RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/22/the-garland-blinken-and-morell-morass/

Doubtless your mother used to tell you to count your blessings. It was good advice. Your situation may be bad. In the case of the United States, things indisputably are bad, and worsening. You know that. But look on the bright side. Merrick Garland, the first American Gothic attorney general of the United States, is a partisan horror show, withholding real protection from Supreme Court justices who are threatened by violent criminals even as he stigmatizes as “domestic terrorists” parents who criticize their local school boards and orders the FBI to conduct dawn raids on critics of the regime. He is a horrible man and a dangerous partisan hack, the very instantiation of the two-tier application of the law that has made such a mockery of justice during Biden’s tenure. 

But look on the bright side. Garland will soon be gone. And remember, he almost made it to the Supreme Court. Obama nominated him in the waning days of his administration. But Donald Trump had other ideas and—let’s give credit where credit is due—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made sure that Garland’s nomination got lost when Republicans held the majority. I am no fan of McConnell’s, but I try to remember to say a little prayer for him whenever I list my intentions. By scotching Garland’s ascension to the Court, McConnell did the country a huge favor. 

I say Garland will “soon” be gone. Most of my readers will assume I mean on or about January 20, 2025, when the next Republican president assumes office. 

It might take that long. But recent developments have me wondering whether he might make his congé even earlier.

A few days ago, it was reported that an unnamed, senior IRS special agent was seeking whistle-blower status in connection with the ongoing investigation of First Son Hunter Biden, who has serious tax problems. 

According to a letter from the agent’s lawyer to several House and Senate committees, the agent laid out multiple examples of “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject [i.e., Hunter Biden] were not politically connected.” The agent’s allegations also “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” and “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” against Hunter Biden.

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

Life right now feels like that moment when your roller coaster car begins slowing down near a terrifying peak, and your line of sight finally captures the precipitous plunge lying ahead.  Americans know that what happens next won’t be enjoyable except in that perverse way when abject terror floods the body with adrenaline.  Majorities or near-majorities expect imminent economic disaster, global war against nuclear-armed foes, and civil war here at home.  If that’s “progress,” then it’s long past time to turn the country around.  Yet that’s the thing with roller coaster rides: even if we hit the brakes now before cresting the summit, our downward acceleration is guaranteed — in one direction or another.

It’s not as if the ruling class’s “cult of expertise” provides any comfort.  We have a president who long ago lost his marbles, a vice president who succeeded in the political profession by excelling in the oldest one, a secretary of defense committed to promoting men in dresses, a health bureaucracy pumping citizens full of experimental drugs, a Treasury Department endlessly printing money, a Commerce Department prioritizing inflation-inducing “green” windmills over real economic growth, a homeland security chief dedicated to keeping the nation insecure, and a national police force that treats half the country as “domestic enemies.”  It’s almost as if whoever installed these yahoos into the highest positions of authority wanted obvious “fall guys” for when everything, well, falls down.

The Gateway Pundit recently ran an article reminding readers of an ominous analysis from a private intelligence outfit predicting a seventy-percent decline in America’s population by 2025.  That Deagel Corporation forecast released less than a decade ago shocked a lot of people at the time, but in an age when Farmer Gates and Doom Fauci continue to promise incoming pandemics worse than COVID, the World Economic Forum’s human sacrifice cult insists on widespread energy poverty and famine, and U.S.-NATO plays Russian roulette for fun and profit, apocalyptic population drops no longer seem so unimaginable from the top of this globalist roller coaster.  (Morbid side question: If Deagel’s devastating prophecy proves right, will climate cultists still insist that only global government and micromanaged markets can save the world from destruction?  Arg, of course they will; even after killing off 95% of the planet, A.I. clones of Klaus Schwab, George Soros, and Barack Obama will still be blaming the remaining 5% for “hate” crimes, global warming, and “white supremacy.”  Hustlers can’t ever give up the con.)

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

In a December 26, 1955 article in Time magazine, George Meany of the AFL-CIO warned Americans that

[t]oo many in the free world fail to see the real nature of Communism as the mortal foe of everything that we hold dear, of every moral and spiritual value. Too many are still prisoners of the illusion that Communism is, historically speaking, a progressive system  [or] … extreme liberalism temporarily making bad mistakes. Actually, Communism … is an anti-social system in which there are embedded some of the worst features of savagery, slavery, feudalism and life-sapping exploitation manifested in the industrial revolution of early-day capitalism.

Meany forcefully asserted that

[t]oo many in the free world seem to have lost their capacity for moral indignation against the most brutal inhumanities when they are perpetrated by Communists. It is painful, but we must face the cruel facts of life. It is disturbing to me that many people in our country who call themselves liberals … never find the time to utter a word of condemnation against the Communist imperialist destruction of the national independence and democratic rights of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Asia.

It was unfathomable to Meany that liberals could not perceive that “communism is the deadliest enemy of liberalism.”

With great prescience, Meany recognized that “[t]he conflict between Communism and freedom is the problem of our time.  It overshadows all other problems.  This conflict mirrors our age, its toils, its tensions, its troubles and its tasks.  On the outcome of this conflict depends the future of all mankind. I pray that … we of the free world can muster the moral courage and total strength to preserve peace and promote the freedom of the men and women of every continent, color and creed.”

In January of 1956, Meany took aim at the American business community when he explained that “[s]omehow or other, many in our American business community are not sufficiently alert to the danger of world Communism[.]”  Meany urged American business “not to let the prospect of monetary profits blur your vision.  Know your enemy.  Don’t help him.”

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-crisis-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia

EXCERPT:

We are also an American society. That is, we share characteristics with other countries in the Americas like Mexico and Brazil that set the countries of our hemisphere apart from countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Like many other American countries, the United States has more ethnic, cultural, social, and religious diversity than most European countries. The turbulent history of the hemisphere has left its mark on many American societies, where levels of crime, inequality, and violence are extraordinarily high by world standards. At the same time, our cultural roots are more Anglo and Protestant than most of our fellow American states, giving us much in common with countries like Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and of course Canada. As is the case throughout the Western Hemisphere, our intellectual classes and social elites have historically looked to Europe for aesthetic and intellectual values, while much of our population has had little knowledge of or interest in European history and culture. Serial waves of immigration, the latest and largest of which is taking place now, have reshaped American politics and culture, while leaving many of the essential elements of the national character largely unchanged.

Most of the time, however, our national conversation fails to do justice to the rich complexity of our national life. There are some outstanding exceptions both on the left and the right of American political discourse, but the quality of too much of our national conversation, mediated as it often is by cable news and social media, is too superficial, too one-sided, and too polarized to address the real issues in American life. That would be dangerous enough in ordinary times, but we live in demanding times. The disruptive economic and social consequences of the information revolution combine with the decadence and decay of the midcentury American model of regulated industrial democracy to plunge American society into a maelstrom of interconnected economic, social, racial, political, cultural, and ideological crises.

Between the domestic upheavals in American society, the international turmoil at a time of renewed great power competition, and global threats ranging from nuclear war to climate change, many Americans feel angry, frustrated, and afraid. To make matters worse, America’s leadership class has lost its way, and too many of the politicians, intellectuals, artists, educators, and religious leaders who ought to be pointing the way forward are locked into stale ideologies and failed institutional models, lacking the vision required to move up to the next stage of American life.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/vivek-ramaswamy-files-lawsuit-against-world-economic-forum_5209770.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is suing the World Economic Forum (WEF) for affiliating him as one of its “Young Global Leaders,” despite rejecting the request and repeatedly asking to be removed from its list of members.

“I fundamentally disagree with the WEF agenda,” Ramaswamy said in a post on Twitter Tuesday. “I’ve been one of the biggest crusaders in our country against it. They named me a ‘young global leader’ when I explicitly said no. Now it’s time to hold them accountable for it.”

Ramaswamy argued that the organization of global elites also listed other young and successful business leaders on the forum without their consent.

In a poll initiated by the 37-year-old businessman-turned-politician, he asked his 456,000 followers to vote on whether they think he should sue the WEF, with over 29,000 Twitter users responding to it. The result showed a whopping 90 percent in favor of filing a lawsuit against the organization, which is headquartered in Geneva.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ramaswamy formally announced that he’s filing a lawsuit against the WEF, saying it’s time to hold the organization accountable “for creating the false illusion of affiliation” in order to undermine its adversaries.

“Our Founding Fathers fought the American Revolution to declare independence from the Old World monarchy,” Ramaswamy said. “That old monster now rears its head again in the form of WEF’s agendas including ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and the ‘Great Reset.’ That’s why I’ve been one of the most vocal crusaders in America against WEF.”

According to the New York Post, citing the lawsuit, Ramaswamy filed it in a court in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Wednesday and is seeking only nominal damages of $2,500.

The lawsuit, per the Post, reads: “The WEF seemingly exploited this false and manufactured affiliation with Mr. Ramaswamy to undermine his credibility as a critic of the World Economic Forum and its objectives.”

“This is an organization that does a lot of wrongs and I’ve opposed it publicly and believe it should be held accountable,” Ramaswamy told the paper. “The WEF has a radical worldview that rejects the principles America was founded on. I’m not interested in being a ‘global citizen.’ I’m an American.”

Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who founded and leads biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, appeared on the WEF’s 2021 list of Young Global Leaders (YGL) before his name was pulled from the website, an archived version shows.

https://www.newsweek.com/toxicity-dei-tale-newton-massachusetts-opinion-1795907

A white grievance backlash has arrived in Massachusetts, to hear the liberal media tell it. Well-funded and well-connected GOP power players masquerading as aggrieved parents have been “harassing educators for policies they deem unfair to white students and antithetical to their values,” per a Boston Globe columnist. It’s “white backlash politics” that’s “clearly coordinated, with right-wing money” and engaged in a campaign of “whipping suburban parents into a frenzy” to win elections for the Republicans.

Sounds sinister! But if you talk to the parents at the center of the ongoing fight over Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public schools in Newton, Massachusetts, you’ll find something very different. You won’t find MAGA Republicans opposing DEI in the schools, but rather liberal Democrats who have noticed a shift in their children’s school system priorities. And their complaints have nothing to do with being white.

One parent had a child excluded from an affinity group (a race-based social group), while other parents were dismayed to find an accelerated math program that was in place for years had been scrapped due to equity concerns. Still others were troubled to learn that their children’s English and History instruction was filled with language dividing everyone into categories of oppressor or oppressed.

When these parents questioned the school about these issues, they were told that their complaints targeted aspects of their children’s education that were consistent the values of Newton Public Schools (NPS). That was true: In 2022, NPS shared these values in their Statement of Values and Commitment to Racial Equity. With imperatives like “Take immediate and sustained action to dismantle racism in our schools and communities” and “It is essential to give voice to those who have traditionally been underrepresented and historically marginalized,” the Statement of Values consists of typical progressive antiracism language, which leaves you with no doubt that blacks and other minorities are marginalized and have no agency, and adheres to the highly subjective findings of unconscious bias.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/the_biden_administrations_attack_on_free_speech.html

If it weren’t for Tucker Carlson, I wouldn’t have known about a disturbing story that Glenn Greenwald broke: The Biden administration is finding ways to stifle speech supporting the Russian position in the ongoing strife in Ukraine. 

I guess I should say up front that I am neither pro-Russian nor pro-Ukrainian. I dislike both sides equally and reserve all my compassion for the innocents caught in the crossfire (including the hapless Russian conscripts). My greatest concern is the one Donald Trump articulated during his interview with Tucker Carlson, which is the fact that we’re witnessing two nuclear powers squaring off against each other—and (which Trump didn’t say) one is ruled by a megalomaniac and the other ruled (for nuclear purposes) by someone who seems to have incipient dementia. I also have no dealings with or respect for black socialists, who are usually antisemitic, too. My sole focus here is on free speech in America.

On Wednesday, Greenwald, a leftist who is also a First Amendment absolutist, tweeted that members of a Black nationalist group were just indicted for spreading pro-Russian propaganda.

Yeshitela sounds exactly like the Reverent Jeremiah Wright, doesn’t he? 

According to the DOJ press release about the indictment, charges were filed against four U.S. citizens and three Russian nationals. The charge is that Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a Russian, founded something called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), which was headquartered in Russia and which the Russian government funded. He was aided by the two other Russian defendants. One of their illegal activities was to spend money to affect a candidate running for a local office in Florida.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/transportation_secretary_pete_buttigieg_proposes_spending_20_million_taxpayer_dollars_on_female_crash_test_dummies.html

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has proposed that the Department of Transportation include  $20 million for female crash-test dummies in its 2024 fiscal budget. That Buttigieg — famous for his love of females though he may be — wants to spend vast sums of taxpayer dollars on feminine crash dummies seems odd in the current cultural climate in which we salute all things non-binary.

Nonetheless, Mayor Pete’s proposal has already garnered support from several House Democrats. For example, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut praised Buttigieg’s plan during a recent House Appropriations Subcommittee meeting. DeLauro stated that the use of female crash dummies would be a major step forward in the fight against “gender inequity”.

Say what? Unlike humans, who are either one sex or another, crash dummies can’t be gendered…as they are not living beings. But, in today’s world, nothing can stand in the way of insanity.

How will manufacturers make crash dummies “female?” Will they be shorter and lighter? Have big breasts and wear lipstick? Carry a purse? Will they tell the “male” crash dummies to slow down and ask for directions? This would seem kind of stereotypical and/or misogynistic in this day and age, wouldn’t it?

How can we even have female crash test dummies if we don’t even know what an actual woman is?

And who’s to say “female” crash dummies don’t identify as male? Particularly since they are arbitrarily “assigned” their gender at birth when they are made.

https://victorhanson.com/wokism-and-history-part-three-the-commissariat/

Under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany divided up Poland. Germany invaded first from the north, west, and south, the Soviet Union subsequently from the east. By early October the war was over. A victorious Germany concluded that while its forces had learned much about Blitzkrieg and needed improvement, Soviet Russia in comparison seemed inept.

That impression was solidified by the so-called “Winter War” of November 30, 1939–March 13, 1940, when the Soviets invaded neutral Finland. Although technically a victory, Russia lost nearly 500,000 dead, wounded, missing, and captured, compared to 75,000 causalities of the so-called losing Finns. Hitler concluded that his new ally Stalin’s Russia was a paper tiger, a view enhanced by the vast and continual improvement in German war-making for much of 1940–41 with the victories in Norway, the Low Countries, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and North Africa.

Germans assumed that the Russian officer corps was largely to blame for these embarrassments, especially given that during the 1937–38 Stalin purges, some 30,000 officers were executed on the pretext of anti-Stalin, anti-communist sympathies.

Among them was over 75 percent of Soviet generals and admirals—at precisely the time Stalin was vastly expanding and modernizing his armed forces and in dire need of competent officers.

Given these exempla, Hitler turned on his ally on June 22, 1941, and foolishly invaded the vast Soviet Union. The initial three-pronged attack was stunning, and nearly knocked out the Soviet Union in the first three months of the invasion, inflicting somewhere between 4-5 million casualties, with perhaps over 2 million immediate dead. Hitler was at first convinced that Stalin had wrecked his military and Moscow would be in German hands by early September.

What followed December 1941—Hitlerian strategic blunders, German overextended logistics and manpower shortages, vast resupplies of Anglo-American Lend-Lease war material to Russia, intact Russian industrial production beyond the Urals, and improving Soviet generalship—had doomed Germans to defeat by late 1943.

By 1943 Stalin had reversed course, reviving the Russian Orthodox Church to lend religious zeal to the war, and increasingly turning over the day-to-day decision making, both tactical and strategic, to an array of talented Soviet generals, most famously Georgy Zhukov, Ivan Konev, Vasily Chuikov, and Konstantin Rokossovsky. Both Konev and Rokossovsky had been purged between 1936–38 but were by 1941–42 “rehabilitated.” In short, once the Soviet Union de facto ended the commissariat/ideological control of the military and allowed it to function more on the basis of military efficacy, the Soviets began to take advantage of inherent German weaknesses.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/20/feds-still-fighting-release-of-j6-tapes-despite-mounting-legal-pressure/

Matthew Graves just received a court summons.

As the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Graves is rarely on the receiving end of a legal inquiry. In fact, Graves’ hand must be tired from signing thousands of criminal indictments, sentencing memos, and plea offers related to his ongoing investigation into the events of January 6, 2021. Just this week, the FBI arrested two more individuals on minor offenses, giving Graves’ overstaffed office more fresh meat for the Justice Department’s vengeful retaliation against Americans who protested the certification of Joe Biden’s election that day.

No investigative technique is too invasive for Graves’ henchmen to use in court proceedings. Big Tech, banking institutions, airlines, hotels, and other private interests work hand-in-glove with the Justice Department to hunt down Trump supporters and track their every movement before and on January 6. Much of the evidence consists of video footage captured by Capitol police’s closed-circuit television system during the breach of the building. Investigators routinely include still shots of the surveillance video in criminal complaints.

But now Graves is under pressure from all sides to make the video footage public. A consortium of major media companies is suing Graves and the FBI for ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the still-secret recordings. As I’ve reported since May 2021, the entire trove was designated “highly sensitive” government material shortly after the investigation began. Clips entered as evidence in January 6 cases are under strict protective orders.

Over the past two years, a group called the Press Coalition filed motions seeking to unseal video clips in numerous cases, however, it never requested access to the full archive of footage. That changed after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy allowed Fox News host Tucker Carlson to view the videos and air selected clips in February.

Lawyers representing the group—which includes CNN, the New York Times, and Politico among other outlets—wrote congressional leaders to demand “all closed-circuit camera footage recorded on January 6, 2021, inside the United States Capitol and on its surrounding outside grounds.” 

In what might be a first, news organizations commended McCarthy. “The Speaker also explicitly recognized the overriding public interest in disclosure: ‘I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment,’” the letter quoted McCarthy.