RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18712/searching-for-an-honest-man

Legend has it that long ago the philosopher Diogenes walked the streets of ancient Greece with a lamp held high in search of an “honest man.” His street theater suggested a quiet but dramatic protest against what he viewed as a corrupt society that smirked at government ethics and ignored personal responsibility.

A millennium or two later, the world’s greatest democracy has need to follow in Diogenes’ footsteps, as we collectively walk Washington, D.C. “looking for an honest man.”

America comes to this crossroads at a perilous time. There are those in our nation’s capital and leaders around the world who quietly believe our country is in a slow but deliberate decline, ceding global leadership to China much the way Great Britain gave way to the United States at the turn of the 20th Century.

If that is the case, then our world needs to brace itself for a dark, despotic era, for it was Abraham Lincoln who reminded all who would listen that the United States was, “…. the last best hope of earth.” Despite all of our domestic bickering, it remains so today.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/phony-rhetoric-about-our-democracy-bruce-thornton/

Ever since the political rise of Donald Trump we have heard mantras chanted about “our democracy,” usually in the context of how Trump allegedly is destroying it. This cliché obscures the actual nature of our Constitutional political order, which created a mixed government more typical of a republic than a democracy rightly understood; and was based on a realist vision of human nature whose destructive excesses the Founders sought to mitigate without diminishing the citizens’ freedom.

More devious, the sloppy use of “democracy” distracts from the fact that progressives for over a century have used the camouflage of “democracy” to hide their systematic dismantling of that Constitutional order that protects the freedom of individuals, civil society, and states from the tyranny of concentrated “large powers and unhampered discretion,” as Woodrow Wilson called for in 1887.

Much of the democracy happy talk reflects the global high estimation of democracy,  its “best of good names,” as historian Michael Mandelbaum describes its universal prestige as a form of government “honored and valued everywhere” with “the same kind of aura that surrounds medicine,” and esteemed as “a high human achievement that improves the lives of those fortunate enough to come into contact with it.” Like “natural,” “green,” and “organic,” it’s a term that reflexively evokes positive approval of whatever ideal or policy it’s used to promote.

But such marketing reinforces a false understanding of the American political order, one predicated not on human perfectibility and utopian ambitions, but on humanity’s permanent destructive weakness and corruptibility caused by our universal “passions and interest” that are “sown in the nature of man,” as Madison said. These indelible traits create diverse political “factions,” associations that compete with each other for the power to gratify both interests and passions.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/13/spoiler-alert-its-all-a-scam/

“The four corners of deceit are: government, academia, science, and the media. I had a hard time coming to this radical conclusion myself, as I wanted to believe otherwise, was not a conspiracist, and have attained all the laurels on offer from our current system. ”

Here is the hard-discovered truth. 

The Left, which now controls all the centers of power and the commanding heights of the world economy, seeks to codify their ideology as science, and thereby make it irrefutable. You can’t disagree with it or you are a kook or insurrectionist. You are outside what Thomas Kuhn, called the “paradigm of normal science.” 

Think about it. Everything these authorities tell you is true is, in fact, precisely the opposite of the truth.

Global warming is a hoax.  Universities are about indoctrination, not education. Government is a form of manipulation with a two-tiered justice system. The media is fake and journalism died long ago. The financial system is a Ponzi scheme. Trump did not collude with Russia. The border is wide open. Inflation is not transitory. Defunding the police increases crime. The pandemic did not originate in a wet market from pangolins. 

Joe Biden is illegitimate. Crackhead Hunter is not innocent. Epstein didn’t kill himself. Black Lives Matter and critical race theory are not about racial justice. Women are not men and vice versa. Virtue signaling isn’t about virtue. Religion is not malevolent. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/13/gavin-newsoms-weird-idea-of-freedom/

In a run-up to what is likely to be a 2024 presidential bid, California Governor Gavin Newsom hit upon the bizarre idea of boasting in commercials that California is America’s true “free” state. 

Part of his ad campaign is to attack Florida—currently run by Newsom’s possible rival, Governor Ron DeSantis. 

Yet, with the most burdensome regulations and high tax rates, Newsom’s California is arguably the most unfree state in the union.

In return for these steep costs, the state’s public institutions, infrastructure, and services are among the country’s worst. 

California’s once-vaunted freeway system is near the bottom of all state comparisons. California’s Highway 99, which runs the length of the Central Valley, is one of the deadliest roads in America based on miles driven. 

Over half the nation’s homeless crowd the state’s major cities. One-third of America’s welfare recipients have flooded into the state. A fifth of the resident population lives below the poverty line. Well over a quarter of Golden State residents were not born in the United States. 

California public school test scores consistently fall among the bottom 10 states. San Francisco has the highest per capita property crime rate in the country. 

The recently recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his soon to be recalled Los Angeles counterpart George Gascón have nearly ruined their cities. Both are iconic of multibillionaire George Soros’ nationwide efforts to undermine the entire criminal justice system. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/14/cataloguing-bidens-ineptitude-on-inflation/

When the latest government report on inflation came out on Wednesday, showing that it had hit another grim milestone in June of 9.1%, President Joe Biden told the public not to worry.

That figure, he said, “is out of date.” Prices for key components of the Consumer Price Index have eased so far in July, he said. Besides, he said, inflation is higher “in many countries (in Europe) than in America.”

The public would do well to ignore anything Biden says about inflation, given his horrible track record when it comes to this topic. Since prices started their upward climb in March 2021, Biden has by turns claimed that it was the result of a booming economy, that it was temporary, that it was the result of supply chain bottlenecks, and most recently that Vladimir Putin is to blame.

When not making fact-free claims like those, Biden simply lies. Take his oft-repeated claim that Europeans have it far worse on inflation. Even Newsweek magazine felt obliged to conclude in its fact check “that Biden’s statement that U.S. inflation is the ‘lowest of almost every major nation’ is largely inaccurate.”

We don’t expect readers to simply take our word for it that Biden has been out to lunch on inflation. So we assembled a handy chart showing the annualized rate of inflation each month since January 2020. It matches up that record with statements Biden made about inflation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-sinking-presidency-nomination-2024-election-harris-policies-inflation-11657743904?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

It’s time to board a sinking ship— Joe Biden’s presidency.

The New York Times reported that its poll with Siena College finds 64% of Democrats, not even waiting for the midterm election results, want their candidate in 2024 to be someone other than the president. That famous Democratic youth vote? Under 30, they’re down on Joe at a 94% rate.

Below this thin ice is the measured sentiment that more than 7 in 10 Americans say the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction.

With the probably pointless caveat that things can change in politics, this means Mr. Biden is effectively a lame-duck president. If he runs, there will be a primary challenge, as there was in 1980 for Jimmy Carter.

Two Democratic governors, California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, are already circling. RootsAction, a group aligned with Bernie Sanders, is planning a #DontRunJoe campaign. When Mr. Biden visited Cleveland last week to tout his economic accomplishments, the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate, Rep. Tim Ryan, and its candidate for governor, Nan Whaley, said scheduling conflicts prevented them from joining him.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/inflation-rose-9point1percent-in-june-even-mor

The consumer price index increased 9.1% from a year ago in June, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate.
Excluding food and energy, core CPI rose 5.9%, compared with the 5.7% estimate.
Costs surged for gasoline, groceries, rent and dental care.
Adjusted for inflation, workers’ hourly wages fell 1% during the month and are down 3.6% from a year ago.

Shoppers paid sharply higher prices for a variety of goods in June as inflation kept its hold on a slowing U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services related to the cost of living, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate. That marked the fastest pace for inflation going back to November 1981.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI increased 5.9%, compared with the 5.7% estimate. Core inflation peaked at 6.5% in March and has been nudging down since.

On a monthly basis, headline CPI rose 1.3% and core CPI was up 0.7%, compared to respective estimates of 1.1% and 0.5%.

Taken together, the numbers seemed to counter the narrative that inflation may be peaking, as the gains were based across a variety of categories.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/13/the-left-is-doing-its-best-to-make-self-defense-a-crime/

A fearless citizen with the will and means to defend himself is a threat to left-wing bureaucrats who want to boss him around.

The same left-wing prosecutors who let rioting run rampant and let repeat offenders out on low bail also want to make it difficult for you to defend yourself.

We don’t yet know all the details about an apparent fatal stabbing of an agitated man by bodega clerk Jose Alba in New York City last week, but we do know that the clerk was quickly charged with murder and initially held at Rikers Island on $250,000 bail while video surveillance seems to indicate he likely acted in self-defense. Surveillance videos show the unnamed girlfriend of Austin Simon, the man Alba killed who had a history of felony arrests and was out on parole, becoming upset with Alba when her card was declined and threatening to “bring my n– down here and he gonna f-ck you up.”

Another video shows Simon walking behind the counter to Alba, shoving him, and getting in his face before Alba stood up and appeared to try to walk past Simon, at which point the two wrestled until Alba eventually stabbed the other man. “I don’t want a problem,” Alba told Simon when he walked in, according to the New York Post. Further footage appears to show the girlfriend pulling out a knife of her own and slashing Alba, although she has not been charged.