RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Here we are in early December, almost a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Growing up in the mid-part of the 20th Century, I thought I was living in the future. The 19th Century – the past – was ever-present in grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older neighbors. The “future,” foretold in books like The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and movies like The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, provided fanciful entertainment, but hardly accurate predictions.

But the world does move on, and change is one constant we can count on.  Politically things change. The Party of Lincoln lost the black vote. The Party of segregation became the party of civil rights. Today we are going through another political change, as the Party of the working class is becoming the Party of elites, and of those dependent on government, and the mindless woke. And the Party of Lincoln, the Party of opportunity, is beginning once again to make inroads among the nation’s minorities.

Mr. Trump’s victory on November 5th may have marked the end of identity politics as we know it. Economic class, the election showed, mattered more than ethnicity, race or gender. Identity politics is based on the natural tendency for people of a specific race, ethnicity, gender, cultural, or religious group to band together, in friendship and to rectify past injustices. But that tendency has been employed and advantaged by politicians who, with the assistance of allies in the media, have divided people into oppressors and oppressed. Identity politics has led to an absence of focus on issues more relevant to individuals.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/vast-invisible-power/

As the name implies, the Supreme Court of the United States is the nation’s highest judicial body and Chief Justice John Roberts is the highest ranking judge. Behind the scenes in recent years, a secret court has usurped SCOTUS and a person outside of that body became the most powerful judge. If that seems a stretch, consider James Boasberg, Chief Judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The San Francisco native moved to Washington as a child when his father accepted a position in the Office of Economic Opportunity, which administered many of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs. So Boasberg fils is something of a “Great Society” diaper baby. The Yale law alum rose through the ranks and in 2011 president Obama, the composite character formerly known as Barry Soetoro, appointed Boasberg to the DC District Court.

In 2014, Chief Justice John Roberts tapped Boasberg for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, better known as the FISA court, established in 1978 during the administration of Jimmy Carter as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. From January 2020 to May 2021, Boasberg served as that court’s presiding judge, a powerful position with important distinctions. The FISA court operates in secret, no advocates for the accused are present, and only the government’s arguments are considered. This is basically a deep state star chamber, but there’s more to it.

Unlike Supreme Court justices, the presiding FISA judge is not subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. That invites a look Boasberg’s treatment of Kevin Clinesmith, Assistant General Counsel in the National Security and Cyber Law Branch of the FBI’s Office of General Counsel. Clinesmith was assigned to the case of Carter Page, an American citizen and U.S. Navy veteran who worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and had also served as an asset for the CIA. Clinesmith altered an email to show that Page was not a CIA asset, subjecting the American citizen to surveillance under FISA.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/01/americas-working-class-is-taking-back-control/

For a generation, America’s working class, as well as much of its middle class, lost political power. Rather than build their appeal on class interests, politicians kowtowed to Wall Street, Big Tech elites, university ‘experts’ and identitarian interest groups. But, as the 2024 presidential election clearly showed, the working class still has the clout to decide who gets put into the White House. Their choice of Donald Trump was a slap in the face to the ruling class.

The shift of working-class voters to the right, particularly those who work with their hands, has been developing for almost half a century. It accelerated during the pandemic, when their work largely kept the country functioning.

Although the number of college-educated voters has expanded, at least until recently, those without degrees still constitute around 60 per cent of the electorate. These are the voters most responsible for electing Trump, the first Republican nominee ever to win among low-income voters. In 2024, he won among non-college voters by 13 points. He even won over 44 per cent of union households, a proportion not won since former trade-unionist Ronald Reagan did so in the 1980s.

Perhaps most important in the long run, Trump also did well among Latinos, winning upwards of 40 per cent of their vote as a whole, and a majority of males. Many working-class Latinos preferred the immigrant-bashing Trump, because they are the ones who compete with and live in the same neighbourhoods as illegal migrants. His support won him formerly Democratic strongholds, from Texas’s Rio Grande Valley to California’s largely Latino interior. He also made major gains among African American males.

This working-class discontent is not unique to America. Similar patterns can also be seen in the UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Immigration has become a primary concern among these voters across the EU as well as Canada. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who wish to reduce immigration has soared. Roughly 60 per cent of Americans and a majority of Latinos support even ‘mass deportations’. Much the same shift of opinion has occurred in Europe.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/leftist-ny-attorney-general-and-judge-vs-the-rule-of-law/

New York State Attorney General Letitia James and New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron have provided a case study in how the Left conducts war against the integrity and impartiality of law enforcement and the judiciary. Together, they weaponized the justice system to wage their personal vendetta against Donald Trump. Their weapon of choice was a broad and vaguely written New York State fraud statute, Executive Law Section 63(12), which they maliciously twisted for the purpose of ruining Mr. Trump financially.

In 2022, Judge Engoron told Donald Trump’s attorney that Mr. Trump is “just a bad guy” whom Letitia James “should go after as the chief law enforcement officer of the state,” which is precisely what she was doing. Judge Engoron’s highly biased statement alone should have disqualified him from presiding over any case involving Mr. Trump. This judge should also have been disqualified for donating to the Manhattan Democrats in violation of Section 100.5(h) of the New York Courts Rules of Judicial Conduct. But Judge Engoron remained on the case.

Judge Engoron had no reason to doubt that Ms. James would zealously “go after” the man who Judge Engoron smeared as “a bad guy.”  After all, this left-wing fanatic had promised during her attorney general election campaign to target then-President Trump. “I’m running for attorney general because I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake,” this election denier declared. “We need an attorney general who will stand up to Donald Trump.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-pardons-son-and-co-conspirator/

The long investigation of the Biden Crime Family ended when its principal member extended a “full and unconditional” pardon to its front man for any and all crimes that Hunter Biden might have committed or taken part in from January 2014 through Dec 1 2024.

The eleven year pardon by Joe Biden for his son and apparent co-conspirator is unprecedented in both its scope and its brazen shameless criminality. Biden’s pardon begins in the last two years of his vice presidency when the lame duck politician was using Hunter to aggressively monetize his fading political influence by conspiring with oligarchs around the world.

President Biden claimed in a press release that he pardoned his son to protect him from being charged for lying on his gun form and failing to pay taxes. But if Biden had been trying to deal with those two cases, he could have just commuted the sentences or offered a narrower pardon.

The gun form incident took place in 2018 and Hunter stopped paying taxes in 2016. Why start the pardon clock on Jan 2014? And why does it end at the vast last possible moment?

What is Joe Biden really trying to protect against?

2014 was the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukraine’s Burisma, scoring a $1 million payday, and millions more for the Biden Crime Family. It was also the year that Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov sent $3.5 million to a Hunter organization and attended an event with Joe Biden in D.C. It was also the year that a Kazakh oligarch who had just taken over the BTA Bank with whom both Joe was photographed sent six figures.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/opinion/yiddish-hebrew-language-thriving.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE4.Zue4.U9O4DqrnHWz9&smid=url-share

A Columbia University linguist explores how race and language shape our politics and culture.

If I tell you that there are languages other than English that someone in America could live a whole life in, which would come to mind? Spanish, maybe? Chinese? Both are spoken in (among many other settings) tight-knit communities that are continually refreshed by new immigration. Pondering a little further, you might think of rural Amish communities that speak dialects of German.

I doubt that many people would think of Yiddish.

In mainstream American culture Yiddish — an Eastern European blend of German with a great many Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic words — is these days either a punchline (a “chutzpah” or a “klutz” in a comic’s monologue) or a historic footnote, a vanishing artifact of a long-gone era. Rueful tales of the days when New York supported a dozen Yiddish-language newspapers, or articles about the last of the Yiddish bookstores, always gave the language a twilight air. Even the stated intention of some younger people to revive Yiddish implies that the language requires some kind of resuscitation.

That would be a surprise to people who live in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities such as Kiryas Joel and Monsey, N.Y., where Yiddish is the dominant language. Despite supposedly vanishing into history, it has 250,000 speakers in America alone, the majority of them in settings like these.

I have had the pleasure and privilege of getting to know one such family during my summer stays at an old Jewish bungalow colony. That family — a husband and wife, along with two of their grown daughters and a grandchild — have taught me a great deal about the language and what it means to them.

https://www.jns.org/trump-white-house-affords-chance-to-confront-lebanese-terror-bank/

President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory offers a golden opportunity to shut down a Lebanese bank, one critical to Iran and Hezbollah, that has so far escaped sanctions even as it serves as one of the main conduits of terror financing, observers tell JNS.

While numerous Lebanese banks and individuals have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Middle East & Africa Bank (MEAB), the 15th largest by deposits in Lebanon, has fallen through the cracks.

In 2019, MEAB bank was named as a defendant in a case, still ongoing, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York, brought by American citizens and the families of American citizens who were killed or injured in Iraq between 2004 and 2011 in attacks orchestrated by Hezbollah in coordination with other terrorist groups.

In 2006, MEAB Bank’s offices were targeted by Israeli fighter jets after a fundraising appeal aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station asking that donations for the terrorist group be sent to a specific account at the bank.

Haig Melkessetian, a former intelligence operative for the U.S. Defense and State departments, has investigated MEAB extensively. He told JNS that the reason MEAB has evaded sanctions is that it has friends in high places.

In January 2015, during the Iran nuclear talks, Mohammad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister at the time, asked then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “to go easy on MEAB,” in other words, that it be kept off the OFAC sanctions list, Melkessetian said.

David Wurmser, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, who has researched the bank and the Shi’ite clan behind it, told JNS, “It’s very clear that the Iranians were out to preserve their core structures, and this bank really lies at the center of the global reach of Hezbollah, and through Hezbollah, the global reach of Iran.”

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2024/11/30/breaking-its-official-trump-names-deep-state-foe-kash-patel-fbi-director-n4934745

The appointment has been rumored ever since Donald Trump was reelected president of the United States, and on Saturday evening, he made it official: “I am proud to announce,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” This is an extraordinary and highly significant appointment, as Patel has been a harsh critic of the far-left, highly politicized and deeply corrupt FBI. A thoroughgoing housecleaning appears to be in the offing — unless the deep state that Patel will be targeting manages to defeat him in a head-on confrontation.

Trump added in his announcement:

Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People. He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution. Kash did an incredible job during my First Term, where he served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Kash has also tried over 60 jury trials. This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border. Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.

Patel may very well do just that. Certainly it is something he has made no secret about wanting very much to do. Back in August, Patel was asked what he would do if he did become the director of the FBI, and his answer was pure gold.

“One of my biggest personal recommendations,” Patel said, “is you shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State, and you send those 7000 agents in the headquarters building down range to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers and let the cops be cops on the streets across America. You keep a small contingent in Washington, DC. That’s step one.” 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/01/what-is-the-administrative-state/

Last week in this virtual space, I wrote that Donald Trump would make a renewed effort during his second term to dismantle “the administrative state.” As in his first term, he would employ various strategies to blunt the effects of the administrative apparatus that governs us. He would, for example, disperse some parts of the government outside the overwhelmingly left-progressive swamp of Washington, D.C.

As an aside, I should note that I regard the persistence of Washington as the seat of our government as a serious impediment to the goal of “deconstructing” the administrative state. “It has,” I wrote back in 2022, “long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city.”

It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it in a locality that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.

I doubt that will happen. Which means that the eternal vigilance that MAGA must maintain around its enemies will have to be redoubled. Trump attempting to govern from Washington will be like Ike trying to undertake the Normandy invasion with half his planners on loan from the German general staff.

Still, there are some symbolic gestures that he and his aides might consider. I have long suggested that the inauguration be held somewhere other than Washington, D.C. There is nothing in the Constitution that requires the inauguration be in Washington. LBJ, remember, was sworn in on Air Force One just a couple of hours after Kennedy was assassinated. When Warren Harding died, Calvin Coolidge was visiting the family homestead in Vermont. His father, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office in the parlor. I think the next inauguration should be well away from the swamp of Washington. Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach is one venue that springs to mind, but I am sure there are other attractive spots. At a minimum, I hope the inauguration committee will consider having some of the parties elsewhere. A ball in Butler, PA, for example, would not only be celebratory but also serve as a useful reminder of how close Trump came to a fatal encounter with an assassin’s bullet.