RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/04/adults-progress-and-disaster/

Is there anything to add to the avalanche of disparaging commentary on the national humiliation that is the Biden Administration’s handling of our departure from Afghanistan? I’m not sure. 

True, the scandals keep coming. As I write, it was only a few days ago that someone leaked and Reuters published the story about Joe Biden’s July call to Ashraf Ghani, then president of Afghanistan, now a multi-multi-millionaire thanks to the $169 million of American taxpayer money which he stuffed into bags before leaving Afghanistan for the United Arab Emirates. During that call, Biden made the president of Afghanistan an offer he couldn’t refuse: military aid in exchange for lies. There is a “perception around the world,” Biden said, that “things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban. And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, . . . to project a different picture” (my emphasis).

Opinions differ about whether this conversation constituted an impeachable offense. Were it Donald Trump making the call, you can bet your burqa-wearing seventh wife that Nancy Pelosi would have articles of impeachment drawn up before the cocktail hour. For Biden, not so fast, though it is an occasion for thought that someone—presumably someone in the Pentagon or the State Department—leaked the audio and transcript of the conversation. That’s a felony, but these days only Republicans get charged for that sort of bad behavior. The question is: what does it portend that someone in the deep state apparat excreted that embarrassing tidbit? Was it a warning shot across the bow of Biden’s sinking skiff? 

It’s also pretty scandalous that the Biden Administration, still reeling from the news that the United States left a zillion dollars worth of prime, made-in-the-USA military hardware behind in bases across Afghanistan in its rush to hightail it out of that god-forsaken country, is now hit with the news that they ordered federal agencies to scrub public records listing the nearly $83 billion worth of military matériel—airplanes, Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles of every size and description, some 600,000 assault rifles, various pieces of artillery, and countless rounds of ammunition—proffered as a tasty trifle for the Tally-bahn toffs. 

There are going to be more such news stories, about the fate of the hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies left behind (not “stranded,” according to Jen Psaki, just abandoned), about the behavior of the thousands upon of thousands of fundamentalist Afghans who have been transplanted to the United States, about what the Taliban is doing with all the merchandise of death we kindly gifted them. So the autopsies will keep coming and will furnish ever more detail about this gigantic political failure.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/the_glaring_truth_about_biden_and_his_masters.html

Corrupt.  Incompetent.  Pathological.  Criminal.  Treasonous.

Those are just a few of the (printable) adjectives that aptly describe the illegitimate gang of idiots currently running our country.  Joe Biden, the so-called president, is nothing more than a marionette controlled by a gaggle of career bureaucrats and academics, none of whom has ever contributed anything substantial to our once vibrant society.  Indeed, they are nothing more than destroyers, power-mad ideologues who use a demented old grifter as a mouthpiece while they dismantle, piece by piece, our once great Republic.  Globalism is their ultimate goal, and the nightmare we’re experiencing brings us ever closer to that frightening reality.

Biden is a figurehead for the Marxist madness that’s corrupting our schools, destroying small business, and slowly but surely eliminating our nation’s sovereignty.  The current push to force Americans to “register” their firearms under a United Nations gun-grabbing scheme is just one example of the ongoing attack on our cherished freedoms.  Another glaring example is the fascist collaboration between the ruling elites and Big Tech to silence dissent, a clear violation of the First Amendment. 

If the Marxist drive continues, it will go on and on until the Bill of Rights is little more than a footnote in a long forgotten history.  After all, it’s hard to teach real history when tyrants control the schools and certain “undesirable” books are banned.  Don’t scoff.  On our present course, it’s not only possible, but likely.  And don’t think the internet can save any documented evidence of real history, because the algorithms Big Tech uses and the Thought Police (i.e., “fact-checkers”) they employ can control virtually everything online…including Cloud, or whatever files you use to store data.  Privacy is virtually nonexistent nowadays, and that includes your bank accounts, business sites, photo files, and email accounts, just to name a few.  (Ask Tucker Carlson.)

But as smart as they think they are, progressives are actually pretty dumb.  And arrogant.  The hubris in our ruling elite sometimes opens a door where their stupidity, ineptitude, deceit, and downright hatred of our founding principles are on full display…for anyone who cares to look, anyway.  The ongoing disaster created by their surrender to the Taliban — laughingly referred to by certain talking heads as a “successful withdrawal” — is a prime example.  Even the compliant media, which normally spin or ignore the administration’s boatload of disastrous mistakes, had to scratch their respective heads over this one.  It’s truly one of the worst military debacles in our nation’s history, costing innocent lives, abandoning American citizens, and handing over almost a hundred billion dollars in high-tech equipment and weapons to a murderous gang of cave-dwelling lunatics. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-wall-street-journal-gets-the-texas-abortion-law-wrong/

The Wall Street Journal’s editors have posted an uncharacteristically weak editorial on the Supreme Court’s refusal to block Texas’s fetal-heartbeat law from going into effect. The Journal’s editors concede that the five-justice majority correctly decided that the plaintiff abortion providers did not have a case for sundry procedural reasons. Nevertheless, they join the chorus of center-right strategists who maintain that, however well-meaning, the curb on abortions is a “blunder” that will ultimately lose on the merits while “hand[ing] Democrats a political grenade to hurt the anti-abortion cause.”

I’d respectfully suggest that the editors are overthinking it. Their analysis is wide of the mark.

To begin with, the Journal’s editors point out that the Texas law would render illegal pre-viability elective abortions that are permitted by Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992). As the editorial acknowledges, however, the High Court already has on its docket for the term that begins a month from now the Dobbs case, involving a Mississippi curb on pre-viability elective abortions after 15 weeks. Given that the justices will necessarily revisit Roe—as revised by Casey—in Dobbs, the fact that the Texas law forbids that which Roe/Casey permits does not necessarily mean the Texas law is infirm.

The Journal is correct that the Texas law does not expressly specify exemptions to terminate pregnancies attributable to rape and incest. It should be noted, however, that rape and incest are not relevant factors in at least 98 percent of abortions. (The Guttmacher Institute has estimated that rape accounts for about 1 percent of abortions, and incest about 0.5 percent.) The act does bar a male who impregnated the abortion patient through an act of rape or incest from bringing a lawsuit under the statute, but it is true that no one else is subject to this bar. The law also provides an exemption if a physician performs an abortion under the belief that a medical emergency exists, but, though it defines a number of pertinent terms, the statute fails to define “medical emergency.” As I understand it, this concept is broadly construed under Texas law, but it is unlikely to include non-life-threatening physical injuries or mental anguish attributable to a rape/incest pregnancy.

All that said, the Journal’s emphasis on the absence of a rape and incest exemption is indicative of the editors’ prioritization of the political implications of the law over its purpose to protect unborn life.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/biden-compounds-disgrace-with-willful-blindness-about-our-jihadist-enemies/

P resident Biden has disgracefully ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban, betraying our government’s first obligation to protect Americans. He left behind hundreds of American citizens, as well as who knows how many thousands of green-card holders and Afghans who assisted our government the past 20 years. Having committed too little of our $710 billion-per-annum military to carry out his evacuation order responsibly, Biden reneged on his vow to get them out.

The president has also abandoned the counterterrorism mission of denying anti-American jihadists sanctuary and operational partnership with the jihadist Taliban regime. Thus, he has imperiled the homeland and virtually guaranteed terrorist attacks against U.S. installations and interests overseas.

Not content with that, the president and his State Department now insist on further humiliating our nation with ignorant, post-surrender claptrap. For example, adumbrating the president’s pathetic speech later in the day, State’s spokesman Ned Price spent Tuesday morning piously spouting that the Taliban need to meet their basic “commitments and obligations in Afghanistan.” These duties, Price says, include “respecting basic rights of the people” and “upholding its commitments on counterterrorism.”

This is sheer idiocy.

Throughout the Obama-Biden administration, I complained incessantly about the government’s refusal to grapple with the ideology of our jihadist enemies. Democrats are aligned with Islamist organizations, many with Muslim Brotherhood ties. Ergo, at the insistence of these Muslim activists, the Obama-Biden administration admonished our law-enforcement, intelligence, and military agencies to avoid focusing on the ideology — sharia supremacism — that catalyzes violent jihad.

Further, the administration adopted a counterterrorism strategy known as “Countering Violent Extremism.” The label “violent extremism” was chosen deliberately.

Since the 1990s and particularly after 9/11, the word terrorism has connoted jihadism. That is not solely due to the spate of mass-murder attacks by Muslim terrorists. Islamic scripture undeniably commands Muslims to use “terror” in fighting their perceived enemies, and sharia supremacists are committed literalists on this point, eschewing interpretations of Islam that “contextualize” these exhortations to brutality as confined to their ancient time and place.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Wisdom is defined by Random House Webster’s Dictionary: “The quality or state of being wise; sagacity, discernment, or insight.” If that definition leaves you confused as it did me, then read what Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote in Literary Remains, Volume I, published posthumously in 1836: “Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.” Wisdom involves judgement and the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s actions. It involves honesty about oneself and the admission of one’s mistakes and limitations. It is empirical not conjectural; it sees a world where reality – not optics – is the driving force.

Wisdom is often associated with age. I recall when I was learning to drive, and that while my father agreed my reactions might be faster than his, he said I lacked judgment. He was right. In The Admirable Crichton, J.M. Barrie wrote: “I’m not young enough to know everything.” But, as can be seen in President Biden’s decision to ignominiously leave Afghanistan, age does not necessarily bring wisdom.

It is, of course, presumptuous to write about wisdom, because the reader must assume the author considers himself wise. That is not my claim. I agree with Shakespeare’s court jester Touchstone who in As You like It says: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Wisdom is rare and illusive, especially in our Twitter-filled world.

The ego-driven ex-Presidencies of Clinton, Obama and Trump show none of the wisdom of former retiring Presidents, like Truman and Eisenhower. Is it wise to assume interest rates will always remain low? What will be the costs on thirty and more trillions of dollars of debt when interest rates do rise? Regarding the federal budget, has it been wise to let discretionary spending (about half of which is defense) decline from 67% of the budget in 1962 to 30% in 2019, while mandatory spending (mostly entitlements) increased from 25% in 1962 to 62% in 2019? In 1962, we were faced with a USSR that wanted to “bury” us. Today, we are faced with a combative China, a resurgent Russia and myriad Islamic terrorist groups who chant: “Death to America.” Yet defense spending, as a percent of GDP, has declined from 9.3% to 3.4%. Has that been wise? Was it wise to leave billions of dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan, thereby making the Taliban-led government – harborers of terrorism – one of the better armed nations in the world? Should social justice be the goal of our armed forces, or should they focus on strategy and winning wars?

https://asiatimes.com/2021/09/stagflation-rears-its-ugly-head-in-us-payroll-data/

Inflation in the US is turning into stagflation.US nonfarm payroll growth of 235,000 in August, the lowest in seven months, was constrained by rising wage costs.

Average hourly earnings rose by 0.6%, or 7.5% annualized. The most labor-intensive sectors turned in the worst monthly performance.

Retail employment dropped by 29,000 and leisure and hospitality employment was unchanged for the month.

Leisure and hospitality jobs had risen by more than 800,000 during the preceding two months.

The chart of the day shows a clear inverse relationship between the rate of employment growth and the rate of change of average hourly earnings.

As labor becomes scarcer and more expensive, employers stop hiring, either because they can’t find workers or because they can’t afford them. This is a classic symptom of an inflationary cycle.

The average rent on a newly-signed lease is up 12% year-on-year as of August, according to Apartmentlist.com.

Home prices are up 20% year on year, the biggest jump on record, according to the Case-Shiller Index.

Used car prices are up 25%, and new car prices are probably up 10% after dealer discounts have dwindled.

Manufacturing jobs rose by 37,000, driven mainly by a 24,000 jump in automotive jobs.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of establishments was conducted in the middle of August before major auto companies announced production shutdowns to the global chip shortage.