RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/30/are-americans-better-or-worse-off-since-january/

The left wing and media rage hysterically from one Trump psychodrama to the next, while Trump trolls both on social media.

But all that is verbiage. What matters is the data and facts of Trump’s first nine months since January 20, 2025, in comparison to either Biden’s prior year or the averages of his four years in office.

Take the border. No one knows how many illegal aliens entered—or stayed in—the U.S. during Biden’s four years of open borders. What is clear is that he set a presidential record of well over seven million illegal entrants.

The border under Trump is now tightly closed. Prior to his administration, it was common for 10,000 people to cross illegally in a single day. In just nine months, approximately two million illegal aliens have been deported or self-deported. The rate of border crossings is now the lowest it’s ever been since 1970.

How about energy? For Trump’s first nine months, gas prices have averaged $3.19 versus Biden’s 2024 average of $3.30 a gallon. Over Biden’s four years, gas averaged $3.46 a gallon.

During the Biden years, oil production averaged 12.3 million barrels per day, compared to 13.5 million barrels during Trump’s first nine months. Biden removed 200 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, leaving office with only 394 million barrels in the SPR.

The reserve has already inched upward under Trump’s initial months to 406 million barrels. Releases have been cancelled. Purchases of replacement oil have been scheduled.

Regarding the economy, Biden’s four years averaged 2.9 percent GDP growth per annum.

Trump’s GDP rose 3.8 percent in the second quarter, with final estimates for 2025 ranging around 3 percent.

Inflation under Trump so far averages about 3 percent. Under Biden’s tenure, inflation increased by 21.4 percent over four years, or on average about 5.3 percent a year.

How about U.S. deterrence and defense?

Under Biden, the military fell short by approximately 15,000 recruits per year, crashing to a shortfall of 41,000 in 2023.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/10/the-outrageous-biden-autopen-scandal/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

On Tuesday morning, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released a report on former President Joe Biden’s use of autopen signatures on the many pardons and commutations he handed out during his term, and particularly near its end. Many of these were scandalous enough taken on their own terms, but what made them particularly outrageous was the suspicion that the bulk of these acts were the work of President Biden’s staff, not the senescent president himself.

After all, this was a president who had imploded onstage at the presidential debate in June 2024, revealing his basic day-to-day incoherence, and then dropped out of the presidential race via tweet a month later. One might reasonably understand how he found the time to preemptively pardon his family members, despite frequently promising never to do so, but it was harder to believe that he was setting aside personal time to commute the sentences of people like Maryland’s thrice-murdering “Black Widow” killer.

The House report confirms what voters long suspected: Biden’s inner circle hid the extent of his mental decline from the American people and, after he dropped out of the race, used his autopen as part of their campaign to set a new record for presidential clemency. Vast swaths of convict-applicants were granted commutations or pardons on the basis of crude search parameters and blunt filtering, not case-by-case examination.

There is little to be done but take note of the dangers of abusing one of the presidency’s core powers (not that President Trump has absorbed this lesson). Acts of presidential clemency are final. As scandalous as mass-printing commutations for the undeserving is, Biden approved of all of this, broadly speaking. One imagines he was not informed of the specifics of who was being granted presidential clemency, but he was aware of the fact that sweeping pardons were being issued under his name.

At the end of the day, this isn’t an autopen scandal so much as a Biden’s poor-judgment scandal. There were, of course, many of those prior to his late-presidency decrepitude, which made things so much worse.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The word “elite” has roots in both Latin and Old French, meaning to choose. As an adjective it meant “elected,” or “chosen.” While the word appeared briefly in Middle English (1100-1500AD), it only reappeared in the mid-19th Century, meaning a “choice or select body.” The word is not in Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Wikipedia defines the word: “A small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group.” Nevertheless, when used today to describe the politically and financially powerful, the word is often used as a pejorative.

Just as cream floats to the top of an unhomogenized bottle of milk, the brightest and most talented, left untethered, will rise to the top of society. That is nature’s way. It is when position and power are used to enhance and protect one’s privileged status that corruption ensues.

For most of our Country’s history, elites who ran our financial and industrial businesses, who educated our young at prestigious universities and who governed our Country were drawn from east coast, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) families – those who were wealthy, educated and civic-minded. They embodied the concept of “noblesse oblige,” but they protected their position through discrimination in education, in business opportunities, and in their social lives. However, time caught up to them. Their wealth, singular education, and political influence began to wane following the Depression and World War II. Like today’s elites, they had little in common with the average American. In a recent issue of The Spectator, Madeline Grant wrote of how WASPs are now in their twilight years, as “meritocracy and modernity” have edged them out. Ms. Grant, in my opinion, is late with her analysis, as I believe this transition has been underway for eighty years. While our nation was better off when merit replaced privilege, today it feels like the same game, but with different players.