RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/10/the-left-knows-leftism-doesnt-work/

Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms. There will never be admissions by our elite that progressivism exists mainly for the acquisition of power by the utopian and virtue-signaling few, who ensure that they are never subject to the baleful implementation of their ideological agendas on the rest of us.

Still, leftists look around at what they have done to America in the last four years and implicitly know that the plan did not work, the people detested it, or both.

How do we know this? By a variety of barometers.

None of the major Biden “achievements”—10 million illegal aliens across a nonexistent border, key components of the cost of living 25-30 percent higher than in 2020, wars and chaos abroad, DEI racial and tribal obsessions, wars on fossil fuels—poll at even 40-45 percent. Biden’s own approval ratings, as the nominal architect of the most left-wing agenda since the Roosevelt administration, hover between 36 and 34 percent.

But most importantly, the left is not running on its record of the last three-and-a-half years but instead studiously ignoring it, at least temporarily through November. Suddenly, we aren’t hearing so much about cancelling pipelines and freezing federal oil leases, or so much demonization of the “greedy” oil companies. Instead, Biden is further draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging OPEC in general and the no-longer-demonized Saudi Arabia in particular to pump oil as fast as possible.

We were lied to for nearly four years that the border was “secure,” as 10 million foreign nationals flooded across. Then we were told Biden was helpless to stop the deluge since he had no legal right to enforce federal immigration law through executive orders—a ridiculous excuse that even he would soon drop. Despite their eagerness for new constituencies, no one on the left dares to openly praise the influx of the last four years, much less demand more illegal immigration.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13509269/pro-Palestine-protest-White-House-chaos-smoke-bombs-maced.html

A huge pro-Palestine protest at the White House has descended into chaos with smoke bombs let off and attendees claiming they were maced. 

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Washington on Saturday calling for a ceasefire on Gaza.

Video shows smoke billowing in front of the White House as a speaker delivers a speech to a crowd calling Israel a ‘butcher of Gaza’.

Independent journalist Ford Fischer shared a photo of his bloodshot face claiming that mace had been deployed on the crowds during an attempted arrest.

In another clip cops can be seen making their way through the throngs to shouts of ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘f*** the police.’

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/09/260077/

I think that it was the great Miranda Devine, she of the “laptop from hell” fame, who first called the world’s attention to the latest wrinkle in the long-running “Get Trump” extravaganza in New York.  Anyway, I first heard about it from her post on X Friday. “If this is legit,” she wrote, commenting on a letter purportedly from Acting Justice Juan Merchan to Donald Trump’s Counsel and the Manhattan DA’s office,  “it should wipe out Trump’s conviction.”

Eh, what?

At issue was someone who (again, purportedly) posted on the Court’s public Facebook page a message from one “Michael Anderson,”  a self-described “professional shitposter,” who claimed to have inside information that Trump was about to be convicted. “My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted. Thank you folks for all your hard work!” The comment, Merchan wrote, was posted on May 29, a day before Trump’s guilty verdict rolled off the tongues of Merchan’s jury.

For a brief moment, the internet was ablaze with speculative comment, elated or anguished depending on the ideological coloration of the poster.  If it turned out that a juror had disobeyed his orders and spilled the beans about the verdict to someone who then posted the bulletin on Facebook, would that that constitute grounds for a mistrial?  After all, “prejudice to the defendant” is one of the four stipulated grounds for a mistrial. Chapter 15A-1061 of the statute says, in part, that “the judge must declare a mistrial upon the defendant’s motion if there occurs during the trial an error or legal defect in the proceedings, or conduct inside or outside the courtroom, resulting in substantial and irreparable prejudice to the defendant’s case.”

Is that what we have here?  It’s hard to say.  The original Facebook post was removed.  As far as I know, the juror in question has not been identified—and that’s assuming that a juror did inform “Michael Anderson” of the verdict. Did the post result in “substantial and irreparable prejudice to the defendant’s case?”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-6-6-the-record-is-not-good-for-perpetrators-of-politicized-criminal-proceedings

With the guilty verdicts in People v. Trump delivered by a Manhattan jury last week, the prosecutors are surely giving themselves a big pat on the back. We really got him this time! Undoubtedly they have convinced themselves that getting Trump branded a “convicted felon” (with little chance to get that reversed on appeal before the election, no matter how weak the conviction) will cause him to sink in the polls. At the very least, the successful prosecution of the main political adversary would have to be a positive for President Biden’s chances of re-election.

I wouldn’t be so sure. If you look into the history of efforts by a dominant political faction to use the criminal justice system as the means to disadvantage opponents, the record is not good for the perpetrators of these efforts. That is true even — maybe especially — where the politicized prosecution initially secured a criminal conviction.

I think it’s too early to expect day-by-day polling to tell us much about how these convictions might affect the upcoming presidential election in November. Instead, let’s look at some great politicized prosecutions of the past, and see how those worked out for the prosecutors.

For example, one of the most famous of this genre is the 1894 prosecution of Albert Dreyfus in France for allegedly giving military secrets to the Germans. Here is a summary of the affair from History.com. Dreyfus was a Captain in the French army. The military quickly tried Dreyfus in a court martial, convicted him, and sentenced him to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Two years later, a new head of army intelligence (Picquart) uncovered evidence that the traitor was another guy (Esterhazy); but instead of acknowledging the facts, the army transferred Picquart to North Africa, and then imprisoned him too. In 1898, Esterhazy was tried in his own court-martial, and acquitted. But then Emile Zola wrote the famous newspaper article “J’accuse” that accused the army of a massive cover-up. The whole scandal rocked France for a decade. Dreyfus was ultimately exonerated, and restored to his position in the army, where he served out his career. If you know anything about the Dreyfus affair today, it is as a famous example of official corruption and anti-semitism.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/08/jill-biden-edith-wilson-and-the-changing-american-state/

Much has been made over the last couple of days about President Biden’s behavior and demeanor at the ceremony honoring World War II veterans at Normandy on June 6, the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Biden looked…old—in large part because he is old. He shuffled like an old man. He got confused like an old man. He was hurried out of an event that was causing him consternation like an old man. Joe Biden is 81 years old and he looks every day of it—and more.

Some commentators, including the Republican Party’s Twitter/X account, suggested that President Biden’s deportment is embarrassing. “This is the most powerful man on the planet? This is the leader of the free world?” some wondered. How pathetic. How dispiriting. How truly and painfully excruciating!

Other observers insisted that the whole thing was just sad. After a lifetime of public service for Biden to be subjected to that kind of profound public humiliation is discomfiting, to say the least. No one deserves such a fate, regardless of political predisposition or partisan affiliation.

Still others said that the president’s condition is dangerous. That it encourages the nation’s friends and especially its enemies to think of the United States as weak and enfeebled. And with Russian warships steaming toward Cuba, apparently unconcerned about American reprisals, one takes their point.

Indeed, one takes all these points. President Biden is, quite simply, physically and mentally unfit for office. He should be sitting on the porch at his beach house in Rehoboth seven days a week, not sitting in the Oval Office. His presence there—not to mention his entreaty to be returned there for a second four-year term—is “all of the above.” It is embarrassing, sad, and dangerous.

More than anything, however, it is telling.

Many of the loudest and most resonant comments about President Biden’s circumstances note that he is forced to rely quite heavily on his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, to keep his embarrassment to a bare minimum. When he tried to sit down in an imaginary chair at the Normandy observance, she was the person who told him to remain standing. When he had to be ushered out of the ceremony quickly and conspicuously, she was the usher. Whatever Biden does, wherever he goes, whomever he sees, Jill is right there by his side, in large part to ensure that he does what he’s supposed to do, so as to spare him more serious embarrassment and, just as importantly, to try to ensure that he does not give his political rivals any fodder for the campaign.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-democrats-faked-a-jobs-boom/

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback,” Joe Biden bragged in March. “With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office.” Milestone or a millstone though might be a matter of opinion.

Politicians like to brag about “creating jobs” and for once it was literally true.

Of those 300,000 jobs, 71,000 or 1 in 4 were government jobs. Another 72,000 jobs came out of the healthcare industry which is heavily government funded. And 9,000 came from “employment in social assistance” or welfare. About 1 in 2 of Biden’s jobs were funded by taxpayers in one form or another. The only non-government industry showing significant job growth was the hospitality industry which was prepping temporary employment for vacation season.

An even more absurd story of government job growth came out of New York City where city officials boasted of having recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. But aBloomberg article revealed that “virtually all of the jobs added in the 12 months ended in March were in home health care, a low-paying but rapidly swelling field. It’s technically classified as private employment, but home health care is actually paid for primarily through publicly funded health programs like Medicaid.” Meanwhile actual private sector jobs were vanishing in New York.

“It’s giving us this sense that our economy is growing when in fact it’s really just Medicaid that’s growing,”  Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, pointed out.

While the Education and Health and the Government job sectors boomed in New York, mostly everything else was contracting or struggling.

And it’s not just New York City.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“’Let the jury consider the verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’” Alice in Wonderland, 1946 (my copy) Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

While the charges against Donald Trump were more severe than stealing tarts, there is no question that the trial was politicized. And there is a question as to whether he received due process, as explained by David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley[1] in the June 5, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump was convicted by a jury of twelve ordinary people, seven men and five women, a panel of jurors agreed to by both prosecution and defense. Like it or not, their decision is something we should respect. As British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannani wrote recently in The Telegraph: “Laws on their own are not enough. A free society rests also on conventions, precedents, unwritten rules. Losers are expected to accept the result, winners to exercise restraint.”

But jurors are not omniscient and judges have biases, which is why our legal process allows for appeals, and one can certainly expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to appeal the decision, and we are free to argue as to whether the charges should have been brought in the first place. The law is not perfect, but justice is supposed to be blind; it should not be weaponized for political gain. Regardless, a civilized society must accept a trial’s outcome, just as it must accept the decision of elections, else anarchy reigns and totalitarianism looms. There is a process that should be followed.

The outcome of the trial in “deep blue” Manhattan was predictable; though many of us hoped for a Henry Fonda-like character from 12 Angry Men to appear among the jurors, to at least create a hung jury. That did not happen.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/remembering_d_day_s_freedom_fighters.html

It is hard to believe that eighty years have passed since American, British, and Canadian troops landed at Normandy and fought their way across fortified beaches covered in German mines and barbed wire fences.  What a nightmare it must have been to overcome such soggy, uneven terrain while enduring heavy fire from gun emplacements secured upon hills and steep cliffs.  It must have felt like being dropped off in Hell and navigating through a gruesome Jell-O of blood, sand, smoke, explosions, and whirring bullets.  There were no timeouts.  There were no “safe spaces.”  There was nowhere to hide.  You either advanced or died.

Could Allied Forces accomplish such audacious feats today?  It is hard to imagine the “Me-Me-Me Generations” putting their lives on the line for much of anything.  Could you convince a socialist who believes that everything should be free that freedom is never free?  Could you explain to a Millennial that storming a beach is not done for Instagram snapshots, social media approval, or Facebook likes?  Could you persuade all those Westerners who hate Western civilization to pick up a rifle and fight for the West’s survival?  I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong; there are still plenty of patriots among us.  America’s armed services remain home to the kind of self-sacrificing heroes who would have parachuted behind enemy lines or fought tooth-and-nail to establish beachheads eight decades ago.  But the Pentagon has also watered down physical fitness standards, promoted “politically correct” Marxists into crucial command positions, and poisoned the rank and file with “woke” indoctrination.  

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

History teaches us that the best way to avoid a war is to prepare for one.

After World War I, another global conflict was unthinkable, the leaders of the democracies declared. Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists thought otherwise.

In the 1930s, Britain effectively disarmed, and France relied on static defense. The United States embraced isolationism, relying on two oceans for protection, while Germany rearmed and Japan invaded China. The cost of that lack of imagination was another world war and 75 million dead.

When World War II ended, shortsighted politicians rushed to downsize our military, even as communism advanced on four continents.

After Vietnam, the peaceniks who had taken control of the Democratic Party couldn’t wait to put our armed forces in mothballs. Then came Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, 9/11, ISIS, and radical Islam’s war on the West.

The Biden administration’s death march of folly began with the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, with 13 service members dead, thousands of Americans stranded and $7 billion in military equipment left behind. The weakness we displayed to our enemies set the stage for the next round of aggression.

President Biden is Neville Chamberlain, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter rolled into one.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-disrespect-d-day/

Over 4000 Allied troops, including over 1500 Americans, died storming the beaches of Normandy on this day in 1944, with thousands more wounded or missing. Today’s Democrat Party chose to honor them with petty political messaging and the hyping of Donald Trump as a threat to democracy comparable to that faced on D-Day.

Failed presidential candidate and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Hillary Clinton, not a person known for empathy or for her concern for American troops, diminished the 80th anniversary of D-Day by tweeting a clichéd comparison of the former President to Hitler: “Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy. This November, all we have to do is vote,” she wrote.

Needless to say, this tone-deaf, disrespectful politicization of the sacrifices and heroism displayed by so many young warriors against tyranny was not well-received on social media:

“Holy s*** I despise these people,” Army Ranger veteran Sean Parnell posted. “It’s impossible to capture just how loathsome a comment this is. To cheapen what WWII heroes did to BS garbage politics makes me sick. Again, WWII veterans deserve so much better than this.”

“What kind of shameless, broken, lizard person do you have to be to tweet out some nonsense like this?” wrote ComfortablySmug. “‘Yes I know what it was like for those soldiers on Omaha beach ducking machine gun fire, I went to vote. I am braver than the troops.’ She has never recovered from Trump’s win.”