RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/14/of-course-obama-knew-of-bidens-influence-peddling-schemes-heres-why-n1695322

In an interview with Lou Dobbs on his Great America Show podcast, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested that former president Barack Obama was well aware of the influence-peddling schemes of Joe Biden involving his family.

“I believe, Lou, that it’s because he knew what Joe Biden was doing the last year of his vice presidency,” Comer told Dobbs.

Last week, the House Oversight Committee disclosed a significant collection of evidence that suggests that Joe Biden and his family received financial contributions from Romanian and Chinese entities while he held the position of Vice President. These payments were divided into multiple transactions and channeled through a network of fictitious companies with no legitimate business activities apart from money laundering. These entities lacked tangible products or services to provide. The sole valuable asset they possessed was the ability to leverage the influence of Joe Biden.

Comer also said that Obama knew that Hunter Biden was bad news.

“He knew his son [Hunter Biden] was no good, and he knew this was nothing but a political liability not just for our country, not just for the democrat party, but for Obama’s legacy,” Comer explained. “Because a lot of this happened during the Obama administration.”

But perhaps the biggest reason why Obama was aware of the Biden family’s questionable business dealings was primarily that Joe Biden’s influence was only as effective as his capacity to persuade Obama to adopt particular policies. Vice presidents have little direct influence over policy, and even when they preside over the Senate or cast a tie-breaking vote, they’re implementing the policies of the president.

Let’s not forget that Obama specifically selected Biden as his running mate due to his perceived foreign policy experience. Given that foreign nations, especially adversarial ones, could perceive Biden as Obama’s primary foreign policy advisor, exploiting his influence was really about gaining access to Barack Obama.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/05/14/trust-n1695303

Among the most basic factors in what we may call the “practice of daily life” is one that is most easily forgotten or commonly neglected: trust. I mean, to begin with, trust in what we habitually regard as reliable without giving it a moment’s thought, as something we rarely doubt, let alone conceptualize. We seem to have little idea of the degree to which trust determines our every move, gesture and act. Trust, as James Bowman observes of honor in Honor: A History, is “reflexive” and at its core “inseparable from the human condition.”

Trust is instinctive in every moment of human existence. It is a faculty that we unconsciously exercise or apply to just about everything, irrespective of the unpredictable: that the approaching driver will stay in his lane, that the elevator will not stall between floors, that the manhole cover we walk over will remain solidly in place, that the balcony we sit under while having coffee in a sidewalk café will not collapse upon us (as happened to a couple in Montreal with grisly results) and will not give way under our feet (as happened to my university’s Faculty Club manager, who plunged to his death a few minutes after we exchanged the time of day), that the food we buy will not poison us, that the vaccine we take is not lethal, that our banker will not defraud us, that our doctor knows what she is talking about, that the ferry we board will not sink, that the microwave will not suddenly burst into flames (as happened to my mother-in-law), that the person we pass while jogging will not attack us — ad infinitum. We may be wary or nervous at times; nonetheless, trust goes so deep that it is the psychic motor powering all human action, even the most trivial.

In effect, trust is what philosopher David Hume in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding called “the apperception of customary conjunction.” If this were not so, the most mundane routines would be put on hold, as in the case of Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov, who never gets out of bed. We would not dare to cross the street. Every instant would be filled with paranoia. Trust is the cornerstone of sanity.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/14/deliver-us-from-reality/

“Because he can.” 

That’s the answer one has to give to those who ask how Alvin Bragg, a local district attorney in office by the slimmest of margins—and then only because of a huge subsidy from the anti-American billionaire George Soros—can get away with antics like indicting Donald Trump, a former (and, possibly, future) president of the United States, and, now, with charging former Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter because he (along with at least two others) intervened to stop Jordan Neely from attacking fellow passengers on a New York subway. 

Because he can. As a friend remarked when digesting the spectacle of Penny being led away in handcuffs, totalitarian movements often start slowly, almost timidly, but as they gain power, they become more brazen. After a certain point, they do outrageous things just to intimidate the public and demonstrate their power.  

We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of America’s security apparatus intervened directly in the decision making of Twitter and other social media companies to influence the course of the 2020 election. One part of that intervention had to do with organizing 51 senior former intelligence figures to sign a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter. They did it because they knew they could get away with it. 

The United States is on the verge of being inundated with thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens. Many are from South or Central America. Hundreds are from China, even though they are crossing that notional line we used to be able to call, without irony, our southern border. Why did the Biden Administration decide to enact a real-life Camp of the Saints invasion of the United States? Because it could. There was no immediate price to pay. 

In her classic study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt makes several observations that bear on our current situation. “There is no doubt,” she observes, 

that the elite was pleased whenever the underworld frightened respectable society into accepting it on an equal footing. The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it. They were not particularly outraged at the monstrous forgeries in historiography of which all totalitarian regimes are guilty and which announce themselves clearly enough and totalitarian propaganda.

It’s not only the compact between the elite and the underclass that is relevant to our experience in the United States today. There is also the incontinent deployment of the word “democracy,” not as a term describing a specific form of political organization but rather as a cognitively empty but talismanic vocable around which political animus can be nurtured and set to work. The latest variation is Our DemocracyTM, dragged out whenever the process of political demonization needs a boost. 

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/14/time-for-republicans-to-confront-january-6-lead-prosecutor/

During the 2020 presidential election cycle, Matthew M. Graves donated $2,000 to the Biden-Harris campaign. The modest contribution was a no-brainer for Graves. Not only was he a domestic policy advisor for the campaign, he worked at the time for the same white-shoe law firm as Douglas Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband.

Graves’ kowtowing paid off. In November 2021, Graves took the helm of one of the most politically-charged U.S. attorneys office’s in the country: the District of Columbia. 

Since then, Graves has escalated the pace and nature of the ongoing investigation into the events of January 6. His fixation on a four-hour disturbance that occurred more than 28 months ago has nothing to do with law and order and everything to do with using the full weight of the federal government to punish Americans who protested Biden’s election that afternoon.

At the same time, Graves, who is in the unique position of prosecuting both local and federal crimes in the nation’s capital, has allowed D.C. to descend into violent chaos.

Gun crimes and carjackings are skyrocketing: homicides are up nine percent over last year. Graves is under fire from community groups, police, and government leaders.

The House Oversight Committee will hear from Graves on Tuesday morning. Finally. Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) threatened to issue a subpoena after the Justice Department first refused to make Graves available for questions. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, departing D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee, and city administrator Kevin Donahue also are expected to testify.

But rather than press D.C. officials responsible for the lawlessness rampant in their city—important as that is—Republicans should instead use their time to confront Graves about his selective prosecution of January 6 defendants and force him to account for his actions publicly. The Biden regime’s double standard of justice runs directly through Graves’ office.

Here is a partial list of questions for committee members to consider:

1) Mr. Graves, the Washington Post recently reported that you have one of the highest, if not the highest, declination rates in the country. According to one site that tracks crime data in D.C., you have refused to prosecute two-thirds of all criminal cases brought to you by police—double what it was in 2015. You blame a lack of resources for refusing to prosecute repeat, violent offenders who threaten the security of the nation’s capital.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/the_federal_governments_catch22_strategy_to_cover_up_its_spying_on_sharyl_attkisson.html

We’ve been covering the incredible story of Sharyl Attkisson, the award-winning journalist, who discovered that her computer was being not just spied-upon but remotely taken over by the federal government. This was ten years ago, as she was reporting on the Fast & Furious Scandal for CBS News. She recorded video of her computer screen being remotely controlled, among other evidence.

The feds had no interest in pursuing their own wrongdoing, so Sharyl was forced to launch a civil suit, which has been in process for years now. We’ve publicized her GoFundMe appeal for help in the very expensive process of documenting the crimes and pursing justice in civil court.

Now, via her GoFundMe page, Sharyl reveals the way the feds have used the law to put her in a no-win Catch-22 situation. In an update written by Mark Fitzgibbons, who has organized the GoFundMe appeal, we learn the incredible, unassailable power the feds have:

You cannot make this up:
+The government’s computer intrusion is forensically confirmed and undeniable, with forensic proof that the govt. is the source.
+But since DOJ won’t hold their own accountable or prosecute them, my only recourse is to seek justice through this civil lawsuit.
+Forensic proof isn’t enough to get the case to a jury. The courts require me to somehow play detective and, in advance, identify the names of the govt. people responsible for the intrusions, and supply the proof of their direct involvement… but without the power to access the evidence.
+That’s because the law gives DOJ (guilty party in this case) the authority to grant or deny our to access to the crucial documents and govt. witnesses that are needed to produce specific names and evidence required by the court. We literally have to ask DOJ’s permission to interview the guilty DOJ agents or those with information, and access the evidence.
+So we ask, but, naturally, DOJ stalls, denies permission for us to get the documents and interviews, then asks court to dismiss case for lack of evidence and the court says “ok.”
+This is akin to a prosecutor having to get permission from a murderer to obtain the evidence against him and to interview witnesses. The murderer would just say no.
+Obviously, the law giving the guilty party authority over access to the evidence against it should be changed. 
+However, Congress won’t change law because there is no powerful interest that is lobbying, paying members, or writing the bill to do so– and that’s pretty much the main way laws gets changed or considered today.
+At the same time, CBS improperly withheld computer evidence in my case. They stalled and delayed while our deadlines ticked on. 
+We finally got that issue before a judge, who ordered CBS to turn over the computer evidence– but with little to no time left for us to get it forensically examined before court-imposed deadlines. And, even then, CBS stalled.
+In the end, there is no legal recourse for people like me, Carter Page and Gen. Flynn who are wronged by bad actors in govt. They have impunity. 
+This is why these issues are important not to just those of us impacted today, but to everyone who could be victimized in ways you can’t imagine until it happens to you.
We haven’t quite reached the end of our rope. Our case continues, thanks to you. But I thought you should be aware and let others know how broken our justice system it. This is a good example.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/stay_faithful_because_history_starts_today.html

What if, hidden behind the censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, a real movement for change is taking hold?

If you’re like me, the news cycle is one smack to the face after the next.  It’s not even a “cycle” at this point; it feels more like crawling out of bed under relentless machine-gun fire of bad news and trying to survive the day without getting hit.  

In this sense, getting “hit” is letting the bastards get you down (excuse my French).  It’s not easy, and it’s not for the faint of heart.  I look at it as a special challenge that all normal, non-woke, patriotic Americans must accept as part of living through this period of great change.

Can you witness all the cultural chaos and national hara-kiri, take a deep breath, give an affirmative nod to the Almighty, and say, “Lay it on me; let’s have it; I can take more”?  Because, at the end of the day, this spiritual contest for the West’s future will not be won by those with the most money, power, or spy toys at their disposal.  It will be won by those who take everything in stride and continue to stand.  In a battle of wills, strength of character alone determines who will prevail.

Now, that’s a pretty simple truth that we all often ignore, is it not?  It is easy to look at the vast array of forces set against us — a corrupt central government dedicated to censorship, political persecution, and open borders; a corporate oligarchy intent on eliminating private property for all but the reigning few; a new world order where Marxist globalism trades freedom for servitude — and conclude that there is little else to do but grab the nearest cardboard sign and scrawl a final, lamentable warning: “The End Is Nigh.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/05/a-compromised-president.php

I called Peter Schweizer this past Wednesday to ask for help in understanding the Chinese connection to the Biden family business. Peter cited his most recent book, Red-Handed, published last year by Harper Collins. Peter also pointed me to his contemporaneous New York Post column “Chinese elite have paid some $31 million to Hunter and the Bidens.” The headline is a bit misleading. For “Chinese elite” read “Chinese intelligence establishment,” as Peter states in the opening paragraph:

For those wondering why Joe Biden is soft on China, consider this never-before-reported revelation: The Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence — some reaching the very top of China’s spy agency.

Peter appeared on Mark Levin’s weekly Fox News show to discuss Red-Handed. He pointed me to the Fox News story by Charles Creitz based on his appearance. Meet Che Fung, “the Superchairman” (as Hunter Biden called him in emails found on his laptop). I have posted video of the segment that Creitz reported on below.

Former TCF Financial Corporation general counsel Greg Pulles reviewed the House Oversight Committee report on the Biden family business released this week. I posted Greg’s comments here on Wednesday.

Greg’s comments reminded me of the heroic exploration of the Biden family business by Senators Grassley and Johnson. Their October 26, 2022 letter to United States Attorney David Weiss is the most recent summary of their work (and a potent reminder of the corruption of the Biden Department of Justice).

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/everything-youve-heard-about-the-debt-limit-is-wrong/

Contrary to widespread claims that the U.S. government will default on its debt if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit, federal law and the Constitution require the Treasury to pay the debt, and it has ample tax revenues to do this.

Nor would Social Security benefits be affected by a debt limit stalemate unless President Joe Biden illegally diverts Social Security revenues to other programs.

The debt limit is a valuable tool for transparency, accountability, and for giving voters an ongoing say in how their money is spent.

The Debt Situation

The U.S. national debt has grown by $8.2 trillion since 2020 and is now $31.5 trillion. This is an average debt of $239,763 for every home in the nation.

Those figures don’t account for the government’s fiscal liabilities and unfunded obligations. When these are included — as the government requires in the financial statements of publicly traded corporations — the total federal shortfall is $135 trillion. This is an average burden of more than $1 million per household.

In addition, Biden has proposed a budget framework that will allow the national debt to grow over the next decade by $19.8 trillion, according to his own administration’s projections.

Such levels of red ink have perilous consequences for nearly everyone, like higher inflation, wage stagnation, investment losses, and lower standards of living.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/from_emthe_american_gulag_chroniclesem.html

The idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their  rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.

In the mid-1970s I and others worldwide were active in a letter writing campaign to Soviet Jewish refuseniks. Anatoly Sharansky is probably the most well-known of these dissidents.  While most of the letters were heavily censored, some did get through and it gave hope to those prisoners of conscience that the world was hearing them despite the malevolence of the communists.

One of my treasured documents is a letter from the wife of Hillel Butman, who was falsely accused of being a spy. She wrote to me that she “wished [me] much power for I knew what to do with it.”  It was a truly incredible and profound statement that I have never forgotten.

It reminds one of the unfortunate truth as stated by John A. Stormer in his Death of a Nation (1968) wherein he wrote,

Our founding fathers were men who — from their study of history… learned that down through history whenever man got power he used it to oppress other humans beings.

Thus, the idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their G-d-given rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.  It hearkens back to those refuseniks who were denied any justice and mercy.

The American Gulag Chronicles: Letters from Prison (2022) authored by Tim Rivers contains the letters and artwork by the latest victims of despotic rule under Joe Biden and his allies.  The editor-in-chief of this work is Marie Goodwyn, the mother of J6 defendant and video journalist Daniel Goodwyn.  Moreover, an international volunteer team of professional typesetters and proofreaders were instrumental in getting the book done.

To reinvent downtown retail, drastic changes may be required.

Some of those policymakers, including both Republican and Democratic leaders, have pointed to crime as a chief reason for the closures, following videos of brazen shoplifting incidents.

“We’re losing chain stores that are closing down. People who are being employed in those stores are losing their jobs” because of crime, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said in February.

But the impact of shoplifting may have been overstated in some cases.

Walgreens said it saw a spike in losses, known as shrink, during the pandemic and cited organized retail crime in its decision to close five San Francisco stores in 2021. But it recently backtracked.

“Maybe we cried too much last year” about shrink numbers, a Walgreens executive said in January.

What Walmart’s pullback from Chicago says about Corporate America’s limits

And instead of a strong correlation with crime rates, the closures aren’t also a recent phenomenon.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City, Seattle, Miami and Chicago lost retail stores from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2021, according to research from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank.

What’s more, experts agree, the closures aren’t just about crime. Several trends have converged to put these stores at risk.

Perhaps most key is the glut of stores in America.