RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/28/trump-tariffs-trade-and-a-taboo/

After only a hundred days, the Trump counterrevolution has made quite miraculous progress on the border, illegal immigration, cost-cutting, curbing the DEI/woke revolution, and a historic Ukrainian War settlement.

The pushback to this multifront effort from the left has been formidable, if not hysterical. The greatest fury mostly centers around Trump’s efforts to force U.S. trading partners to adopt either reciprocal or no tariffs while obeying international trading norms—an effort aimed at vastly reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

If Trump could cut a proverbial deal in the next 100 days that, say, cut the annual $1.2 trillion trade deficit in half, coupled with multitrillion-dollar foreign investments, then stocks and bonds would settle down.

Wall Street would go back to its traditional platitudes that the trade deficit then would be no higher than the 3-percent-of-GDP red line.

Stocks would then soar in anticipation of the other news of a continuation of tax cuts, more budgetary reductions, robust energy development, and further deregulation.

The U.S. has run a half-century of trade deficits. And now the red ink has climbed to nearly $1.2 trillion, the largest in history. Yet for all practical purposes, only a few entities account for most of an astronomical sum. And they all have corollary concerns to the U.S. that make their surpluses part of larger problems.

The administration can accurately talk about “70 nations wanting to deal.” But, in truth, if Trump were to settle with just China, Mexico, Canada, the EU, and the ten-nation Southeast Asian trading bloc (ASEAN), then the so-called trade wars would be over.

Start with our North American partners Mexico ($171.9 trillion surplus) and Canada ($63 trillion surplus) that alone account for over 20 percent of the U.S. trade deficit.

Canada’s surplus is almost entirely attributable to its vast oil and gas sales to the U.S. Almost all its daily oil exports go to the U.S., some four million barrels—as well as half its natural gas shipments.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/28/americans-love-hate-relationship-with-elon-musk-tesla-doge-ii-tipp-poll/

For some, it’s hard to imagine an unpaid civil servant doing an important job for the government could be treated worse than Elon Musk. The government cost-cutting head of DOGE has been rewarded for his service by a boycott of Tesla and its stock, by death threats, insults, and violent attacks on Tesla dealers and owners. And now, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, a surprisingly large share of the population backs this behavior.

The national online I&I/TIPP poll was taken by 1,452 adults from March 26 to March 28. It has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points. The poll was intended to look at the anti-Musk phenomenon, and how average people view anti-Musk protesters.

Respondents were asked three questions, the first being: “Do you support or oppose the Tesla Takedown movement’s call to protest Elon Musk by selling Tesla vehicles and stock?”

A clear plurality of 43% say they either support it “strongly” (27%) or “somewhat” (16%), while a smaller 32% oppose it either “strongly” (23%) or “somewhat” (9%). Another 14% said they were “not familiar with the movement,” while 11% described themselves as “not sure.”

Not surprisingly, Democrats back the selling of Tesla vehicles and stock by 53% “support” to 26% “oppose,” while independents give the boycott 40% support to 29% opposition.

But perhaps most surprising are Republicans, who support the call to protest Musk by 40% but oppose it by an equal 40%.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

President Trump has achieved a few goals. Border crossings by illegal migrants have declined by close to ninety percent. Military recruitment is up, with Army recruitment at 15-year highs. DOGE has exposed waste and fraud in many government agencies, and woke ideology is on the run. And, unlike the Biden years, we know who is in charge at the White House.

But in other respects Mr. Trump has been less successful. He is wrong, in my opinion, when he calls for the capitulation of Ukraine, and when he advocates for tariffs – a tax on American consumers. His on-again-off-again tariffs have wreaked havoc with the stock market, weakened the dollar, and caused a pause in the economy. A weak dollar would result in higher interest rates for U.S. Treasuries. While illegal migration poses cultural and dependency risks, globalization and a strong dollar have raised living standards, as the cost of consumables, measured in hours worked, have declined over the decades, due to manufacturing being done where it is most cost efficient, along with technological innovations. Stronger education standards, secure borders, and a tax code that encourages innovation and investment are what is needed, not barriers to free trade. And I fail to understand Mr. Trump’s love affair with cryptocurrencies.

This essay focuses on a few of the challenges we face. (There are, obviously, many others). Shakespeare’s three witches had filled their cauldron with fillets of fenny snakes, eyes of Newts, tongues of dogs, and other such delicacies, but the cauldron of which I write is filled with threats: federal debt and unfunded liabilities at record levels; interest rates that encourage borrowing and discourage savings; public schools that don’t educate; declining birthrates – a world-wide phenomenon; an imperialistic China; a revanchist Russia; a soon-to-be nuclear armed Iran; and, I would argue, an absence of moral judgement.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5266419-musk-tesla-government-efficiency

Elon Musk has announced that, in the coming months, he will be spending more time managing Tesla, and less time on his Department of Government Efficiency. Although good news for Tesla shareholders, this is bad news for our country.   

Musk’s pivot is not shocking, but it should anger every patriotic American. The left is guilty of carrying out one of the most despicable vendettas of all time — against Musk and the car company he founded. Why? Because Musk has been volunteering his time to help streamline and modernize our government. Americans no longer wear poodle skirts or eat TV-dinners, but they are saddled with a federal bureaucracy propped up by 1950s-era technology and systems. It is absurd, and DOGE has been working at warp speed to make it better.   

The left’s insane outrage over Musk’s investigations into federal waste and fraud has driven attacks against Teslas for months, with cars being vandalized, drivers being harassed and dealerships being firebombed. Not one Democrat has called for an end to the madness.  

The incessant attacks have helped drive a downturn in sales of Tesla cars, disappointing earnings and a stock that is down 37 percent just since the beginning of the year. After all, who would want to put themselves or their families in danger by driving a Tesla? In response to the company’s travails, Musk has agreed to spend more time at the helm.  

Far from calling off the brutal attacks against Teslas, Democrats have cheered the company’s struggles. 

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-restoring-meritocracy-executive-order-disparate-impact-theory-civil-rights

Measured in Trump time, it took them eons to get around to it, but the White House has finally taken the most important step it can to restore meritocracy to American society: eliminating disparate-impact theory from civil rights analysis and enforcement.

Disparate-impact theory holds that if a neutral, colorblind standard of achievement or behavior has a disproportionately negative effect on underrepresented minorities (overwhelmingly, on blacks), it violates civil rights laws. It has been used to invalidate literacy and numeracy standards for police officers and firemen, cognitive skills and basic knowledge tests for teachers, the use of SATs in college admissions, the use of grades for medical licensing exams, credit-based mortgage lending, the ability to discipline insubordinate students, and criminal background checks for employees and renters. It has been used to eliminate prosecution for a large range of crimes, including shoplifting, turnstile jumping, and resisting arrest; to end police tactics such as proactive stops (otherwise known as stop, question, and frisk); and to purge safety technologies like ShotSpotter and speeding cameras from police departments.

In none of those cases has it ever been demonstrated that the disfavored standard was implemented to exclude blacks or other minorities from a position, opportunity, or right. The genius (if a diabolical one) of disparate-impact theory was that it obviated any need to show discriminatory intent on the part of a targeted employer or institution. Discrimination was inferred simply by the effect of the colorblind standard.

Disparate-impact theory preserved the hegemony of the civil rights regime long after the original impetus for that regime had all but disappeared. One would be hard-pressed today to find any mainstream institution that discriminates against blacks in admissions, hiring, or promotion. The reality, in fact, is the opposite: every mainstream institution is desperate to hire and promote as many remotely qualified blacks as possible; it is white males who are disfavored and excluded from positions based on their skin color.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/25/can-trump-kill-this-2-2-trillion-regulatory-beast/

The President lays the groundwork for explosive economic growth.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” — Donald Kenkel, Cornell University

Last week, the New York Times discovered that President Donald Trump was serious when he promised to liberate the economy from the oppressive weight of the regulatory state, describing it as “deregulation on a mass scale.”

Cornell’s Donald Kenkel, who was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the first Trump administration, told the Times that “It’s going on much more quietly than some of the other fireworks we’re seeing, but it will have great impact.”

Great, indeed. In both senses of the word.

Gutting the regulatory state would free up massive amounts of pent-up economic energy, raise standards of living, lower inflation, and sharply cut the deficit, without unduly harming anyone (except busybody bureaucrats).

It’s hard to fathom just how gargantuan and intrusive the regulatory state has become over the past 100 years. Even the Times seems surprised, noting that “more than 400 federal agencies … regulate almost every aspect of American life.”

But that barely scratches the surface. Thursday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute released its annual “10,000 Commandments” report, which tracks the regulatory Leviathan. CEI calculates that the annual cost of complying with federal regulations is now $2.155 trillion.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/24/the-dangers-of-the-political-gender-gap/

Throughout history, poverty, class and economic self-interest have driven radical political movements. The Bolsheviks harnessed the anger of impoverished workers and peasants to create a movement that controlled the world’s biggest country for seven decades. The Nazis came to power due to both the Great Depression and resentment towards a small but economically nimble Jewish community.

Today, extremist politics is not bubbling up primarily from the economically disaffected, as occurred both in medieval and modern times during periods of upheaval. The self-professed radicals of our age seem more driven by their own inner cultural angst and disturbed psychology.

This angst is now expressed increasingly with violence, from the well-funded campaign against weirdo-genius Elon Musk, which includes arson attacks on Teslas, to the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, the most destructive outbreak of civil disorder in US history, as well as the awful ‘January 6’ riots. Blood-curdling rhetoric now comes even from the once respectable political class. Democratic congresswoman Jasmine Crockett wants Musk ‘taken down’ and says that Democrats have to be ‘okay with punching’. One study suggests that nearly 38 per cent of respondents and over half of ‘progressives’ would see the assassination of Donald Trump as ‘justified’.

At the core of today’s political extremes lies a deep-seated social anxiety, fuelled by atomisation and alienation between the sexes. This is particularly true for the young women who have become the vanguard of so-called progressives. This can be seen in leftists’ support for Luigi Mangione, who allegedly murdered healthcare executive Brian Thompson. In California, a centre of lunacy, there is even a pending proposition on healthcare reform named after Mangione. Taylor Lorenz, a former star reporter at the Washington Post and New York Times, has called the alleged murderer ‘a morally good man’. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was promoting a defence fund for Mangione before being shamed into taking it down. There is even a controversy about his ‘fangirls’, the young females who dominate the crowd at hearings about the case.

This division between men and women comes at a time when females are outpacing men in school and careers, leaving them with fewer potential partners, and are increasingly sceptical of marriage. Over 28 per cent of young US women, notes Gallup, identify as LGBTQ – more than twice the rate for older millennials. Over five per cent of US high-school students struggle with their gender identity, according to the CDC.

Alienated from traditional familial ties, young, educated and unattached women have become ever more prominent across the far left. Some even embrace violently homophobic and anti-feminist movements like Hamas and see no contradiction with their own supposedly progressive beliefs. A large, highly disproportionate segment of anti-Israel activists, notes researcher Eitan Hersh, consists of LGBTQ-identified people.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/24/what-is-democratic-legality/

Since 2021, the left has waged a veritable war against the American legal system in a variety of ways.

One serial target of Democrats and the Left has been the Supreme Court.

In 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke to an angry throng of pro-abortion protestors assembled at the very doors of the court chambers.

He threatened two of the justices, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, by name. Schumer yelled to the volatile crowd that the justices’ views would make them “reap the whirlwind,” and the two would not know what “hit” them.

In the ensuing months, protestors mobbed some of the conservative justices’ homes—likely committing felonies. The sympathetic Biden Justice Department chose not to follow the law, and so did nothing—although eventually a would-be assassin turned up.

Joe Biden himself bragged that he would try to ignore the Supreme Court ruling banning his arbitrary cancellation of billions of dollars in student loans. Indeed, he boasted, “The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me.”

In response, no one on the left ever complained about endangering the “rule of law” or Biden as “a dictator.”

For three years, four local, state, and federal prosecutors warped the law to neuter Donald Trump. Most of the charges had never been brought against other political figures in similar circumstances.

The vast majority of the 93 weaponized indictments backfired on the liberal prosecutors, who had contorted the legal system for political purposes and now face their own ethical or legal quagmires.

The federal prosecutor Jack Smith belatedly reported accepting $140,000 in free legal services.

Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis was removed from the Trump case and fined, and is now under further investigation.

New York prosecutor Letitia James is now facing allegations of falsification of documents and loan fraud.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-field-guide-to-the-american-left/

The Democrats have responded to their repudiation by the voters by tripling down on the toxic ideas and preposterous policies that make sense only when one remembers that, as DOGE has exposed, in the end, they are patent grifts, opportunities for enriching themselves and their plutocratic, corporate globalist co-grifters.

On one hand, this state of affairs makes for great comedy enlivened by 100-proof schadenfreude. But we should remember that as British PM Harold MacMillan famously said, “events” are the most frightening thing in politics. The unforeseen, the unpredictable, the astonishing anomaly, all are most powerful in representative governments with regularly scheduled elections that invite the voters to ask, whether fairly or not, those in power, “What have you done for us lately?”

Despite having twice been victims of that biennial habit of our democratic republic, the Dems seem to keep deepening the hole they’ve been digging for decades, mostly by endorsing various iterations of Marxism, and abandoning the Constitution––but also by willful blindness to the voters’ anger over their policies that defy not just the Constitution, but also morality, virtue, common sense, and the science they arrogantly claim as their guide.

Typical of the Dems’ willful blindness is their attacks on the Republicans’ attempts to stop the blatant corruption of our elections by passing the proposed Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act.

As Joe Concha recently pointed out, on this issue the contrast between the majority of voters, who are concerned about electoral integrity, and the Dems’ left-wing caucus, was one of the issues that cost them the election last November. Yet “208 Democrat Congressmen,” Concha reports, voted against “a bill aimed at preventing those who entered the country illegally from voting,” and 47 Senators for now are also lined up to vote against it. “And since 60 votes are needed for cloture,” Concha reminds us, “that means this is dead on arrival.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/04/parental_rights_at_risk_from_tyrannical_state_overreach.html

Last month, one-month-old Roxana was wrested at gunpoint from her mother Emily Yazdani’s breast by police and Child Protective Services (CPS) of Loudon County, Virginia. CPS placed the infant in a “foster to adopt” program before being returned to her parents after eight days. A few vigilant websites reported it, but mainstream media ignored this heartless snatching.

What did her parents do to warrant such an intervention? Nothing, says Roxana’s father Farzin Yazdani, an engineer and Navy veteran. CPS was acting on a false allegation of abuse filed by his ex-wife, with whom he is involved in a custody dispute over their five-year-old son. Her previous allegations that Yazdani was abusing their son had also resulted in separations that were later overturned.

While taking Roxana away, armed deputies said they were there “only to enforce.” But there was no warrant nor any specific charges—only CPS and police violating parental rights and riding roughshod over constitution-guaranteed due process. In actions faced by the Yazdanis, police withheld bodycam footage, and CPS rejected FOIA requests for its records.

Eventually, the abuse charges against Yazdani were dismissed. But despite no criminal record, he was handcuffed on one occasion, and, on another, watched helplessly as Roxana was torn from his wife. In a heartrending April 5 post on X, Yazdani called these actions “terror,” “psychological warfare,” and “government-sponsored child abuse.”