver Stone’s 2012 “documentary” The Untold History of the United States is a textbook example of how a specious, ahistorical moral equivalence is used to make a moral condemnation of the United States as the instigator of the Cold War.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/30/who-are-the-real-semi-fascists/

President Joe Biden caused quite a stir late last week after accusing supporters of former President Donald Trump of following a political creed of “semi-fascism.” But it’s yet another case of the far-left Democratic Party projecting its own grievous sins on the political opposition.

This was Saul Alinsky’s 13th rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The Biden administration and the Democrats are following this rule to a T.

They constantly call Republicans, conservatives and those “deplorable” moderate Americans in middle America the most vile names – “racists,” “fascists,” “Nazis,” and worse – and have launched an all-out, non-stop Deep State campaign against the man they fear the most, Donald Trump.

Thus came this not entirely unexpected but wholly unpresidential and hate-filled diatribe by Biden just last week:

“What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy … it’s like semi-fascism,” Biden charged at last Thursday’s Democratic National Committee “Build a Better America” rally in Rockville, Maryland.

“Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans have made their choice,”  Biden went on. “To go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division.

“We’re at a serious moment in our nation’s history. The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security, they’re a threat to our very democracy,” he added. “They refuse to accept the will of the people, they embrace political violence.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/i_was_wrong_about_trump.html

I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024. I was wrong. I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable. Some people want Trump without his vices. I was among them, until yesterday, when I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.”  It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump’s character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect. I need to man up in my defense of the former President’s virtues. The speech was among the most pointed I have heard and deserves some exposure. Klingenstein says:

Other Republicans say some version of “I like Trump policies but I don’t like the rest of him.” This gets it almost backwards. Although Trump advanced many important policies, it is the ‘rest of him’ that contains the virtue that inspires the movement… Trump was born for the current crisis, a life and death struggle against a totalitarian enemy I call woke communism… that controls all the cultural and economic powers in America…

[Trump] revealed, not caused, the divide in this country. In war, you must make a stand… Trump is a manly man… traditional manhood, even when flawed, is absolutely essential… Trump plays to win… There are no clean hands in a fistfight…Trump is unreservedly, unquestionably pro-America… Trump is a refreshing break from the guilt and self-loathing that marks our age…

It is anti-Americanism that makes so many of us very angry: The Left have trashed America’s Founding and her history to the point where some believe it virtuous to hate America. Rather than advocating forgiveness for sins, the Left is advocating hair shirts, self-flagellation, and perpetual guilt. It is un-American and certainly un-Christian.

Trump thinks we can vanquish all comers if we just put our minds to it, and he’s right… Courage never demands perfection… Trump over and over said exactly what political correctness prohibits one from saying… Trump said Haiti is a shithole and that representative Maxine Waters has a low IQ. These were not racist lies. They were uncouth, politically incorrect observations with which most of us would agree but would not dare say.

In 2016, we loved Trump for his outspokenness. But many seem to have changed their minds without cause; Trump is the same today as he was before he was elected. The very things we disdain today are the things that made him the man for our time.

From morning to night, we were told that Trump is a racist. But endless repetition does not make it true. It isn’t. Trump’s contempt for political correctness showed patriotic Americans that its ever-tightening grip could be loosened… It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Trump’s fight against political correctness, a fight in which most Republicans are reluctant to engage… Trump treated the woke media with the same contempt he treated political correctness, provoking their outrage and revealing their utter corruption… it must be defeated.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/28/american-ayatollahs/

What do Salman Rushdie, Dave Chappelle, and Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) have in common?

Not much at first glance. One is an erudite writer who was once married to the stunning Padma Lakshmi. The other is a fast-talking, streetwise comedian who might just say anything for a laugh. And finally Zeldin is a Jewish GOP Congressman running for governor of New York. But the recent attack that nearly killed Rushdie is a reminder that the three, and many others in modern life, actually have a lot more in common than may seem obvious. 

Salman Rushdie was a relatively obscure artsy author when he penned The Satanic Verses. That 1988 novel drew attention and caused a stir. That stir soon became a major controversy and riled up Ayatollah Khomeini, the iron-fisted Muslim radical cleric who ruled Iran from 1979 to 1989. 

Khomeini was always a fan of a particular kind of virtue signaling. “Death to America” was his favorite chant, and the virtue he signaled was all about spilling American blood on behalf of his vision of Allah. Rushdie’s book provided Khomeini the opportunity to demonstrate his ability to be a radical global influencer on behalf of the Islamic fascism he installed when he took over Iran. He didn’t even need TikTok or Instagram to get his point across. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/28/the-strangest-thing-about-semi-fascist-trump/

For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with “fascism” (or “semi-fascism,” as Joe Biden put it the other day). And for Liz Cheney and most of the NeverTrumpers, he remains an existential threat to democracy. 

But to quantify those charges, what exactly has Trump done extralegally—as opposed to his bombast and braggadocio about what he might have wished to have done? 

And what are the standards by which to judge this supposed menace? Did Trump illegally and with a mere signature nullify over $300 billion of contracted student loans—to firm up his college-student and college-graduate base nine weeks before the midterm elections?

Did Donald Trump weaponize the feared IRS, the logical place to find fascistic tendencies of any president bent on using government to punish his enemies? Did he push through a plan to add 87,000 new IRS investigative agents at a time of national discord?

For the last five years, Trump was rumored to be under investigation by the IRS. Currently, his accountant is facing felony sentencing for advising improper write-offs. 

Certainly, from the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the remarks of Hunter’s associates like Tony Bobulinksi, the Biden family raked in millions of foreign dollars. Evidence so far suggests Joe Biden was a recipient (as the “Big Guy”) of 10 percent of these quid pro quo payments. At times, Bobulinksi may have sent a strapped and broke Hunter thousands of dollars in cash gifts. Were any of these stealthy transactions taxed? Does the recently heavily Biden-endowed IRS care?

If Trump wished to abuse his power over the IRS, he would have followed the Obama model of weaponizing it during a reelection year to go after his ideological enemies. 

In Obama’s case, the tax agency slow-walked or denied nonprofit status for groups whose ideology was deemed not helpful to Obama’s campaign in 2012. There was a reason Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment, and it was not to protect Donald Trump.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/did-zuckerberg-prove-fbi-created-russian-disinfo-brad-slager/

It has become a really bad week for the FBI, and by extension the DOJ. With the release of the warrant affidavit the comically redacted document only further cast the Bureau in a mocking light.  From what can be gleaned out of the fragments revealed is that now the raid on Trump’s residence was inspired not by the revelation of state secrets missing or classified nuclear intel, but by the National Archives requesting more docs after receiving boxloads, and a local news affiliate that saw moving trucks at Mar-A-Lago. 

This means that the raid was justified with the thinnest of reasons. And the purpose was to simply acquire as much as they could from the compound in an effort to find…anything. Reports of the Feds going in with a specific agenda were blown out of the water when the warrant was found to have been signed off with the intent of obtaining anything at all from Trump’s entire time in office.

Adding to the embarrassments was the news of a whistleblower from inside the FBI revealing that the Bureau had shielded the knowledge of the laptop obtained from Hunter Biden. This is a story not receiving much media coverage, a telling departure from a press corps that normally gets rather excitable at the arrival of whistleblowers. The claim being made is the FBI elected to bury the laptop story for the reason of not wanting to influence the 2020 election. Then things became even more disturbing – and more ignored in the press.

On Joe Rogan’s podcast Mark Zuckerberg revealed that FaceBook had been approached by the FBI regarding the laptop story and to be wary of how the platform treats the information. The focus has been on the move by the FBI to direct social media to avoid the story.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/three_signs_were_in_a_banana_republic.html

Satirist Sol Luckman defines “banana republic” in his irreverent glossary, The Angel’s Dictionary, as a “lawless society where the monkeys rule.”  

Looking around the United States today, it’s hard to say we don’t fit his meaning.  Nearly 80% of Americans believe we live under a two-tiered system of justice.  Likewise, in Gallup’s recent survey of Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions, it notes, “This year’s poll marks new lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government — the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency (23%) and Congress.”  Of sixteen institutions tested, confidence in the U.S. Congress sits at the very bottom with a scant 7%!  Even though there is now “record-low confidence across all institutions,” confidence in the Office of the Presidency suffered the largest year-over-year drop in 2022 — cratering 15%!  In other words, not only do Americans believe the country is lawless, they’re also convinced that it is being run by a barrel of monkeys!  Clearly, Americans “get” that we’re living in a “banana republic” today.  

Just consider these three telltale signs:  

(1) Manipulation of language and mandatory leftist religion:

The political Left’s most potent weapon is its penchant for undermining the meaning of words.  For decades Democrats have branded anything antithetical to their worldview as “hateful” and banned “offending” viewpoints from civic culture altogether.  When “authorities” deconstruct biological sex so preposterously that they can’t even tell the difference between boys and girls, though, they’ve lost the plot.  One school board in Wisconsin is so fearful of the language police crashing through its doors that it has replaced all references to “girls” with sterilized language concerning a “person with a vulva.”  When “teachers” are afraid to say “girl” out loud, it’s banana republic time! 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/29/the-dis-unification-of-america-continues-ii-tipp-poll/

To look on the bright side, Americans don’t disagree about everything. One issue in particular seems to bring them together in near-perfect accord: Are we a unified nation after more than a year-and-a-half of President Joe Biden? Americans overwhelmingly answer no, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

To gauge the ongoing unity zeitgeist, each month the I&I/TIPP Poll asks Americans whether “the United States is: Very united. Somewhat united. Somewhat divided. Very divided. Not sure.”

The data make for depressing reading. Among those responding to the poll, taken Aug. 2-4 from online surveys of 1,335 adults across the county, 74% described the U.S. as “Divided,” versus just 24% who called it “United.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points.

And among all survey participants, the No. 1 response was “very divided,” with 43% answering this. No. 2 was “somewhat divided,” at 30%. By comparison, just 8% of the entire survey called America “very united,” while 16% described it as “somewhat united.” Just 2% were “not sure.”