RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/why-socialism-and-why-now/

“Socialist! is no longer a McCarthyite slur.

Rather, the fresh celebrity “Squad” of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.

Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate — Vermont’s trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness. But in 2016, Sanders’ improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.

After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.

Sanders, like the members of the Squad, has limited political power. But the celebrity and social media influence of these new and retread socialists has been on the upswing — especially in the current 21st-century climate of radical transformations in economic and political life.

Note the shock over Clinton’s 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual. And there are still other undercurrents that explain why currently socialism polls so well among young Americans.

College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans. Many of these debtors despair of ever paying back the huge sums.

Brexit: Boris Turns to the Queen

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/brexit-boris-turns-to-the-queen/90811/

Queen Elizabeth II’s approval of the suspension of Parliament next month is an important step in protecting Britain’s decision to leave Europe. It is crucial to a plan of Prime Minister Johnson that is being set down by furious opponents as, in the words of one, “profoundly undemocratic.” What a hypocritical jibe. For Mr. Johnson seeks to redeem a Brexit referendum that is one of the great acts of direct democracy in modern history.

https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/dsei/2019/08/27/can-an-israeli-missile-give-us-army-aviation-an-advantage-in-future-warfare/

Can an Israeli missile give US Army aviation an advantage in future warfare? Jen Judson

In the mountainous desert of Arizona, an AH-64E helicopter hiding behind 1,600 feet of craggy mountain fires a missile at a target representing a Russian Pantsir medium-range, surface-to-air missile system on the opposite slope.

The Aug. 26 scenario, attended by Defense News, was part of a U.S. Army experiment to achieve greater standoff against enemy threats using the Rafael-manufactured Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) anti-tank, guided missile.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/comparison-trump-record-former-presidents-current-critics/

Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.

I n traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.

In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/president-can-legally-regulate-foreign-commerce-says-congress/

Foreign policy via Twitter is obviously unwise, but Congress has given the president wide latitude to regulate foreign commerce.

Lots of high dudgeon after the president’s manic tweeting on Friday.

As to some of it, rightfully so. It was contemptible for the president to equate the dictator of Communist China to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, a patriotic American who apparently disagrees with Donald Trump on policy — and who is more attuned than the president to the need to avoid the appearance that Fed policy is susceptible to political tantrums.

Still, the righteous blasts by Trump critics in defense of Chairman Jerome Powell turned out to be so much throat-clearing. Soon followed indignant howls over what was framed as the president’s constitutional illiteracy in purporting to “order” American companies “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Trump also said he was “ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE . . . all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!).”

Preliminarily, let’s stipulate that there is uncertainty, to say the least, about exactly what the president may “order” anyone to do via Twitter, even the people who work for him.

After being dazed by the tweets in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, I’ve come to regard them as political performance art. I imagine most of us have. I tune most of it out. Other times, I chuckle . . . or gasp . . . or envision Trump rubbing his hands together in anticipation of making his critics’ heads explode. Mostly, I wonder if the president is too self-absorbed to grasp how wearying all this is — how he could easily lose a winnable reelection because he is exhausting, or because the tweets help his critics argue that he is unstable, or at least too feral for the office.

Foreign policy via Twitter is obviously unwise, but Congress has given the president wide latitude to regulate foreign commerce.

Lots of high dudgeon after the president’s manic tweeting on Friday.

As to some of it, rightfully so. It was contemptible for the president to equate the dictator of Communist China to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, a patriotic American who apparently disagrees with Donald Trump on policy — and who is more attuned than the president to the need to avoid the appearance that Fed policy is susceptible to political tantrums.

Still, the righteous blasts by Trump critics in defense of Chairman Jerome Powell turned out to be so much throat-clearing. Soon followed indignant howls over what was framed as the president’s constitutional illiteracy in purporting to “order” American companies “to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Trump also said he was “ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE . . . all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!).”

Preliminarily, let’s stipulate that there is uncertainty, to say the least, about exactly what the president may “order” anyone to do via Twitter, even the people who work for him.

After being dazed by the tweets in the first few weeks of the Trump presidency, I’ve come to regard them as political performance art. I imagine most of us have. I tune most of it out. Other times, I chuckle . . . or gasp . . . or envision Trump rubbing his hands together in anticipation of making his critics’ heads explode. Mostly, I wonder if the president is too self-absorbed to grasp how wearying all this is — how he could easily lose a winnable reelection because he is exhausting, or because the tweets help his critics argue that he is unstable, or at least too feral for the office.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/22/cultural-marxist-attack-western-society/

Have you ever heard of Antonio Gramsci? How about Herbert Marcuse? Or the Frankfurt School?

These names are probably meaningless to all but a small minority of scholars academics and political theorists throughout the world. Yet, Americans — and indeed all those who treasure the religion, culture and history of Western Civilization — should become acquainted with these names if they are to understand the forces that are currently tearing society apart. 

Marxism appeared on the scene in Europe in the mid-19th century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels posited a thesis that capitalist society was doomed to  demise as the “proletariat” — the working class — rose up to overthrow their oppressors, the “bourgeoisie” — the middle class of property owners. Marx and Engels saw world history through the prism of a perpetual class struggle between these two implacable enemies. Marx predicted that socialist revolutions would spring up throughout the West as the proletariat overthrew the bourgeoisie and established dictatorships in the name of the “people.” 

Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Marx, his prediction fell short.  The socialist revolutions largely failed to materialize in Europe or America. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 arrived in Russia — vanguard of the East — and had as much to do with the tragic casualties and deprivations of World War I as anything to do with the wealth of the propertied classes. Subsequent communist revolutions that attempted to replicate what Lenin achieved in Russia — be they in  postwar Hungary under Bela Kun or Germany under Rosa Luxemburg were either  short-lived or failed altogether. 

amgreatness.com/2019/08/25/the-mythical-trump-hydra/

Many are the hissing heads of the polycephalic Donald Trump—at least according to the progressive Left and the NeverTrump Right, who see the president of the United States as some sort of mythical nightmare. Here are a few of his supposedly monstrous manifestations.
Trump, the Profiteer 

Candidate Trump never really wanted to be president. His entire amateurish and buffoonish candidacy was designed only to enhance his brand. Once he was unexpectedly elected, Trump was more shocked than anyone, and quickly sought to maximize his profits from the Oval Office. Thus, followed the constant progressive evocation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution to prevent chronic Trump profiteering.

In reality, the Trump empire reportedly has declined by nearly $1 billion in net value, aside from the tens of millions of his own money that Trump spent on the 2016 campaign. Trump’s business interests are the most thoroughly investigated of any recent president in memory. Obama and the Clintons made millions from their presidencies; Trump may well end up losing billions.

Trump, the Liberal 

NeverTrumpers insisted that the politically polymorphous Trump was lying about his hard conservative agendas during the 2016 primaries. In truth, they warned, Trump was a Manhattan liberal wolf in right-wing fleece clothing. 

If ever elected, Trump would adopt progressive abortion policies, become another radical environmentalist in the fashion of a squishy Arnold Schwarzenegger, select liberal justices like his moderate federal justice sister, ignore evangelicals, and in general defer to the liberal foreign policy establishment. In sum, Trump would keep none of his conservative promises and govern to the left of the McCain wing of the Republican Party 

https://spectator.org/recession-headlines-in-search-of-a-story/

Recent breathless headlines of impending recession exposed the “experts” more than the economy. In attempting to see over the economic horizon, they appeared more to be seeking to see past this administration. The economy remains sound, even as attempts to discredit become less so.

On August 19, the Washington Post’s first sentence summed up their one-dimensional angle on the National Association for Business Economics’ August survey: “Most economists believe the United States will tip into recession by 2021, a new survey shows, despite White House insistence the economy is sound.” So it went, with most establishment news outlets bent on finding the gray cloud around today’s current sterling economy.

Negative news sells. Perhaps it has always been thus, though it certainly seems most prevalent when it is adverse to this administration.

Interestingly, the latest NABE survey showed something else — an improvement over the previous survey — if the time had been taken to read it. As the survey stated in its section on the economy: “Compared with results in the February 2019 survey, respondents, on balance, expect the next U.S. recession to occur later.” In other words: The survey shows an improved outlook regarding recession.

Respondents predicting a recession this year dropped from ten percent to two percent. Those anticipating one next year also dropped, from 42 percent to 38 percent. Presuming these more optimistic respondents must put their predictions somewhere, they moved them to 2021, causing this later estimation to rise from 25 percent to 34 percent. Finally, those predicting the next recession would be even later moved up from 11 percent to 14 percent.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/24/andrew-mccabes-unjust-deserts/

I was going to pass by in silent contempt the news that CNN—the network that patrons of airport lounges cordially dislike and that no one else watches—just decided to hire disgraced former FBI honcho Andrew McCabe as a commentator. He’ll fit right in, I thought, with other such mountebanks barking against Donald Trump not only at CNN but also at MSNBC not to mention The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other retirement homes for the anti-Trump fraternity.

But Andrew McCarthy’s column at NRO on Saturday reminded me that the case of McCabe is important. It says something critical not just about one of the most important players in (to cite the subtitle of McCarthy’s new book) “the plot to rig and election and destroy a presidency,” but also about some larger issues, which from one perspective might be said to turn on the task of guaranteeing the peaceful transition of power in a democracy and, from another, on the ambition of our justice system to provide (as the legend chiseled into the pediment of the Supreme Court says) “equal justice under law.”

As I have noticed before in this space, Andrew McCabe was a central player in the pseudo-investigation of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified information and self-enrichment schemes while secretary of state. He was one of the people who made sure that the probe went nowhere.

McCabe was also a central figure in the get-Mike-Flynn operation and, later, the Great Trump Hunt that occupied Andrew Weissmann’s Howdy Doody dummy Robert Mueller for some two years. McCabe leaked information about an investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter and lied about leaking in casual conversations with superiors as well as under oath. Yet he will soon be reporting for duty at CNN.

I was going to pass by in silent contempt the news that CNN—the network that patrons of airport lounges cordially dislike and that no one else watches—just decided to hire disgraced former FBI honcho Andrew McCabe as a commentator. He’ll fit right in, I thought, with other such mountebanks barking against Donald Trump not only at CNN but also at MSNBC not to mention The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other retirement homes for the anti-Trump fraternity.

But Andrew McCarthy’s column at NRO on Saturday reminded me that the case of McCabe is important. It says something critical not just about one of the most important players in (to cite the subtitle of McCarthy’s new book) “the plot to rig and election and destroy a presidency,” but also about some larger issues, which from one perspective might be said to turn on the task of guaranteeing the peaceful transition of power in a democracy and, from another, on the ambition of our justice system to provide (as the legend chiseled into the pediment of the Supreme Court says) “equal justice under law.”

As I have noticed before in this space, Andrew McCabe was a central player in the pseudo-investigation of Hillary Clinton’s misuse of classified information and self-enrichment schemes while secretary of state. He was one of the people who made sure that the probe went nowhere.

McCabe was also a central figure in the get-Mike-Flynn operation and, later, the Great Trump Hunt that occupied Andrew Weissmann’s Howdy Doody dummy Robert Mueller for some two years. McCabe leaked information about an investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter and lied about leaking in casual conversations with superiors as well as under oath. Yet he will soon be reporting for duty at CNN.

AOC: Jeff Bezos started Amazon fire to ‘make billions in insurance fraud’

https://genesiustimes.com/aoc-jeff-bezos-started-amazon-fire-to-make-billions-in-insurance-fraud/

The feud between US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and businessman Jeff Bezos reached another level today as AOC blamed the Amazon fire on Bezos.

“The Amazon fire is so heartbreaking. And you look at who would profit. Well clearly the man who owns it: Jeff Bezos. He obviously started the fire to make billions in insurance fraud.”

Jordan Peterson: The deepfake artists must be stopped before we no longer know what’s real

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-deep-fake

Something very strange and disturbing happened to me recently. If it was just relevant to me, it wouldn’t be that important (except perhaps to me), and I wouldn’t be writing this column. But it’s something that is likely more important and more ominous than we can even imagine.

There are already common fraudulent schemes being perpetrated by both telephone and internet. One known as the “Grandparent Scam” is particularly reprehensible, first because it is perpetrated on elderly people who are, in general, more susceptible to tech-savvy criminals and second because it is based on the manipulation of familial love, trust and compassion. The criminal running the Grandparent Scam calls, or emails the victim, pretending to represent a grandchild who is now in trouble with the law or who needs money for a hospital bill for an injury that can’t be discussed, say, with parents, because of the moral trouble that might ensue. They generally call late at night — say at four in the morning — because that adds to the confusion. The preferred mechanism of money movement is wire transfer — and that’s a warning: don’t transfer money by wire without knowing for certain who is receiving it, because once it’s gone, it’s not coming back.

amgreatness.com/2019/08/23/the-lefts-three-rs-russia-racism-and-recession/

Long ago when I was young, the fundamental building blocks of education were “the three Rs”: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Today, for the less-than-edifying Left, the basic brickbats of their 2020 campaign against President Trump also comprise three “Rs”: Russia, racism, and recession.

Tragically, among those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, the most important “R” is missing. That would be reality. Consequently, the cudgels of their “three Rs” campaign likely won’t prevent another four years of the presidency that has been the bane of their existence. If anything, that campaign is likely to boost his reelection chances next year.

The first of the Left’s three Rs stands for “Russia,” specifically the notion that President Trump is a compromised Putin stooge who, along with his campaign, conspired with the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election.

Having run with this seditious myth for more than two years, until Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and his own congressional appearance wrecked the narrative, the Left quickly dumped the trope down the memory hole. Of course, for the more gullible Russia-gate dead-enders, the Left will tweak it every now and again to spur campaign contributions and voter turnout. For those who produced, perpetuated, and pimped this big lie—and who may well find themselves in legal jeopardy—the Left will only trot out the Russian-collusion scam for a broader audience on an as-needed basis, so as to provide a faux, affirmative defense for their potential malfeasance.