RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.aol.com/kellyanne-conway-democrats-disastrous-first-090052727.html

As pundits, pollsters, and op-ed writers turn to their assessment of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days — an “artificial metric,” White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles once said — it seems fitting to examine what the Democrats have done (and failed to do) over the same period.

The Democratic Party is in complete disarray. With only 27% saying they view their own party positively, the Democrats are suffering their lowest positive rating in NBC tracking in 35 years. They continue to openly blame, name and shame each other for lying to the nation about Joe Biden’s ability to function as a successful president (and frankly, Kamala Harris’ ability, too), for not stopping Donald J. Trump from winning a second term, and for being a rudderless, leaderless, visionless mess since.

With GOP control of the House, Senate and the White House, Democrats are the party out of power. Yet they are also the party out of touch with most Americans, out of excuses as to why they lost last fall, out of reasons why core Democratic constituencies that went for President Trump in 2024 should give Democrats another look, and often out of their minds in the hateful rhetoric they use.

Lately, the causes and characters they champion include hulking men in girls’ sports and a Salvadorean national “Maryland man” with gang affiliations, whose wife filed abuse charges against him. Because nothing says “we care about women” quite like stuntman and sometime Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who has dishonored the memory of constituent Rachel Morin, a mother of five who was raped and murdered in his state by an illegal immigrant, but hightailed it to El Salvador to whine about “due process” for someone whose wife detailed multiple violent assaults.

Van Hollen has been awkward, but not alone. Congressional Democrats like Ayanna Pressley, who have done nothing to prevent or punish anti-Semitism on college campuses, have glorified antisemitic protesters, visited them in ICE detention centers, and referred to them as “political prisoners.”

Same with Teslas. Democrats want to force us all to drive electric vehicles, “EVs,” but not if Elon Musk’s company produced it. Those can be destroyed by arsonists.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/03/despite-what-youve-heard-trumps-budget-doesnt-slash-sending-it-barely-trims-it/

President Donald Trump did something extremely rare in Washington on Friday. He offered a budget plan that proposes actual, honest-to-goodness cuts in spending next year. Which helps explain the hysterical reaction from the usual suspects.

Normally, White House budget proposals claim to be cutting spending when all they are doing is slowing the growth in spending. Or they promise spending cuts far down the road while boosting outlays in the short term.

But the budget outline Trump released Friday does none of that. In sticking with Trump’s “revolution of common sense,” when it says it cuts spending, it cuts spending – meaning spending less next year than this year.

Trump wants to reduce spending on domestic programs by $163 billion next year – which would be almost 23% less than the federal government will spend this year on things such as education, the environment, energy, transportation, foreign aid.

So, it’s not surprising to see headlines that scream that Trump’s is a “scorched earth” plan that “slashes spending,” makes “drastic cuts,” and – our favorite headline from the New York Times – proposes “Slashing Domestic Spending to the Lowest Level of the Modern Era.”

Right now, reporters are scouring the country for examples they can trot out – or invent – of how these spending cuts will harm children, gut scientific research and throw people on the streets.

But, while we commend Trump for proposing deep cuts this year – and for laying out in plain English what he wants to cut and why – let’s not get carried away. What he’s proposing is far from “drastic.”

If Trump got his way – which is doubtful considering how weak-kneed Republicans in Congress are when it comes to spending cuts – his plan would simply remove the massive increase in spending that happened during and after COVID.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/02/mining-our-own-business/

Rare earth elements are crucial to our modern existence, as well as our advanced defense systems. China, America’s primary supplier of these metals, has restricted exports of rare earths into the U.S. in retaliation for the president’s tariffs on Chinese exports into the country. There’s no reason to panic, though. There’s a way to work around the problem, and it doesn’t require a minerals deal with Ukraine.

Rare earth elements are needed to make our cellphones, computer hard drives, flat-screen monitors and televisions, as well as life-saving medical equipment. They are in fact “indispensable metals in electronics manufacturing.” Without them, modern society simply cannot survive. Even renewable energy sources, so precious to green zealots, need rare earths.  

There are also “significant defense applications,” says the U.S. Geological Survey, including “electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, and radar and sonar systems.”

Despite their importance to our economy and security, our “leaders” have put us in an awkward position. China provides the U.S. with 70% of the rare earth compounds we buy from abroad.

As their name implies, supplies are scarce. because they can’t be found “in high concentrations in the earth’s crust” and when they are discovered, the process to separate them from other resources is typically arduous. 

But the process is not beyond the U.S.

This country could have – and should have – been mining large volumes of its own rare earths. But environmental zealots have blocked mining efforts, including the planned Pebble Mine in Alaska, “home to at least 70 known occurrences of rare earth elements.” It was shut down in 2014 even before the partnership applied for federal approval. The Environmental Protection Agency “decided to kill this project before any science had been done,” Tom Collier, who was the project’s chief executive, told John Stossel. 

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/01/the-trump-counterrevolution-and-the-moral-ledger/

Despite the media hysteria, Trump’s counterrevolution remains on course.

Its ultimate fate will probably rest with the state of the economy by the November 2026 midterm elections. But its success also hinges on accomplishing what is right and long overdue—and then making such reforms quietly, compassionately, and methodically.

No country can long endure without sovereignty and security—or with 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants crossing the border and half a million criminal foreign nationals roaming freely.

The prior administration found that it was easy to destroy the border and welcome the influx. But it is far harder for its successor to restore security, find those who broke the law, and insist on legal-only immigration. Trump is on the right side of all these issues and making substantial progress.

Everyone knew that a $2 trillion budget deficit, a $37 trillion national debt, and a $1.2 trillion trade deficit in goods were ultimately unsustainable.

Yet all prior politicians of the 21st century winced at the mere thought of reducing debts and deficits, given that it proved much easier just to print and spread around federal money. As long as the Trump administration dutifully cuts the budget, sends its regrets to displaced federal employees, seeks to expand private sector reemployment, and quietly presses ahead, it retains the moral high ground.

The elite universities have long hidden things from the American people that otherwise would have lost them all public support.

They deliberately sought to neuter Supreme Court rulings banning race-based preferences by stealthily continuing their often-segregated policies on campuses, from admissions and hiring to dorms and graduations.

They have taken billions of dollars from autocracies, such as communist China and Qatar. And they have partnered abroad with their foreign illiberal institutions and then disguised their quid pro quo subservience.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/david-horowitz-r-i-p/

On behalf of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, we are very saddened to announce the passing of the Center’s founder, David Horowitz. After a lengthy battle with cancer, David passed yesterday at the age of 86.

The Freedom Center’s founder and guiding force was a relentless conservative warrior who survived a previous brush with death (chronicled in his book Mortality and Faith), confrontations with the Black Panthers, campus radicals, government investigations, death threats, and hate campaigns, some led by his former friends and allies, without ever considering giving up or letting up. Nothing short of the end that comes for us all could silence his voice. He continued writing, working, and steering the Center to the very last; his final article, “The Biggest Lie of All,” appeared earlier this month.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/30/common-sense-is-highly-contagious-except-among-dems/

At a town hall meeting last week, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez — one of the few moderate Democrats left in the world — made a perfectly common-sensical statement: “Americans believe that only U.S. citizens should be determining the outcome of American elections.”

She was greeted with a torrent shouts, boos, and profanity, signs that said “shame” from her constituents, and was ushered out of room for “security reasons.”

After President Donald Trump called for a “revolution of common sense,” it spread like a virus – except among Democrats, who appear to have a natural immunity.

Trump has been implementing his common-sense agenda at a breakneck speed, whether it’s restoring order at the border, protecting taxpayers from waste and fraud, insisting that foreign policy focus on what’s best for the U.S., dispensing with DEI, transgenderism, and other leftist projects that defy common sense, protecting parental rights.

The most important thing Trump has done, however, has been to make it safe again for everyday Americans to express common-sense views.

That illegal immigrants should be sent back to their home countries. That borders should be secure and streets safe. That it’s OK to buy reliable, affordable gas cars. That vast amounts of government spending is wasteful. That there are only two genders. That discrimination is never acceptable, no matter how you dress it up. That companies should focus on serving consumers, not anti-capitalist zealots. That violence for political ends is never justified.

Major corporations are rejecting DEI, now that it’s safe to admit what they knew all along – that it increased strife among workers, alienated customers, and didn’t help their bottom lines. Likewise, corporations are abandoning the uber-woke “environment, social, governance” investment ideology for the same reason.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/28/trump-tariffs-trade-and-a-taboo/

After only a hundred days, the Trump counterrevolution has made quite miraculous progress on the border, illegal immigration, cost-cutting, curbing the DEI/woke revolution, and a historic Ukrainian War settlement.

The pushback to this multifront effort from the left has been formidable, if not hysterical. The greatest fury mostly centers around Trump’s efforts to force U.S. trading partners to adopt either reciprocal or no tariffs while obeying international trading norms—an effort aimed at vastly reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

If Trump could cut a proverbial deal in the next 100 days that, say, cut the annual $1.2 trillion trade deficit in half, coupled with multitrillion-dollar foreign investments, then stocks and bonds would settle down.

Wall Street would go back to its traditional platitudes that the trade deficit then would be no higher than the 3-percent-of-GDP red line.

Stocks would then soar in anticipation of the other news of a continuation of tax cuts, more budgetary reductions, robust energy development, and further deregulation.

The U.S. has run a half-century of trade deficits. And now the red ink has climbed to nearly $1.2 trillion, the largest in history. Yet for all practical purposes, only a few entities account for most of an astronomical sum. And they all have corollary concerns to the U.S. that make their surpluses part of larger problems.

The administration can accurately talk about “70 nations wanting to deal.” But, in truth, if Trump were to settle with just China, Mexico, Canada, the EU, and the ten-nation Southeast Asian trading bloc (ASEAN), then the so-called trade wars would be over.

Start with our North American partners Mexico ($171.9 trillion surplus) and Canada ($63 trillion surplus) that alone account for over 20 percent of the U.S. trade deficit.

Canada’s surplus is almost entirely attributable to its vast oil and gas sales to the U.S. Almost all its daily oil exports go to the U.S., some four million barrels—as well as half its natural gas shipments.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/28/americans-love-hate-relationship-with-elon-musk-tesla-doge-ii-tipp-poll/

For some, it’s hard to imagine an unpaid civil servant doing an important job for the government could be treated worse than Elon Musk. The government cost-cutting head of DOGE has been rewarded for his service by a boycott of Tesla and its stock, by death threats, insults, and violent attacks on Tesla dealers and owners. And now, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, a surprisingly large share of the population backs this behavior.

The national online I&I/TIPP poll was taken by 1,452 adults from March 26 to March 28. It has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points. The poll was intended to look at the anti-Musk phenomenon, and how average people view anti-Musk protesters.

Respondents were asked three questions, the first being: “Do you support or oppose the Tesla Takedown movement’s call to protest Elon Musk by selling Tesla vehicles and stock?”

A clear plurality of 43% say they either support it “strongly” (27%) or “somewhat” (16%), while a smaller 32% oppose it either “strongly” (23%) or “somewhat” (9%). Another 14% said they were “not familiar with the movement,” while 11% described themselves as “not sure.”

Not surprisingly, Democrats back the selling of Tesla vehicles and stock by 53% “support” to 26% “oppose,” while independents give the boycott 40% support to 29% opposition.

But perhaps most surprising are Republicans, who support the call to protest Musk by 40% but oppose it by an equal 40%.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

President Trump has achieved a few goals. Border crossings by illegal migrants have declined by close to ninety percent. Military recruitment is up, with Army recruitment at 15-year highs. DOGE has exposed waste and fraud in many government agencies, and woke ideology is on the run. And, unlike the Biden years, we know who is in charge at the White House.

But in other respects Mr. Trump has been less successful. He is wrong, in my opinion, when he calls for the capitulation of Ukraine, and when he advocates for tariffs – a tax on American consumers. His on-again-off-again tariffs have wreaked havoc with the stock market, weakened the dollar, and caused a pause in the economy. A weak dollar would result in higher interest rates for U.S. Treasuries. While illegal migration poses cultural and dependency risks, globalization and a strong dollar have raised living standards, as the cost of consumables, measured in hours worked, have declined over the decades, due to manufacturing being done where it is most cost efficient, along with technological innovations. Stronger education standards, secure borders, and a tax code that encourages innovation and investment are what is needed, not barriers to free trade. And I fail to understand Mr. Trump’s love affair with cryptocurrencies.

This essay focuses on a few of the challenges we face. (There are, obviously, many others). Shakespeare’s three witches had filled their cauldron with fillets of fenny snakes, eyes of Newts, tongues of dogs, and other such delicacies, but the cauldron of which I write is filled with threats: federal debt and unfunded liabilities at record levels; interest rates that encourage borrowing and discourage savings; public schools that don’t educate; declining birthrates – a world-wide phenomenon; an imperialistic China; a revanchist Russia; a soon-to-be nuclear armed Iran; and, I would argue, an absence of moral judgement.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5266419-musk-tesla-government-efficiency

Elon Musk has announced that, in the coming months, he will be spending more time managing Tesla, and less time on his Department of Government Efficiency. Although good news for Tesla shareholders, this is bad news for our country.   

Musk’s pivot is not shocking, but it should anger every patriotic American. The left is guilty of carrying out one of the most despicable vendettas of all time — against Musk and the car company he founded. Why? Because Musk has been volunteering his time to help streamline and modernize our government. Americans no longer wear poodle skirts or eat TV-dinners, but they are saddled with a federal bureaucracy propped up by 1950s-era technology and systems. It is absurd, and DOGE has been working at warp speed to make it better.   

The left’s insane outrage over Musk’s investigations into federal waste and fraud has driven attacks against Teslas for months, with cars being vandalized, drivers being harassed and dealerships being firebombed. Not one Democrat has called for an end to the madness.  

The incessant attacks have helped drive a downturn in sales of Tesla cars, disappointing earnings and a stock that is down 37 percent just since the beginning of the year. After all, who would want to put themselves or their families in danger by driving a Tesla? In response to the company’s travails, Musk has agreed to spend more time at the helm.  

Far from calling off the brutal attacks against Teslas, Democrats have cheered the company’s struggles.