RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/tragic-trans-battle-of-the-brands/

Consumers across the country were bewildered last week when Budweiser and Nike waddled into the transgender debate.

Inexplicably, in less than a week, both the King of Beers and the athletic apparel behemoth dubbed trans activist Dylan Mulvaney the new face of their respective brands. 

It doesn’t take a marketing executive to spot that this probably isn’t a winning sales strategy. 

But the knee-jerk response among most people is: What the heck is going on in corporate America?

What the heck is going on in this country? 

Sure, it’s a fast-track for a CEO to virtue signal and curry social status and power.

But that’s only a piece of the story. 

This is just the latest episode of a mystifying trend in corporate culture.

I wrote an entire book, “Woke, Inc.,” about it, but there’s a more complex dimension that deserves an exploration of its own: the ESG movement in capital markets.

I expose this trend in my sequel “Capitalist Punishment” later this month (that’s not a plug, that’s a promise). 

Here’s how the game works: The world’s largest asset managers use your retirement funds, 401(k) accounts and investment dollars to pressure US companies to adopt political agendas that most Americans did not and would not vote for at the ballot box.

This isn’t a theoretical idea or a conspiracy theory. It’s a plain description of reality. 

Chevron buckles 

Take what happened at Chevron in 2021: A Dutch nonprofit founded by a former refrigerator salesman who wanted to fight climate change submitted a shareholder resolution demanding that Chevron reduce “Scope 3 emissions.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s website defines those as emissions that are “the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization, but that the organization indirectly impacts in its value chain,” including employee commuting, leased assets and downstream use of products by customers. 

This is a completely senseless decision for an American oil company to make — it’s like asking McDonald’s to take responsibility for reducing the body weight of adults who eat Big Macs, without asking the consumer to share any semblance of responsibility. 

Chevron’s board initially recommended to shareholders against adopting the proposal.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/ex-biden-official-sam-brinton-accepts-plea-deal-in-las-vegas-luggage-theft/

The former Biden administration official accused in two separate stolen-luggage cases in different states was ordered to pay one of their victims back — but given no jail time — Tuesday after they pleaded no contest to the bizarre theft.

Samuel Brinton, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, was given a 180-day suspended jail sentence for lifting a woman’s suitcase from Las Vegas‘ Harry Reid International Airport in July 2022, according to court records obtained by Fox 5.

As part of the plea deal, Brinton was charged with a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

A judge ordered them to pay $3,670.74 in restitution for the stolen luggage, which contained pricey jewelry, clothing and makeup.

The 35-year-old was caught on surveillance footage wearing a white T-shirt with a large rainbow-colored atomic nuclear symbol design — that Brinton was also caught wearing in an Instagram photo they posted later that day.

The 35-year-old was working as the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy when they committed the fashion crime, but has since been fired.

Brinton still faces felony charges in a similar case that alleges they struck again two months after the incident during a trip to Minnesota from Washington, DC.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tourist-terror-turns-ten/

April 15 will mark ten years since Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev targeted the Boston Marathon with explosive devices that killed Lingzi Lu, 23, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Martin Richard, only eight years old.  The powerful pressure-cooker bombs also wounded more than 250 at the crowded annual event.

Police killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout and captured younger brother Dzhokhar. His death sentence was overturned in 2020 and reinstated in 2022. This January, Tsarnaev made another bid to have his death sentence overturned, and Dzhokhar, 29, has to like his chances.  That invites a review of how the bombers got to Boston in the first place.

In April of 2002, Anzor Tsarnaev arrived in the USA on a tourist visa with sons Tamerlan, 15, and Dzhokhar, only eight at the time. The family gained asylum and Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012, despite security concerns. In 2011, the Russian government warned the FBI that the Tsarnaevs had ties to Chechen terrorists.

More than a year before the bombing, Tamerlan traveled back and forth from Dagestan for terror training. He should have been stopped at JFK airport but his name had been misspelled in a security database. The FBI did conduct an investigation of Tamerlan but closed the probe in June of 2011, after finding “no links to terrorism.” As Bostonians and people across the country may recall, the FBI committed a similar lapse in 2009.

The bureau knew that U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans. The FBI dropped the probe and on November 5, 2009, Hasan murdered 13 Americans and wounded more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, yelling “Allahu akbar” as he fired. Pvt. Francheska Velez was pregnant, so the death count should be 14. Despite the carnage, the lessons of Fort Hood went unlearned.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_west_declares_war_on_itself.html

For Americans who cherish self-government, free speech, and personal liberty, the reality of today’s America is jolting.  How can Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Barack Obama’s FBI, and an assortment of sordid Intelligence Community actors conspire to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy in a veritable coup d’état without suffering any legal consequences?  How can the IRS target Americans for their political viewpoints and be rewarded with bigger budgets and more armed agents?  How can the FBI illegally spy on a presidential campaign, target parents concerned over the content of their children’s public education, and label half of America “extremists,” and not be disbanded?  

How can the Department of (in)Justice seek to punish Americans’ speech and religious faith as impermissible expressions of “hate” and deprive Americans of their Second Amendment protections without being immediately defunded as a threat to the Bill of Rights?  How can the State Department lecture regimes around the world about violently quelling political dissent and violating human rights when thousands of Americans who protested for fair elections have been persecuted as “insurrectionists,” denied impartial justice, and imprisoned for having “incorrect” beliefs?  These are not the actions of any “free” nation and are shockingly antithetical to America’s foundations in liberty.

From this perspective, it seems apparent that the American government has not so quietly declared war on the American people.  Why?  Because it has abandoned any effort at preserving the qualities of its charter that once distinguished the American system as “exceptional” from all others — chiefly its constitutional framework empowering individual citizens and states while severely limiting centralized authority from ever infringing Americans’ inalienable rights and liberties.  This idea — that legitimate political power can arise only from the people — had been an invaluable guardrail for keeping governing excesses, if not outright tyranny, in check.  The steady erosion of this principle over the last century and its replacement with the age-old fallacy that “might makes right” have squandered American exceptionalism and invited tyranny to return through the front door.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/04/13/the-biden-crime-family-was-all-in-on-gain-of-function-research-n1686944

Remember when Hunter Biden tagged along on Joe’s trip to China in 2013? Photographers captured the moment when Hunter followed his dad and daughter Finnegan down the stairs of Air Force Two. The Obama White House produced a fawning video about it (watch it below). It was a trip that would pay millions in dividends for what some people call “The Biden Crime Family.”

On that Asian tour, Vice President Biden held a four-and-a-half hour-long meeting with Chinese President Xi that was mostly off the record. He also visited Japan and South Korea. The trip was in December 2013.

Hunter’s visage wasn’t featured in the vast majority of the coverage. But they needed only one look to ask, “What was Hunter doing on this trip?” It turns out, he was off doing deals, trading on his dad’s name, and making millions for the family.

Eleven months after that trip, the big deals started happening. In October 2014, Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) became an investor in a Silicon Valley company called Metabiota, which does business with China, the Pentagon, and Ukraine. The company, which predicts pandemics and tries to “prevent proactively the spread of diseases” for “companies, governments, and livestock producers,” has ties to the World Economic Forum (Davos) through its founder, virologist Nathan Wolfe, who has been selected by WEF as an up-and-coming leader. Eventually, Biden’s RSTP would own a 13.4% stake in Metabiota.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/14/will-latest-revelations-of-corruption-get-biden-impeached/

With each day, it seems, we hear something new about how President Joe Biden and his ever-eager son, Hunter, used the power of Biden’s various political offices to make money for the Biden family. If even half of the allegations are true, Biden’s in big trouble. Will that make him think twice about running for a second term in 2024?

American voters are a thick-skinned lot, and know pretty much that many politicians are scoundrels. But Biden is a different breed.

His family has, for years, received mysterious piles of money — we’re talking millions of dollars here — from questionable overseas sources, including Chinese Communist-linked executives, Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and huge sums from Ukraine and its giant Burisma energy company.

The latest revelation is just stunning.

Turns out that Hunter, with no real experience at all in the energy business, was asked to join Ukraine-based Burisma’s board of directors on April 18, 2014 — the same month that President Barack Obama made Biden his “point man” on Ukraine, then in the midst of a growing conflict with Russia.

A mere three days after Hunter joined Burisma’s board, Vice President Biden high-tailed it to Ukraine on an “official” trip to push ”medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.”

Did it work? You bet. “According to Burisma’s website, it ramped up production from 100 million cubic meters in 2010 to 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2018 – when it generated revenues of at least $400 million,” the Daily Mail reports.

For sitting on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden and his business partner and former Yale classmate, Devon Archer, each scored $83,333 a month for “consulting services” paid to their consulting firm, Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, from April 2014 to November 2015.

This wasn’t the only payment they received from questionable Eastern European sources. While the media later spun its wheels with unproved and outright bogus claims of Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, a Senate investigation noted Biden’s hands were in Russia’s pockets for real.

“On Feb. 14, 2014, (Elena) Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement,’ ” a Senate report said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-health-warning-feinstein-khanna-newsom-biden-competency-age-reelection-f8242e0c?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Nothing is certain but death and taxes, save perhaps Democrats’ recent ability to ignore the relevance of old age to that saying. Will their Dianne Feinstein problem provoke a rethink of the wisdom of renominating Joe Biden?

Ms. Feinstein, California’s 89-year-old senior senator, announced this week that her return to Washington would be delayed by “continued complications” of shingles. She has already missed nearly three-quarters of Senate votes this year because of her illness, though Democrats’ more immediate frustration is that her absence leaves the Judiciary Committee deadlocked, unable to greenlight Mr. Biden’s nominees. With the House in GOP hands, that’s about all the Senate is currently good for.

And don’t progressives know it. Plenty of senators have faced injury and illness before, some absent for long periods. But with a 51-49 Senate margin—and the potential for a judicial pileup or the loss of a crucial floor vote—Democrats have suddenly decided octogenarians pose a problem. California Rep. Ro Khanna unloosed the hordes on Wednesday with a tweet demanding Ms. Feinstein resign, citing the need to put “country ahead of personal loyalty.” He was joined by Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who called it a “dereliction of duty” for Ms. Feinstein to remain in office and for Democrats to “remain quiet.”

Don’t think Mr. Khanna is motivated entirely by civic-mindedness. Gov. Gavin Newsom has vowed to appoint a black woman to Ms. Feinstein’s seat should she step down before her term ends in 2025. Mr. Khanna happens to be a co-chairman of House Rep. Barbara Lee’s campaign for the seat. Ms. Lee is an obvious top contender for a placeholder pick, which would give her a huge leg up over rivals in 2024. It’s convenient when “country” holds a political upside.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/leak-documents-likely-came-from-air-national-guardsman-at-fort-bragg-official-says-dbf48c0a

“President Biden, when asked for an update on the leak investigation Thursday during a trip to Dublin, said he was concerned that the leak happened, but “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that’s of great consequence.”

The FBI arrested a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman in connection with a leak of what appear to be highly classified intelligence documents, a security breach that posed a threat to U.S. ties to some allies and efforts to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Federal agents took Jack Douglas Teixeira into custody in Dighton, Mass., on Thursday afternoon. Television footage showed armed agents leading a male wearing red shorts and an olive green T-shirt with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed Mr. Teixeira’s arrest in connection with the “investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.” Mr. Garland declined to elaborate, citing the probe.

Mr. Teixeira was expected to appear Friday in federal court in Massachusetts. An attorney for Mr. Teixeira couldn’t be immediately identified, and members of his family couldn’t be reached for comment.

The arrest caps a fast-moving probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Pentagon and others to pinpoint the source of a leak of documents that appear to have exposed details of U.S. surveillance of adversaries and allies, touching off multiple diplomatic storms and raising worries about undermining Kyiv’s fight against Russia.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/if-they-are-not-calling-you-a-fascist-youre-too-damn-soft/

Look, they are always going to call you a fascist, but if they are not screaming about what you are doing as loud as their high-pitched voices can go, you are not going against the left anywhere near hard enough. They will insist that any use of conservative power – whether by a Florida governor elected with a 20-point margin or a Tennessee 3-1 supermajority – is illegitimate authoritarianism in their Marxist narrative. This is why we conservatives, instead of caring about the lies that we are “fascist” or “authoritarian” or – of course – “racist,” should use the volume of their howling solely as a metric of our success.

They scream loudest when it hurts the most.

When we take away their ability to groom kids in schools.

When we cut off the power of their corporate co-conspirators.

When we use the judicial system to stop their (actual) fascist power grabs.

When we buy guns and ammunition to protect our lives and liberty.

When we hold them to their own rules and toss out insurrectionist representatives who obstruct legislative proceedings.

That last one, from Tennessee last week, is instructive. A trio of Marxist mutants marched into the well of the legislature straight from commie central casting with a bullhorn to co-opt the session and demand disarmament of normal people in the wake of some trans weirdo murdering six Christians.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/death_to_the_suburbs.html

The indomitable Betsy McCaughey has called out the latest ugly manifestation of “diversity, inclusion, and equity” the drive to destroy the suburbs.  The Biden administration and Democrat-controlled legislatures in several states have taken the lead in this effort.  In New York State, Governor Kathy Hochul, as part of the state budget, has advanced a so-called Housing Compact that would eliminate local control and single family zoning. 

Hochul’s plan would require that high-rise “affordable” (read: low-income, taxpayer-subsidized) housing be constructed close to each sleepy village train station — mostly a few miles apart — on Metro North and the Long Island Railroad.  If the affected communities fail to do so “voluntarily,” the state will have the power to override local zoning.  Those who fail to applaud this combined coup by warriors for social justice and real estate interests are, you guessed it, racist.

Suburban homeowners, Democrats as well as Republicans, are beginning to awaken to the deadly threat these proposals pose to their way of life.  What is largely overlooked is that this is a repeat of a similar effort in 1972 about which I wrote at the time (“Housing Controversy in Westchester,” Congress Biweekly, November 10, 1972 and December 22, 1972).  Believe it or not, the effort to overthrow zoning was then spearheaded by Republicans — with New York’s Westchester County selected to pioneer the program.

On June 20, 1972, the New York State Urban Development Corporation announced that it was overriding local zoning to create a variety of low- and moderate-income housing developments in nine, for the most part rural, Westchester communities.  Reminiscent of the emotional reaction to the death of George Floyd, the UDC had been given zoning override power by a hitherto balky state Legislature the day after the murder of Martin Luther King.  Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller, in a burst of virtue-signaling, argued that this was the best tribute the Legislature could give the slain civil rights leader.  When rationality returned, efforts by the state Legislature to take away the override power were vetoed by Rockefeller.