RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/06/09/one_generation_away_from_extinction_149333.html

Americans are steadily getting used to giving up their freedoms – and as someone who was forced to flee the oppressive dictatorship in Venezuela, that terrifies me.

In Venezuela, even mild criticism of the Maduro regime is treated as a criminal act. For “minor” offenses, you might simply be ridiculed and ostracized by state-controlled propaganda (which is ubiquitous). If you continue to challenge the ruling elite, however, the consequences become more severe – you might be arrested without cause and indefinitely detained, or you might even be subjected to physical torture.

That’s the Venezuela I fled as a teenager when I migrated – legally – to the United States. I escaped a violent, repressive dictatorship.

That wasn’t always the case, though. When my parents were young, Venezuela was a vibrant, prosperous democracy. At one time, foreigners spoke of “Venezuelan Exceptionalism” and our people revered Venezuela’s anti-authoritarian Constitution.

So what happened?

Hugo Chavez – pardoned after a failed coup attempt in 1992 – took advantage of a temporary economic downturn to run for the presidency on a socialist platform, essentially bribing the voters with promises of lavish spending on education, healthcare, and social programs. 

To pay for all this, Chavez gutted the productive portions of the Venezuelan economy. When punitive tax rates didn’t generate enough money, he forcibly seized control of oil companies, telecoms, and other industries, using them as a personal slush fund for his economic Ponzi schemes.

Predictably, this caused an outcry from those who had their possessions taken from them by jack-booted thugs. Chavez responded by imprisoning those who dared to speak out against his illegal abuses. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, uses the same tactics to keep the Venezuelan people from overthrowing his regime.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-indictment-classified-documents-jack-smith-mar-a-lago-biden-justice-department-81591082?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, his indictment by President Biden’s Justice Department is a fraught moment for American democracy. For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President. This is far graver than the previous indictment by a rogue New York prosecutor, and it will roil the 2024 election and U.S. politics for years to come.

Special counsel Jack Smith announced the indictment in a brief statement on Friday. But no one should be fooled: This is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s responsibility. Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to provide political cover, but Mr. Garland, who reports to Mr. Biden, has the authority to overrule a special counsel’s recommendation. Americans will inevitably see this as a Garland-Biden indictment, and they are right to think so.**

The indictment levels 37 charges against Mr. Trump that are related to his handling of classified documents, including at his Mar-a-Lago club, since he left the White House. Thirty-one of the counts are for violating the ancient and seldom-enforced Espionage Act for the “willful retention of national defense information.”

But it’s striking, and legally notable, that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA) that allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office. It allows for good-faith negotiation with the National Archives. Yet the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.

This doesn’t fit the spirit or letter of the PRA, which was written by Congress to recognize that such documents had previously been the property of former Presidents. If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be part of Mr. Trump’s defense.

 https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/08/former-president-donald-trump-charged-in-classified-documents-probe/

Former President Donald J. Trump has been indicted in the district court in Miami on federal counts stemming from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s months-long investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.

The indictment represents the first time in U.S. history a former president will face criminal charges. Trump announced the indictment Thursday night on Truth Social. “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is “secured” by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time,” Trump said in a post at 7:21 p.m. eastern time.

He will surrender to authorities in Miami on Tuesday.

Exact charges are unclear; the New York Times reports that the former president faces seven counts. Those charges potentially include obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and unlawful retention of classified material. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland, appointed by Joe Biden in January 2021, named Smith special counsel last year to take over Garland’s existing investigations into both the classified documents matter and Trump’s alleged role in the events of January 6. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability,” Garland said in a November 2022 announcement.

After months of accusations by the National Archives and Records Administration that Trump-era government documents were missing in violation of the Presidential Records Act, the agency retrieved 15 boxes of records from Trump’s primary residence in Palm Beach, Florida in January 2022. The following month, NARAs inspector general sent a letter to the Justice Department seeking a criminal investigation into Trump, claiming the boxes contained “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and a lot of classified records.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/new_gallup_poll_shows_nearly_40_of_americans_identify_as_socially_conservativeand_that_number_is_climbing.html

We all know the proverbial “give them enough rope” aphorism but in this age of apathy, I wondered if the precept was obsolete. In a world where political power rightfully belongs to the people but requires vigilance, I didn’t have high expectations of a stuporous public deluded by television, streaming services, and social media — of course, the “bread and circuses” maxim also comes to mind.

However, it looks as though I may have been letting my pessimism get the best of me….

A Gallup poll released today revealed something I didn’t expect: right around 40% of Americans say they identify as “conservative” on “social issues” — and, a deeper look at the numbers paints a rather bright picture. From Gallup:

More Americans this year (38%) say they are very conservative or conservative on social issues than said so in 2022 (33%) and 2021 (30%). At the same time, the percentage saying their social views are very liberal or liberal has dipped to 29% from 34% in each of the past two years, while the portion identifying as moderate (31%) remains near a third.

Furthermore:

Since 2021, there have been double-digit increases in conservative social ideology among middle-aged adults — those between the ages of 30 and 64. At the same time, older Americans’ ideology on social issues has been stable, while there has been a modest increase in conservative social ideology among young adults.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hate-group-smears-parental-rights-groups-as-hate-groups/

Apart from pro-lifers, the anti-family Left hates nothing quite so fervently as parents who believe they should have more authority over their own children than the government does. And so the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – a fear-mongering, corrupt, discredited but influential smear organization that demonizes mainstream conservatives as “hate groups” – has placed a dozen parental rights organizations on its “hate map” as “antigovernment extremist groups.”

According to the SPCA’s annual 2022 Year in Hate and Extremism report, the burgeoning, Florida-based Moms for Liberty organization was added to the Center’s hate list along with 11 other parental rights groups. These purportedly dangerous mothers now join 701 other “antigovernment” entities – as if “antigovernment” is an unreasonable stance to take in the wake of the totalitarian pandemic lockdowns, the weaponization of the FBI and the Department of Justice against the Obama and Biden administrations’ political enemies, the Department of Homeland Security’s abandonment of border security, and on and on. In light of the havoc the current regime is intentionally waging against the American people, it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could be pro-government.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is the same organization, by the way, that does not list the domestic terrorists of Antifa or Black Lives Matter among its so-called “hate groups.” It does, however, name Freedom Center founder David Horowitz among its “extremists” – indeed, the SPLC rather melodramatically calls him “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement.” (As Horowitz himself has stated many times, neither he nor the Freedom Center is “anti-Muslim” but pro-freedom, which does put the Center proudly at odds not with all Muslims but with anti-democratic sharia law and with anti-Western jihadists. The “godfather” label is an amusing touch, painting Horowitz as some kind of Vito Corleone-style crime family patriarch).

Back to the demonization of parental rights groups. Categorized under “Locally driven right-wing mobilization” (because grass-roots community organizing is only acceptable when the Left does it, don’t ya know) the SPLC report reads, “Schools, especially, have been on the receiving end of ramped-up and coordinated hard-right attacks, frequently through the guise of ‘parents’ rights’ groups,” the SPLC’s report claims. “Hard right,” by the way, is the SPLC’s favorite scare label for anyone to the Right of Lenin.

ttps://www.frontpagemag.com/trump-indicted-for-crime-every-admin-in-last-40-years-was-guilty-of/

Selective criminalization is unequal justice. Selective criminalization aimed at political opponents is political repression.

Every administration since President Ronald Reagan’s has mismanaged classified documents, according to National Archives and Records Administration officials who spoke to a congressional committee behind closed doors in March.

Mark Bradley, who directs the agency’s Information Security Oversight Office, said that since 2010, his office has gotten more than 80 calls from libraries that have found classified information in papers belonging to members of Congress.

For example, Sen. Edmund Muskie, D-Maine — who left Congress in 1980 and was secretary of state in the last year of President Jimmy Carter’s administration — included 98 classified documents when his papers were given to Bates College.

Biden seemed to have dumped classified documents just about everywhere he set foot. Never mind Hillary and her server. Or the other manifold examples.

Since old dogs never learn any new tricks, this is once again a process crime created by the Dems investigating Trump. Indicting presidential associates on process crimes is one thing, but going after Trump on a process crime is unrealistic. But then this isn’t about actually winning the case, but winning an election.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/davidhasanyi/2023/06/09/nothing-to-see-here-but-a-credible-whistleblower-accusing-the-president-of-bribery-n1701816

President Joe Biden has been accused by a credible informant of allegedly taking $5 million in “a bribery scheme with a foreign national” while he was the sitting vice president. That seems like a pretty big story, but what do I know?

Apparently, there’s a document laying out the accusation in some detail, and not one cooked up by an oppo-research firm for the Republican National Committee and then disseminated to saps in the media to try and delegitimize a presidential election. No, it’s in an unclassified FD-1023 form, used by law enforcement to record credible tips. Granted, it’s not in the possession of BuzzFeed, but rather the vaunted FBI, which refuses to hand it to Congress for some reason. And there is no curiosity on the part of establishment media to find out what it says.

I know, I know, it’s getting tedious asking people to imagine the thermonuclear media blast they’d be swept up in if a Republican president had been accused of bribery by an FBI informant. This is the way of the world. To this point, the debate over the proper pronunciation of Ron DeSantis’ last name has gotten more coverage than the president possibly pocketing millions of dollars through shell corporations.

Though, I suppose that’s not exactly right. Biden’s Praetorian Guard have begun to preemptively frame chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, as some devious nut for demanding the FBI hand over documents. This is what they did to Devin Nunes, who turned out to be correct in his assessment of the Russia collusion investigation.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/06/08/biden-melts-down-during-presser-when-asked-about-bribery-allegation-gives-unbelievable-answer-n758118

As we reported earlier, Joe Biden held a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom on Thursday. He needed note cards to just do his greetings with Sunak, and he got confused about what the prime minister’s position was. That raised fresh concerns about his mental ability to do the job.

Then the White House decided to throw caution to the wind and had him answer a few questions. Of course, he had a pre-approved list as he usually does, so he may also have the questions and answers in front of him as well.

But even that didn’t stop Joe from being Joe (that is, putting his foot in his mouth). Biden completely blanked out on part of what the question was that a reporter just asked him.

This, even though he appeared to have cards and at various points during the press conference, looked to be reading off them/referencing them.

He also seemed to have no idea how many people there are in Africa.

The staff was trying to get the reporters out of the room, but they were able to get in a couple more questions before he left the room. That’s where it truly went off the rails.

That’s when Biden started getting disturbed and testy when he was questioned about corruption—specifically what Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said about evidence that he sold out the country. A reporter asked, “Bribery allegations. Congresswoman Nancy Mace says there’s damning evidence in an FBI file that you sold out the country. Do you have a response?” Biden’s response was unbelievable.

Biden smirked, and said, “Where’s the money?” He then called it “a bunch of malarkey.” His smirk shows he thinks he’s untouchable, that he won’t be held accountable for anything.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/09/how-do-we-get-back-the-lockdown-time-stolen-from-us/

Our sense of incarceration from the pandemic lockdowns was caused by more than being unable to live as freely as we had before the diktats were issued. Like inmates locked in a prison, we lost track of time. It was stolen from us by “leaders” who willingly traded our liberty for a perception of safety, and in too many cases in exchange for satisfying their authoritarian urges.

A study published late last month by Scottish researchers “found a large error for estimating the timing of events that occurred in 2021” when they questioned participants about the past events.

“The findings show that participants were less able to recall the timeline of very recent events coinciding with COVID lockdowns” and “are consistent with poor perception of event timeline reported previously in prison inmates.”

Though the authors, from the University of Aberdeen, acknowledged that “​​drawing a comparison between the prison environment and pandemic related restriction might be seen as an extreme case,” they were still confident “that there are similarities in the extent of social isolation in both situations.”

This isn’t the first research paper to reach this conclusion. A University of California, Irvine, study posted last August in an online science journal concluded that “the passage of time was altered for many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranging from difficulty in keeping track of days of the week to feeling that the hours themselves rushed by or slowed down.”

Previous studies had found that “these distortions have been associated with persistent negative mental outcomes such as depression and anxiety following trauma.”