Progressives Thrive on Deceit

 

Progressives Thrive on Deceit

Kenin M. Spivak, The American Mind 

Conservatives must know their enemy and respond accordingly.

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell, 1984

To remake America, progressives have centered on a strategy of rewriting history, distorting current events, changing language, and using false allegations of disinformation, malinformation (facts progressives believe are presented out of context), and racism to censor and suppress centrists and conservatives.

By undermining confidence in American values, progressives have considerably advanced their efforts. They have controlled the White House and at least one house of Congress for 12 of the last 16 years, and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 70 years. Almost all major media outlets and reporters are in lockstep with progressive goals, lies, and omissions. Most report only about events and views that benefit the progressive agenda, and mischaracterize or suppress news, information, and opinions that may impede it. Progressives also control most federal agencies, many state agencies, leading universities, school boards, professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, most leading think tanks, and many corporate boards.

As the COVID pandemic raged, progressives spoke hopefully of a new world order in which experts would tell us how to live. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, often refer to this chaos as the “rules-based international order.” They and other progressives, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, see the U.S. as just one among many countries. That is why they oppose immigration controls, support global compacts, subordinate the United States to the United Nations, and believe the U.S. can use economic or military power only when supported by an international coalition.

In a recent article for RealClearPolicy about progressives’ crude ad hominem attacks on conservatives, I explained that progressive dogma is a fierce, culturally Marxist philosophy that: (1) demands all policies, resources, and opportunities be allocated in accordance with a benighted view of oppressors and victims centered on race, sex, and sexual orientation; (2) believes children are wards of the state to be indoctrinated by educators, while physically cared for by parents; (3) represses religion for being what Karl Marx described as “the opium of the people;” and (4) places a green agenda, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the rights of criminals above free speech and assembly, the judicial process, and rights of petition. Progressives deny that ISIS and Hamas are terrorists, oppose Israel’s right of defense because Jews are “oppressors,” and believe children may select irreversible gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.

To achieve their goals, progressives must overcome deeply held American beliefs in individual freedom, merit, hard work, and pride in their country.

Curricula based on The 1619 Project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery…at the very center of the United States’ national narrative,” Critical Race Theory (CRT), which teaches that all whites are guilty of bias, and Environmental, Social, and Governance criteria (ESG), which features progressive doctrine on DEI, climate change, and workers’ rights, has been infused into K-12 schools through action civics.

The National Association of Scholars has identified at least 45 state-level education standards in 25 states that incorporate these radical expressions of anti-American animus. Departments of education, accreditation agencies, university administrations, professional licensing organizations, and teachers unions mandate ideological training and DEI goals, and then coerce compliance as a condition of employment, promotion, and appointment to governing boards. Last year, the State Department announced that it will condition promotions and raises on an employee’s loyalty to DEI.

Eliminating or distorting teaching about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and liberty leaves students uninformed about America’s unique story. An Echelon Insights poll highlights the cumulative impact of this indoctrination. Sixty-six percent of high schoolers viewed the U.S. as exceptional and unique, compared to 47% of college students; 63% of high-schoolers were proud of the U.S., compared to 40% of college students; and 58% of high-schoolers were patriotic, compared to just 35% of college students.

Concurrently, progressives are remaking the acceptable lexicon. They corrupt language and norms to deprive us of the ability to express nuance and understand distinctions.

Leading institutions, including government agencies, professional organizations, and universities, proclaim that our language is replete with hidden racism and genderism that must be cleansed with a new vocabulary featuring ideologically-laden phrases. Among the words that trouble the American Medical Association are “disadvantaged,” “equality,” and “disparities.” The politically acceptable terms are “historically and intentionally excluded,” “equity,” and “inequities.” Similarly, “ex-con” or “felon” are to be replaced with “returning citizen” or “persons with a history of incarceration,” and “fairness” with “social justice.”

“Illegal alien,” the term used in federal law for those who enter the U.S. without proper visas or overstay their visas, first became “undocumented alien” and then “non-citizens,” who somehow deserve all benefits to which citizens are entitled.

The American Dream of “equality” is replaced by “equity.” Instead of seeking fair opportunities, we are to seek outcomes in which so-called marginalized minorities receive benefits at least in proportion to their percentage of the relevant population. According to Ibram X. Kendi, if a person embraces DEI and allocates opportunities by race, he is “anti-racist;” otherwise, he is racist. Whites cannot be the victims of racism, because only members of marginalized minorities can be victims. Over the last several years, dictionary definitions of racism have been stealth edited to conform to this new paradigm.

“Infrastructure” has always meant roads, buildings, bridges, and the like. But progressives have implausibly expanded that term to include paid leave, child care, and caregiving. They falsely described the Biden-Harris $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as an emergency COVID stimulus plan, even though 90% of the plan had nothing to do with COVID.

Contrary to the Associated Press’s adoption in 2015 of “they” as a singular pronoun, there are only two biological sexes, and an individual has never been a “they.” Just 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender. Yet, insisting there are only two sexes is now hate speech. Multiple professors have sued to retain the right to properly address their students. Columbia University threatens to terminate employees who don’t bow to the fiction that there are multiple genders, and the Biden-Harris Administration allows an “x” to be used as a gender on a passport.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s selection of three conservative Supreme Court justices, progressives advocated court packing by increasing the number of justices. They justified doing so by falsely asserting that Trump’s selection of justices based on their political leanings also was court packing. Dictionary.com changed its definition of court packing to “the practice of changing the number or composition of judges on a court, making it more favorable to particular goals or ideologies, and typically involving an increase in the number of seats on the court.” Here, “typically” supplants “always,” which is the threshold condition of court packing. Selecting justices based on their views is not court packing—it is what all presidents do. This is not mere semantics. This is a ploy intended to overcome the opposition of majorities of voters in both parties.

As progressives erase and change language, history, and values to create a foundation to change America’s way of life, they also corruptly fabricate, suppress, and misrepresent recent and current events to confuse voters, shield accountability for their failures, and disparage their opponents. The following is a list of recent political hoaxes promoted by progressive elected officials, bureaucrats, and major national media (my thanks to Breitbart News for identifying many of these):

• Russia Collusion Hoax
• Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
• Biden Is Not Cognitively Impaired Hoax
• The Biden-Harris Administration Is Not Censoring Social Media Hoax
• Biden Is Not a Crook Hoax
• Project 2025 Hoax
• Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
• Jussie Smollett Hoax
• Covington KKK Kids Hoax
• Very Fine People Hoax
• Drinking Bleach Hoax
• Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
• Russian Bounties to Taliban Hoax
• Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
• Policemen Killed on January 6 Protest Hoax
• Rittenhouse Hoax
• Eating While Black Hoax
• Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
• NASCAR Noose Hoax
• The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
• COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
• Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
• COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
• Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
• Hamas Hospital Hoax
• The Alfa Bank Hoax

Hiding Biden’s cognitive impairment took dozens, if not hundreds, of staff, family, elected officials, and reporters. That hoax was revealed only when replacing Biden became imperative to defeat Trump. In lockstep, the progressive media complex abandoned its cover-up of Biden’s impairment and called for his replacement.

Harris’s and Tim Walz’s campaign became the second act of this hoax. With few exceptions, they refuse to discuss their records or beliefs, and falsely claim to have changed both. They willfully misstate Trump’s positions and falsely attribute to him sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (yet another hoax, as even USA Today and CNN have acknowledged).

A complicit media purports to fact check Trump, but seldom checks Harris or Walz. During the candidates’ debate last week, ABC’s moderators checked Trump in real time on six occasions (at least two of which were wrong), but never checked Harris, who repeatedly made false statements. Since then, a few mainstream media outlets have acknowledged some of Harris’s misstatements, though most give her the benefit of the doubt while blasting Trump for every imprecision or contentious assertion.

When the New Yorker’s fact checker, Susan Glasser, was caught pretending that Harris had never spoken in favor of taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for illegal aliens, rather than correct her article, she claimed that she intended to question “the political advisability of bringing up these things in a national debate.”

As Harris runs from her record, the media often scolds Republicans for pointing that out, or for tying her to the Biden-Harris Administration. That went too far even for White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who explained that Harris has been a full partner in administration policies. And, last week, The New Republic reported that “much” of the new issues section on the Harris-Walz campaign website was lifted from Biden’s campaign website.

Though conservatives may win an occasional battle, there should be no illusions about the power and effectiveness of progressive deceptions, or the arc of recent history. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, and the strong consumer opposition to Bud Light’s woke capitalism, opponents of DEI won a few battles, but DEI is simply going underground with a name change. Some states have rolled back genital mutilation of children, men in girls’ sports, and CRT in schools, while other states and the Biden-Harris Administration have gone in the other direction.

More than 90 corporate leaders have endorsed Harris—who strongly supports DEI, reparations, increasing corporate taxes, taxing unearned income, censorship, and the full range of progressive policies. If she wins, the pendulum will swing strongly to progressive victories, as America moves ever-closer to an Orwellian dystopia.

Any conservative who believes that progressives have ethical limits is naive. If conservatives have any hope of changing course, Republicans will need to win the presidency, control of both houses of Congress, gubernatorial elections, and state legislatures. To do so in November, and then to keep winning, conservatives must understand the ruthlessness and entrenched power of progressives, and must respond with equal or superior tactics. Marquess of Queensberry rules won’t do.

Tim Walz: Mao’s Missionary

Tim Walz: Mao’s Missionary

Anyone who wanted to pass on copies of the Little Red Book is not intellectually fit to execute the office of vice president under the Constitution of the United States.

Stephen B. Young, American Greatness 

According to one of his students, during their 1995 trip to China, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sought out copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book to give to American friends.

Anyone who, in 1995—two decades after the Great Helmsman’s death and the truth about his unconscionable tyranny over the Chinese people had become widely known—wanted to pass on copies of the Little Red Book is not intellectually fit to execute the office of vice president under the Constitution of the United States.

For those who did not live through Mao’s Cultural Revolution or who don’t remember his Little Red Book, let me fill you in.

I have a first edition of the Little Red Book from 1966 with Lin Biao’s introduction, purchased in Hong Kong. The book contains quotations from Chairman Mao’s many writings. The small book of 311 pages, each 3X5 inches, had a plastic red cover. Millions were printed and handed out. The purpose of the book was to indoctrinate all Chinese with correct Maoist thinking, to make them “Red,” as the saying was, in mind, heart, and spirit, dependent on the Chairman and his Chinese Communist Party as their thought leader.

As Lin Biao wrote in his introduction to the Little Red Book (before he turned against Mao and died when his airplane was shot out of the sky as he was trying to escape to Russia): “The most fundamental task … is at all times to hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong thought and to arm the minds of the people throughout the country with it.”

A Chinese student of mine in the early 1980s described how the Little Red Book was used by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Liu Pei had been sent from Beijing to work as a field hand in a rural cooperative to learn how to be a model “Red” Chinese. A Red Guard would come up to him and verbally pounce with a number, say “36” or “114.” Liu Pei was expected to recite every word of the Chairman printed on that page.

If one word was forgotten or mispronounced, it was taken as evidence of not being sufficiently “Red” and patriotic. Therefore, discipline was administered and more right-thinking education imposed to help him self-correct and eradicate the non-proletarian tendencies of his personality.

The author of the book, by the way, is credited with causing the deaths of at least 30 million Chinese, which puts Mao way ahead of Adolph Hitler as a killer of people.

So, we might consider the Little Red Book as the Chinese counterpart to a mini Mein Kampf setting out the thinking of the leader—Fuhrer in German and Lingxiu in Chinese.

With this parallel to Hitler in mind, we might say that the key sentence in the Little Red Book is this: “Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’”

Thus, the Little Red Book instructs us to impose our will, our ideology, on others through force, never taking “Let’s talk about it” for an answer.

Did Tim Walz really think we needed this in America back in 1995? Is this the socialism that Walz thinks of as just friendly and nice “neighborliness?”

The Little Red Book says too, “The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution.”

The Little Red Book was also famous on the American Left for passing on Mao’s dictum that “a revolution is not a dinner party.”

Other dicta of the Chairman quoted in the Little Red Book include:

“The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.”

(I wonder if Walz had this in mind when he spoke of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis as pardonable given past wrongs done to African Americans.)

“The masses have a potentially inexhaustible enthusiasm for socialism. … those who are utterly incapable of seeing this enthusiasm are blind and all is dark ahead of them.”

“In a class society, everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.”

“Our present task is to strengthen the people’s state apparatus—mainly the people’s army, the people’s police, and the people’s courts—in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people’s interests.”

“The people’s democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry, and the urban petty bourgeoisie.”

“We must conscientiously get rid of every unhealthy manifestation in any link in our work that is detrimental to the unity between the Party and the people.”

“The Revolutionary War is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses.”

“Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.”

How could any of these dicta have been inspiring or relevant to Americans in 1995 (or to the Chinese for that matter)?

And in 2024, they don’t feel like the politics of Joy either.

Stephen B. Young is the author of Kissinger’s Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War

Chaos in Aurora

Chaos in Aurora

How the federal government subsidized the migrant madness in suburban Colorado. 

Christina Buttons, Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal 

Aurora, Colorado, is normally a quiet, nondescript suburb 30 minutes outside Denver. In recent months, however, the city has been at the center of a national scandal.

Beginning last year, a large influx of Venezuelan migrants, some of them members of the notorious Tren de Aragua street gang, reportedly had “taken over” a series of apartment buildings in Aurora—and unleashed terror. Last month, Venezuelan migrants were allegedly implicated in an attempted homicide, an arrest of purported gang members, and shocking security footage that showed heavily armed men forcibly entering one of the apartments. In response to the chaos, police mobilized en masse and vacated one of the complexes after the city, alleging code violations, deemed it uninhabitable.

An obvious question: How did members of Venezuelan gangs suddenly find themselves in suburban Colorado? To answer this, we have conducted an exclusive investigation, which leads to a troubling conclusion: the Biden administration, in partnership with Denver authorities and publicly subsidized NGOs, provided the funding and logistics to place a large number of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora, creating a magnet for crime and gangs. And, worse, some of the nonprofits involved appear to be profiting handsomely from the situation.

The story begins in 2021, when the Biden administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law, allocating $3.8 billion in federal funds to Colorado. The City of Denver, which had declared itself a “welcoming city” to migrants, drew on this reservoir of money to launch its Emergency Migrant Response resettlement program, with the goal of housing and providing services to a massive flow of migrants.

Denver, in turn, signed multimillion-dollar contracts with two local NGOs, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, to provide housing and services to more than 8,000 predominantly Venezuelan migrants. These NGOs are run, respectively, by Yoli Casas and Marielena Suarez, who, according to professional biographies, do not appear to have previous experience in large-scale migrant resettlement.

Nevertheless, the city flooded them with cash. According to public records, between 2023 and 2024, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo received $4.8 million and $774,000, respectively; much of this funding came from the Migrant Support Grant, which was funded by ARPA. Then, in 2024, ViVe secured an extra $10.4 million across three contracts, while Papagayo received $2.9 million from a single contract to serve migrants; two of those five contracts were awarded to implement the Denver Asylum Seekers Program, which promised six months of rental assistance to nearly 1,000 migrants.

With this funding in hand, the two NGOs began working with landlords to place migrants in housing units and to subsidize their rent. One of these organizations, Papagayo, worked with a landlord called CBZ Management, a property company that operates the three apartment buildings at the center of the current controversy: Edge of Lowry, Whispering Pines, and Fitzsimons Place, also known as Aspen Grove.

We spoke with a former CBZ Management employee, who, on condition of anonymity, explained how the process worked. Last summer, the employee said, representatives from Papagayo began working with CBZ Management to place Venezuelan migrants in the company’s Aurora apartment complexes. When a Venezuelan individual or family needed housing, the NGO would contact the regional property manager, who then matched them with available apartments.

It was a booming business. According to the employee, Papagayo arranged hundreds of contracts with the property manager. The NGO provided up to two months of rental assistance, as many migrants did not have, or were unable to open, bank accounts. Within six months, according to the employee, approximately 80 percent of the residents of these buildings were Venezuelan migrants. The employee also noted that the buildings saw gang activity and violence.

The employee, however, alleges that these agreements were made on false pretenses. To convince the hesitant employee to accept the migrants, Papagayo made assurances that the tenants had stable jobs and income. With limited English and facing a minimum six-month wait for work permits, though, many migrants were ineligible for legal employment, struggled to find stable jobs, and ultimately fell behind on rent.

This was only the beginning. As the Venezuelan migrants settled in the apartments, they caused lots of trouble. According to a confidential legal report we have obtained, based on witness reports, the apartments saw a string of crimes, including trespassing, assault, extortion, drug use, illegal firearm possession, human trafficking, and sexual abuse of minors. Each of the three apartment complexes has since shown a localized spike in crime.

Volunteers who spoke with us on condition of anonymity said they were initially eager to assist with migrant resettlement but grew disillusioned with the NGOs running it. “I am passionate about helping migrants and I have been honestly shocked at the way the city is sending funds to an organization that clearly is not equipped to handle it,” one volunteer said.

The City of Denver, for its part, appears to be charging ahead. It recently voted to provide additional funding for migrant programs and, according to the right-leaning Common Sense Institute, the total cost to Denver could be up to $340 million, factoring in new burdens on schools and the health-care system. And the city also appears to have no qualms about exporting the crisis to the surrounding suburbs, including Aurora, which, in 2017, had declared itself a non-sanctuary city.

The truth is that there is no sanctuary for a city, a county, or a country that welcomes—and, in fact, attracts—violent gang members from Venezuela. This is cruelty, not compassion. Unfortunately, it might take more than the seizure of an apartment building, a dramatic rise in crime, and a grisly murder for cities like Denver to change course.

Christina Buttons is an independent journalist. Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution.

“Pre-Game Warm-Up - The Great Debate Tonite”

“Pre-Game Warm-Up - The Great Debate Tonite”

Joe Sullivan,Layers_Of_Truth

This morning, at the expense of dating myself, I‘m thinking about when I was a youngster back when John F. Kennedy ran against Richard M. Nixon leading up to the 1960 Presidential Election. Nixon was then the Vice President in Eisenhower’s administration. Kennedy was a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts.

Both men were respected for their past accomplishments. Both men had prevailed in winning their respective party’s nominations. The 3 major networks ABC, CBS and NBC had discussed their political differences in ways that were factually fair and correct - but (in those days) the networks didn’t engage in using language that minimized the character of the candidates. The networks reported the pre-debate “news” in generally neutral terms…

The Kennedy-Nixon Debate was the first Presidential Debate to be televised. However, most American families did not have televisions and the majority listened on the radio. After the debate, the majority who listened thought that Nixon had won - but the majority of those who watched thought that Kennedy had won…. The media commentators pointed out that while Kennedy looked “tanned and rested”, Nixon looked “pale and nervous”… 

In my opinion, this was the beginning of an unfortunate trend in American politics where the way candidates “look” on television became increasingly more important than what they actually “said” or “stood for”. Increasingly over time, “ISSUES” gradually became less important than “PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES” and “SOUND BYTES” - both of which are media inventions… just like selling “soap” in commercials.

Similarly, Presidential Debates have devolved since the “Age of Television” began. In 1960, the two candidates stood at podiums and answered questions from Howard K. Smith of ABC News. They listened quietly and respectfully while their opponent spoke and were then given an opportunity to respond. It was all appropriate and dignified…

Modern debates from recent elections have been characterized by occasional interruptions and sarcasm - as well as facial gestures while the opponent is speaking. These are strategies intended to intimidate the opponent and break their concentration while they’re speaking…. None of these strategies would work unless the debates were televised…. 

On that point - it is now the case that the journalists who conduct the questioning are now considered “media personalities” in their own right who have risen to national prominence over many years. Consequently, they conduct the questioning by instilling their own attitudes toward the candidates. In that way - they make themselves part of the coverage. Often, these same “personalities” have clashed with the candidates in previous interviews or otherwise revealed their own bias for the individual candidates. Some of these media “types” have previously served in government before joining the media. In one infamous case, such a person was Donna Brazille - who actually gave the list of questions to candidate Hillary Clinton before the debate!

Modern Presidential Debates are essentially a media-driven production where each campaign looks to install aspects of their appearance or their opponent’s persona to gain their own advantage on camera. The questions asked are often dodged as the candidates try to use “talking points” to send a separate message to the audience. When the opponent is given time to respond or rebut - they often use their time to underscore their own “talking points”…

Frankly, these “media events” are no longer “real debates” - and the public interest is now poorly served…

IN CONCLUSION… Don’t expect anything truly significant from tonite’s debate. Both candidates have a strategy going in and both of them will follow the “script” that they and their handlers have practiced. I expect that because of the extraordinary influence of media commentators the public perception of the candidates BEFORE the debate will be reinforced AFTERWARD.

WITH THAT SAID…. I believe that PRESIDENT TRUMP will surprise many tonite by focusing on his PLANS for how his administration will address the future. Those who expect him to attack Kamala Harris personally will be generally disappointed. Kamala Harris will try to avoid accounting for her record with Biden and try instead to engage in her plans to “tax the rich” to pay for the needs of the “under-served” in American society. In that way she will be running on ENVY and CLASS WARFARE…

President Trump will give undecided voters something to vote FOR while Harris will reveal that the future will largely be “MORE OF THE SAME” if she’s elected.

As President Lincoln said: “You can fool ALL of the people SOME of the time; you can fool SOME of the people ALL of the time - but you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time.”

God Bless You  God Bless America

America is STILL the Hope of the World! 

VOTE!

The Biden-Harris World Is Afire

 

The Biden-Harris World Is Afire

Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness 

Somehow the United States ended up this summer with no engaged president and an absent vice president who avoids the missing president and is frantically repudiating everything she co-owned the last three years.

The world was already confused over how President Joe Biden was apparently declared by unnamed Democratic insiders and donors unfit and unable to continue as their presidential candidate—as if he were a dethroned Third-World usurper.

It further wondered how those who staged his removal had no problem allowing him, in his debilitated state, to continue as America’s commander-in-chief until January 20, 2025. They demonstrated their priorities that focus on retaining power, not the welfare of the nation or the will of over 14 million Biden primary voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris, until Biden’s forced abdication, was judged by these same backroom fixers as too incompetent to ever be commander-in-chief and thus for three years a good reason why Biden apparently was not forced out earlier.

Now nominal Vice President Harris is on the campaign trail nonstop, while Biden has taken the most vacation time off and worked the shortest workweek in presidential memory.

The world again wonders who is in charge, what they believe, who is a friend, and who is an enemy. Harris is busy trying to get elected on three premises: disowning her prior co-ownership of what was mostly a disastrous Biden term and certainly no recommendation for reelection; reinventing her affluent radical past and present as moderate and working-class; and keeping absolutely silent about any detailed agenda or policy plan for governance as president.

Our rivals and opponents abroad cannot decide which is better for their own anti-American agendas—a derelict and absent Biden-Harris or dealing with a cognitively challenged Biden and a linguistically loopy Harris?

So, again, who or what now governs America?

Is it Biden again at the beach or closing up shop at noon for his nap and early bedtime?

Or is it Vice President Harris, far from the White House, out campaigning and confused over who she really is or wants to be, what, if anything, she plans on doing if elected president, and how to avoid any unscripted moment?

Or are our real rulers the stealth cabal of Democratic grandees and billionaire donors who arranged the Biden presidency by forcing out his 2020 primary rivals, staged the conspiratorial silence about his real disabilities for well over three years, ambushed him, and forced him off the Democratic ticket, and are now frantically reinventing Kamala Harris as capable and centrist when just a few months ago they had written her off as incompetent and a hopeless wannabe California radical?

As a result, a confused but also encouraged world of enemies watches the listless United States and wonders whether to try something stupid.

In this widening vacuum, lots of foreign opportunists, outright enemies, and nihilists are seizing the day—on the assurance that Biden is not a lame duck, but a lame, lame duck, and Harris is a near functionary in search of an identity and an idea.

The Houthis, a ragtag cabal of terrorists who hijacked Yemen after shaking off a few prior Biden “precision” retaliatory strikes, now “own” the Red Sea. They just hit a Greek-flagged oil tanker that is now adrift and polluting the Red Sea. It serves as their warning for commercial ships to keep clear of their mare nostrum.

The Houthis expect neither a Western nor an American response to ensure safe transit in and out of the southern Mediterranean by the world’s commercial fleet. Apparently, they believe that they are so backward, and their drones are so cheap and simple that the top-heavy U.S. cannot afford to hit their ad hoc launches with sophisticated, multimillion-dollar, and often misapplied weapons. And they are probably right.

Indeed, under Biden-Harris, the world has now lost free and safe transit in the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Will the Caribbean or mid-Atlantic be next? The military is short thousands of troops, the merchant marines idling ships.

Our NATO enemy/“ally” Turkey—when it is not threatening to send missiles against fellow NATO member Greece, bragging about once again ethnic cleansing Armenians, leveling more warnings to Cyprus, bombing the Kurds, colluding with the Russians and Chinese, trying to veto Finnish and Swedish NATO membership, or claiming US nuclear weapons based in Turkey are virtually its own—apparently has created such an anti-American climate that its pro-Erdogan street thugs feel they can beat up visiting American sailors, docking at Izmir to help aid the Turkish navy.

Not a peep follows from the White House. If it had, President Recep Erdogan would have leveled one of his accustomed unhinged responses.

Hamas just murdered more of its Israeli hostages, among them an American citizen.

Now non-candidate Biden is apparently still more worried about 250,000 Muslim voters in Michigan (who profess more solidarity with Hamas than lament the murder of a fellow citizen) than US interests in the Middle East. He customarily and matter-of-factly issued one of his empty editorials before returning to form by performance art blasting Israel.

In Biden’s world, our closest and only democratic ally in the Middle East is at fault because it will not, this election year, give constant concessions to the murderous Hamas clique. Biden-Harris forget that Hamas started the current war by butchering 1,200 Israelis at a time of peace, scrambled back to its subterranean labyrinth with over 250 hostages, hid their terrorist killers under schools, hospitals, and mosques, murdered any who were about to be rescued by Israeli forces, and promised to kill more if rescue attempts continue.

The Biden-Harris messaging seems simple: pro-Western, civilized, and consensually governed nations are rational and so listen to the U.S. and therefore should be leveraged and often punished for rationality; anti-American, medieval, and theocratic terrorist cabals do not and therefore should be appeased and exempted from criticism or retaliation given their lawlessness.

Normally, when asked about foreign threats to harm Americans or their interests, Biden gives one of his accustomed blowhard, one-word threats, “Don’t!” That empty and tired banality is now interpreted abroad as zero consequences will follow when you harm America. As a general rule, an animated Biden is far more likely to threaten to beat up or go after Trump than Hamas or Iran.

Harris has been mum—other than her usual on the one hand/on the other hand vacuity. Her vice presidential candidate running mate, the usually frenetic and loquacious Tim Walz, when asked directly about the murder of an American hostage, similarly goes mum—and simply waved off the question and turned away. Walz seems as terrified as Harris of any unrehearsed utterance, as if he knows only his silence masks his foolery.

Brazil, as was warned by many, is heading toward full-scale Latin American communism of the Venezuela/Nicaragua/Cuba sort. It is now waging a censorship war against Elon Musk with the tacit approval of the Biden-Harris consortium—for the crime of turning the former useful Twitter leftwing and censored megaphone into a global free speech pavilion.

Ukraine has now been inside Mother Russia for weeks, which is strategically understandable but geo-strategically dangerous against a nuclear hyperpower run by a ruthless dictator. Biden has no clue what the U.S. is doing other than supplying enough arms to Ukraine not to lose but more than enough to trigger a wider theater war. Ask Biden and Harris what the U.S. strategy is on Ukraine, and one will mumble incomprehensibly, the other, if unguarded, plunge into a circular word salad about the “art of diplomacy” or “democratic fragility.”

Iran is more afraid of an Israeli response than U.S. threats.

Or is it worse than that? Does the theocracy now rely on Biden-Harris to restrain any Israeli retaliation for the tens of thousands of rockets launched by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran against the Jewish state.?

All Biden-Harris had to do was continue the Trump protocol of warning Iran to stay out of the conflict. Instead, it de facto greenlighted the Iranian supply chain to Hamas and Hezbollah and turned all of them loose to murder.

In truth, US foreign policy toward Iran is the resumption of the Obama-era embrace of the supposed underdog Shiite/Persian counterweight to Gulf moderates and democratic Israel. Biden-Harris cares not a whit whether Iran goes nuclear and might even in their warped Ben-Rhodes/Barack Obama-era imbecility tacitly support such nuclearization to “rein in” the Jewish state.

Mexico’s outgoing “president,” Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has now unabashedly also gone full communist. As he preps the way for his even harder-left successor, Obrador is seeking to destroy what is left of Mexico’s democracy.

AMLO, remember, bragged of the tens of millions of illegal aliens that Mexico drove out and into the U.S.—especially given the $60 billion in remittances they send to prop up an otherwise failed narco-state. In retirement, he will brag that he was the first Mexican president to destroy the U.S. border.

He even urged all Mexican-American expatriates to vote anti-Republican. For the next few months, he will cooperate with the US to slow down the influx northward in order to allow Harris-Biden to claim they are for pre-November 5 election-cycle “border security.” And thereby help Harris get elected and welcome in another 10 million illegal aliens.

In his delusions, AMLO—who proved one of the truly dangerous anti-Americans on the world stage—thinks he is winning phase two of the 19th-century Mexican War. In fact, all he is proving is that millions of Mexicans want out of his country and only romanticize it when they are safely and permanently distant from its numerous failed paradigms.

In sum, there really is no President Biden or Vice President Harris. The former is non compos mentis and failing ever more rapidly. The latter has no clue who she is or what she should do. The cabal that engineered their respective exits and entrances cares more about retaining power than using it for American interests.

So, we are in perilous times.

All of our enemies and even former neutrals are coming out of the woodwork. They are convinced that the next two months offer one-time advantages—unless Harris is elected and thus can extend their opportunities for four more years of what Americans see as a chaotic decline, but the world abroad views as a rare and ripe opportunity.

No "Nicer' Way to say "I'm Guilty"

 

Hunter Biden Discovers There is No "Nicer' Way to say "I'm Guilty"

Jonathan Turley, johnathanturley.org 

Below is my column in Fox.com on the Hunter Biden guilty plea. The plea proved vintage Hunter Biden for all of the wrong reasons. The effort to plead guilty without admitting guilt left him looking like the most privilege person since Marie Antoinette. However, it was consistent with a bizarre criminal defense that never seemed connected to a legal strategy. In a twist on the famous tag line from Love Story, Hunter believed that being a Biden “is never having to say you’re guilty.”

Here is the column:

“Guilty.” That word repeated nine times by Hunter Biden in a federal courtroom in California represented something that he had evaded for much of his life: accountability.

Five years ago, Biden had to explain the rule to ABC News reporter Amy Robach, who had the audacity to ask about his history. Biden instructed the TV journalist to “say it nicer.”

The president’s son spent his adult life with his father, his family, political allies, and reporters enabling every corrupt deal and human debauchery. Even at his plea hearing, Biden was closely shadowed by his so-called “sugar brother” Kevin Morris, who bankrolled his lavish lifestyle for years.

This week, Biden was still demanding that even prosecutors “say it nicer” on the eve of his criminal trial. He created chaos at the start of jury selection by announcing that he would plead guilty but demanded an “Alford plea.” The Alford plea allows a defendant to accept that there is sufficient evidence to convict while declining to admit guilt.

Roughly 17 percent of state cases and 5 percent of federal cases end in Alford or no contest pleas. However, as a criminal defense attorney, I have never heard of a defendant seeking an Alford plea without previously discussing the option with prosecutors. These pleas ordinarily require the approval of prosecutors and Justice Department rules require the approval of high-ranking officials or the Attorney General himself.

Prosecutors were gobsmacked by Biden’s sudden announcement and told the judge that they had not been consulted on the demand. Not surprisingly, they were miffed and quickly opposed any such plea.

The result was all too familiar for those of us who have witnessed the chaos of the Hunter Biden defense. After causing a stir, the effort failed and Biden was left standing in the courtroom repeating a standard guilty plea nine times.

It is the continuation of a legal strategy that could be best described as controlled chaos. In 2023, Biden stood with his lawyers in open defiance of a congressional subpoena outside of Congress. He demanded that the House committees meet his demands for appearing as a witness. After all the drama, the effort failed. Facing a criminal contempt sanction, he appeared as demanded by Congress and was later accused of perjury.

It was the same pattern that emerged when Biden secured a sweetheart plea deal that avoided any jail time, avoided a host of federal charges, and gave him sweeping immunity for unnamed offenses. It collapsed in court when the judge asked the prosecutor if he had ever seen such a deal offered to any other defendant. He admitted that he had not.

The response from the Biden team was the same privileged fit. One lawyer told prosecutors to “just rip it up.” Later the Justice Department attorneys stated that they still tried to reach a new plea deal but that Biden gave them the stiff arm.

The result? An unmitigated failure. Biden was convicted on every gun count before a sympathetic jury in the hometown of the Biden family.

This burning train then continued down the track to California where the team insisted that it would make the same addiction defense that failed in Delaware.  It then pulled another jump scare with the Alford plea demand.

From the beginning to the end, it is a series of total failures produced by sheer hubris. As I wrote in 2023, Biden ultimately was undone by his entitlement and appetite. He expects everyone from reporters to representatives to prosecutors to “say it nicer.”

At every stage, his bravado and defiance led to the worst possible result. Ironically, he had a prosecutor in David Weiss who fought to help him avoid any prosecution or jail time. Weiss allowed major felonies to expire for now explicable reasons and refused to indict Biden for being an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Yet, somehow, Biden succeeded in forcing Weiss to prosecute him against every apparent inclination to the contrary.

In a statement after his guilty plea, Biden continued to seek to excuse his actions. Just hours after accepting guilt for federal felonies, he insisted that he did it only to protect those he loved: “I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment.”

It was strikingly belated. Biden could have avoided over a year of such “needless embarrassment” by pleading guilty last year. A plea at the time would likely have secured real benefits for him in sentencing recommendations. Instead, he waited literally until the start of his trial to enter a plea at the very last moment when it offered the least benefit to himself or his family.

Yet, the long road to “guilty” did bring clarity for others as well as Biden. There were no more of the mantras of how my son “has done nothing wrong” or legal experts struggling to rationalize his conduct. He now has over a dozen convicted crimes, including nine related to the millions that he acquired through a massive influence-peddling operation by the Biden family.

There is no way to say that “nicer.”

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Emboldened Anti-censorship Movement

Emboldened anti-censorship movement takes on 2024

Zachary Basu, Axios 

An anti-censorship movement born from the chaos of COVID and cultivated on platforms like X is increasingly aligning with the Trump campaign — and scoring some big wins.

Why it matters: Championed by Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and disaffected liberals, this loose network of dissenters views censorship — real or perceived — as the existential question of the 2024 election.

• Axios has reported in the past on the growing movement of wealthy, anti-establishment renegades united mostly by their hatred of DEI policies, mainstream media and elite consensus.

• Presented with a binary choice this November, many, like Musk, are now explicitly supporting the candidate who hews most closely to their view of free speech: Donald Trump.

Zoom in: This week alone has produced two of the anti-censorship movement's biggest political breakthroughs.

1. On Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the Biden administration had "pressured" Facebook in 2021 to "censor certain content" related to COVID-19 as part of its efforts to crack down on misinformation.

• Zuckerberg expressed "regret" over the situation, and also said Facebook had erred when it "temporarily demoted" a story about Hunter Biden's laptop in late 2020 out of concern that it was Russian disinformation.

• Conservative media and free speech advocates erupted over what they saw as an admission of Big Tech censoring "dissent" at the government's request.

2. On Tuesday, Trump named RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, both former Democrats who have endorsed him, as honorary co-chairs of his presidential transition team.

• The new alliance was celebrated by elements of Trump's base, including Tucker Carlson, who has long sought to forge connections with anti-establishment voices on the left.

• With RFK Jr. by his side, Trump is making a more concerted push for independent, politically homeless voters who are inherently skeptical of the government and mainstream science.

The other side: Some conservatives expressed discomfort at the notion of ceding influence on policy and personnel to two longtime progressives — regardless of their evolution and newfound celebrity in MAGA world.

• Some anti-vaccine RFK Jr. supporters are also unhappy with his Trump endorsement, seeing the former president's championing of Operation Warp Speed as an unforgivable sin.

Reality check: RFK Jr. was polling only around 5% before endorsing Trump, and many of his most vocal online boosters were already in the former president's camp.

Between the lines: Some of the anti-censorship movement's most prominent leaders — Musk included — have been prone to spreading baseless conspiracy theories and misinformation about a range of topics.

• RFK Jr., for example, responded Monday to an X account claiming military pilots are pumping "chemtrails" into the atmosphere: "We are going to stop this crime," Kennedy wrote.

The big picture: Trump has always attracted anti-establishment support. But his heightened hostility toward the Justice Department, Big Tech and government bureaucrats since leaving office has deepened his populist appeal.

• Vice President Kamala Harris is expanding her coalition in her own ways, winning the endorsement this week of more than 200 former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers who fiercely oppose Trump.

What to watch: The anti-censorship movement views its enemies on a global scale, and has rapidly mobilized in support of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov after his arrest by French authorities this weekend.

• Durov has not been charged officially, but he faces allegations related to complicity in crimes associated with child exploitative material, fraud and drug sales on his messaging platform.

• "#FreePavel," Musk tweeted along with a clip of Durov praising X's commitment to free speech in an interview with Carlson.