RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/06/the-grasshopper-elite-and-its-enemy/

Many publications provide their writers with “style sheets,” a list of dos and don’ts with respect to things like diction, punctuation, grammar, and linguistic etiquette. My personal list of “dos” includes the Oxford comma (apples, oranges, and pears: that last comma is requisite) and, in most cases, using the singular masculine pronoun after collective nouns like “everyone” and “someone” (e.g., “Everyone likes to have his [not ‘their’] own way”).

Style sheet prescriptions (and proscriptions) can be more elaborate, and can affect substantive as well as stylistic matters. Over the last year or so, I have noticed an innovation, at once stylistic and substantive, that has taken root throughout the regime media. It is this: whenever referring to Donald Trump and the 2020 presidential election, be sure to insert editorial comments to the effect that any concerns about the fairness of that election are “baseless” or the result of “lies.”

I do not remember when I first noticed these little injections of partisan squid ink, but by now they are ubiquitous in the anti-Trump fraternity. Just one example: in a column Saturday about Donald Trump’s weekend rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, the writer claimed Trump “spent much of his speech focusing on his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election” (emphasis added).

To the writing teachers out there, let me ask: Would that sentence have been better—less obviously partisan, hence more persuasive—had the word “baseless” been omitted?

Or how about this bit from later on in the piece: “Trump spent much of his speech touting the accomplishments of his term as president . . . and promoting the lie that the 2020 election was ‘rigged and stolen’” (again, emphasis added). What do you think?

Or how about this: Trump was in Wisconsin “ostensibly” to stump for Tim Michels, the person Trump backs for Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary, but he devoted much of his speech “focusing on his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.”

This last sentence offers connoisseurs of cant not one but two morsels to chew on.

Since 2016, we’ve questioned why rank and file, paper pushing regulatory agencies are arming up, i.e. HHS, VA, EPA, IRS, ED, etc.

Just who are these federal agencies preparing to battle? After grabbing legal power, federal agencies are amassing firepower!

GET THE FULL BREAKDOWN OF GUNS, AMMUNITION, AND MILITARY-STYLE EQUIPMENT IN THE RANK AND FILE FEDERAL AGENCIES.

FACT: There are now more federal agents with arrest and firearm authority (200,000+) than U.S. Marines (186,000)!

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/08/ron-desantis-is-right-on-the-executive-duty-to-enforce-the-law/

The Florida governor may look like he’s engaging in a power grab, but as the executive, he’s standing up for a core rule-of-law value.

The rule of law is vital to the American system of government. Our system is designed, in the words of John Adams, “to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.” That core value imposes a variety of different obligations on different actors in the system. Today’s big announcement by Ron DeSantis, suspending a county attorney who refused as a matter of policy to enforce Florida laws he disliked, highlights one of those obligations: the duty of the executive to enforce the laws written by the legislature.

The people choose the government and retain the power to remove its officials: That makes us a democracy. Nobody has an inherited role or a privileged status above the law: That makes us a republic. The rules are written down: That makes our system constitutional. The rule of law binds these strands together. Once the constitution and the laws are written down, there are only two choices: Challenge the laws in court as conflicting with the written constitution, or change the constitution or the laws through the democratic process. In the meantime, there are only two outcomes: Either the rules are binding as written on everyone, or the people are no longer in charge of the government.

Adams used the phrase “a government of laws and not of men” in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 to justify the rigorous separation of powers: Only the legislature writes laws, only the executive enforces them, and only the judiciary interprets them. John Marshall used the same phrase in Marbury v. Madison to emphasize a related but distinct point: Judges have not just the power to declare laws invalid if they violate the Constitution, but a duty to do so in order to restrain the legislature: “To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished. . . .”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/04/the-evasive-mr-wray/

It was time for him to fly.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time since July 2021, insisted he had to leave the hearing by 1:30 p.m. sharp. (It began at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning.) 

Despite leading a scandal-ridden agency quickly losing the trust of the American people and congressional Republicans, Wray somehow believes that setting aside less than four hours to answer questions by lawmakers responsible for checking and balancing his work is sufficient.

“I had a flight that I’m supposed to be high-tailing it to, and I had understood that we were going to be done at 1:30, so that’s how we ended up where we are,” Wray told Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking member who asked why the rush. If Wray needed to leave on business, Grassley noted, “you’ve got your own plane,” referring to the taxpayer-funded Gulfstream G550 jet used to ferry the head of the FBI around the country privately.

Wray got his way—the committee wrapped shortly after 1:30 p.m. with no chance for Republicans to ask follow-up questions. It was a symbolic win and another example of how Wray almost always prevails in skirmishes between his agency and members of Congress.

To be fair, an extended appearance only would have resulted in more non-answers and political spin. 

Wray, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018, knows a lot about issues that matter to the Biden regime and national news media, such as the imaginary threat of “domestic violent extremists.” But he isn’t so savvy when it comes to issues that matter to Americans, such as a wide-open southern border, exploding crime rates, an aggressive China on the rise, and foreign terrorists who arrived here in the disorderly evacuation of Afghanistan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/moral-dimension-crisis-we-face-david-horowitz/

Everyone can sense that the political situation we find ourselves in is anything but normal. Yet the language we use to describe current conflicts is a language designed to frame them in the category of politics as usual – only perhaps more so. In speaking about current conflicts, we focus on the surface “issues” that divide us – a record inflation, off-the-charts crime waves in our urban centers, a humanitarian crisis at our southern border. Sometimes we sum it up as a double standard in the justice system that treats violent leftists as “peaceful protesters” and public school parents concerned about the abuse of their children as “domestic terrorists.” That juxtaposition gets us closer to the true nature of the conflict. But it is still inadequate to the gravity of the political moment, suggesting that progressives simply fail to understand the issues at hand.

But they understand them very well. For progressives the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the “revolution” – the
“re-imagining” and transformation of American society into a future where genders are selected and “social justice” prevails.  That goal is so worthy and so necessary, it justifies any and all means to achieve it. Once this is understood, one can see that under the surface of the crises we face is a sinister force that poses an existential threat to our way of life – a threat far more immediate than the so-called climate apocalypse.

Morality is about following rules that ensure virtuous ends. Detach the means from the ends and what you get are the totalitarian regimes that have blighted the modern era. At the root of the current American crisis is what can only be described as the moral depravity of the “woke” progressives and their radical agenda.

Is this extreme? How else to describe Senator Elizabeth Warren’s response to the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade with a call – unopposed by her Democrat colleagues – to close the nation’s 3,000 private “crisis pregnancy centers.”[1]

https://mailchi.mp/b694bc49f90d/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-59147?e=0c8ccf8e98

BILLIONS SPENT ON PRIVATE BUSINESS DEALS IN HOSTILE NATIONS

Ever heard of the Export-Import Bank? It’s little-known, but it’s not like your local credit union. It’s part of the federal government and it spends BILLIONS of your tax dollars!

The bank is meant to finance deals that boost exports and small businesses when private capital can’t be found.  But most of the money goes to huge corporations like Boeing and General Electric – or to countries that are openly hostile to the United States! 

Since 2007, Chinese companies have received more than $6.4 billion even though the nation has the second largest GDP in the world – AND even though they’re threatening us over Taiwan! 

Russian companies, which often line the pockets of oligarchs, received $1.9 billion – even though Russia is fighting a land war in Europe and could be responsible for food and fuel shortages worldwide! 

Saudi Arabian companies took over $6.9 billion in financing – even though President Biden called them a pariah over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The icing on this awful cake? These deals and capital assurances are guaranteed by YOU, the American taxpayer. If any of this cash is lost in a country that’s economically or politically unstable, that’s tax dollars down the drain. 

With widespread turmoil around the world, we need to take a SERIOUS look at where we fund private business deals. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18772/jewish-democratic-council

This organization — the Jewish Democratic Council — is misnamed. It recruits members and solicits money based on false advertising. It promotes itself as comprised of pro-Israel Jews. But the reality is that its leadership consists mainly of progressive Democrats who just happen to be Jewish. For them Israel, Iran and anti-Semitism are peripheral issues.

That is increasingly true of many Democratic Jewish voters who prioritize other concerns over Israel, over the growing threat of anti-Semitism from the hard left and hard right, and over other issues that directly affect the Jewish people.

[T]hey obviously do not want to hear the perspective of this Jewish Democrat, because the organization is more united behind social policy issues — abortion, gun control, the environment and the Supreme Court — than they are about Israel. I was told by two people who attended the event that the word “Israel” was never even mentioned….

I shake my head in frustration at why so many left-wing Jewish Democrats are willing to abandon Israel and continue to vote blindly for their grandparents’ Democratic Party without demanding that it marginalize its anti-Israel extremists.

We have no loyalty to the current Democrat Party, just as many of its most prominent officials seem to have no loyalty to so many of their Jewish supporters. We certainly should have no loyalty to organizations such as the Jewish Democratic Council that hides its true priorities behind the misleading label “Jewish.” There is nothing Jewish about their agenda, which is to elect Democrats regardless of their views on issues of direct concern to the Jewish community and Israel.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Victory in the Cold War provided the U.S. a peace dividend that lasted ten years, until the attack on 9/11. U.S. defense spending, as a percent of GDP, declined from 5.6% in 1990 to 3.1% in 2000. It peaked in 2010 at 4.9% but fell to 3.7% in 2020. (In comparison, during the Vietnam war defense spending exceeded 9%.) But history did not end with end of the Cold War, evil did not vanish, and people did not become kinder and gentler. While the United States and the West gloated in victory and let their defense systems erode, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, expanded their defense budgets.

But it is not just spending that is the problem. A smarter and more focused military means commitment on the part of the people and their representatives in Congress. While the U.S. developed technical leadership in social media platforms and video games, it fell behind China and Russia in military technologies. The U.S. graduates about 70,000 engineers each year, which compares to Russia and China, together, graduating ten times that number. The fate of Bell Labs, once known as “the idea factory,” is indicative of our technological decline. As a division of AT&T, and partnering with the U.S. government, it was responsible for world-changing technologies, from the transistor to the laser. Now it is owned by Nokia, a Finnish company. DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) annual budget remained flat in constant dollars over the past twenty-five years, despite significant advances in technology.

Today’s military has embraced wokeism. Soldiers, sailors and airmen are taught to be gender sensitive, to be sure to use the right pronouns. They are instructed in Critical Race Theory and told our nation is systemically racist. In appealing to activists, the military is alienating those most likely to serve.