RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/michelle_obama_got_750000_for_a_single_speech_in_munich.html

Debate is raging about whether Michelle Obama will step in to save the day for Democrats if both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are yanked from the top of the ticket. Meanwhile, though, Michelle isn’t letting any grass grow under her feet. Instead, she jetted off to Munich to give a single speech, in exchange for which she collected 700,000 euros, which is equivalent to over $740,000. Given how rich the Obamas are, one has to wonder about her price tag…although I have some guesses.

I’m not a Michelle Obama fan. She came from an affluent black Chicago family; got into the Ivy Leagues (probably through affirmative action, given the childishly poor quality of her bachelor’s thesis); obtained jobs for which she was not qualified and that required no work but nevertheless paid her very, very well; and ended up as America’s First Lady for eight years. Along the way, she and her husband amassed at least $70 million, a wealth package that includes three mansions, one in D.C., one in Martha’s Vineyard, and one in Hawaii.

That level of wealth is impressive when you consider Barack Obama’s considered opinion that “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” But of course, for leftists, enough is never really enough. The richest people in the world are leftists who squirreled away a bit of money for themselves—e.g., Hugo Chavez, Yasir Arafat, every Soviet dictator, Fidel Castro, and, now, the Obamas. Oh, and let’s not forget Bernie Sanders, who used to inveigh against millionaires and billionaires until he became a millionaire. Then, he only had a problem with billionaires.

But back to Michelle. Here’s the reason I don’t like her: Despite her wealth and prestige, Michelle Obama is a woman who feels that life has done her wrong. She’s a race hustler who waves her skin color around like an angry flag. If you don’t worship at her feet, it’s not because you dislike her values or her personality. It’s because you’re part of a systemically racist, capitalist, American system that offends her to the core, despite her having benefitted from that same capitalist, American system in a way few people ever have or will.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19999/menendez-indictment

In both the Menendez and Trump cases, prosecutors are engaging in the questionable tactic of seeking to influence the jury before trial.

Both show and tells [Menendez’s gold bars and Trump’s documents] are wrong. Both are intended to prejudice potential jurors and witnesses and to try the case in the court of public opinion before it is subject to the adversarial process to the courts of law.

Two wrongs do not make a right — nor do they cancel each other out. They simply compound the injustices and demonstrate that this Justice Department — and several others that came before it — are willing to violate the spirit if not the letter of the law, Justice Department regulations and legal ethics.

No one should rush to judgment before all the evidence is seen and heard. Nor should Menendez be compelled to resign his seat in the Senate based on allegations, photographs and the kind of one-sided testimony that is heard by grand jurors. The presumption of innocence means just that: at this point in time, Menendez should be deemed no more guilty than other officeholders who have been accused of wrongdoing.

One irony of the Justice Department’s publication of prejudicial photographs clearly intended to influence the jury and potential witnesses is the fact that the same Justice Department is seeking to impose a gag order on Trump, in part because of the claim that he will try to influence jurors and witnesses against the government.

Both Trump and Menendez have the constitutional right – under the 1st and 6th Amendments – to defend themselves in the court of public opinion. The government, on the other hand, has no constitutional right to try to influence jurors or witnesses. Its only legitimate role is just to seek objective and fair justice. In that regard, the Justice Department is starting off on the wrong foot in both the Menendez and Trump cases.

Many Democrats are claiming that the recent indictment of Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) proves that the current Justice Department provides equal justice to Democrats and Republicans. Although it is necessary to wait for the evidence to emerge before judgment is passed on this most recent indictment, what appears so far may be closer to equal injustice.

In both the Menendez and Trump cases, prosecutors are engaging in the questionable tactic of seeking to influence the jury before trial. The photographic display of gold bars and cash in the Menendez case is an image that will remain with everyone who saw it. The same is true of the contrived photographic display by the Justice Department of allegedly classified documents spread on the floor. This “show and tell “was produced by the Justice Department and published in virtually every media outlet in the country.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/09/26/hunter-biden-received-260000-in-wires-from-china-guess-where-they-were-sent-n1730134

It looks like the House Oversight Committee has found another juicy nugget that is going to complicate Joe Biden’s impeachment defense.

According to subpoenaed bank records, Hunter Biden received wire transfers totaling roughly $260,000 from communist China, and these transfers listed Joe Biden’s Delaware residence as the beneficiary address for the funds.

“As part of the investigation, Comer subpoenaed financial records related to a specific bank account and received records of two wires originating from Beijing and linked to BHR Partners,” Fox News Digital reported Tuesday evening. “BHR Partners is a joint-venture between Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital. BHR Partners is a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited. Hunter Biden reportedly sat on the board of directors of BHR Partners.”

The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.

The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.

The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address “1209 Barley Mill Rd.” in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-bidens-record-contradicts-his-pro-union-braggadocio/

President Biden likes to boast that he is “the most pro-union president in history.” To underscore his claim, the president has decided to join the United Auto Workers picket line in Michigan for a photo op, which will provide him with the opportunity to secure the endorsement of the UAW.

However, Joe Biden has hurt labor in the United States over the years by being a longtime leader in advocating the normalization of trade with China, beginning with his strong support for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Labor unions in the manufacturing sector opposed China’s admission to the WTO out of concern that cheaper labor in China would entice U.S. companies to eliminate many well-paying jobs in America and use less expensive Chinese workers instead. The unions were right. Joe Biden got it wrong.

According to a study published in January 2020 by the Economic Policy Institute, “The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2018 was responsible for the loss of 3.7 million U.S. jobs…Three-fourths (75.4%) of the jobs lost between 2001 and 2018 were in manufacturing (2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost due to the growth in the trade deficit with China).”

Donald Trump recognized the massive loss of jobs to China, which exploited and violated the rules of the WTO to its advantage. Mr. Trump confronted the devastating consequences for American workers during his presidency. Although he was unable to stop China’s unfair trade advantages completely, at least he tried to protect U.S. workers’ jobs. Mr. Trump imposed stiff tariffs and other measures that brought China to the negotiating table, resulting in more balanced terms for trade between the two countries.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has done nothing of the kind. To the contrary, he has long downplayed the threat that China poses to the American economy.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-transgender-homecoming-queen-to-transhumanism/

Last week, a biological male named Tristan Young who “identifies” as a female beat out several young ladies for the title of “homecoming queen” at Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri.

In July, the Netherlands crowned a biological male identifying as a woman as its first transgendered Miss Netherlands.

Leaving aside the question of who is spearheading this annihilative agenda, we should be clear on what is the intended goal of the perpetrators. When a biological male who looks like a man in drag is crowned as homecoming queen, the adults behind this agenda are sending a clear message that this is a socially endorsed beauty contest. And further, that teenage boys should find male homecoming queens attractive and even sexually alluring.

There are two issues here to consider. One is the normalization of transgenderism. Its mainstreamed nature will brand as a homophobe or transphobe anyone who claims not to be attracted to trans “women” since they are to be regarded as actual women. The perception of discrimination, and discrimination associated with transwomen of color will increase. America will be viewed as less tolerant, more systemically racist and—if heterosexual men reject biological male transwomen—as irredeemably misogynistic.

The second factor to consider is that a form of socio-sexual eugenics is spreading like an epidemic in our society.  Boys who normally would not have been attracted to biological male trans-women will be increasingly attracted to such persons. The result will be a further increased segment of the copulating population incapable of reproducing. According to a recent survey of over 1,000 members of generation Z, 27% don’t want to have kids. When asked why, 89% of generation Z women said they enjoy the flexibility in their lives of not having children and 70% responded that they value their alone time.

Since it is women who both grant access to sex and determine if children come into the world, one can imagine a scenario in which an already declining U.S. population could precipitously slip further into an irreversible decline if a significant portion of transwomen become the partners not of gay men (not likely) but of re-socialized and sexually re-engineered heterosexual males.

The other factor to consider is that the agenda has as its end goal—the elimination of the male pronoun, men as we know them and any memory of a term such as heroic masculinity. Think about it: a biological male/ trans-woman is a feminized woman; a trans-man (biological female identifying as a biological male) looks often like a diminutive male with none of the primal and elemental raw masculinity of men. Although we live in a culture that problematizes the definition of women, it is men who are being erased.

https://www.thefp.com/p/coleman-hughes-is-ted-scared-of-color-blindness

TED Conferences, LLC is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”.

Like any young writer, I am well aware that an invitation to speak at TED can be a career-changing opportunity. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was invited to appear at this year’s annual conference. What I could not have imagined from an organization whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading” is that it would attempt to suppress my own.

As an independent podcaster and author, I count myself among the lucky few who can make a living doing what they truly love to do. Nothing about my experience with TED could change that. The reason this story matters is not because I was treated poorly, but because it helps explain how organizations can be captured by an ideological minority that bends even the people at the very top to its will. In that, the story of TED is the story of so many crucial and once-trustworthy institutions in American life.

Let’s go back to the start.

This past April, I gave a talk at the yearly TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. In my talk, I defended color blindness: the idea that we should treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and in our public policy. (This is also the topic of my forthcoming book.)

Even though a majority of Americans believe that color-blind policies are the right approach to governing a racially diverse society, we live in a strange moment in which many of our elite believe that color blindness is, in fact, a Trojan horse for white supremacy. Taking that viewpoint seriously—while ultimately refuting it—was the express purpose of my talk.

https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-store-mob-thefts-teenagers-f2351d631f691aa081233b1df1bee54d

Groups of teenagers swarmed into stores in Philadelphia’s Central City on Tuesday, stuffing plastic bags with merchandise and fleeing, although police made several arrests, authorities and witnesses said.

An Apple Store was hit at around 8 p.m. and police chased fleeing teenagers, recovering dropped iPhones and a “pile of iPads” at one spot, a police statement said.

More than 100 people who appeared to be teenagers looted a Lululemon store, NBC10 Philadelphia reported, citing a police officer.

Video posted on social media showed masked people in hoodies running out of Lululemon and police officers grabbing several and tackling them to the sidewalk, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

No injuries were immediately reported but CBS Philadelphia said a security guard was assaulted at the Foot Locker.

The flash mob-style ransacking followed an earlier peaceful protest over a judge’s Tuesday decision to dismiss murder and other charges against a Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a driver, Eddie Irizarry, through a rolled-up window.

However, several police commanders said that the store ransacking wasn’t connected to earlier demonstrations, CBS Philadelphia reported.

The thefts also occurred on the same day that Target announced it will close nine stores in four states, including one in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood, and three in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying that theft and organized retail crime have threatened the safety of its workers and customers.

http://Is the Left Happy That They Got Their Wish?

America has been in a veritable cultural revolution since the 1960s. Nearly all our major institutions finally became woke—the administrative state, traditional and social media, universities, K-12, the corporate boardroom, entertainment, professional sports, and the foundations.

So the Obama and the Biden administrations finally seemed to have achieved their aims, in what the Obamas once boasted would be the “fundamental transformation” of America into something unrecognizable by its Founders. But what they gave us was nihilism—the destruction of norms, laws, and customs. There is no border, no criminal justice system, no real president any more.

The citizen is a serf, the illegal alien the veritable citizen. The former needs a passport to reenter the country, the latter is waved on through. There is a slob in gym shorts and a hoodie establishing dress codes for the Senate, teen murderers bragging that they won’t spend a day in jail, and a would-be state legislator filming herself doing sexual gymnastics while begging for cash only to be upset over the invasion of her “privacy.” So the Left got what it wanted and gave us our new America.

The curious result, however, is that even the elite Left is now forced to live among, and cannot always escape, the ruination it created—and for the first time is becoming slightly unhappy with what it birthed.

Critical legal theory has now trickled down into most of our large cities. It insists that criminals are not criminals at all, but rather victims of prior racial and class oppressions. Thus their victims should blame society for their injuries, not their predatory victimizers. Critical legal theory is a sort of Marxist redistribution schema—the middle class almost deserves its equal share of violence commensurate with that of the inner city.

As a result, in Chicago and Oakland and hundreds of other cities, prosecutors let out criminals without bail or sometimes even indictments—in part out of spite and hatred of middle- and upper-middle-class America that supposedly deserves a payback for its bourgeois indifference, in part out of sheer ignorance of the unleashing of human nature once all deterrence is removed.

And the result?

https://victorhanson.com/the-origins-of-the-biden-disaster-part-one/

In a much-heralded Washington Post column, David Ignatius recently called for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris not to run again.

But to justify such a Draconian call, he first reviewed their tenures and concluded of Joe, “In sum, he has been a successful and effective president.” Consider the logic: the more successful a president, the quicker he must get out of office?

Obviously, if Ignatius really believed that assessment, then he would not be calling for Joe to step aside. While Joe has deteriorated a great deal cognitively since his January 2021 debut, even before his inauguration he was clearly unfit physically and mentally for the job—a fact of course known to liberals like Ignatius and others.

So the subtext of this new ridiculous argument that a successful Joe must suddenly depart is essentially the following:

In 2020, Joe Biden was health-wise unfit to become president. The Left backed him, however, by persuading virtually the entire field of 2020 primary candidates to step aside—given his competitors, many of whom had polled well ahead of Joe and won primaries, were deemed either too socialist (Sanders), too shrill and off-putting (Warren), too sanctimonious and insufferable (Buttigieg), too nutty (Spartacus-Booker), and too boring, condescending, and effusively rich (Bloomberg) to ever get elected.

A previously inert Joe was then coronated as the only hope left by the leftwing donor class. And in lockstep, the Democratic minority-base was then persuaded (quid-pro-quo-ed) to back the heretofore losing Biden.

Suddenly Joe won the primary in South Carolina. Or as a giddy NPR said of his late February 2020 South Carolina victory:

The 77-year-old former vice president has now notched an expected yet much-needed victory in the South Carolina primary, according to The Associated Press’s projection. Just days ago, the press and the pundits had declared his candidacy dead. (emphasis added) “Now, thanks to all of you—the heart of the Democratic Party—we just won and we’ve won big because of you, and we are very much alive,” an energized Biden said at an event with supporters in Columbia, S.C.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-moral-order-is-already-crumbling-climate-europe-immigration-australia-25d21439?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The new moral order our secularist elites have been busy constructing since the end of the Cold War is collapsing around them.

Over the past 30 years, the values of Judeo-Christian belief that had inspired and sustained Western civilization and culture for centuries have been steadily replaced in a moral, cultural and political revolution of the postmodern ascendancy. But the contradictions and implausibilities inherent in this successor creed have been increasingly exposed, and its failure to supply the needs of the people is discrediting it in the popular mind.

This new edifice has been built around three principal pillars: First, the ethical primacy of global obligation over national self-interest, in economic and geopolitical terms, but most directly and consequentially in a rejection of the morality of national borders and an embrace of something like open-door immigration. Second, a quasi-biblical belief in climate catastrophism, in which man’s essential energy-consuming sinfulness can be expiated only by massive sacrifice of economic progress. Third, a wholesale cultural self-cancellation in which the virtues, values and historic achievements of traditional civilization are rejected and replaced by a cultural hierarchy that inverts old prejudices and obliges the class of white, male heterosexuals to acknowledge their history of exploitation and submit to comprehensive social and economic reparation.

This fall, throughout the West, on three continents, each of these three pillars is crumbling,

In Lampedusa, the Italian island midway between Europe and Africa, and at Eagle Pass, Texas, and elsewhere along the visible and increasingly invisible frontiers that separate the global North from the South, the idea of permissive migration in an economically unequal world is being tested to destruction. Lampedusa was inundated last week with another surge of migrants from Africa, larger than the population of the island itself. In Texas, the influx across the border with Mexico became a torrent.

The demographic tsunami from the global South as the North’s population shrinks is in its early stages, and most people can see clearly what happens when leaders insist on a moral code that suggests our obligations to indigent foreigners are as great as those to our own citizens. It won’t survive the political backlash now under way in both Europe and America, as even U.S. Democrats and Brussels Eurocrats are slowly starting to grasp.

The second pillar, the moral imperative of self-abasing action to combat climate change, is falling too—most interestingly again in Europe and the U.K., where it has long been the official religion of the secularist priesthood.

Last week, Britain’s notionally Conservative government took a small but symbolically important step in climate apostasy, announcing some sensible tweaks to a program of regulatory decarbonization mandates, such as pushing back by a few years the phasing out of new gasoline-powered cars. The move was precipitated by the high and rising costs to ordinary citizens of these measures and didn’t actually involve—yet—a formal retreat from the ambitious goal of making the country “carbon neutral” by 2050. But the howls from almost the entire establishment were an encouraging sign that the priesthood knows its days are numbered.