RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guilty-until-proven-innocent-11625697428?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

“If the FBI and U.S. Attorney have proof of wrongdoing, bring it on. But the burden for depriving an American of property is on the government to prove guilt, not on the targeted to prove innocence.”

When the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults in Beverly Hills in March, it did so after the business had been indicted for conspiring to launder money, sell drugs and other crimes. But the FBI also took control of $86 million in cash and valuables it found in the safe deposit boxes of people who haven’t been accused of a crime. Some of these folks have sued, and two weeks ago federal Judge R. Gary Klausner granted a temporary restraining order preventing the FBI from taking permanent legal title of the seized contents of the plaintiffs’ boxes.

The Institute for Justice is representing seven plaintiffs in this case. Their argument is that they have done nothing wrong and should not have to go through the cumbersome civil forfeiture process to prove that their cash, jewelry or precious metals are legitimately theirs.

Judge Klausner seems to think they may have a case, taking aim at the FBI’s forfeiture notice. “This notice, put bluntly, provides no factual basis for the seizure of Plaintiffs’ property whatsoever,” the judge wrote in granting the restraining order.

U.S. Private Vaults is a private safe-deposit company that asks fewer questions than banks, and its boxes could be used to stash ill-gotten cash, drugs or other loot. Even so, the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to due process before property can be taken.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/07/biden_inc_hunter_joe_and_the_mexican_oligarchs_146043.html

The indictment of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer has received a lot of press, and properly so. But while the media has been focused on the former president, they have ignored another corruption story involving the sitting president and his family. Like so much news that has been buried, the latest comes from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. You know, the one the Bidens and their allies in Congress and the media suggested was a “Russian plant” and disinformation campaign, before that cynical claim was demolished by the director of national intelligence.

The latest buried story involves some photographs, taken in Joe Biden’s office in 2014. They include the then-vice president, his son Hunter, and Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico (and once the richest in the world), plus some of Slim’s associates.

Why are the pictures newsworthy? Not because some U.S. officials met with some rich foreign businessmen. That happens all the time. Their real significance is that the vice president met with these guys and included his son at the same time Hunter was working on lucrative business deals with the same people. That looks like self-dealing by the Biden family, despite Joe’s repeated insistence that he knew nothing about his son’s business.

Hunter had other meetings with Carlos Slim and associates in Mexico. Those came after he flew there with his father on Air Force Two, just as he had flown to similar business meetings in China. When you arrive on Air Force Two, when your father is the second-highest official in the U.S. government, and when you bring your business associates to meet him, you are sending a clear signal to potential partners around the world: “I’m incredibly well connected and, if you do business with me, I can open the biggest and best doors in the U.S. government for you.”

Since Hunter has no other marketable skills, opening those doors is the only thing you are paying him for. In country after country, the oligarchs Hunter was wooing had the good fortune to meet with the vice president, meetings that Hunter apparently arranged. Some were held in the host countries, some on the White House grounds.

When you have connections like this in Chicago, you whisper, “I know a guy.” Hunter virtually shouts it. He knows a guy: the “Big Guy,” as one of his secret notes describes his father. That note laid out how the lucre from another deal would be divided, with the “Big Guy” as a silent partner. A partner in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, has publicly stated that all the partners knew the “Big Guy” (or BG) was Joe Biden.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/06/what-is-trump-to-us/

Donald Trump became the political vehicle for the American people’s resentment of an overweening, corrupt ruling class. Trump’s invaluable contribution to the Republic was to lead Americans publicly to disrespect that class. 

Americans elected Trump to preserve freedoms and prosperity against the encroachments of that class. But instead, he became the catalyst by which that class cohered to transform the American Republic into an oligarchy. 

During Trump’s presidency, more wealth passed from ordinary Americans to oligarchs, and more freedoms were lost than anyone imagined possible. As we consider how to remedy these losses, Trump’s fateful combination of things said and unsaid, of things done and not done, must be part of our search for the persons and policies most likely to lead republican Americans out of our quandary.

Persona Politica

In 2015 and 2016, candidate Trump’s disrespectful, disdainful attitude toward the ruling class put him at the head of presidential preference polls ab initio, and kept him there. Throughout the campaign, he said little of substance—just enough to give the impression that he was on the side of conservatives on just about everything. His leitmotif was “I despise those whom you despise because they despise you. I’m on your side, America’s side.” 

Trump promised to “make America great again,” but did not explain what had made it great in the first place nor how to restore it. Never a religious person, and one who had once expressed support for abortion, Trump delivered more stirring thoughts on religious freedom and the right to life than any candidate ever, including Ronald Reagan.

Trump believed in the unity between himself and his followers, and that they would stay with him, even if he were to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Millions of them reciprocated. The political, and even the moral content of that unity mattered less. He did not try to support his many accusations with facts. Millions who disagreed with him or who disliked him personally voted to make Trump president, and even more voted to reelect him. 

But whatever Trump might have thought, his voters knew that hatred for the ruling class—not Trump himself—was why they supported him. It was about themselves, not Trump. The ruling class knew it, too. That is why, for most of the past six years, it brayed so much disdain from every available venue on him personally, trying to convince at least some of his followers that he is unworthy of decent people’s allegiance. 

We need not rehearse the size, provenance, ubiquity, and vehemence of the ruling class’ attacks on Trump. It is near impossible to recall any official, semi-official, corporate, educational, media, or professional association that did not take part in them, often repeating the very same words ad nauseam. Trump’s peculiarities made it possible for the oligarchy to give the impression that its campaign was about his person, his public flouting of conventional norms, rather than about the preservation of their own power and wealth. The principal consequence of the ruling class’ opposition to candidate Trump was to convince itself, and then its followers, that defeating him was so important that it legitimized, indeed dictated, setting aside all laws, and truth itself. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/new-anti-terrorism-strategy-narrowly-tailored-lloyd-billingsley/

“This National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lays out a comprehensive approach to addressing the threat while safeguarding bedrock American civil rights and civil liberties – values that make us who we are as a nation,” explains an introduction attributed to Joe Biden in the document, released last month by the National Security Council. This strategy, readers learn “is narrowly tailored to focus specifically on addressing violence and the factors that lead to violence.” As it happens, this “narrowly tailored” approach is nothing new.

The strategy reflects the fundamental transformation by the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. He changed the focus from radical Islamic terrorism to “right-wing” domestic terrorism, and imposed that strategy in the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

In April of 2009, DHS released Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. These rightwing extremists, the document claims, are “mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” The “possible passage of new restrictions on firearms” also disturbs them.

“We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity,” proclaimed DHS boss Janet Napolitano, “ but we do not – nor will we ever – monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources.” According to critics, Napolitano’s DHS was targeting most conservatives and libertarians in the country.

Some six months later, on November 5, 2009, American-born Muslim Nidal Hasan, a self-described “soldier of Allah,” murdered 13 American soldiers and wounded more than 30 at Fort Hood, Texas. The composite character president called it “workplace violence,” not domestic terrorism or even gun violence. Hasan’s victims included blacks and Hispanics, but the administration did not call it a hate crime motivated by racism.

The FBI was monitoring Hasan’s communications with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki but dropped the case and did nothing to stop the mass murder. Major Hasan didn’t fit the “right-wing” profile, which kept appearing in DHS documents such as “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1979-2008.” This 2012 study classified as “extreme right-wing terrorists” persons judged to be “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and “reverent of individual liberty.”

Consider also Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. This 2013 study warns about the “anti-federalist movement,” whose members “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights.” They also support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self-government, so these potential terrorists sound a lot like millions of mainstream Americans. The National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism takes this genre to new depths.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/air-force-chief-staff-browns-racism-witch-hunt-daniel-greenfield-0/

“Unconscious bias,” an Air Force video warns, “can’t be seen or felt.” As the camera focuses on white personnel, an unseen minority voice claims that, “it hides itself in our unseen behaviors”.

“As Airmen in the U.S. Air Force, it’s our duty to acknowledge our biases whether we realize they exist or not,” the official video pushing critical race theory struggle sessions demands.

This is Chief of Staff Charles Q. Brown Jr’s new Air Force.

Brown, the first black Chief of Staff of the Air Force, ought to be a living symbol of opportunity. Instead, like other disloyal military leaders, including his predecessor, Chief of Staff David Goldfein, he’s smearing America, and conducting a witch hunt for imaginary racism.

The racial attack on the U.S. Force from within began with the Black Lives Matter riots.

“I am a Black man who happens to be the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force,” Chief Master Sergeant Kaleth Wright tweeted using his official Air Force account. “I am George Floyd…I am Philando Castile, I am Michael Brown.”

Even Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison admitted there was no racial element in the Floyd case and had not even tried to add to the wrongful prosecution with hate crime charges.

But Wright, the top advisor to former Air Force Chief of Staff Goldfein at the time of the Black Lives Matter race riots, suggested that he could be killed by white police officers at any moment.

“My heart starts racing like most other Black men in America when I see those blue lights behind me,” he claimed. “You don’t know the anxiety, the despair, the heartache, the fear, the rage and the disappointment that comes with living in this country… every single day.”

It made you wonder why Wright hadn’t left America for somewhere safer like Cuba.

The Air Force’s top enlisted leader smeared America, identified with criminals, and urged everyone to be angry. He ranted that he had been inspired by socialist rapper Killer Mike to pursue “plotting, planning, strategizing, organizing and mobilizing”. And together with his boss, Goldfein, they would be working on a “full and thorough independent review of our military justice system”. The review, predictably, accused the military justice system of being racist.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/joe_bidens_pantsonfire_lie_of_a_white_nationalist_insurrection.html

The Democrats have a talent for avoiding responsibility for their contemptible actions by blaming them on the other side.  A recent manifestation of this talent is President Biden’s attempt to deflect attention away from abhorrent behavior by scores of Democrat politicians.  Throughout 2020, they shirked their duty to uphold the law in the face of civil disturbances.  Biden wants you to pretend that never happened in order to rail against what he calls a “white nationalist insurrection.”  Pants on fire!  Biden should be ashamed to embrace this nonsense.

In his first joint address to the U.S. Congress on April 28, Biden identified white supremacy as the number-one domestic terror threat.  He insisted that white supremacists pose a bigger threat than foreign actors.  “We won’t ignore what our intelligence agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to our homeland today,” Biden said.  “White supremacy is terrorism.”

For seven months, Democrat mayors and governors refused to take action against leftist violence that destroyed our cities.  In many cases, they supported the rioters.  “You have to look pretty hard to find Democrats condemning fires, riots, violence, looting, stealing, burning police cars,” said author and political commentator Dennis Prager.  If you condemn only what Republicans do and applaud what was done daily by leftists, says Prager, then you don’t care about truth.  “Violent protests had been championed and normalized by Democrats and their media over the last four years,” Daniel Greenfield wrote in the Jewish Press.  Greenfield is referring to the attempt by the media to characterize the ongoing violence as “peaceful protests,” an obvious fabrication.

On January 6, 2021, a nonviolent assault on the U.S. Capitol, spurred on by leftist agitators who were bussed in, was staged by Democrats with the collaboration of mainstream and social media, along with — if you believe Tucker Carlson’s well-substantiated accusation — the FBI.  “The purpose of the entire circus was to provide a propaganda opportunity for the Left,” wrote Daniel Greenfield.  By blaming the assault on white nationalists, Biden and the Democrats hope to achieve three objectives: (1) create a diversion from the 2020 riots, (2) divert attention from massive circumstantial evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, and (3) crush conservatives and Trump-supporters.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-culture-war-must-go-on-11625608694?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

I happened to mention the phrase “culture war” in a 1996 conversation with Irving Kristol, who was a contributor to these pages and always a penetrating observer of contemporary American life. “The culture war is over,” Irving said, then paused and added: “We lost.” Alive today, Irving would have been sadly reaffirmed in his declaration, surprised perhaps only at the extent of the loss and the cost it has entailed.

His “we” would include those people who believe in the rewards owed to effort and merit, the value of tradition, and the crucial significance of liberty. “We” would distinctly not include those who believe in the importance of spreading “diversity,” “inclusion” and “equity” as conceived by present-day universities. Nor would it include those whose sense of virtue derives from their putative hunger for social justice and their willingness to make severe judgments of others based on lapses from political correctness. These people are “they,” the woke, who have, as Kristol had it, won the culture war.

The extent of the woke victory is perhaps best demonstrated by the long list of cultural institutions they have captured and now control. Two of the country’s important newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, are unashamedly woke. The New Yorker and the Atlantic have ceased to be general-interest magazines and are now specific-interest publications—that interest being the spread of woke ideas. The major television networks early fell in line without a fight.

Universities, in their humanities and social-sciences divisions, are not merely devoted to the propagation of woke ideas but initiate most of them. In turning away from the ideals of authority and objectivity in favor of clearly partisan views, these institutions have lost their former prestige yet are apparently sustained by the confidence that preaching woke doctrine is a higher calling.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/opec-biden-and-gas-prices-11625611235?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

As cognitive dissonance goes, this is a classic. President Biden’s explicit policy goal is to reduce U.S. oil and gas production, limiting the global supply of fossil fuels in the name of fighting climate change. Yet his Administration is now imploring the OPEC oil cartel to pump more oil so U.S. gasoline prices don’t rise more than they already have on Mr. Biden’s watch.

Oil prices climbed to a six-year high on Tuesday after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia failed to agree on increasing production quotas. Last spring OPEC slashed production quotas after crude prices plunged to $20 per barrel amid economic lockdowns and a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

But energy demand has snapped back in much of the world as Covid-19 vaccines roll out, governments ease lockdowns, and freight shipments surge. U.S. petroleum consumption is now roughly where it was at this time in 2019. OPEC estimates that oil demand in industrialized countries will increase by 2.7 million barrels a day this year.

In early June OPEC modestly raised production quotas, but demand is still rebounding faster than supply. The upshot is that crude prices are averaging around $74 a barrel, up 45% or so this year. OPEC countries naturally want to take advantage of the pandemic recovery to boost production and generate more petrodollars to fund their governments.

But a squabble between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over quotas is blocking an agreement, sending U.S. gasoline prices to a near seven-year high. Enter the Biden Administration. A White House spokesperson on Monday said it is urging OPEC and its allies to quickly come up with a compromise “that will allow proposed production increases to move forward.”

The Administration is worried that higher gas prices could undermine Mr. Biden’s climate agenda and spending plans. Republicans have been linking his veto of the Keystone XL pipeline with higher gas prices. The two aren’t directly related. But no Keystone does mean that more crude from Canada and the northern Bakken Shale will have to move by rail to U.S. refiners.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/april-powers-condemned-jew-hate-then?token=e

I don’t remember when I first came across Kat Rosenfield’s byline, but I can tell you that for years now I’ve read everything she writes. Her bailiwick is our culture, particularly the strange corners of it that tend to go overlooked by everyone else.

Exhibit A is her ongoing, insightful coverage of the mad world of Young Adult fiction and the moral panics that regularly tend to convulse that industry.

Last week that beat converged with the urgent story of rising Jew-hate in America when a black, Jewish diversity chief named April Powers lost her job in children’s publishing for condemning antisemitism. (You read that right.)

When I came across the story, I immediately reached out to Kat to ask her what it said about the state of the publishing world and, more, what it revealed about how high-minded ideals like intersectionality actually operate in practice.

— BW

On first viewing, it looked like a Tik-Tok riff on The Purge: a caravan of cars rolls down La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. The passengers — young men in keffiyehs, some draped to mask their faces — stand and shout through sunroofs and windows. The cars honk incessantly. In the back of a slow-moving Jeep, one man waves a billboard-sized Palestinian flag while another shouts through a megaphone: “Israel kills women and children every day!” His companions jeer: “Yeah! Fuck you!”

The next video shows the same men on the sidewalk, shouting and advancing on another man in a grey shirt who’s trying to fend them off with a metal pedestal. In the next: The man in grey is lying on the ground, curled in the fetal position. They punch him, kick him, claw at him.

The last video clip of the evening’s events shows the same sidewalk, now crowded with police. “They’re apparently going around the city, asking who’s Jewish, and beating them up,” says the unseen videographer. “This is America, guys.”

These clips were shot in late May, during the recent war between Israel and Hamas, a month in which there were dozens of similar attacks on Jews and Jewish spaces across America. It was also a moment when corporations and politicians —  many of whom had eagerly released statements unequivocally condemning the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes the previous month, or supporting Black Lives Matter the previous year — suddenly lost their nerve when it came to denouncing violence against minorities.

Those that did speak out against Jew-hate, including high-profile progressives like Bernie Sanders and Ayanna Pressley, tended to speak out against “antisemitism and” — as in, antisemitism and Islamophobia, or antisemitism and all other forms of bigotry. (Tablet’s Noam Blum documented the trend here.)