RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://victorhanson.com/biden-democrats-use-midterm-mass-distraction-strategy-to-hide-counterculture-revolution-from-angry-voters/

The contours of the upcoming November midterms seem clear. President Joe Biden scarcely polls above 40% approval. His disastrous energy, economic, crime, immigration, and foreign policies proved even more unpopular.

In reaction, frightened Democratic candidates on script are resorting to strategies of diversion. They avoid mention of their prior lockstep support for Biden agendas that induced current high gas prices, spiraling inflation, deflated 401(k) retirement plans, out-of-control violent crime, 3 million illegal aliens pouring across the southern border, and the disaster in Afghanistan and its aftermath.

Most Democrats are quietly relieved that a 79-year-old, cognitively challenged Biden does not appear with them on the campaign trail, preferring he continue his frequent down time at his Delaware retreat.

Democrats also increasingly rely on a series of ginned up Trump-MAGA psychodramas. That way they hope to make the midterms a referendum on a supposedly demonic Donald Trump—with help from the media, the January 6th House Committee hearings, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and now periodic Biden rants about “semi-fascist” Trump supporters.

These efforts of mass distraction will not work.

Aside from Democrats’ inability to mask their prior support for the disastrous Biden record, most presidents lose dozens of congressional seats in their first midterm election. And when a president’s approval rating stays stuck at about 40 percent, down-ticket party candidates do poorly.

But even more importantly, in the last month of the election, there is a growing consensus that our very civilization itself is imploding and America’s current trajectory is unsustainable.

https://victorhanson.com/what-now-exactly-are-impeachable-offenses-part-one/

We know that Donald Trump was once impeached for calling up his Ukrainian counterpart and complaining that the Ukrainian government had been too involved with the corrupt Biden family. Trump then warned that if Ukraine did not clean up its quid-pro-quo act, he would delay approved military aid.

And while Trump eventually sent offensive weapons to Ukraine that the Obama-Biden administration had vetoed, he was still impeached. Apparently, his sin was that he had anticipated Biden as a future 2020 Democratic rival candidate for president, and thus was intermingling politics and foreign policy to his own benefit and the nation’s detriment.

As such, it did not matter that his phone call did not affect U.S. policy because Ukraine got its weapons, and better ones than those approved by the prior administration.

Nor did it apparently matter that Trump was correct, as we know from the later Hunter Biden laptop revelations, that the entire Biden family syndicate was corrupt. Indeed, Joe Biden himself—known to the family as the “Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten-percent” and “pedo”—cannot explain his sudden wealth, lavish pre-presidential lifestyle, or various estates without some source of extra (non-taxed?) income.

Nor does it matter apparently that Trump’s call was listened to by partisan Ukrainian American Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who relayed it—although initially denied doing so—to the technically still “anonymous” whistleblower. The latter filed a complaint with the congressional intelligence committees, based on hearsay (from Vindman no doubt), and then coordinated with Adam Schiff to set the stage for impeachment proceedings. That fact was denied by the prevaricating Schiff, who also lied about several elements of the impeachment proceedings.

So, what then is the new bar for impeachment for warping U.S. policy for perceived political advantage?

Why was not Barack Obama impeached for his hot-mic revelations in Seoul, South Korea in early election year 2012?

After all, Obama was caught:

a) trying to alter U.S. policy to the nation’s disadvantage (by cancelling preapproved missile defense systems with Poland and the Czech Republic) in exchange for advancing his own political interests in getting reelected (asking Vladimir for “space” so that Obama would not be embarrassed by Russian adventurism during his “last” election).

b) And unlike Trump, who did send aid to Ukraine, Obama did not go forward with missile defense. And, unlike Trump’s call that did not affect events on the ground, Putin did, as promised, not invade Ukraine until 2014 after Obama was reelected.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/21/race-baiting-celebrity-j6-cop-once-involved-in-race-related-lawsuit/

Michael Fanone, the former D.C. Metropolitan police officer using his presence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as a pathway to fame and fortune, is on a major publicity blitz. Along with his Pulitzer-prize finalist co-author, Fanone managed to turn his 30-minute struggle that afternoon into a 256-page book: Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul is an “urgent warning about the growing threat to our democracy from a twenty-year police veteran and former Trump supporter who nearly lost his life during the insurrection of January 6th.

Never mind that Fanone was well enough on the evening of January 6 to call CNN and complain about its news coverage or that he sat for a lengthy interview with a Washington Post reporter a few days later. Fanone is part of a quartet of celebrity cops juicing every second of their involvement in the four-hour disturbance nearly two years ago, earning lucrative book deals, congressional awards, and cable news gigs in the process.

Fanone has lots to say in his memoir—heavily sprinkled with obscenities—while ranting about Donald Trump and his supporters. (Fanone begins with a brazen lie that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of “wounds” sustained on January 6.)

He condemns Republican lawmakers for refusing to go along with the “insurrection” narrative and he names names: A secretly recorded meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is described in the book. “While you were on the phone with [Trump], I was getting the shit kicked out of me, almost losing my life,” Fanone told McCarthy in 2021. “The way that he, you know, saying this is what happens when you steal an election. Go home. I love you. What the fuck is that!?”

But one name is missing from Fanone’s profane screed: Michael A. Maddox. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ryanledendecker/2022/10/21/bidens-diesel-fuel-supply-crisis-could-soon-cripple-america-in-ways-never-before-seen-n1638814

Oil prices and President Joe Biden’s continued draining of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) have dominated the headlines over the past few weeks, but analysts say a more impactful and serious crisis on the energy front looms: a diesel fuel shortage.

Diesel doesn’t get as much of the limelight as oil and gas, but it should because diesel fuel is the industrial lifeblood of the United States, and the price of diesel alone probably has a more significant impact on inflation and the prices you’re paying at the grocery store over any other factor. Without ample amounts of diesel, semi-trucks don’t move, farms are shut down, and critical manufacturing sectors are crippled.

As Bloomberg noted this week, “The US has just 25 days of diesel supply, the lowest since 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration. At the same time, the four-week rolling average of distillates supplied, a proxy for demand, rose to its highest seasonal level since 2007.”

The Biden administration has remained strangely silent, probably hoping that the dismal news doesn’t hit the mainstream because it’s a total political timebomb waiting to go off, especially as the midterm elections are so close.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The question: Will young people schooled to disdain America for her racist and imperialist past, and her misogynist and non-inclusive present be willing to defend her in time of war?

The United States has long shunned standing armies. Such an attitude is in the “American DNA,” as Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI) stated in an interview a week ago in The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, the military was respected. That appears to have changed. A recent annual poll by the Reagan Institute, showed a “great deal of confidence” in the military at 45%, down 25% in three years – victim of “woke ideology,” according to Representative Gallagher.

Is this lack of respect for the military symptomatic of a greater problem? Historically, a positive aspect of democracy has been the ability to criticize it. Yet we now live in an Orwellian world, defined by identity politics, where truth is not based on historical or empirical evidence, but on what we are told. Identity politics is a way of relegating the individual to the group, a precursor to authoritarian rule We should be able to love something, yet criticize it, with the goal of making it better. Now, discrimination has taken on a new look. Instead of racial or gender discrimination, we have discrimination against dissenting opinions – the censoring of conservatives on college campuses, and the blocking of political opinions that do not conform to a prescribed message. 

Yet, regardless of our political persuasions, it may become necessary to defend this nation, which means that critics must be willing to pick up arms, to defend what they have been taught is indefensible. So, the question must be asked. Is it possible to defend a nation where partisanship has given birth to hatred? Our internecine bickering has been noted by leaders in China, Russia, and Iran who use our own words to drive deeper the wedge that separates us. When we claim our nation is racist, inequitable, and imperialist, they agree – we are the “Great Satan,” as Iran’s leaders say. Now, with so many pundits, politicians and teachers declaring we are a nation born on the backs of slaves, it is difficult for many to recognize how fortunate they are to live in this land. And it may prove difficult for them to recognize that freedom is not free, and that there are times when it must be defended.