RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/14/a-new-offensive-trump-the-gop-and-the-battle-for-americas-future/

Having just spent a week padding about battle sites around Verdun and the Somme,  I could not help but register the historical vibration of certain dates. Was it entirely coincidental that on July 18, 1918, Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander, launched a major counteroffensive against the Germans in the Second Battle of the Marne? That operation  was the beginning of the end for the Boche.  They sued for peace in November after American General John Pershing crushed the German forces near Montfaucon, northwest of Verdun.

This Thursday, July 18, 2024, Donald Trump will deliver his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. I like to think that Trump’s address will mark the beginning of a potent counteroffensive against the soul-blighting, woke forces of the Democratic juggernaut.

Like the German army in the summer of 1918, the Democrats are in rabid disarray.  On paper, they still command impressive force.  They continue to jail their political  opponents and shower Donald Trump with potentially lethal legal shrapnel. [UPDATE: I wrote this column  before the assassination attempt on Donald  Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania yesterday.  I will have more to say about that in due course.]

But though their guns may continue their periodic eructations, morale among the troops teeters on despair. Their leaders are panicking.

Of the Kaiser, Winston Churchill once remarked that “in every crisis he crumbled.  In defeat, he fled; in revolution, he abdicated; in exile, he remarried.” What would Churchill say about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Addressing NATO a few days ago, the leader of the free world introduced the President of Ukraine as “President Putin.” Asked whether he really thought Kamala Harris was up to the top job, Biden said, “I would not have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president if I did not think she is qualified to be president. Let’s start there.”

Shall we start there? Harris, the half-Indian, half-Jamaican scion of slave owners,  may be a certified “person of color.” But she is also living proof that senility is not the only form of cognitive-rhetorical incapacity.

Like the Germans in the summer of 1918, the Democrats and their media poodles are full of sound and fury.  The New York Times, for example, is regularly on the battlements, delivering anguished rhetorical air-raid sirens. They understand that “Biden’s Path to Re-election Has All But Vanished.” Hence, the Times, along with other besieged media battalions, are engaged in a desperate pantomime to diffuse the biggest threat to their franchise. Donald Trump is “unfit to lead,” they skirl; Republicans will rue the day Trump is reelected, they insist. He’s a dictator in waiting, a bully, and a man of bad character who tramples upon the rule of law.

This signal-jamming wall of static is impervious to fact—including the fact that almost every item of the Democrats’ bill of indictment is a morsel in the giant feast of projection that Trump’s opponents have laid on.

https://victorhanson.com/our-brezhnev-our-pravda-our-soviet-union/

Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like most Russian apparatchiks who excessively smoked, drank, and gained weight, he aged prematurely. Also like them, his disabilities never led to his abdication.

By Brezhnev’s late sixties and early seventies, he was too ill to travel abroad or make public appearances. Indeed, his debility left the Soviet Union without a real leader for the final six or seven years of his tenure.

Brezhnev got away with it because the Soviet state-controlled media doctored photos and videos to attest to his supposedly vigorous health and constant hands-on involvement.

“Journalists” sent out false communiques. They spun narratives that Brezhnev was robust, hale, and working long hours on behalf of the Russian people. Any dissenting journalists who sought to report the true, sad state of affairs were in danger of losing their jobs, freedom—or even their lives.

Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s busy workdays. Pravda’s handlers spun fables about the respect (and fear) the rest of the world held for such a dynamic leader—even as Brezhnev became an ill virtual recluse.

The cynical Russian people shrugged because they had long been accustomed to their lying media and the falsehoods they peddled. And besides, Brezhnev was a doctrinaire Stalinist communist. So his job was not to rock the boat or upset the Russian communist hierarchy.

Instead, he reigned over the penultimate Soviet “era of stagnation,” while an ossified communism increasingly destroyed all incentives and hope, leaving the Russian people poor, cynical, and helpless.

Something similar has happened to a calcified America under President Joe Biden. Like the late-stage Leonid Brezhnev, Biden is now a president in name only. He has outsourced his administration to a vestigial hard-left apparat from the Obama years.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/sociologys-descent-into-woke-satire/

Most casual observers, especially those with even slight conservative leanings, would agree that sociology is obviously left-wing. But this wasn’t always the case. When I began my sociology graduate work in the early nineties, it was the classical spirit of the discipline that drove me. There was then enough of the residue of what the discipline had been at its origins to enable idealistic souls like myself to imagine that sociology was still about uncovering the objective realities of social life, rather than simply producing a radical mythology that denounced all that existed and preached the necessity of total revolution.

Radical Marxist approaches were certainly there from the beginning. But many of these had at least the patina of intellectual seriousness and required substantive efforts to challenge and dismantle. However much one disagreed with Marx, for example, one could not reasonably call him a fool and a charlatan, at least if one had read him. He was wrong, but not obviously ignorant of basic things and oblivious to the requirements of argument and evidence.

Today’s sociology is so patently devoid of any intellectual rigor that most of it evokes only contemptuous laughter. The arguments advanced, the “evidence” mustered to support its partisan claims, are so weak that it is genuinely amazing to realize that the people making these cases have spent many years in educational institutions and yet have come away from all that with either no understanding of or an utter contempt for careful and rigorous argument.

Sociology Advertises Its Product

For example, the American Sociological Association (ASA) offers a series of video shorts titled “Sociological Insights.” These clips feature sociologists presenting their research in brief, visually engaging morsels. They are intended to provide an introduction to sociological reasoning and analysis. But the viewer who is not already converted to the Woke cult to which the ASA gives its allegiance can be forgiven for thinking, on watching a selection of the videos, that they were made by an enemy of sociology, as a wickedly humorous satire of the discipline.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-says-anti-israel-student-protesters-are-showing-exactly-what-the-human-emotion-should-be/

There have been many hints at the fact that Vice President Kamala Harris is more hostile to Israel than President Biden. As Democrats take a closer look at her as the most likely replacement should Biden drop out of the race, her views on Middle East policy will undergo closer scrutiny. Now, in an interview with Joan Walsh in the The Nation, Harris makes clear that she sympathizes with the anti-Israel protesters on college campuses — even though she doesn’t agree with everything they said.

Here is the part of the interview that gets to her views on Israel’s war against Hamas:

“Listen, I strongly believe that our ability to evaluate a situation is connected to understanding the details of that situation. Not speaking of myself versus the president, not at all. From the beginning, I asked questions. OK, the trucks are taking flour into Gaza. But here’s the thing, Joan: I like to cook. So I said to my team: You can’t make shit with flour if you don’t have clean water. So what’s going on with that? I ask questions like, What are people actually eating right now? I’m hearing stories about their eating animal feed, grass … so that’s how I think about it.

“Similarly, I was asking early on, what are women in Gaza doing about sanitary hygiene. Do they have pads? And these are the issues that made people feel uncomfortable, especially sanitary pads.”

The young people who have mobilized against the destruction of Gaza are unlikely to be mollified by these answers. What does she say to them?

“They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza. There are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.”

Harris is careful to provide herself an escape hatch — to say she doesn’t fully endorse everything the protesters say — but it’s clear that in her mind, she feels that she has to say something nice about the antisemitic protests because ultimately she is trying to win over the pro-Hamas contingent of the party

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trespass-without-fear

New York is suffering a “finders keepers, losers weepers”–style squatting epidemic, enabled by the state’s cumbersome civil process for abused landlords. As several recent stories make clear, the state’s housing courts are far too sympathetic to invaders masquerading as tenants. The situation had grown so dire that New York’s legislature passed a measure in April excluding from the definition of “tenant” those who intrude and then hunker down on property without permission.

The new law opens the possibility of a criminal-justice solution to the state’s squatting problem. But a pivotal question remains: Will New York’s 62 district attorneys, encumbered by a decade of pro-defendant policy reforms, successfully prosecute these non-tenants’ crimes? Recent experience suggests that they will struggle to do so, especially in trespass cases.

Queens district attorney Melinda Katz has been in the news for a high-profile prosecution against Brian Rodriguez, who featured in a video that went viral in April. Rodriguez, a 35-year-old burglary and narcotics ex-con, was allegedly occupying a Queens house that Adele Andaloro inherited from her parents. Before Andaloro could eject him, Rodriguez reportedly sublet her rooms. When she had the locks changed and tried to retake her property, he claimed squatter’s rights after 30 days—and had her arrested!

Katz’s office, to its credit, charged Rodriguez with five counts: burglary in the second degree, grand larceny in the fourth degree, criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, criminal trespass in the second degree, and criminal mischief in the fourth degree. If convicted, Rodriguez faces up to 15 years in prison.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/animal-farm-democrats/

Leftists make up things as they go along, as yesterday’s heresies (e.g., Biden seems demented) become today’s orthodoxies (e.g. Biden really is demented)—depending on the current party directive about what is most advantageous.

So many of the Democrats current dilemmas are self-inflicted— a result of their often illegal and always unethical efforts to warp democracy that boomerang upon them and remind us that hubris really does earn nemesis.

Note that there would never have been any presidential immunity suit before the Supreme Court had the Biden administration just not orchestrated local, state, and federal prosecutors to neuter Trump, Joe Biden’s 2024 presidential opponent.

That current lawfare effort marked the third sequential attempt to sabotage a political opponent’s campaign—following Hillary’s 2016 Russian “collusion”/Steele “dossier” scam, and Joe’s 2020 Russian “disinformation”/ “51 intelligence authorities” ruse.

In other words, had Nathan Wade not synchronized with the White House counsel’s office, had Merrick Garland not had his third-ranking federal prosecutor take over the Manhattan prosecution from the incompetent Alvin Bragg, and had not Garland picked the biased and previously failed special counsel Jack Smith to hound and rush to judgement Trump, the question of presidential immunity from Biden’s orchestrated lawfare would have never come up before the court.

The leftwing panic over Biden’s cognitive decline in the debate is not because he is clearly unable to fulfill the duties of a president (is there any other job in America that Joe Biden could perform other than being in charge of the nuclear codes?), and thus might injure the country. The hysteria instead arises solely because he might lose the Democrats power, either by losing the election—or by winning it, then crashing, and passing the country off into the hands of a cackling Kamala Harris.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamalas-legacies/

One day before the deadline, California Gov. Gavin Newsom scrapped plans to place on the November 5 ballot a measure to compete with an already qualified proposition to reform Proposition 47. That measure, passed by voters on November 4, 2014, is a legacy item for Kamala Harris, who could be on the ballot for president this November 5.

As California’s attorney general in 2014, Harris named a proposition that changed thefts of property valued under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors. Harris called it the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” but failed to explain how legalizing crime made schools and neighborhoods safer. She has claimed she took no position on the act, but the ballot language has exposed that falsehood.

Proposition 47 launched a crime wave across the state, with 31,322 vehicle break-ins in San Francisco alone in 2017, a 24-percent increase from the previous year. The measure empowered criminals to break into vehicles in broad daylight with bystanders present. The arrest rate in San Francisco, where Harris previously served as district attorney, was less than two percent, and under Proposition 47 criminals could expect at the most a citation.

The consequences of the pro-crime measure were obvious to all but the willfully blind, but the attorney general kept on the quiet side. That emboldened the terrorists embedded in the Golden State.

On December 2, 2015 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The dead and wounded included blacks, Hispanics, Asians and immigrants, but Harris failed to call the mass murder a hate crime or even gun violence.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/09/they-lied-to-you/

Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. It is said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but politics is assuredly the dirtiest—filthier even than garbageman, mortician or, well, the world’s oldest profession itself.

Former President Bill Clinton (while we’re on the topic of sexual promiscuity) perjured himself, leading to his impeachment. Former President Barack Obama, in what PolitiFact called its 2013 “Lie of the Year,” promised that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” And on and on, it goes.

The corporate media, whose 21st-century raison d’être is propping up the Regime Party (Democrats) and punishing the Deplorable Party (Republicans), often joins the fray. The Russia-collusion delusion disinformation operation was laundered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to seedy “intelligence” firm Fusion GPS and law firm Perkins Coie LLP. For years, the corporate media dutifully pushed the false narrative. Indeed, it is unclear to this day whether MSNBC has ever read the Mueller report.

But after last Thursday’s CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, in which President Joe Biden delivered a catastrophic performance for the ages, there is only one conclusion: The yearslong effort by Biden administration flunkies, Democratic Party poohbahs and pro-Regime media stenographers to forcefully deny Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline will go down as the single greatest lie in American history.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pennsylvania-state-capitol-evacuated-after-bomb-threat-in-the-name-of-palestine/

The Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg was evacuated Saturday after every member of the state’s legislature received an email threatening anti-Israel bombings in the complex.

“In the name of Palestine, I have hidden highly lethal lead azide devices in and around Pennsylvania State Capitol as well as the Pennsylvania Judicial Center,” the suspect, going by the alias of “glorytoourmartyrs,” wrote. “I plan on triggering one device every few hours until Joe Biden goes on national television and publicly denounces the illegitimate state of Israel. Keep in mind I am inside one of the 2 buildings armed w/ a knife, and plan on remaining here to my dying breath!”

According to a statement from the Pennsylvania Department of General Services, law enforcement immediately evacuated the state capitol and conducted a sweep of the complex. They did not detect any explosives or the presence of the individual who sent the email, which had as its subject line “My manifesto.”

“Following a comprehensive search, Capitol Police, federal, state, and local authorities determined there was no credible threat and the buildings were cleared to reopen,” the department announced.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/09/media-are-now-gaslighting-us-about-bidens-accomplishments/

Joe Biden is the worst president in American history and a man whose lifetime of accomplishments wouldn’t fill up a Post-it note.

esterday, we pointed out how the press and Democratic Party politicians and operatives have started calling President Joe Biden a “good man,” despite all evidence to the contrary. Now the media are trying to convince the public that Biden has been a great president who racked up big accomplishments, which is another insult to our intelligence.

“Objectively speaking, President Joe Biden has presided over some significant, even historic, accomplishments,” is how the Atlantic put it.

The Atlantic writer could name only three. Massive spending programs (all with borrowed money), mandating COVID vaccines (that were developed in record time thanks to Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed), and “the lowest unemployment rate in over 50 years” – a rate that has been steadily increasing all year.

This is the short list Biden sycophants usually trot out. But it’s the list of Biden’s failures that is truly impressive. Here’s just a sampling:

Inflation. Prices have climbed 20% in the three-and-a-half years Biden has been in office. That compares with 8% during Trump’s entire term, and just 15% during Barack Obama’s eight. The massive increase in prices under Biden was exactly what many economists predicted would happen when he and his fellow Democrats poured trillions of borrowed dollars onto a fast-growing economy.