RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/democrats-insurrection-circus-ignores-real-robert-spencer/

As the Democrats’ prime-time Jan. 6 circus began, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explained “the real purpose” of their televised hearings: “convincing Americans that conservatives are to blame for the events of that day,” leading to “a repudiation of conservatism and all those who hold conservative values. Democrats want to use the violence of Jan. 6 to stigmatize conservative voices and delegitimize conservative ideals. They’ve even talked—condescendingly, of course—about treating conservatives as ‘cult’ members who need to be deprogrammed.” In service of this goal, they’re not just running a prime-time show trial, but persecuting ordinary Americans who protested that day, and ignoring, of course, the real insurrection – the one they supported.

Last Tuesday, BlazeTV host Steve Deace tweeted a harrowing message from a “January Sixther” that demonstrates how far what is happening regarding Jan. 6 really is from actual justice, and shows that it is all a dirty political game in which Democrats are victimizing decent people in order to prop up their ridiculous and baseless “insurrection” narrative.

“I am a husband and father who has zero criminal history,” this man wrote to Deace, “and I am looking at years in prison AFTER I took a plea. You may ask why would people take a plea if they are innocent? Innocent has nothing to do with this as my lawyer has told over and over again. This is payback. There are only a handful of representatives in DC that care about us. The vast majority couldn’t care less.”

The man explains: “I wasn’t violent, I didn’t break anything, I didn’t steal anything and that doesn’t matter. I lost my 6 figure income, friends, and my family is a wreck. I had the FBI in my home, I was brought before a judge in shackles. And I am a lucky one. I got to remain free till sentencing. So this is the country that I now live in. Where the powerful few can attack an elected president attempting to removing him for 4 years and where elections no longer matter.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/democrats-face-disaster-their-racialist-identity-bruce-thornton/

Last week Mayra Flores, a naturalized citizen born in Mexico, won outright a special election in Texas’ 34th Congressional District in the Rio Grande Valley, a Democrat redoubt since 1870. A Republican conservative and mother of four, Flores ran on “God, family, and country,” and self-identifies as pro-life and a supporter of tougher border controls. Flores is heading to Washington to be the first House Representative born in Mexico.

This victory is yet another portent of doom for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. They already are facing headwinds like soaring murder rates, record inflation, and astronomic gas prices––all the consequences of progressive policies like bail and sentencing “reform” and lax leftwing DAs, more fiat money pumped into the economy, and the disastrous war on fossil fuels that has significantly reduced domestic production even as global supplies have been squeezed by sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile the anti-American “woke” are intensifying their culture war on several fronts, from unrestricted abortion and transgender curricula in public schools, to pronoun etiquette and “cancel culture” and other violations of the Second Amendment.

Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden’s average disapproval rate is 54.7%,  while the Republicans have been leading the Congressional generic ballot by 3 points since the first of the year. Remember, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton had positive approval ratings and still lost the House of Representatives in midterm elections.

Given these obstacles, the Democrats can’t afford to lose any support from Latinos, who now comprise 18.7% of the U.S. population. Yet Dems for decades have ignored the diversity of everyday Latinos on a number of issues––such as the economy, patriotism, faith, border security, crime, and social issues such as transgenderism and same-sex marriage––and have alienated them and driven many to the GOP.

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

In an op-ed in a recent The Wall Street Journal, Ted Van Dyk, author of Heroes, Hacks and Fools: Memoirs from the Political Inside, wrote: “The country is desperate for pragmatic problem solving and at least an attempt by leaders to collaborate across partisan and ideological lines.” It is true. People are impossibly divided, and the effect is being felt among families and friends. It is unhealthy, individually and collectively for the nation. One consequence was the choices voters had in 2020 – On the right the polarizing figure of Donald Trump, who despite his accomplishments as President, has an insatiable ego and is overly sensitive to criticism, which make him unpalatable to many conservatives. On the left, Democrats nominated Joe Biden, a 77-year-old career politician with no notable achievements, but with noticeable cognitive challenges. Was that the best a nation of 330 million people could do? Questions need to be answered: Why has reason failed? Where does fault lie? Why are we in this place? What can be done?

The fault, in my opinion, lies principally with politicians who thrive on a strategy employed by Julius Caesar, divide et impera, divide and rule, and by a media that has given up on reporting in favor of advocacy. It is easier for politicians to address the needs and wants of specific constituents than to discuss complex issues that affect us all. Such activity has led to divisive “identity politics” and away from the understanding that we are all, regardless of race, class or ethnicity, citizens of this republic and that we all have a stake in its continuance. The United States is unique among nations in that our ancestors came from every corner of the world. It is unique in its government forged out of a belief in individual freedom, a government – with its separation of powers, rule of law, and protection of private property – whose primary responsibility is to guarantee the freedoms enumerated in the Constitution. We have differences, as expected and as we should, but, as citizens of the United States, we have in common (or we should have) a reverence for this imperfect but rare nation.

Perhaps it is the cynicism that comes with age, but I believe most politicians would prefer not to solve many of the problems we face – illegal immigration, gun legislation, climate change, healthcare and abortion. One might add education and election integrity. These are perennial issues, which when left undecided serve both sides, in that they inflame noisy partisans, the driving force behind both political parties, and who further divide us.

The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack is exhibit A. This is not a committee trying to understand what happened – Exactly what role did Mr. Trump play? Why did not advanced warnings of trouble prompt enhanced security? If this was an insurrection, why were there no firearms found on the rioters? Why did the committee not investigate the claim of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capital?” Why was an unarmed woman shot and killed as she entered a Capital window? What might be done to prevent a future occurrence? Will the committee investigate the rioting during the summer of 2020, which killed 35, injured 1,500 police officers and caused $1.3 billion in property damage? From the start, the committee was established to be a partisan hit job on Mr. Trump and his supporters, not a bi-partisan voyage of discovery. Ironically, the Committee’s shaming of Mr. Trump may well backfire on Democrats who seemed to have forgotten that a viable Mr. Trump is Republican’s biggest liability and Democrat’s greatest asset.

As Michael Barone pointed out in an interview in The Wall Street Journal, it was not too long ago that “Americans expressed great trust in their institutions and great belief and confidence in their leaders.” Mr. Barone suggests Watergate was “a historical watershed” that ended that trust. But no matter its origin and whether deserved or not, disillusionment in government has harmed the United States. I recall being in the Senate dining room for lunch in the early 1970s and seeing Democrats and Republicans dining together. It’s my understanding that rarely happens today. Political partisanship has destroyed friendships and disrupted families. Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis argued in last weekend’s The Wall Street Journal that the problem is less about polarization around “fixed ideological poles” and more about hostility toward individuals. Regardless, questions remain. Why have we reached this impasse and what, if anything, can be done to end it? It seems to me that our best hope lies in education, a return to reason, traditional values and a revival of patriotism.

Amidst this anger, we appear to have forgotten that free-market capitalism, within a democratic context, has made Americans wealthier beyond the wildest imaginations of those who lived a hundred and two hundred years ago. Few young people in the U.S. appreciate the lifestyles they live compared to that of their forebearers. They have little appreciation for the political and economic systems that make their lives comfortable. Do they ever think of the magic of capitalism, that a loaf of bread can be brought to a supermarket shelf for only three dollars? It is Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the farmer, miller, baker, trucker and merchant to work together.

Reason has been lost as time-tested traditions and customs have collapsed. The concept of national service disappeared with the abandonment of the military draft. The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America (written by Irving Berlin in 1938 as a peace song) are no longer public-school rituals. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, only 22% of children today are living with two parents, both in their first marriage. Fifty-four percent are living with a single parent. Church attendance (including that at mosques and synagogues), which was 73% in 1937 when Gallup first measured it and 70% in 2000, fell to 47% in 2021.

Too many public schools are more focused on woke issues, like gender identification and “saving the planet,” than on the basics of reading and math, or simply teaching students to think independently. Apart from Luxembourg, the United States spends more money per student than any other country, yet we rank 13 out of 79 countries on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), behind countries like Estonia and Poland. In a financial literacy test, the U.S. ranked nine of eighteen. Teachers should be embarrassed; parents should be upset, and we should all be concerned.

In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which was based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow) asks, rhetorically: If we do not use our brain to reason, “why did God plague us with the capacity to think?” “What other merit have we?” We need politicians and members of the media, to treat people as adults, to approach problems, not as ideological opportunities to push preferred agendas, but as issues that need resolution. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Immanuel Kant wrote: “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.” Politicians (and media types) appeal to emotion, especially personal vilification. Their focus should be on imparting wisdom, allowing reason to blossom. Instead, they bully opponents and the electorate into submission with emotion-ridden ideological tirades, and the press laps it up.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-is-practically-engineering-a-recession-regulation-fed-economy-taxation-supply-unemployment-11655924530?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Most discussion about the possibility of recession focuses on the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies. But there are also factors on the supply side of the economy that may tip the U.S. economy into a recession. Among them are the tax and regulatory policies of the Biden administration.

A recession is sometimes defined as a decrease in employment. Other times it is defined as a reduction in real gross domestic product for two quarters or more. Strong labor-force and productivity growth are supply-side factors that make a recession less likely, as is recovery from the pandemic. But increased regulation and increased taxation of capital—two Biden administration policy priorities—are supply-side headwinds that make recession more likely.

Adult population growth is normally an economic tailwind. But it has fallen substantially, from above 1% between 1980 and 2018 to about 0.4%. President Trump’s restrictive policies on even legal immigration are partly to blame for this decline. President Biden has done little to reverse those policies.

Recovery from the pandemic has also been a tailwind. It will continue to lift employment, but most of the recovery in employment has already occurred. Workers lost skills and capital laid idle during the pandemic. These are recovering, though strictly from an accounting point of view, their recovery won’t be fully recognized in the growth data.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/06/21/tom_fitton_our_military_is_being_undermined_from_within_by_woke_racist_marxist_democrats.html

“Judicial Watch” founder Tom Fitton talks about the anti-racism training the officer corps of the U.S. military is being taught on FNC’s Tucker Carlson:

TOM FITTON: We had to sue to get the documents, and they’re mandating or pushing critical race theory training on the cadets [at West Point]. This is where our next officer corps is trained and they’re being told “whiteness” is something that is what the critical race theorists say, full of characteristics that are negative.

They suggest that blacks are still the equivalent of slaves today, and they’re pushing queer theory, which is a cousin of the Marxist critical race theory.

And so, you know, our military is being undermined from within. You know, this is the type of Marxist revolutionary language that our military was designed, during the Cold War to try to protect this nation from. And now they’re on the inside.

And, you know, this is the Biden Defense Department. Because you remember, Trump tried to slow this down and it’s now the animating force for the Biden administration, and our military’s being abused.

So, you know, you’re pointing out senators are controlling our guns, right? While ignoring the abuse of our cadets at West Point with racist theories. When you have a white cadet come in and told they’re bad people because of the color of their skin, or blacks are told they are being oppressed because of the color of their skin, that’s racism and frankly, it’s banned under the law.

There’s got to be a rescue operation for our military from this woke madness.