RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/20/even-cnn-gets-what-the-biden-administration-doesnt-n1736759

When Biden announced that he was promising $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank, it was immediately clear to anyone with common sense that this money would end up in the hands of Hamas and not used for humanitarian purposes.

The Biden administration insists there will be safeguards in place to prevent this from happening, but no one really believes it will work—not even the pro-Biden CNN.

On Wednesday’s “Laura Coates Live,” CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and CNN military analyst Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.) both agreed that preventing humanitarian aid from being seized by Hamas in Gaza would be extremely difficult because there are no mechanisms in place to ensure how the aid is distributed and used.

“Just, in hearing what he had to say about the conditions, really, of being in compliance or going along with what President Biden has said, the conditions about hostages being released, the ideas of how to ensure that the aid is not going to be essentially taken and siphoned off by Hamas. Is it realistic to think that could actually be a condition that could be met before aid gets there?” host Laura Coates asked.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-got-200k-payment-from-family-business-tied-to-islamic-terror-hamas/

In 2020, I dug into what was probably one of the strangest and most overlooked Biden family scandals.

James Biden, Joe’s brother, had become a principal at Americore whose business model was based on buying and turning around rural hospitals. But the turnaround was into the grave.

Obamacare had hit rural hospitals hard, forcing many of them to shut down. By Obama’s last year in office, 4% of rural hospitals had closed down, and hundreds more were on the brink. And the Bidens had figured out a way to profit from the devastation caused by Obama-Biden.

“His brother was very interested in rural health care and very interested in veterans’ health care, and it was something he really wanted to get behind,” an Americore executive recalled Biden telling him. “This would help his brother get elected.”

The hospitals were trashed and patient care fell apart, but James Biden was making money.

Hospital patients might have been able to get basic care and supplies, but the money wasn’t there. Meanwhile, James Biden had allegedly made off with $650,000.

According to the Americore CEO, “Jim Biden directed me to loan him approximately $400,000 of this money for him to use to repay a past-due personal loan.”

Later, “Biden took additional amounts totaling approximately $250,000.”

Thanks to the House Oversight Committee, we now know where some of it went.

In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.

While Joe Biden getting cash courtesy of his brother trading on his name and sending it to the ‘Big Guy’ is bad, the details lead down a very disturbing trail.

According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/20/convoluted-condescending-contradictory-biden-defaces-the-nation/

In good old groups-of-three style, your correspondent could have gone several directions in describing President Joe Biden’s spiel Thursday night.

Alliterative: Cringeworthy. Crass. Craven.Assonantal: Eerie. Airy. Arrogant.Rhyming: Stumbling. Bumbling. Crumbling.

But upon review and reflection, fell back upon the tried-and-true repeat-prefix formulation: 

Condescending. Convoluted. And most of all: Contradictory.

Condescending  

Biden immediately reminded his audience that he was “the first American president to travel (to Israel) during a war,” as if that had anything to do with the price of shakshuka in Beersheba. And later, “the first American to enter a war zone not controlled by the United States military since President Lincoln.” 

The “Being There” presidency: 80% of Chance the Chief Executive’s accomplishments involve managing to show up.

Next, you’ll learn he has a “much higher IQ than you.” Or at least than the Israeli leadership he ostensibly traveled to encourage but managed instead to talk down to:

“President Netanyahu and I discussed again … the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war … protecting civilians in combat as best as they can.”

You mean the prime minister (not president) whose government – after his people were slaughtered, tortured, raped, abducted, and subjected to a rain of thousands of missiles in brazen violation of “the laws of war” – seeks to minimize civilian casualties by warning an entire country to get out of harm’s way rather than be used as human shields?

“As I said in Israel, as hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution.”

Oh. You mean the “two-state solution” that, with your predecessor’s support, Israel and several Arab states shuffled off to the side while entering into true peace accords – now possibly shattered thanks to your encouragement and financing of terrorist organizations and their sponsors? 

“Israel and Palestinians equally deserve to live in safety, dignity and peace.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/globalists_fear_spartacus_and_his_slave_rebellion.html

Something intriguing is happening with bitcoin.  What started as a series of perplexing data “inscriptions” containing classified files from the U.S. government has now been confirmed by Bitcoin Magazine as an ongoing effort to cement information in the public record beyond the reach of government censorship.

An anonymous guardian of free speech has begun using bitcoin to republish all of the information originally published by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks back in 2010.  Codenamed “Project Spartacus,” the operation seeks to take advantage of several inherent bitcoin attributes:

(1) It utilizes bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol that allows users to add personalized data to units of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.

(2) Because data within integrated parts of the blockchain cannot be subsequently removed, it forms a part of the cryptocurrency’s permanent record.

(3) Because the blockchain of transactions operates on a decentralized, global network of sovereign nodes, there is no tech CEO or other middleman who can intervene to do governments’ censorship bidding.  

Decentralized blockchain technology, in other words, is about much more than cryptocurrencies.  It is a powerful tool that will continue to allow ordinary people to evade government authority.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantis-vs-newsom-on-violent-crime-5161224f?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t running for president in 2024, at least not yet, but he has agreed to a televised Fox News debate next month with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. One worthy topic will be their respective economic records, but they should also spend some time on public safety.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation this week released national statistics on 2022, and the headline was that violent crime fell 1.7%, dipping back to the same level as before the pandemic. But it’s a big country, and those averages don’t tell the whole story. In California violent crime is still up 13% since 2019. In Florida it’s down 31.5%. The rate of violent crime in Mr. Newsom’s state last year, 499.5 per 100,000 people, was nearly double that in Mr. DeSantis’s domain, 258.9 per 100,000.

The nearby chart shows a longer view. Amid the Covid lockdowns, the George Floyd protests, and a public backlash toward law enforcement, violence shot up in Florida, as in many other states, though California stayed on a higher plateau. But the real difference is what happened next: in 2021 and 2022, violent crime plunged in Florida while surging in California. One caveat is that the FBI in 2021 changed its methodology for calculating crime rates, but this affected all states, so it isn’t responsible for the obvious divergence.

2012’13’14’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22225250275300325350375400425450475500525 Crime rates per 100,000 peopleCalif.Fla.

Mr. Newsom touts California’s strict gun-control laws, but at least a fifth of its aggravated assaults last year were committed with a knife or blunt object. Many of the state’s violent offenses are perpetrated by mentally ill or drug-addicted people living on the streets. Mr. Newsom himself was assaulted in 2021 by a homeless man in Oakland.

The FBI’s numbers on property crime add to the picture. In Florida such offenses are down 27% since 2019, about three times as much as nationwide, while in California they’re up 0.3%. Those figures likely underestimate the true difference, since businesses are less inclined to report theft to law enforcement in jurisdictions where it often goes unprosecuted.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/10/17/open-society-foundations-closing-offices-laying-off-staff-n1735587

Have they tried turning the heat down? Putting on sweaters? Maybe couponing?

It may be a little premature to celebrate, but the Open Society Foundations are closing offices in Africa and laying people off. In fact, 40% of the organization’s offices on the African continent will be hanging out “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs, and the employees will be hitting the want ads. This is in spite of the fact that the organization is worth an estimated $25 billion. Closures also hit offices in Barcelona and Baltimore.

Bloomberg reports that earlier in the month, it obtained emails sent out to staffers announcing that the organization would be scaling back. One of those emails from Binaifer Nowrojee, vice president of programs, read, “With the decision by the board in June to cut the staff by more than 40%, our staffing size and footprint by necessity needs to diminish. We no longer have the bandwidth to operate multiple small offices, and thus the decision to further reduce our locations.”

In another email, Africa Executive Director Muthoni Wanyeki stated, “I’m very sorry that it’s turned out this way. It’s obviously not what any of us expected and I’m also very sorry that I didn’t have the information on this earlier,” she added, saying the changes aren’t what leadership ‘committed to two years ago.’” Grantmaker positions will reportedly be the hardest hit. Only three African offices will remain open. Programming positions outside of the United States will be pared down from 450 to 150 people.

According to Bloomberg, OSF announced that the offices in Spain and Baltimore were slated to be shuttered earlier in the year. The African offices have been in “transition” since 2021.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/hate-trump-all-you-like-the-gag-order-is-still-wrong/

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing United States v. Donald Trump issued a gag order prohibiting a leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, from engaging in speech aimed at “government staff,” among others, during his trial.

Listen, I understand the disdain some conservatives feel for the former president. I share the sentiment. But if you’re cheering on a judge who’s inhibiting political speech on rickety grounds, you’re no friend of the “democracy” or the Constitution.

“Mr. Trump may still vigorously seek public support as a presidential candidate, debate policies and people related to that candidacy, criticize the current administration and assert his belief that this prosecution is politically motivated,” Chutkan explained. “But those critical [F]irst [A]mendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pre-trial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families and foreseeable witnesses.”

Who is Chutkan to dictate the contours of a presidential candidate’s political speech? What if one of the “participating government staff” or a family member is compromised by partisanship? Moreover, preemptively suggesting that without gagging, Trump will engage in a “smear campaign” is as prejudicial to the case as any of the inflammatory things Trump has thrown around. It implies that any accusation now aimed at prosecutors is untrue.

Trump contends that he is being railroaded by special counsel Jack Smith, the longtime federal prosecutor who works on behalf of Democrats and Joe Biden. You might believe the special counsel is a chaste defender of Lady Justice, but there’s ample evidence that partisan considerations are in play. Fears of a politicized justice department are real. As we speak, the head of the Democratic Party is being mollycoddled by the state in a very similar case involving classified documents.

Whatever the case, the Justice Department now plays a big part in Trump’s campaign for the presidency — and probably his legal case, as well. If the state’s accusations can be spread throughout the media before a trial, why can’t the defendant speak openly, as well?

https://victorhanson.com/woke-hits-the-wall-part-four/

Another tenet of woke was a veritable war on gas and oil. Note the same serial ironic theme: if Biden inherited a calm border, he had the luxury or rather the margin of error to demagogue it, destroy it, and not be swamped by illegals—for a while.

It was also easy to call for defunding the police and the BLM agenda, as long as such megaphones were safe—and they were until the full effect of their nihilism eventually rooted them out.

And so too it was easy to war on fossil fuels when Trump’s full-production agenda had given an incoming Biden seemingly limitless gasoline and natural gas at cheap prices, with a full strategic petroleum reserve.

But as in the case of illegal immigration and crime, Biden’s rhetoric of banning fossil fuels finally caught up with him. Grinding down the fracking industry, canceling and restricting federal energy leases, stopping pipelines, and freezing vast oilfields finally gave Biden what he wanted and most feared: record-high gas prices and an irate public that blamed him for its misery.

The iconic, jump-the-shark moment of his failed fossil fuels campaign was when Biden began draining the strategic petroleum reserve right before the 2022 midterms.

Biden’s woke subtext went something like this: “Because we curtailed production of our own horrific fossil fuels, we want to get our hands on more of the awful stuff by either draining what the evil Trump had stockpiled for us, or begging the illiberal Saudis, Venezuelans, and Iranians to produce the icky goo that we will not.”

What, then, is Biden’s energy policy? It is to virtue signal greenness and to damn the Saudis, the oil companies, and the MAGA Winnebago and snow-mobile crowd for two-year intervals.

And then before a national or midterm election, it is to turn on the oil spigots in order to get gasoline prices down before the mail-in-voting begins, by begging the now good Saudis and the noble Venezuelans and our partners the Iranians, draining the last drop out of the strategic petroleum reserve, and symbolically opening a new federal oil tract for leasing that likely has little oil beneath it.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/10/17/the-morning-briefing-another-trump-derangement-syndrome-2024-election-interference-update-n1735418

There is plenty of division to be found anywhere right of center on the American political spectrum. Republicans spend more time fighting other Republicans these days than they do going after Democrats. I don’t worry too much about that because I figure it’s better for everyone to get it out of their systems now rather than fight over dinner on election night next year.

One thing that a lot of people in this fractured coalition can agree on is that the Democrats are using corrupt, politically motivated prosecutors and judges to preemptively interfere with the 2024 presidential election. Even Republicans who are no longer fans of former President Donald Trump find themselves saying, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” every time a rogue prosecutor or judge absolutely mangles the law in an effort to keep him off of the ballot.

They’re interfering with the 2024 election because they say Trump tried to interfere with the 2020 election.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

We’re usually talking about unhinged prosecutors when we’re covering stories like this. Today we are dealing with a judge who has publicly been in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome for a while now. Victoria covered this latest legal circus:

The hearing in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s D.C. U.S. District Courtroom over whether to at least partially gag Donald Trump was at times contentious and at other times surreal and Kafkaesque. Chutkan ruled that Trump could not post or repost “attacks against Special Counsel, staff, court staff or personnel” as well as prohibited statements about witnesses or expert witnesses.