RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/republicans-infrastructure-bill-biden-democrats/

President Joe Biden, facing a crisis on the southern border, a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and a breakdown of relations with foreign allies, desperately needs a win on his domestic agenda. It looks increasingly unlikely, however, that the ambitious spending bills he wants passed will ever make it to his desk. The usually unified Democratic party is so fractured over the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that it appears Speaker Nancy Pelosi no longer has the votes to pass either.

Biden is primarily to blame for negotiations going this way. He said back in June that he would not sign the infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill, describing the bills as being in ‘tandem’. This set up the perfect showdown between the two factions within the Democratic party. Progressives warned that they wouldn’t vote for the infrastructure bill unless the reconciliation bill also had enough votes to pass. Moderates responded that they wouldn’t be bullied into supporting the reconciliation bill and demanded a standalone vote on infrastructure.

Pelosi tried to call the progressives’ bluff, scheduling a vote for the infrastructure bill — known as the ‘BIF’ — on Thursday. The progressives refused to be rolled, with at least two dozen of them promising to block the legislation; without their votes, it would likely not pass. Unless, that is, dozens of Republicans made up the gap.

Senate Republicans, some of whom helped negotiate the BIF, urged their colleagues in the House to go ahead and vote for it.

‘It’s a good bill; it’s right there for the country, so I’m encouraging Republicans to support it,’ Sen. Rob Portman said. ‘There’ll be some that have told me they will, but they’re under a lot of pressure.’

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/wrongthink-on-race-with-glenn-c-loury

Four decades ago, Glenn C. Loury became the first tenured black professor of economics in Harvard’s history. Ever since then, he has made waves for his willingness to buck the elite intellectual establishment; for his iconoclastic ideas about race and inequality; and for his incisive cultural criticism. 

He is a man of many apparent contradictions: he rails against the divisiveness of woke politics from his post as the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics Brown University, one of America’s most left wing campuses. He worries about what the death of God means for the country — though he calls his own past religious beliefs a “benevolent self-delusion,” even as he admits they saved his life. In the ‘80s, Glenn challenged his fellow black Americans to combat the “enemy from within,” while he himself battled personal demons like addiction. 

For my part, I think Glenn embodies what the philosophers call a man in full. Glenn is a man who, in a time of lies told for the sake of political convenience, strives to tell the truth even when the truth is hard. Or complicated. Or an affront to our feelings. Or contradicts what we wish were true.  

On today’s episode of Honestly we discuss: race, racism, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Tony Timpa, school choice, standardized tests, crack, sexual infidelity, Christianity, the Nation of Islam, neoconservatism, and pretty much every other hot-button subject you can imagine.

Plus, Glenn’s own remarkable life story and what it says about America.

Below are some of the highlights from our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/another_leftist_gets_redpilled_by_the_truth.html

Several honest leftists have been red-pilled—that is, their eyes have been opened politically—because of the Democrats’ tyrannical moves in 2020/2021, That list includes Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Wolf, Tulsi Gabbard, and Bill Maher. They’re not Republicans, by any means, but their disgust with their party is growing. The most recent addition to this cavalcade of honest leftists may be British comedian Russell Brand, who just discovered the truth about Russiagate.

Brand started as a stand-up comedian and then moved into TV and movie stints in both Britain and America. Many Americans came to know about him because of his two-year-long marriage to Katy Perry, which ended when his self-admitted drug, pornography, and sex addictions came to the fore. (If you read about his early life, you can see how he ended up with those problems.) He’s a relatively bright guy and can be very funny.

Politically, Brand is a man of the left. In 2009, along with every other leftist, he attacked Israel for the Gaza incursion. By 2013, Brand had pretty much given up comedy in favor of political activism and commentary…always from the left. He’s all about climate change, sought a socialist revolution in England, advocates for decriminalizing drugs, opposed Brexit, and supports just about any other leftist cause de jour.

For seven years now, Brand has done a one-man video podcast that looks at news and social issues from his self-admitted leftist viewpoint. He’s got almost 4 million subscribers, so he has a bully pulpit for his ideas. The problem for Brand of late is that, while he may be a leftist, in his own way he’s intellectually honest. In the crazy world of 2021, that’s making it difficult for him to maintain a pure leftist attitude. He’s discovering that the people he admired and supported don’t just have feet of clay but are also truly terrible people.

Six days ago, Brand had his mind-blown (call it swallowing a red pill) when he discovered that the entire Russiagate scandal that ran for most of Trump’s presidency and seriously damaged his ability to govern, was a Clinton hoax. The video is only 15 minutes long but Brand leads with his conclusion: He’s a leftist and no fan of Trump but he just had his mind blown. He is “in awe, gobsmacked, flabbergasted, and startled” by which he learned. Continue to listen to him and you’ll see a man in the beginning stages of disillusionment, long may it continue:

(Incidentally, have you noticed that the leftists’ problem isn’t that Russia is totalitarian because it’s always been totalitarian? Their real problem is that Putin is a garden-variety oligarch, rather than a communist. They liked the Soviet Union.”)

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/29/our-porcine-two-legged-wokists/

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

—George Orwell, Animal Farm

What were we to make of multimillionaire Barack Obama’s 60th birthday bash at his Martha’s Vineyard estate, and the throng of the woke wealthy and their masked helot attendants?
Was socialist Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) suffering for the people when she wore a designer dress to the more than $30,000 a ticket Met gala? Her entourage needs were certainly well attended to by masked Morlock servants.

Did the leftist celebrities at the recent Emmy awards gather to discuss opening Malibu beaches to the homeless when the (unmasked) stars virtue-signaled their wokeness?

For answers about these hypocritical wokeists, always turn first to George Orwell. In his brief allegorical novella, Animal Farm, an array of animal characters—led by the thinking pigs of the farm—staged a revolution, driving out their human overseers. 

The antihuman animal comrades started out sounding like zealous Russian Bolsheviks (“four legs good, two legs bad”). But soon they ended up conned by a murderous cult of pigs under a Joseph Stalin-like leader. And so, the revolution became what it once had opposed (“four legs good, two legs better”).

Our own woke, year-zero revolution is now in its second year. Yet last year’s four-legged piggish revolutionaries are already strutting on two legs. They are not just hobnobbing with the “white supremacists” and “capitalists,” but outdoing them in their revolutionary zeal for the rarified privileges of the material good life. 

The Marxist co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, is now on her fourth woke home. She has moved on from the barricades to the security fences of her Topanga Canyon digs in a mostly all-white, all-rich rural paradise—the rewards for revolutionary service.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/murderous-anti-semitism-effort-kill-iron-dome-richard-l-cravatts/

Even for Congressional Democrats who, in recent years, have shown a growing animosity and even cruelty toward Israel, last week’s effort to remove $1 billion of funding to maintain Israel’s Iron Dome defense system was particularly grotesque. Congressional “Squad” members, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and including Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), pressured the Democratic House leadership to strip funding to Israel for this key military technology that tracks and intercepts incoming rockets and has a success rate of doing so of over 90 percent. 

It is one thing to seek to deprive a country of offensive weapons out of a wish to minimize further conflict, reduce casualties of that country’s enemies, or based on a record of abusive or disproportionate use of weaponry in previous military engagements. But Iron Dome is a defensive weapon, which, in neutralizing incoming and potentially lethal rockets, saves Israeli lives by ensuring that Hamas rockets never reach their intended targets. It also, of course, saves Arab lives, as well, since the inevitable political and military Israeli response to high numbers of its citizens’ casualties that might well occur in Iron Dome’s absence would be more aggressive and prolonged retaliation against Hamas, along with unfortunate, but inevitable, civilian casualties—especially since Hamas regularly (and in violation of international law) embeds itself and fires its rockets from Gazan neighborhoods, mosques, hospitals, and other non-military locations.

Any sentient being understands that Iron Dome reduces deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians, and therefore its use ought to be continued and supported, but not, apparently, the radical Leftist Squad, whose decision to push for these funding cuts cannot be explained away by any other interpretation than that these members of Congress do not care at all about Jewish lives and are willing to sacrifice them in a hollow, though long professed, desire to promote Palestinian self-determination. In seeking social justice for the Arabs, these policymakers, and their fellow Israel-hating travelers, wish to level the playing field of military engagement, favoring the weak in the name of equity and justice.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/respondent-exposing-cartel-family-law-jason-d-hill/

Family breakdown is the single greatest threat to American society. Every day, more than 4,000 children lose a parent because of our archaic and inhumane family-court system. Every day, ten divorced men commit suicide. And now, one in three children in our country is without a father.

The Respondent is Ellis’s personal story about a Hollywood dream razed by internal and external forces. Part memoir, part meditation, and part manifesto, it’s a timely and heartrending portrait of perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the American legal system. Through its candor and moral strength, The Respondent offers guidance and hope. As such, it’s an indispensable read for not only parents enduring the grief of child separation, but all interested in learning about the gross overreach and unrelenting brutality of family law.

This book is a masterpiece and a gem on many levels. To begin with, Ellis is a brilliant writer and stylist. The prose is of another world—elegiac and full of pathos without becoming mawkishly sentimental. The writing is cinematic and evocative. The words create a lush visual image of the harrowing experiences Ellis experienced by losing custody of his children. If you want to learn how deeply family law is antipodal to the interests of the father—then read this book. If you want to learn how one innocent man survived the single-minded goal of his spouse to destroy his life and career, but who emerged with his dignity intact, his love of life burning incandescently, and the way his profound love for his sons have kept him living with sustained purpose and meaning—read this book.

I was struck by Greg Ellis’ graciousness throughout the book. In describing the toxic manner by which his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law tried to set him up and destroy his life, Ellis does not resort to demonization of those vocationally called to destroy him. Rather, in a dignified and restrained manner he unfolds the chain of events that led to the crisis, orchestrated by his ex-wife, that found him being forced into a psychiatric unit.

The book is suspenseful and a real page-turner. Fathers matter. They love their children deeply and want to protect them. This is the story of a devoted father viewed as almost sub-human by the guardians and enforcers of family law. If your marriage is on the rocks and you honestly think divorce is a possibility—then read this book. It is chock full of profound insights about the nature of family law, and the hidden anti-male attitudes embedded in our culture that influence that law. Thousands of fathers like Greg Ellis have suffered unspeakable injustice by a legal system that regards men—by nature—as disposable, toxic and incapable of efficacious parenting.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/hows-anti-trump-doing-not-so-good-bruce-thornton/

Joe Biden was touted by his supporters as the anti-Trump, the seasoned politician and “centrist” who had the experience, gravitas, and governing skills that the radical “demagogue” Donald Trump lacked. Supposedly, Biden also possessed the respect for “democratic norms” and the “empathy” lacking in the abrasive tweetster and crude-talking ex-reality show host. Elect Biden, the pitch went, and the “adults” will be back in charge, the sacred “norms” and “decorum” once again respected, and our status in the world restored.

This appeal, of course, depended on hyping Trump’s “mean” tweets and rhetoric, while ignoring his successful first term achievements both at home and abroad. It also required burnishing Biden’s decades of mediocrity and trimming, his gaffes and plagiarism, his unseemly attention to women and girls, and the stench of corruption wafting from his career. Indeed, the odor was so strong that his media and social media courtiers had to discredit, censor, and embargo the blockbuster New York Post story about son Hunter’s laptop and emails, which we now know is authentic and contains strong, corroborated evidence of Biden’s complicity in his son’s influence-peddling grift. And as the campaign progressed, the Dems’ media flaks were compelled to ignore as well the obvious signs of Biden’s cognitive decline.

But last November the Dems and the media pulled Biden across the finish line, leaving another bad odor of electoral anomalies the bipartisan establishment keeps declaring is actually the stink of conspiracy theories that––without a thorough investigation conducted to settle the issue–– they somehow know are in fact MAGA fantasies. Biden took office, and immediately began undoing Trump’s successes, as if to show that his policies, like his confected “presidential” persona, will be the antitheses of Trump’s.

In just eight months, we have now a record with which we can judge that governing principle.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-energy-price-shock-oil-gas-opec-shortage-11632950693?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Crude prices hit $80 a barrel on Tuesday, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) warned oil could skyrocket without increased investment in new production. So much for the claim that the death of fossil fuels is nigh.

Europe’s climate follies have created fuel shortages and price spikes that are rippling through global energy markets. Demand for liquefied natural gas in Europe has soared due to waning wind production, the shutdown of coal and nuclear plants, and lower Russian gas deliveries. But there’s not enough LNG to supply Europe and the world.

Asia and Europe are having to burn more coal to keep their lights on. But coal is also in short supply, and factories in China are shutting down as local governments ration power. Gas-powered generators in Asia are switching to burning oil, which is also pushing up crude prices.

Goldman Sachs projects that crude could hit $90 a barrel by year end, which could add 10 to 20 cents a gallon to gasoline prices at the pump. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday assured Americans that the Administration is speaking “to international partners, including OPEC” about “doing more to support the recovery.” How about encouraging more U.S. production?

https://www.city-journal.org/three-facts-about-crime

Though academics, the media, and politicians can’t seem to agree on much when it comes to crime in the United States, three stubborn facts generally apply.

First, crime is heavily concentrated by place. As a general matter, 5 percent of the locations in a given city account for 50 percent of that city’s crime. This finding has been replicated so often that it is sometimes referred to as “the law of crime concentration.” As David Weisburd and Taryn Zastrow note in a recent Manhattan Institute report, “there is tremendous consistency in the degree to which crime is concentrated at hot spots across cities.” This is not just a matter of neighborhoods: between 3 percent and 5 percent of specific addresses on city blocks generate 50 percent or more of reported crimes. And if the focus is strictly on violent crime, such as shootings, then even fewer locations—perhaps a drug house or a liquor-store check-cashing operation—are magnets for an even greater percentage of violent crime.

This first rule has important implications for law enforcement. Identifying and concentrating on hot spots can yield big rewards. Merely parking a patrol car outside of these addresses can lessen crime; even better to identify what exactly is going on there. Some crime may be displaced to other locations when the police shut down hot spots, but evidence shows that suppressing crime at these magnet addresses may create a diffusion of benefits that extends beyond the hot spot. After all, setting up another stash house or problematic liquor store is not always so simple.

Second, violent crime is heavily concentrated in a relatively few individuals. In general, 5 percent of the criminal offenders (not 5 percent of the general population) in a given city commit about 50 percent of that city’s violent crime. One study found that just 1 percent of offenders were responsible for over 60 percent of violent crime.