RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/democrats-bidenflation-disaster

You’ve seen the news — the government says inflation rose 8.5% in March compared to last year. That is up from the annual inflation rate last month, which was 7.9%. Both are the worst since 1981.

There are a lot of stories behind the big number. Inflation is up in every area of the economy. But the worst news concerns some very fundamental human activities: eating, finding warmth and shelter, and moving around. Look deep into the website at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and you’ll see how bad inflation is in those basic areas.

Start with the price of food. You’ve been to the grocery store. You know it is bad. Now, BLS says the price of meat, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 13.7% annually. The price of cereal and bakery products rose 9.4%. Fruits and vegetables, 8.5%. Nonalcoholic beverages, 8%. Dairy, 7%. And other foods that don’t fit into those categories, 10.3%. All of that adds up to the category of “Food at Home,” which BLS says went up 10% in March over last year.

Want to go out to eat? BLS says prices of full-service meals went up 8% in March, while limited-service meals went up 7.2%. There is simply no way to eat, at home or out, without paying more.

Move on to the subject of staying warm. It is hard to believe, but BLS reports the price of fuel oil is up 70.1% in March over last year. 70.1%! Then there is the price of what BLS refers to as “shelter,” which increased 5%. (What does the BLS mean by “shelter”? Here is its definition: “The cost of shelter for renter-occupied housing is rent. For an owner-occupied unit, the cost of shelter is the implicit rent that owner-occupant would have to pay if they were renting their homes.”)

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/11/questions-loom-after-verdicts-in-whitmer-kidnapping-trial/

It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the verdicts handed down last week for four men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 and use a “weapon of mass destruction” in the process.

Despite sworn testimony from several FBI experts and agents—including the primary FBI informant, Dan Chappel, who was compensated at least $60,000 by the bureau for his involvement—endless federal resources, and favorable rulings by the judge to withhold evidence and testimony, a jury of 12 Americans rejected the government’s case in cold fashion on Friday in a Grand Rapids courtroom. The Justice Department did not win a single conviction; two men walked free after 18 months in prison and two men remain behind bars as prosecutors prepare to re-try them after a hung jury could not agree on their guilt.

What the jury did agree on, however, is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in entrapment. Defense attorneys, with the consent of Chief District Court Judge Robert Jonker, argued that the FBI attempted to induce their clients into committing the alleged kidnapping crime. 

“When I look at what happened in this case, I am ashamed of the behavior of the leading law enforcement agency in the United States,” Joshua Blanchard, the lawyer representing Barry Croft Jr., who was not acquitted last week, told jurors in his closing statement. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/hunter-bidens-laptop-leverage-lloyd-billingsley/

“Federal investigation of Hunter Biden heats up,” headlined a March 30 CNN story that mentioned “a laptop purported to belong to Hunter Biden and said to include his business documents and other potentially salacious materials.” As CNN previously reported, the FBI took possession of the laptop in late 2019.

On October 19, 2020, 51 former intelligence officials claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Since the laptop became a news item last month, the intelligence crew has not owned up to any falsehoods or expressed any second thoughts. The back story here is American disinformation, from official American sources.

The signatories to the October 19, 2020 statement include CIA directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden, along with former acting CIA directors Mike Morell and John McLaughlin. John Moseman and Larry Pfeiffer formerly served as chiefs of staff at the CIA.

Signatory Doug Wise was deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Rick Ledgett, formerly deputy director of the National Security Agency. Joining these heavyweights is a squad of former CIA officers and analysts, along with former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who famously called the Muslim brotherhood a “largely secular” organization.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/_saudi_television_viciously_mocks_biden.html

The whole world knows that Joe Biden is a husk of a man, mentally and physically not up to the job. On top the danger that his sheer incompetence poses for Americans comes the risk that enemies and less friendly countries (and even allies) will be tempted to defy or take advantage of the vanished leadership at the top of the federal government.

One country that has moved away from the status of ally thanks to the Biden administration’s insane backing of Iran through giveaway “negotiations” over restoring the JCPOA nuclear deal is Saudi Arabia. Media there are carefiul not to offend the government, so the following broad satire of an utterly decrepit Biden no doubt reflect government attitudes toward the man occupying the post that used to be called “leader of the free world.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/12/america-moving-from-a-permission-society-to-a-repressive-regime/

The ruling class believes there is nothing so private that it cannot be regulated, nothing so personal that it cannot be intruded upon.

A few years ago, a book titled “​​The Permission Society” explained how the country’s ruling class had turned our God-given liberties into privileges granted by government. Is it possible that the U.S. has gone even beyond and become a nation of the ruled? There’s more evidence to support that proposition than there is to refute it.

We’re reminded of this by a set of new rules to live by proposed by the Biden White House. Last month, the Energy Department announced it was taking public comments on efficiency standards for residential air conditioners and pool heaters that are intended to “to help consumers save on their utility bills.”

The “savings” angle, though, feels more like cover for the department’s deeper agenda, which is its “commitment to reaching net zero carbon emissions.”

The Democrats who for now dominate policy making in Washington believe there is nothing so private that they cannot regulate, nothing so personal that it can’t be intruded upon. The only question is the pace of the arrogation of our freedoms. They have to be taken down in increments, so that the country won’t notice the slippery slope toward tyranny. In many cases, often regarding energy and conservation policies, restrictions are even celebrated by the loudest factions to help numb the public to the constant attacks on liberty.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/04/09/david_mamet_when_people_with_an_opposing_view_are_canceled_were_going_to_end_up_with_a_totalitarian_state.html

Playwright, screenwriter-director, and author David Mamet appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO program to discuss his latest book, “The Recessional On The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch,” and what the impact of cancel culture could mean for the future of America.

“Let’s be honest, a lot of your book is calling out the left for their goofiness,” Maher said to his guest.

“I’m not here to flog the book, which is called ‘The Recessional On The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch,’ people, but the point is we have to have free speech,” Mamet said. “Without free speech we have nothing because if one group takes the high road. It doesn’t matter which group it is. If they’re in power long enough, we’re going to have a police state. So when it’s not acceptable to have an opposing view, when people who state an opposing view are not disagreed with but are marginalized and canceled, we’re going to end up with a totalitarian state because that’s the way human nature works.”

“We see in the book that you do like Trump, which is fine,” Maher said to Mamet. “We’re not there together on that one but I’ve said many times on this show you cannot hate everyone who likes him. It’s half the country and I understand why people are driven into his arms because of the goofiness.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/10/the-debasement-of-our-professional-and-political-classes/

The left-wing professional and political classes bequeathed a number of new protocols during the Trump derangement years. And it will be interesting to watch whether the Republicans abide by them in November should they take back the House and perhaps the Senate—and the presidency in 2024 as well. 

Will they follow the New Testament’s turn-the-other-cheek forbearance, or go for Old Testament style eye-for-an-eye retribution? 

What Are the New Rules?

Will Republican magnanimity suffice to shame the Democrats to be more professional in the future? Or will tit-for-tat deterrent reciprocity alone ensure a return to norms? Specifically, will Biden be impeached Trump-style, after losing the House in November? Say, to give just one possible example, for deliberately not enforcing and, indeed, undermining U.S. immigration law? 

Will Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in Pelosi-fashion, start yanking troublesome radical Democrats off House committees? 

Will a conservative Robert Mueller-like “wise man” head a $40 million, 22 month-long special counsel investigation of the Biden-family influence-selling syndicate—arrayed with a “dream-team,” “all-star,” and “hunter-killer” right-wing lawyers to ferret out “Big Guy” and “Mr. Ten Percent” quid pro quo profiteering? 

Would a Republican-led House set up a special committee to investigate the racketeering and “conspiracies” across state lines that led to a near “coup” and “insurrection” marked by “the riots of 2020?” Would such watchdogs offer up criminal referrals for all those responsible for attacking a federal courthouse and torching a police precinct or for setting an historic church afire? Or causing $2 billion of damage, over 30 deaths, and 1,500 law enforcement officer injuries—while carving out illegal no-go zones in major downtowns? 

Given the need for “accountability,” the “threats to democracy,” and a need for “transparency,” would another congressional committee investigate the Afghanistan fiasco of summer 2021? Will it learn who was lying about the disaster—Joe Biden or the Joint Chiefs—and how and why such a travesty occurred? 

Would a rebooted January 6 committee reconvene under new auspices—with Democratic members limited to those selected by a new Speaker McCarthy—to revisit the lethal shooting of Ashli Babbitt, to review thousands of hours of released surveillance video, to subpoena all email communications between the previous congressional leadership and the Capitol police, to demand the lists of all the FBI informants in the crowd, and to interrogate the sadistic jailers and overzealous prosecutors who have created America’s first class of political prisoners subjected to punishment without trial? Such a multifaceted legal inquiry would eat up most of Biden’s final two years in office. As accomplished leakers, Republicans then would also supply “bombshells” and “walls or closing in” special news alerts on cable TV, the fuel of supposedly “imminent” and “impending” indictments, based on special counsel leaks to conservative media. 

Following the Democratic cue, should the Republican-majority Senate consider ending the “disruptive” and “anti-democratic” filibuster? Should there be a national voting law rammed through the Congress, overriding state protocols, and demanding that all national election balloting must require a photo ID? 

Will Speaker McCarthy, Pelosi-style, in furor at more of Joe Biden’s chronic lies, tear up the president’s State of the Union address on national television? 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/gmail_is_hiding_emails_from_conservatives.html

It’s not uncommon for the American Thinker staff to learn that emails from readers and writers have vanished into Gmail’s automatic spam filter. It’s extremely irritating but is it deliberate? One study suggests that it probably is. That’s either because the email’s content is obviously conservative or because the email comes from Proton Mail, a site to which conservatives gravitated after the FBI’s partisan crackdown following January 6.

Six years ago, Russ Vaughn authored an American Thinker post revealing that his email box appeared to show a distinct bias in the way Google automatically sorted email:

I decided to clean out my email trash, and after completing the task, I turned to my spam to do the same.  But upon clicking into that folder, I made the interesting discovery that almost all of the emails relegated to spam by Gmail’s filters (I have no personal filters in place) had a common thread: Almost all were from conservative sources.  In fact, ninety percent of them were from Republican or conservative causes, most seeking contributions. 

It turns out that what Russ observed was not limited to his own inbox. North Carolina State University’s Department of Computer Science decided to look into the matter. Fox News reports that it recently published its findings in “A Peek into the Political Biases in Email Spam Filtering Algorithms During US Election 2020.” The results completely supported Russ’s suspicions:

“We made several important observations in our study. For example, as an aggregate trend, Gmail leaned towards the left while Outlook and Yahoo leaned towards the right. Yahoo retained about half of all the political emails in inbox (up to 55.2% marked as spam) while outlook filtered out the vast majority of emails (over 71.8%) from all political candidates and marked them as spam,” the proposed methodology section continued. “Gmail, however, retained the majority of left-wing candidate emails in inbox (< 10.12% marked as spam) while sent the majority of right-wing candidate emails to the spam folder (up to 77.2% marked as spam).”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/never-admit-anything-john-stossel/

“Apologizing for mistakes is something we teach little kids to do. Is that too much to ask of our media and social media giants?”

President Joe Biden says he never talked business with his son.

Maybe he didn’t.

Maybe that Ukrainian gas company paid Hunter Biden half a million dollars because he has unique business skills that no one else noticed.

It’s possible.

But unlikely.

Now a Justice Department investigation may tell us whether Hunter is a sleazy opportunist who broke the law and whether his father knew, or even helped.

But equally revealing is the arrogance and bias the reporting on Hunter’s laptop revealed among wide swaths of media and big tech gatekeepers.

Even today, most will not admit they were wrong.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bill-clintons-corrupt-love-affair-putin-daniel-greenfield/

Bill Clinton, once the youngest governor in the country, now only four years younger than Biden, came out of the shadows with a defensive op-ed, titled, “I Tried to Put Russia on Another Path”.

While the Clintons, like Obama, fashionably embraced Putin-bashing when it served their agenda of inventing a Russia scandal as a pretext for discrediting the 2016 presidential election and spying on their Republican political opponents, Bill’s history tells a very different story.

In My Life, his 2004 memoir, Bill Clinton praises Putin and uses him to attack Republicans.

After his first meeting with Putin, Bill Clinton wrote that he came away believing “Yeltsin had picked a successor who had the skills and capacity for hard work necessary to manage Russia’s turbulent political and economic life” and the “toughness to defend Russia’s interests”. He called Putin’s appointment, which helped end democracy in Russia, a “wise and shrewd move”.

After Putin was elected, Bill Clinton recollects that he “hung up the phone thinking he was tough enough to hold Russia together.” Soon Clinton is using Putin to bash Republicans, sneering that “even the Russian Duma was more progressive on arms control than the U.S. Senate” and supporting Putin’s refusal to hold off on the anti-ballistic missile treaty because “Republicans had been enamored of missile defense since the Reagan era, and many of them wouldn’t hesitate to abrogate the ABM Treaty in order to deploy it.” Putin good, Republicans bad.

Why was Bill Clinton flattering Putin in his autobiography?