RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/13/is-the-deep-state-coming-after-joe-biden/

The second half of Joe Biden’s presidential term has officially gotten off to an ignominious start.

Earlier in the week, CBS News first broke the story that Biden had been storing classified documents, taken from his previous stint as vice president to Barack Obama, at the Chinese-funded Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement “think tank.” Those classified documents were first identified by Biden’s personal attorneys, CBS reported, on Nov. 2—a full six days before the midterm elections. Richard Sauber, Biden’s special counsel, claimed that the White House counsel’s office quickly notified the National Archives, which seized the documents posthaste.

That alone would be bad enough for a president who utterly excoriated former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of last August’s unprecedented predawn FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s palatial Palm Beach estate, due to Trump’s own classified document retention scandal. Biden openly wondered to CBS’ “60 Minutes” news program weeks after the FBI raid “how anyone could be that irresponsible.”

The galling hypocrisy from the Penn Biden Center incident would have been bad enough. But then, Joe Biden’s week got even worse.

Adding insult to injury, on Thursday two separate tranches of additional classified documents from the Obama-Biden Administration were found in Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, personal home. All but one of the documents was found in a storage space in Biden’s garage. That garage was “locked,” the president quickly pointed out in a flippant attempt at deescalation, and also housed his prized Corvette. One other classified document was found strewn about elsewhere in the house, outside the garage.

Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the news with the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden’s misdeeds. Garland, of course, had done the same for Trump almost two months prior, on Nov. 18. At least from Garland’s perspective, it seems both men are “irresponsible” enough and present sufficiently politically delicate positions so as to require a special counsel.

But obvious similarities—hence, Biden’s egregious hypocrisy stemming from his earlier attempt to seize a moral high ground—in these situations aside, there are some crucial differences. Those differences do not reflect well on the current White House occupant.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/01/13/meet-lyin-clyde-shavers-the-democrat-george-santos-n1660846

Americans are shocked, shocked that there are liars in politics. The most gobsmacked of all are politicians – especially Democrats – who can’t believe that the likes of that evil Republican, George Santos, a gay-ish, Jew-ish, Catholic, non-college graduate was elected to a Long Island, N.Y., congressional seat after lying about his resume. Strangely, Democrats have been nothing but ebullient about the successful campaign of a newly elected Washington State legislator known locally as Lyin’ Clyde Shavers.

‘Lyin’ Clyde’s story is one for the books. Clyde wants to be your president someday and he’s willing to go the Joe Biden route to do it. If Joe Biden can be president after co-opting the life story of a UK politician; lying about law school and how many degrees he has; lying about being right about any foreign policy opinion he’s ever had (see Afghanistan); lying about being Jewish, Puerto Rican, Italian, a truck driver, sexually assaulting a staffer, jobs numbers, infrastructure, his role as The Big Guy, Chinese and Ukraine payoffs, and his dad, Corn Pop, all while swearing he’s telling the truth “on his word as a Biden,” then so can Lyin’ Clyde.

Clyde has a magnificent start.

The newly elected state legislator who just took his seat this week was outed as a liar by his own father, who, during the campaign, wrote an extraordinary letter to The Lynwood Times, a local newspaper.

His Dad says Lyin’ Clyde lied about his family background, claimed to be a submariner with the U.S. Navy when he never served on a sub; parachuted into the district, and moved into a bed and breakfast to qualify as a “resident”; claimed to be a working attorney when he hasn’t passed the Washington State bar; made up inspirational quotes his father never said; and claimed to be homeless at a point in his life.

In his letter, Brett Shavers laid bare what he called his son’s lies about his U.S. Navy service while running for office in a district that contains the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

https://www.realclearbooks.com/articles/2023/01/11/the_new_jew_874920.html

It was early December when The Chosen Comedy Festival came to Miami. It had been a tough few weeks for Jews.

Kanye was on his “I love Hitler” tour and it seemed like too many people wanted to hear what he had to say. The New York Times was running regular pieces about problems they saw in the Haredi communities of Brooklyn, and absolutely nowhere else, and even the secular Jews who nodded approvingly at the first write-up were starting to notice the obsession.

A rabbi friend once told me that Jews are the only people that when someone says “I hate you” say “let’s hear him out.” But at the end of 2022, Jews were finally unwilling to hear anyone out. The hatred at us had gotten old. We were collectively tired of being the target and we were craving being together in an actually safe space.

It had been 4 years since the Tree of Life shooting, 3 years since the Monsey stabbing. We weren’t over those attacks, at least in part because less deadlier attacks on Jews in places like Brooklyn were happening regularly both before and after those killings. We weren’t raw anymore. We were something else. Inside the community, something was shifting.

The easy explanation is political. Jews are moving rightward. Slowly. An Associated Press survey found that President Donald Trump’s share of the Jewish vote went from 24% in 2016 to 30% in 2020. Exit polls had 33% of Jews voting Republican in the midterm elections and exit polls require someone to tell the truth to a pollster, something a lifelong Democrat switching sides for the first time might not be ready to do. Some people credit the Jewish vote with swinging several close House seats in New York and ultimately netting Republicans the House of Representatives.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-gas-stove-culture-war-progressives-consumer-product-safety-commission-richard-trumka-jr-kathy-hochul-11673647434?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

A sign of the media times is how quickly our leading progressive organs rally to deny that Democrats are doing what Democrats really are doing. A classic example was this week’s flare up in the coming climate war over banning gas stoves.

A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

We and others criticized the idea, and the media response was to rush to blame conservatives for starting it all. “Right’s new fight: Gas stoves,” said Axios, which pushes hard for the climate alarmist agenda. The Washington Post assured its readers that “regulators have no plans to ban gas stoves, but Republicans are slamming the Consumer Product Safety Commission for announcing it will examine the health impacts of the appliances.”

But we didn’t make up Mr. Trumka’s quote. We and others responded to it. After withering public criticism, including by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the CPSC Chairman denied any plan to ban, and the White House said President Biden also doesn’t want to ban gas stoves. But that’s cold comfort given that the climate left does want to ban them, and progressive cities and states are doing it.

Progressive cities such as Berkeley, San Francisco and New York City have already banned gas stoves and other appliances in new buildings. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week proposed a ban on gas equipment including stoves in new small buildings in 2025 and larger ones in 2028.

https://victorhanson.com/the-january-6th-insurrection/

Here is what we do not understand about the January 6th Committee—if it truly was intended to appear as a disinterested investigatory body.

1. Why for the first time in memory did Speaker Pelosi forbid the House Minority Leader’s pro forma nominees to a special House committee? Fairly or not, the result was that the only two Republicans who did serve shared two embarrassing requisites: they would likely be out office, and not by their own volition, in January 2023; and two, they despised Donald Trump and voted for the second Trump impeachment.

So, what were the Democrats afraid of to make them break all precedents with past hearings? Pelosi, in other words, ensured that there would be no cross-examinations of any witnesses, no disagreements about witness lists, no contrasting interviews to the media about the work of the committee, and no diversity in staff interrogatories.

2. Why did not the Committee investigate whether the FBI had numerous agents and informants present on January 6th? Michael Rosenberg, the New York Times assigned reporter to the demonstration, claimed they were ubiquitous. Were they?

3. Why did not the Committee review the circumstances in detail of the deaths of Officer Brian Sicknick and the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. These were the two most high-profile and controversial deaths on January 6th, and Babbitt’s perhaps was the only violent death at the direct hand of a known other?

4. Why did not the Committee investigate and release all the communications between the House leadership and the Capitol police to learn why the Capitol was virtually open and unsecured on a day that everyone knew would be the scene of mass protests there?

5. Why did not the Committee investigate all incendiary speech by major elected officials at iconic Washington buildings, deemed inflammatory and allegedly resulting in violence at a subsequent time? For example, in 2020 then Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer screamed to a large demonstration massed at the doors of the Supreme Court:

I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh—you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”