RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-critical-mass-of-my-righteous-fury/

The West right now seems absorbed in pushing such idiocies as the finer intricacies of transgender and critical race theories, the claim that defunding the police will help poor blacks (yep, really), a sort of zero-risk, precautionary principle on steroids approach to life and to governing citizens, and the notion that indirect quotas are a good idea as long as you dress them up in the insidiously seductive language of ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’. That means you find some desirable jobs and educational opportunities and then insist there be a near 1:1 correlation between (1) the numbers in the wider society with particular reproductive organs or types of skin pigmentation or preferences in bed, and (2) the numbers from such groups filling these jobs or university places etc – so basically it’s a type of Marxist equality-of-outcome outlook dominating not just universities and the public service but now all big corporations too. 

Moreover, it’s an outlook that indirectly lowers diversity of viewpoint, because conservatives make autonomy and individual choice key. And because they don’t want to play the identity-politics game, they largely don’t get these jobs or places or promotions.  The result over time is a monolithic orthodoxy of outlook, on campus, in the boardroom — heck, even in the Liberal partyroom.  This destructive, navel-gazing wankery in the West is very depressing.  Of course, the rest of the world is busy showing us that the great British philosopher Thomas Hobbes was right.  Humans have, do and always will live in a dangerous world, one chock full of bullies, thugs, religious zealots and hard men who know only the lessons of the schoolyard (by which I mean the schoolyard when I was a kid at a pretty tough state school in Toronto, where bullying meant being beaten up, not today’s schoolyard where ‘bullying’ has been emptied of all content and appears to mean someone has said something that might reduce self-esteem a few points on the ‘might I possibly be offended?’ scale).

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/will-the-next-j6-trial-expose-another-justice-department-lie/

Federal prosecutors last week scored a big victory after a Washington, D.C., jury took less than three hours to find Guy Reffitt, the first January 6 defendant to stand trial, guilty on all counts.

The Justice Department’s winning streak might be short-lived, however. Prosecutors will have a tougher task with the trial starting Monday for Couy Griffin, the “Cowboys for Trump” leader arrested for his minor and nonviolent involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6.

Griffin was the subject of my very first article over a year ago on the Justice Department’s abusive prosecution of January 6 protesters in which, coincidentally, I asked the rhetorical question, “Where is the outrage over America’s political prisoners?” as official Washington was in a tizzy over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imprisonment of his country’s star dissident.

After the government charged Griffin on January 19, 2021 with two low-level trespassing misdemeanors, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin asked the court to keep Griffin detained pending trial. Sherwin, recall, bragged about a “shock and awe campaign” of January 6 arrests prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration. 

Relying mostly on remarks Griffin made during and after the protest, Sherwin claimed that the New Mexico county commissioner, who never entered the Capitol, was a danger to the community. “[The] defendant is an inflammatory provocateur and fabulist who engages in racist invective and propounds baseless conspiracy theories, including that Communist China stole the 2020 Presidential Election,” Sherwin’s office wrote in a motion seeking Griffin’s imprisonment. “He denies the lawful election of the president and as [sic] stated repeatedly that Biden will never be president.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/17/the-disturbing-details-about-bidens-scotus-pick-just-keep-on-coming-n1567263

Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was briefly hailed (by some) as a consensus nominee that even some Republicans could support.

I’m starting to think that Republican support will be much harder to get than Biden had hoped.

Last month, we learned that in 1996, Jackson wrote a “Note” for the Harvard Law Review arguing that convicted sex offenders were treated “unfairly” in the courts. Earlier this week, her past work advocating on behalf of Guantánamo Bay terrorists also became an issue that will undoubtedly come up during her confirmation hearings.

Completing the trifecta of disturbing aspects of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s radical record is her repeated embracing of champions of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in lectures and speeches and her belief that “microaggressions” are real.

If confirmed, Jackson won’t alter the court’s ideological balance, but that’s no reason for Republicans not to stand up for American values and vote “nay” on her confirmation.

According to the Daily Wire, “A review of a handful of Jackson’s lectures and speeches from the past seven years shows that the nominee has a strong appreciation for leading proponents of CRT, a progressive idea that holds in part: ‘racism is endemic to, rather than a deviation from, American norms,’ legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term, wrote in 1989. While Jackson has avoided openly championing CRT, she has complimented its advocates and suggested that the progressive theory informs her legal analysis.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/is-anyone-actually-fooled-by-lia-thomas/

At Swimming World magazine, John Lohn neatly sums up the farce:

“No, this title-winning effort in the 500-yard freestyle should be met with nothing less than a head shake, an eye roll or a shrug of the shoulders. Why? Because Lia Thomas’ victory is an insult to the biological women who raced against her. Against those who fought for Title IX and equal opportunities for female athletes. Against science, and the unmistakable physiological differences between the male and female sexes.”

From the Times:

ATLANTA — Lia Thomas, the transgender woman whose record-threatening times on the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team made her a star of college athletics and a symbol of the debate over sports and gender identity, won an N.C.A.A. championship in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday.

Thomas, a fifth-year senior who arrived for the swimming championships in Atlanta as the top seed in the 500 and 200 freestyle races, completed the race in 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds, more than a second ahead of the runner-up.

I would like to know who is fooled by this. My suspicion is that almost nobody is fooled by this, but that almost everybody is scared to admit that in public.

However “Lia Thomas” might self-identify, he has the body of a man. This matters, because he is competing in a women’s sports league, and because there are profound biological differences between men and women in that sport, as in almost every other. The Times reports that Thomas “that left opponents far behind and put some collegiate records under new pressure.” Well, yeah. This is because Thomas is a man, and because Thomas’s “opponents” — two of whom were Olympians — are not.

https://www.nysun.com/article/manchin-turns-out-to-be-the-only-adult-in-the-room

Markets rose after Jay Powell finally emerged from his politically-induced coma and announced the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates by 25 basis points, with several more hikes to follow. He also told investors he would likely begin shrinking the Fed’s $9 trillion balance sheet as early as May.

Traders, it seems, welcomed certainty over the muddle that has been Fed policy for many months. Yet, most would agree that the central bank is entering a perilous phase; no one can remember a time when the Fed succeeded in pulling off a “soft landing.”

The yield curve is flattening, sentiment souring and forecasts of growth — including from the Fed — heading south. Many expect a recession in 2023. How did we get here? How did inflation deflate a healthy recovery?

President Biden has blamed Covid-induced worker shortages, supply chain issues, greedy companies, and Vladimir Putin for spiraling prices that are eating into Americans’ paychecks and trashing his approval ratings. Voters blame Mr. Biden, and investors point the finger at Chairman Powell.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/17/four-charts-prove-biden-is-lying-about-putin-an

THE PRESIDENT’S EXCUSES ARE RISING FASTER THAN PRICES

As inflation has continued to climb, so have the number of President Joe Biden’s excuses for why he’s not to blame. First, it was a “transitory” effect of the economy rebounding from COVID lockdowns. Then it was the result of supply chain problems because ports didn’t operate 24/7. Then it was due to a lack of competition among beef suppliers. Then it was greed. Now he’s settled on Vladimir Putin.

None of it is true. But the White House is so determined to take advantage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine it invited TikTok “influencers” to propagandize them. The mainstream press had already fallen in line, delivering stories about why Biden is not at fault. (The New York Times, for example, ran a “fact check” headlined: “Republicans Wrongly Blame Biden for Rising Gas Prices.”)

But Biden is to blame. He set off the current inflationary spiral with the $2 trillion “rescue plan” he and his fellow Democrats jammed through at the start of 2021. They claimed the money was desperately needed to get the economy back on track (it wasn’t) and dismissed warnings from even liberal economists that dumping all that money (while paying people not to work) at a time when the economy was rapidly rebounding would spark an inflationary spiral.