RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/19/kamalas-collapse/

“It’s hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a white man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves.” That was a former aide to Kamala Harris speaking to Edward-Isaac Dovere and Jasmine Wright of CNN. The nearly 5,000-word story, headlined “Exasperation and Dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ Frustrating Start As Vice President,” tapped many anonymous sources, but California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis was willing to go on the record.

“It is natural that those of us who know [Harris], know how much more helpful she can be than she is currently being asked to be,” Kounalakis said. So the real problem is not Harris but Joe Biden. As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) of “Holy Grail” fame might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of politics? 

Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a real-estate tycoon with a net worth of $600 million. According to Greek USA Reporter, Angelo is a “top political donor to the Clintons as well as the Democratic Party,” whose “donations to former President Bill Clinton were rewarded with a night in the prestigious Lincoln Bedroom.” In 2013 Tsakopoulos, “confirmed that Hillary Clinton will seek the Democratic nomination in the next presidential election.”

 Eleni, a protégé of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, raised more than $1 million for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that money found its reward. On January 7, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swore in Kounalakis as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. Kounalakis served until 2013, and in 2015 authored Madam Ambassador: Three Years of Diplomacy, Dinner Parties and Democracy in Budapest.

 In 2016, Kounalakis did her best to beat back a presidential run by Joe Biden, with strategic assistance from husband Markos Kounalakis, a columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, publishers of the Sacramento Bee.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/11/19/the-diversity-road-to-mediocrity-n1534777

When you are looking for a scientist, an engineer, a designer, or an artist, if the most brilliant, accomplished, and talented candidate is a white male, reject him! White males are not “diverse,” are “privileged oppressors,” and “overrepresented,” so instead hire a member of a “marginalized. underserved minority,” such as a person of color, a female, an LGBTQ++ individual, a poor or disabled person. Never mind if the person hired is weaker at the job; “social justice” will have been served. The examples are staggering.

The competition for the 2021 Australian National Jazz Awards for piano was carried out via blind auditions using audio recordings, with the names, faces, and voices of the competitors not disclosed. The ten short-list candidates were all men. Female jazz performers went ballistic, denouncing the results as sexist and unfair. They demanded that blind auditions be done away with and that a quota for female winners be implemented. In other words, the female critics demanded that merit be rejected in favor of enforced parity of the sexes.

An even more egregious case is the competition for the prestigious fellow status for the American Geophysical Union. One committee was appointed to nominate candidates in the cryosphere (Earth’s snow and ice) section. Some of the candidates were described by the female member of the committee as “truly, amazingly deserving.” But the nominees, suggested by peers in the Union, were all men. This was too much for the diversicrats on the committee, who felt that “social justice” demanded the nomination of more females, more blacks, and more non-Americans. So the Committee refused to nominate a winner.

The claim made by diversicrats was that there is “implicit bias” against outgroup members, i.e. people who are not white males. It is alleged that members of oppressed victim groups, such as females and people of color, are not recognized for their accomplishments. A study in Scientific Social Studies concluded that prizes in 141 of the world’s top scientific competitions between 2001-2020 went to 2011 men and 262 women. This is a disparity that violates the “equity” argument that all census categories of race, sex, sexuality, etc., must have equal outcomes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thoughts-on-the-rittenhouse-not-guilty-verdicts/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

I could not be more delighted to be wrong. I was increasingly convinced with each passing hour that the Rittenhouse trial was headed to a hung jury. It was a very straightforward case, with a single question about self-defense to be resolved. The jurors seemed to be taking way too long to resolve it.

The one thing that cut against that was the absence of a deadlock note. Usually, if the jury reaches the point when they realize they are hopelessly divided, they send a note to the judge reporting that situation. That never happened here.

I continue to believe that the jury should have been sequestered — that is obvious, to my mind. With the kind of intense publicity, threats, violence on the courthouse steps, the MSNBC incident, and overall atmosphere in which the case ended, Judge Bruce Schroeder was running a huge risk of jury tampering and intimidation that could have caused a mistrial. The fact that foreseeably disastrous consequences thankfully did not occur should be taken as good fortune, not a template for future trials.

Because the jury took so long to reach its verdicts, there can be no credible claim that the case was not carefully weighed. The jurors gave a weak prosecution case very respectful and diligent attention — more than it deserved, but the jury’s duty nonetheless. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted because that was the only just verdict — i.e., the only faithful application of the controlling law to the facts proved.

There is always a letdown at the conclusion of a trial, even when the proper result has been reached.

There is a dissonance between what we invest in a trial and what it resolves. We rely on the criminal-justice process for the airing of important aspects and arguments around many public controversies that deeply divide us. The trial and its attendant litigation become our historical record. But in the end, a criminal proceeding settles only a very narrow point: Did the state present proof beyond a reasonable doubt to support the charges it alleged?

In the Rittenhouse trial — in what I continue to believe is a case that should never have been a criminal prosecution — the state did not meet its burden. That narrow finding is critical, and the jury made it.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2021/12/unprecedented

The theme is “Western civilization at the crossroads.” Far be it from me to doubt that the West is on the precipice of something enormous. But “crossroads” implies a map. Do we have one? Is a piece of paper showing the way forward—whether predictive or hopeful—even possible?

I’ve noticed that a lot of people more or less “on my side,” or who see things basically as I do, are extremely confident that they know what is going to happen next. Their certainty is entirely independent of what they think they know.

Some believe that the end—the collapse of present ruling arrangements—is imminent, if not tomorrow or next week, then soon, within a year or five. Others assert that the present regime is stable and not only can but will last for decades or even centuries. Some insist that the regime will fall of its own incompetence, others that its end will require an external push—which some are certain will come, and others are equally sure will not.

When I have thought about this, I have been in some part inclined to the opinion that present arrangements are unstable and may be approaching their end. Yet in thinking it through further, I am forced to admit that our times are marked by so many unprecedented trends and events that making predictions seems foolhardy.

Both Rome and America were founded by kings—or, in our case, under the auspices of a king.

But before going into those differences, let’s first consider the one historical parallel that all sides of this debate draw on for precedent: the rise, peak, decline, and fall of Rome. At first glance, the two cases seem to have a lot in common. Not only was the United States founded by men educated in the classics who took Roman pseudonyms and named the government’s top legislative body after Rome’s, and not only did those founders revive republicanism after centuries of abeyance following the transformation of the Roman republic into an empire, but our country’s history itself seems to have tracked Rome’s, if not precisely then certainly thematically.

https://rumble.com/vphnor-the-rittenhouse-veredict.html

The 18-year-old defendant Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted by a jury of his peers on all charges on Friday afternoon. Rittenhouse, accused of various counts of murders stemming from his shooting of three people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, insisted that he acted in legitimate self defense. A unanimous jury appeared to agree, and Rittenhouse is now a free man.

I will have much more to say on this verdict and the reaction to it, but immediately after the verdict was delivered, I went live on Rumble to provide my views of why, after having watched the entire trial, I believed this verdict was just, and why the media narrative was particularly deceitful and morally repellent. The video is 45-minutes long and can be watched here, at this link.