RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/01/american-liberty-in-the-balance/

John Kerry, maybe the most pompous politician of our lifetimes, admits that the First Amendment is an obstacle to the Democrats’ hard-left agenda. It’s a deeply disturbing statement perfectly in line with the party’s irrepressible authoritarian urges.

At last week’s Sustainable Development Impact Meetings of the World Economic Forum, Kerry, a long-time U.S. senator from Massachusetts, secretary of state for four years of the eight-year Obama nightmare, Joe Biden’s climate czar and a failed presidential candidate, acknowledged that his party wants to censor speech that it doesn’t approve of.

“Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence,” he said. “What we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”

This was ominously followed by his warning that “there are some people in our country who prepared to implement change by other means.”

His party will take that as a reference to Jan. 6. But the rest of us should understand that he’s saying that Democrats can take power the easy way or the hard way – so just turn it over to us in November and we won’t have to be more coercive than we already are.

https://www.jns.org/democratic-senators-demand-sanctions-against-settlement-group/

Three U.S. Democratic senators have urged further sanctions against “extremist settlers” and their supporters, singling out in particular the Amana (“Covenant”) organization, which works to develop Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

“We cannot allow a reckless and dangerous minority to continue to endanger Israelis and Palestinians alike through theft, arson, intimidation, violence, and worse,” the senators wrote in a Sept. 27 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

“Targeted sanctions have long been a valuable tool in holding violent extremists accountable for their actions and creating space for peaceful and more rational actors to work,” they added.

The signatories are Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; and Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The senators expressed strong support for the Biden administration’s earlier sanctions against Israeli individuals and groups, such as the Lehava and Tzav 9 organizations.

“Amana has a long and well-documented history of supporting extremist settlers who expropriate Palestinian land and threaten Palestinian landholders, farmers, and shepherds. Amana has played a central role in forming and sustaining hill-top outposts illegal under Israeli law, often by granting loans to bankroll their start,” they wrote.

Were the United States to sanction Amana it would join Canada, which imposed sanctions on the group in June under its Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations.

Amana, the settlement movement of Gush Emunim, was established in 1976, becoming a registered association in 1978, to help develop communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights, the Galilee, Negev and Gush Katif (a settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip evacuated in 2005).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-deep-state-vs-the-people/

Despite an enormous fundraising advantage, a rigged presidential debate, and overwhelmingly positive media coverage, Vice President Kamala Harris is still in a virtual tie with her challenger, former President Donald Trump.

According to the latest Real Clear Politics average of national polls, Harris leads Trump by only 2.2%. In his last two campaigns, Trump was further behind his Democratic opponents. In 2016, he trailed Hillary Clinton by 2.6%; in 2020, Joe Biden led by 6.6%.

Additionally, Harris has the support of many Hollywood stars, the endorsement of pop superstar Taylor Swift, and just received a televised “love fest” from media icon Oprah Winfrey. Of course, the Vice President is avoiding all reporters who will ask tough questions and has not held any news conferences since her coronation as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

Harris hopes to employ her version of the “Biden basement” strategy until Election Day, while the left-wing media refuses to hold her accountable.

In contrast, Trump continues to hold monster rallies, speaking behind bulletproof glass. The assassination attempts have not deterred him from outdoor events or interacting with his enthusiastic supporters.

Donald Trump is truly the “people’s candidate.” While Kamala Harris and Democrats ludicrously claim that Trump only wants to enrich himself and his billionaire friends, his real interest is in helping average Americans.

His ideas, such as “no tax on tips,” “no tax on overtime,” and “no tax on Social Security,” are designed to help struggling Americans deal with the pain of Biden’s failed economic policies. Despite the recent easing of interest rates and inflation, Americans have endured four years of economic agony. Just to survive, many Americans have been forced to withdraw money from their savings accounts or increase charges on their credit cards.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/oh-yeah-they-tried-to-kill-the-president-i-forgot-about-that/

You might think that an attempt to shoot the president – okay, the former president and likely the next one, but you know what I mean – would be a big deal. And you might think that two attempts to shoot him in the space of a couple of months might be an even bigger deal. But you would be wrong. They are no deal at all, and that’s not a good thing. Not at all.

We are on a very scary path, and it’s unclear that there is a turn-off we can take that brings us someplace good.

What is happening now is unprecedented. I was a junior in high school when that rabid and very misguided Jodie Foster fanboy shot President Reagan. A few years before, a couple of Charles Manson bimbettes had made feeble attempts to murder Gerald Ford, but Hinckley managed to shoot Rawhide as well as three others. That happened while I was a high school junior. I am not sure if school let out or if we just watched it in class, but that was a huge deal. And it remained a huge deal for a while.

Now, one scuzz wounds the president and a couple of other people, plus kills Corey Competore, and it’s no biggie. Next, some Harris-Walz voter tried to ambush Trump on the fairway. And is this a huge story? Nah. They did not even interrupt the sportsball games for a special report. I mean, sure, an assassination attempt is no pet-noshing narrative. It’s just a couple of committed Democrats trying to change the course of American history with guns because Orange Man Bad.

And the regime media is okay with that. The reaction to Attempt No. 1 was simply muted as if they were measuring their words to provide plausible deniability that they thought the shooting was a bad thing for reasons beyond the fact that it gave the courageous candidate an iconic photograph and more combat time than the pseudo-sergeant major Dem VP nominee. But after Attempt No. 2, the regime media’s journohacks did not even try to pretend. They went right into their bullSchiff narrative. Why, Trump being mean to illegal aliens for dining on Fido means he brought it on himself. Stop hitting yourself, Donald. You were asking for it with that short skirt.

But beneath the garbage narrative to try to turn yet another Democrat murder freak into a MAGA NRA GOP White Nationalist Christian Guy, you could detect something else.

Disappointment. It was as if the unspoken question was not “How can we stop our allies from trying to murder our political opponents?” and was, instead, “Can’t anybody here shoot straight?”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/stirring-monument-to-americas-warriors

Sabin Howard’s engrossing 38-figure, high-relief sculpture—the centerpiece of Washington’s new National World War I Memorial, situated on Pennsylvania Avenue just east of the White House and Treasury Department—takes a cinematic approach to sculptural narrative. It commemorates a civilization-transforming conflict in which 116,516 Americans were killed and 204,000 wounded. The several scenes in what Howard calls his “movie in bronze,” portraying a soldier’s departure from home and family for war and its horrors and then his return, unfold from left to right in a work nearly 60 feet wide.

Entitled A Soldier’s Journey, the sculpture is noteworthy for several reasons. Its kinetic design, with changing tempos and moods and a range of character types, seems to resonate with visitors. In remarks at the memorial’s inauguration on September 13, Howard said that his sculpture heralds “an American cultural Renaissance.” There’s also a polemical edge to his public discourse, as when he told the historian Victor Davis Hanson in a recent podcast interview that the “art world” treats the public the way the government does.

Credit: Photo Courtesy of Catesby Leigh

A Soldier’s Journey appears at a time of growing aversion to elite arrogance and incompetence of the kind that foisted on the public Frank Gehry’s bloviated, $150 million Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial (2021), with its rigid, lifeless statuary groups and enormous, unfathomable background tableau of metallic squiggles supposedly resembling the Pointe du Hoc. Back in 2018, Howard and the World War I memorial’s young architect, Joseph Weishaar, confronted such art-world arrogance when their project ran into headwinds at the federal Commission of Fine Arts, one of the guilty parties in the Ike memorial fiasco. The $44 million World War I memorial, mostly paid for with private funds, could wind up fortifying public opposition to boondoggles like Gehry’s, for which the American taxpayer got stuck with the bill.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/09/27/were-gonna-get-you-pro-hamas-mob-rampages-across-new-york-city-during-mass-protest/

Pro-Hamas activists stormed the streets of New York City on Thursday night, amassing in the hundreds to stage a demonstration outside the Loews Regency New York Hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying before addressing the United Nations the following morning.

“Netanyahu, we’re gonna get you,” the protesters, led by Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and its founder and leader Nerdeen Kiswani chanted, appearing to threaten the prime minister’s life. Flanked on all sides by dozens of New York City Police Department (NYPD) Bike Unit officers assigned to contain the demonstration, they waved Palestinian flags and signs calling for the destruction of Israel.

Later in the night, the protesters defied law enforcement officers’ orders to stay within the space they allowed, resulting in several arrests and additional charges for resisting arrest and obstructing justice. During the detainments, the protesters screamed expletives at officers, calling them “fascists,” “p—ssies,” and “pieces of sh—t.” Others, jamming their cell phone cameras into the thick of the confrontations, demanded to know the officers’ names, presumably to report them for misconduct.

In a statement WOL accused the NYPD of setting off a “cop riot to protect Netanyahu, the Butcher of Gaza.” It continued, “The NYPD incited another egregious riot against New Yorkers, arresting and injuring dozens. The NYPD’s violence and aggression exemplifies that they will continually prioritize protecting the forces of imperialism and zionism [sic] over the safety and rights of the people of NYC.” The group added that “two protesters remain in state custody.”

The demonstration shows that, nearly a year removed from Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, pro-Hamas extremists are as active as ever and intend to continue targeting major cities for mass disruptions and clashes with law enforcement.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=852c51fdb4

The answer to the question is that it’s not a close call. The Biden-Harris DOJ/FBI is far more corrupt.

For the latest evidence, consider the new federal criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Yesterday, a federal grand jury, acting at the behest of the Biden-Harris Department of Justice and FBI, handed down an indictment of Adams. The indictment was then released today. The full text can be found here.

Plenty in the Democrat Party media took the occasion to credit the work of the feds and jump all over Adams. As an example, the headline at Bloomberg News is “NYC Mayor Was Corrupt For Years, US Claims in Scathing Case.” Adams, on the other hand, responded by accusing the Biden-Harris DOJ/FBI of engaging in corrupt pay-back for his speaking out about the Biden-Harris immigration crisis and its impact on the City. Adams released a video with his response, available at the New York Post website. Excerpt:

Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics. . . . I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became.

Who has the better side of the case? I’m old enough to remember when if the feds handed up an indictment of a politician, you could be very sure that they had a real case. Those days are long gone. Today under Biden and Harris, the DOJ and FBI are very much in the business of corruptly using their power and resources to harass their political opponents, and jail them if possible.

Could that be what’s going on here? Let’s look at the indictment. I have read the whole thing carefully, and it is shockingly thin. There has been a full-bore federal investigation going on for many months, probably more than a year. Many millions of federal taxpayer dollars have been expended. Is this all they have come up with?

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-guilt-of-intellectuals/

Let the Hosannas ring forth: Fredric Jameson, one of the world’s most owlish producers of reader-proof prose of a Marxian bent, has just shuffled off his mortal coil, age 90.  The New York Times was quick off the mark with a fawning obituary. Duke University, where Jameson emitted his signature brand of academic “anti-capitalist” fog for many years, actually lowered the campus flags to commemorate the passing of this maven of Marxist muddle. (I put editorial quotation marks around “anti-capitalist” because, like so many of his academic brethren, Jameson railed against capitalism, “bourgeois individualism,” etc., while eagerly lapping up their benefits.) 

I last thought about Jameson in the 1990s when I wrote an essay about him for The New Criterion. I thought it might be worth reprising, with a few alterations, now that he has gone to his worker’s paradise. 

I began with an epigraph from the master himself: 

It is rather the essential “innocence” of intellectuals which is here in question: this private inner game of theoretical “convictions” and polemics against imaginary conceptual antagonists and mythic counterpositions, … of passionate private languages and private religions, which, entering the field of force of the real social world, take on a murderous and wholly unsuspected power.

—Fredric Jameson, Fables of Aggression

Among the stars that twinkled in the academic firmament of the 1990s and after, none twinkled more formidably than the Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson. Having taught at Harvard, Yale, and at various campuses of the University of California, Professor Jameson, who died on September 20, was for many years ensconced at Duke University — that favored perch for so many academic twinklers — where he was William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of both the Graduate Program in Literature and the Duke Center for Critical Theory.