RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/31/the-biden-presidency-is-unsustainable/

Imagine if Gavin Newsom was currently Vice President amid the final meltdown of the Biden family consortium.

Does anyone doubt that Biden would then either be forced to resign by Democratic politicos (for reasons in addition to his escalating dementia), or would be impeached and perhaps abdicate Nixon-style?

The presence of the now predictable mediocrity of Kamala Harris and the impossibility, given her race and gender, of removing her, for now is about all that keeps a cognitively declining Biden still in office. The Left fears what she could do as president to the Democratic Party; conservatives are terrified of what she could do to the country.

Joe Biden’s bewilderment exempts his embarrassments from accountability in the way that Hunter Biden’s addictions excuse his past serial criminality. But the passes granted to both father and son would be now unsustainable with a viable Vice President in waiting.

Indeed, the Harris problem explains some of current Democratic strategy.

Backroom leaks and growing insider rumors of Biden dementia confirm the portrait of an often befuddled president whom the public by now knows all too well.

The aimless House Democrats’ “how-dare-you-even-consider-an-impeachment inquiry” furor, coupled with their half-hearted efforts, along with the media, to refute the actual charges of corruption of the Biden family, suggest that he will not run for reelection—but also not be impeached much less convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment.

So the Harris dilemma explains a lot: finding a way to keep her out of current power until Biden somehow finishes his first term, and thus letting the Democratic 2024 primary candidates organically abort her presidential aspirations.

There are a few problems, however, with this strategy.

One, can Joe Biden finish his first term?

That would require his staff to shorten his already truncated workday for the next 18 months to about 2-3 hours of work per day.

Following the launch of our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report earlier in the week, last night I was featured on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street show.

When Biden claims climate change is the #1 national security threat, politicians and unelected bureaucrats think they have license to run amok — fleecing the American people and curtailing of freedom and liberty…

WATCH THE INTERVIEW: THE EPA IS STAFFING UP, LAWYERING UP, AND ARMING UP WITH AN EXTRA $100 BILLION FROM CONGRESS
 

https://nypost.com/2023/07/30/doj-cant-sink-any-lower-after-attempted-arrest-of-hunter-bidens-ex-partner-devon-archer/

The Department of Justice attempted to have Devon Archer report to prison ahead of his expected testimony about his former business partner Hunter Biden before the House Oversight Committee. Alec TabakWhat a coincidence!

On the eve of Devon Archer’s bombshell testimony to the House Oversight Committee, the Department of Justice tried to put him in jail. 

If you don’t suspect that’s an attempt to intimidate Hunter Biden’s former best friend before he reveals damaging secrets about the president, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

It’s another example of a DOJ gone astray.

Coming hot on the heels of the first son’s dubious plea deal in Delaware collapsing last week, and amid allegations from senior IRS whistleblowers of political favoritism by prosecutors to protect Joe Biden, you have to wonder how far a weaponized, all-powerful, unaccountable justice system can go.

Two more examples from the past week tell you the sky’s the limit — and they’re not even bothering to hide it anymore.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors dropped campaign-finance violation charges against cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who just so happens to have been Biden’s second-biggest donor.

On Thursday, new charges against Biden’s chief political rival, Donald Trump, were filed by special counsel Jack Smith over the former president’s handling of classified files.

‘Obstruction of justice’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-biden-foreign-agents-registration-act-robert-mueller-donald-trump-26596b5a?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Unequal justice has emerged as a theme in the Hunter Biden plea deal, and one example came last week when Judge Maryellen Noreika asked the prosecution and defense in court if their agreement meant the President’s son could still be prosecuted for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Hunter’s lawyers said no, but the prosecutor said yes, and Hunter can thank Robert Mueller if he is prosecuted under that statute.

FARA is a long-ignored law dating to 1938 that special counsel Mueller brought out of mothballs in an attempt to pry information out of Donald Trump’s associates. It requires Americans acting as an “agent of a foreign principal” under most circumstances to register with the U.S. government. As we noted at the time, in the nearly half-century up to 2016 the Justice Department brought only seven criminal FARA cases and won three convictions. The rarity of prosecutions created much confusion about how and when the law applies.

That didn’t stop Mr. Mueller. As special counsel investigating nonexistent Russia collusion, he used FARA to prosecute Trump associates who were mostly accused of lying about their work on behalf of foreign governments.

This is how he nailed Paul Manafort, who took money from the Ukrainians. Michael Flynn admitted to making false statements in documents filed pursuant to FARA regarding his work on behalf of the Turkish government. FARA also ensnared Greg Craig—a high-powered Democratic lawyer and former White House counsel to President Obama—who was prosecuted as an offshoot of the Mueller investigation into Mr. Manafort’s deals with Ukraine.

https://thespectator.com/topic/operation-get-trump/

Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, cannot bear very much reality. A case in point was the chyron that Fox News posted briefly on June 13. That was the day that Donald Trump was arraigned in Miami. The news story featured a split screen. On the left was Joe Biden speaking at an event in Washington for the secretary-general of NATO. On the right was Donald Trump addressing supporters in New Jersey. Underneath ran the unspeakable truth: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.”

That fresh-breeze-of-truth window was open for a total of twenty-seven seconds. Then it was slammed shut. But that was long enough. Our Guardians on the internet erupted in fury. Fox issued a public apology and canned the veteran producer responsible on the spot. The Washington Post wailed that Fox had “crossed a line” with the unseemly graphic.

Yes, that is amusing coming from a house organ of the leftoid Democracy-Dies-In-Darkness megaphone. But the irony is that such eruptions of unchaperoned truth-telling are more and more rare at Fox, which has molted into a standard-issue mushy media mouthpiece.

Sure, there are still a few conservative-sounding pundits on Fox. But the corporate culture there is 100 percent grade-A woke. There’s also the dwindling audience, of course. As Chadwick Moore reported for The Spectator last edition, “total Fox viewership is down nearly 40 percent from the same time last year, and has tanked a whopping 62 percent in the key demographic.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-republican-house-needs-to-cancel-john-kerry/

Last week 24 House Republicans introduced the No Taxpayer Funding for Climate Zealots Advancing Radical Schemes Act which if passed will defund our “climate czar” John Kerry’s office. This federal feed-bag is beyond political accountability to the voters or Congress, but at least the taxpayers will not be footing the bill for his emissions-spewing, global gallivanting to promote suicidal climate policies.

A Congressional rebuke would be a fitting end to Kerry’s public career––one marked by thoughtless adherence to leftish Democrat shibboleths, new-world-order received wisdom, and bad policies dangerous to our national security and interests.

Kerry’s latest junket was to China last week to coax the communist regime to remain on board with the West’s suicidal “green” energy demonization of cheap, abundant fossil fuels as codified in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.  That’s a big reason for the House’s bill to defund the energy czar’s $14 million budget and his staff of 45.

As Rep. Chip Roy (R. Texas) put it, Kerry is the “poster child for the Biden administration’s anti-energy policies that are destroying both our economy and national security.” The trip to China, Roy adds, which is “the top threat to our national security and the world’s number one polluter,” will do nothing but “further hamstring our energy policy.”

Moreover, approaching China as a suppliant and de facto junior partner––Xi didn’t deign to meet with Kerry personally–– in our relationship only emboldens our global rival to continue with its duplicitous diplomacy. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out the obvious, China’s agreement to stick with the Paris deal is “another way of saying Beijing intends to keep increasing its carbon emissions for another seven years. From 2015 to 2022 China’s greenhouse gas emissions grew nearly 12%, while the U.S. cut them by some 5%, according to the Climate Action Tracker.”

And it’s not just China’s duplicity about mitigating “global warming.” China understands that the West is in thrall to the climate-change cult and its “green energy” psalter, and takes such meetings as a way to leverage influence over our foreign policy by dangling the promise of cooperation on greenhouse gas emissions, of which China is by far the biggest emitter––almost as big as the next four emitters combined.

https://victorhanson.com/how-to-create-conspiracy-theories/

It is easy to birth conspiracy theories.

All that is required is chronic government stonewalling of reasonable requests for transparency. Then add in high officials serially lying under oath, along with the blatantly unequal application of the law. Institutionalize arguments from authority of politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to adjudicate arguments empirically.

Include the weaponization of investigatory and intelligence bureaucracies. Finish with the transformation of an obsequious media into a mouthpiece of the state. And presto, you end up with a skeptical, cynical public that learns to believe the very opposite from what it is told by elites.

January 6th

Curiously. some conservative politicians, media and politicos often remark of their surprise that so many of the Trump base insists that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was in part a federally driven conspiracy, or perhaps just a mere “demonstration” gone awry.

But whether true or not, why would some not believe that—given the efforts of the state to hide and warp facts?

Consider what drives rational people to embrace supposed “conspiracy” theories around the so-called “insurrection?”

One reason, of course, is that there was evidence of FBI informants present on January 6. Do not take the word of conservatives for such suppositions.

Instead, remember what award-winning New York Times’s reporter and keen follower of right-wing political activity, Matthew Rosenberg said of January 6, albeit in an ambush interview conducted by Project Veritas:

The left’s overreaction — the left’s reaction to it in some places was so over the top. They were making it too big a deal … that gave the opening for lunatics in the right to be like, ‘Oh, well, nothing happened here. It was just a peaceful bunch of tourists,’ you know, and it’s like, but nobody wants to hear that.”

Rosenberg then remarked that he spotted numerous FBI informants among the crowd milling around the Capitol. Or as he put it, “There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol.” Cannot the FBI refute such allegations?

Apparently not. Given such speculation, one would expect that FBI Director Christopher Wray might at least categorically deny such inflammatory accusations.

Yet in congressional testimony when asked whether the FBI had inserted informants among the protestors, sphinxlike Wray merely shrugged, “So I really need to be careful here talking about where we have or have not used confidential human sources.”

Then there is the mysterious case of Ray Epps, initially sought by FBI “as a person of interest” for allegedly inciting demonstrators to break the law and enter the Capitol.

But then oddly Epps was de facto exempted for some 30 months from arrest—even as hundreds who urged no such action were indicted and convicted of “illegal parading” or unlawfully “demonstrating in front of the Capitol”—misdemeanors that ended up resulting in felony-type sentencing.

In one video clip, as Epps attempts to gin up the stationary crowd to move illegally into the Capitol, he is met with “conspiratorial” accusations from skeptical bystanders calling out: “Fed! Fed! Fed!”

https://victorhanson.com/americas-razors-edge/

We are the most powerful country in civilization’s history but not invulnerable. Even America will finally bleed out if we continue to open our own veins.

Was it $40, $50, or $60 billion in equipment, weapons, supplies, and infrastructure that the U.S. simply abandoned in Afghanistan? That was that—no problem?

We had too much military junk anyway? We can just print the money to buy more replacement stuff?

Our enemies took no notice and instead thought, “Wow, what a powerful adversary just to scram out of Kabul and leave priceless weaponry behind—my God, we don’t wish to tangle with such a formidable power!”

Was that the idea in leaving as we did?

Was that “Flight of the Americans” the fitting epitaph to 20 years of blood-and-treasure nation-building to ensure another Bin Laden did not partner with the Taliban to attack the U.S.? Are we safer in 2020 from Talibanian terrorism than in 2001, given the two decades of costly occupation?

Are we so wealthy in treasure and blood, that Americans can fly pride flags, paint George Floyd murals, and birth gender studies programs in Islamic Kabul, while losing 2,400 lives, and seeing 24,000 wounded—before abandoning a $1 billion new embassy and a $300 million refitted secure airbase to the Taliban?

Is it no big thing that it will take years to resupply our 155mm artillery shell stocks, our Javelin missiles, our short-range missiles, after giving Ukraine $100, $120, or is it $130 billion in weapons, economic aid, training, and supplies?

Is America so internally secure that it can normalize shoplifting in its major cities?

Exempt smash-and-grab destruction of parked cars in San Francisco?

Hector the middle class on their incorrect use of gas water heaters while allowing flumes of feces to stream in the bays of Los Angeles and San Francisco, on the theory that such organic pollution is not pollution if the excrement emanates from the homeless?

https://thespectator.com/topic/hunter-biden-grift-whole-family-business/

The Biden administration has repeatedly told the public that Hunter’s lucrative consulting business doesn’t matter unless it is directly connected to his father. That’s true. Moreover, they add, that connection is not just unproven, it cannot be proved because it didn’t exist. That’s false, although the mainstream media has repeated it faithfully. But even the most feckless are finding it increasingly difficult to sustain this awkward lip-syncing with the White House press office.

Actually, the Biden grifting operation extends well beyond Hunter to include multiple family members. It always centered on Joe’s public position and the political access it ensured, first as the sitting vice president and then as a prospective Democratic nominee after Hillary Clinton’s defeat. 

The clearest indication of the enterprise’s corrupt purpose is its construction of a web of nearly thirty LLCs to hide the distribution of profits from the operation. There is no legitimate business purpose for this tangled web of pass-through entities. The only purpose is to hide the sources and distribution of this outside money. That should be obvious even to the Washington Post, though it doesn’t seem to be. They might want to pay attention to another painful fact: all this money was paid for services that have never been disclosed to the public. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know the purpose. My dear Watson, all the clues point to political access.

That access hinged on Joe Biden’s political position. His family (and especially Hunter) went to great lengths to hide any direct, criminal connection and, it appears, to pay taxes on all the proceeds. 

Proving a criminal connection to Joe Biden is a difficult, complex task — and it has not yet been done.

The main reason is hasn’t been proved, we now know, is that official investigations were deliberately blocked by higher-level officials at the IRS and, most likely, the Department of Justice. In private meetings at the Internal Revenue Service, those officials acknowledged that there were sufficient legal grounds to pursue those connections to Joe Biden, which emerged from the IRS investigation of Hunter. Then, for reasons that have not been explained, the same higher-level officials reversed themselves and prevented any investigation that would touch on Joe Biden himself.

We need to know the names of people who blocked that inquiry. We need to know if anyone higher up the chain of command ordered this cover-up or if they simply did it themselves to curry favor. We need all that testimony under oath.

And we need to know who disclosed to Hunter and his lawyer that some of Hunter’s documents were about to be searched and some of his associates interviewed. Miraculously, those documents disappeared before the search and the associates were nowhere to be found. Another avenue of inquiry had been successfully blocked.