RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-3-11-a-couple-of-really-smart-guys-set-out-to-prosecute-donald-trump

From time to time on this blog I have had occasion to note the extent to which many of the seemingly “smartest” people in our society time and again fall hook, line and sinker for the most preposterous mass hysterias. When it really counts, the people who have risen to the very top ranks of our social hierarchies prove to have no critical thinking capabilities whatsoever. For some entertaining reading about various self-made billionaires, former cabinet secretaries, and the like, making utter fools of themselves, you might try my posts from February 9, 2017 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’ — Part III”), or June 25, 2014 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’”). Both of those posts dealt with the topic of attempts to alter world temperatures through government taxation and spending.

A recent example of the phenomenon of the smart dopes now comes forth from the District Attorney’s office of New York County — that is, the people here in Manhattan charged with the enforcement of the New York State criminal laws. In this instance the subject of the hysteria was the idea that Donald Trump, President of the United States, needed to be charged with some sort of violations of the New York criminal law arising out of his business dealings.

Although prosecutors don’t publicly announce when they start investigations, it is clear from various court filings along the way (e.g., Trump’s lawyers opposing enforcement of subpoenas) that the DA’s criminal investigation of Trump was well underway as early as 2019, that is, in the middle of Trump’s term as President. The Manhattan DA at the time was Cyrus Vance, Jr. If you are old enough, you will recognize from Vance’s name that he is the son of the Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of State when Jimmy Carter was President, and also at various times Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and other such government positions, in between stints as big-time partner of big-time law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

https://whiterosemagazine.com/contributor/thane-rosenbaum/

Before Alice Sebold became a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist (the film The Lovely Bones was an adaptation from her first novel of the same name), she signaled her arrival as a writer with an important voice and compelling tale, as evidenced by her memoir entitled, Lucky. 

The book was a searing and, at times, improbably witty retelling of her freshman year at Syracuse University when in 1981, while she was walking late at night, an assailant with a knife dragged her into a tunnel and raped her. The book details her experience with the hospital that treated her injuries along with her own efforts to heal—unsurprisingly, without much success. Much of the book is devoted to her reliance on law enforcement and the criminal justice system to hold her attacker to account. 

It made for a gut-wrenching read: A woman who served as an eyewitness to a heinous crime committed against herself. 

Sebold ended up identifying the man who assaulted her and testified against him. He was convicted of rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison, serving 16.

Stories of sexual violence against women are inexorably disqualified from happy endings.

At the police station, one of the detectives thought it might be helpful for her to know that the last sexual assault victim on campus was raped and dismembered by her attacker. In this way, he reasoned, Sebold should consider herself “lucky”—hence, the book’s alluring title.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech-totalitarians-are-on-the-march_4319982.html

The Chinese were pathbreakers.

With their system of “social credit,” which seeks to enforce conformity by “grading” an individual’s or business’s adherence to the party line and imposing penalties for deviations, they have showed the West the way.

If you don’t espouse the right attitudes, you might find yourself barred from public transportation, from work permits or travel visas, from preferred jobs and other social—which includes economic—perquisites.

It’s a totalitarian’s dream—one that was dreamt by George Orwell in the pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—and it’s made all the more total by advances in technology.

Winston Smith, Orwell’s unhappy protagonist, had to contend with a tiny two-way television set in his flat that he could not turn off and that constantly eavesdropped on him.

Chinese citizens have to contend with having their texts, emails, and internet activity constantly scrutinized, which also means having every phone conversation docketed and financial transaction tracked.

Cameras, backed up with facial-recognition technology, are everywhere, watching, listening, building up a record that can always be marshaled as an indictment.

It’s a good thing, isn’t it, that we in the freedom-loving West eschew such totalitarian intrusiveness?

Just kidding.

The American Department of Justice showed how it is done in the land of the formerly free when it employed all those techniques to track down, arrest, and incarcerate hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.

Phone and social media accounts were hoovered up and dissected; facial recognition technology was deployed and weaponized; financial transactions and travel records were subpoenaed and combed through.

Hundreds of people are still languishing in a Washington, D.C. gulag, waiting while the authorities expend vast amounts of legal ingenuity to transform various misdemeanors into felonies.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/03/11/russian-economy-in-shock-due-to-sanctions-but-so-is-ours-without-them-n1565674

The Russian economy is in “shock” over what the Kremlin calls “economic warfare” waged by the U.S. and the West… so what’s our excuse?

According to a new Reuters report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “Our economy is experiencing a shock impact now and there are negative consequences, they will be minimized.”

Exactly how Moscow would minimize those negative consequences — with much of Russia’s trade and finance halted, sanctioned, or frozen — wasn’t specified.

“This is absolutely unprecedented,” Peskov said. “The economic war that has started against our country has never taken place before. So it is very hard to forecast anything.”

Bloomberg calls the pinch “a domestic toll that’s already comparable to the worst downturns of President Vladimir Putin’s more than two decades in power.”

“Russia is already headed for one of its biggest inflation spikes this century and the risk of shortages is prompting the government to impose restrictions on exports,” according to the report.

A Bank of Russia survey showed that analysts believe the Russian economy will shrink 8% or more in 2022, compared to a pre-Ukraine War consensus of 2.4% growth.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/03/10/how_ukraine_conspired_with_dems_against_trump_to_

Six years ago, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country, the Ukrainians bet that a Hillary Clinton presidency would offer better protection from Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though he had invaded Crimea during the Obama-Biden administration, whose Russian policies Clinton vowed to continue.

Ukraine worked with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats against Donald Trump as protection against President Vladimir Putin of Russia … 

… but Ukraine’s bet backfired both when Trump won in 2016 — and when Russia invaded after the Democrats regained power under Joe Biden.

Working with both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign, Ukrainian government officials intervened in the 2016 race to help Clinton and hurt  Donald Trump in a sweeping and systematic foreign influence operation that’s been largely ignored by the press. The improper, if not illegal, operation was run chiefly out of the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, where officials worked hand-in-glove with a Ukrainian-American activist and Clinton campaign operative to attack the Trump campaign. The Obama White House was also deeply involved in an effort to groom their own favored leader in Ukraine and then work with his government to dig up dirt on – and even investigate — their political rival.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/02/the-biden-inflation-octopus/

The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms. 

This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.  

The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.  

First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed. 

Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.  

The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad. 

Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/idiots_of_high_culture.html

I recently saw the headline in a Classical Music website: “Cardiff Philharmonic removes Tchaikovsky from programme in light of Russian invasion of Ukraine.”  Oh, poor Pyotr Ilyich, he has been dead for almost 130 years, but he turns out to be guilty of the Russian fascism of the 21st century. He was hit by the Russian aggression as if by a ricocheting bullet.

A wave of hatred to Russian culture has rolled over the planet like a tsunami.  All over the world, cultural idiots are removing from their programs works by the great composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff and canceling performances by musicians, singers and dancers who had the misfortune to come from the USSR or Russia.

The conformist idiots who run the culture business try their best to portray themselves as “more Catholic than the Pope” when it comes to shunning all things Russian. They fired Valery Gergiev, the head conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra; the manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Peter Gelb, banned the prim donna Anna Netrebko when she refused to publicly condemn Putin. Gergiev and Netrebko spend most of their time in the Western countries, but they are still the Russian citizens, having deep roots there, so it’s painful and even dangerous for them to publicly condemn the Russian invasion, especially given the vindictive nature of the present-day Kremlin czar. Not everyone has the courage or desperation to do this.

It’s easy to be a hero and judge others from the comfort of New York or Munich. I could understand if they were fired for publicly supporting the aggression, but firing them for remaining silent?