RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11745765/East-Palestine-Ohio-residents-demand-urgent-testing-toxic-train-wreck.html

‘We basically nuked the town’: Hundreds of residents in Ohio village demand urgent testing of their homes after train wreck released toxic chemicals into the air – and officials tell them it’s safe to return
About 50 cars, including 10 carrying hazardous materials, derailed in a fiery crash in East Palestine at about 9pm on Friday, February 3
Some train cars were carrying hazardous chemicals and houses were evacuated while authorities carried out a ‘controlled release’
But residents are suing Norfolk Southern and fear their health is still at risk 

Residents evacuated from an Ohio village where a freight train derailed before huge clouds of toxic gasses were released in an explosion fear they could still be in danger nearly two weeks later, despite authorities telling them it’s safe to return home.

About 50 cars, including 10 carrying hazardous materials, derailed in a fiery crash in East Palestine at about 9pm on Friday, February 3.

Houses were evacuated after vinyl chloride was slowly released from five of those cars. Authorities then ignited the gases for a ‘controlled release’ of the highly flammable, toxic chemicals in a controlled environment, creating a dark plume of smoke.

Officials warned the controlled burn would send phosgene and hydrogen chloride into the air. Phosgene is a highly toxic, colorless gas with a strong odor that can cause vomiting and breathing trouble and was used as a weapon in World War I.

Despite the threat, safety officials insisted it is safe for residents who were evacuated to return to their homes just days later.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/17/the-cbo-exposes-bidens-5-45-trillion-lie/

While spending the country into ruin, President Joe Biden likes to portray himself as a fiscal conservative who has cut the deficit in half in the past two years. But a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows just how big a lie this is — a 5 1/2 trillion dollar lie, to be exact.

During his State of the Union speech last week, Biden not only claimed that “my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history,” he also claimed that he’s a miser compared to Donald Trump. “Under the previous administration, the American deficit went up four years in a row. … Nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate was added by just one administration alone — the last one,” he said. 

“They’re the facts. Check it out. Check it out.”

Well, we checked it out. And it is perhaps the most flagrant of all Biden’s lies. The evidence shows that Biden is, in fact, the most fiscally reckless president in history.

Days after Biden’s speech, the CBO released its latest 10-year forecast for the federal budget. What it reveals is that Biden sharply increased the deficit last year, this year, and next year, and he has set the country on course to add a total of $5.45 trillion to the federal deficit over the following decade.

How do we know this? Because two years ago, when the CBO released its 2021 budget forecast, it did so before any of Biden’s policies had been enacted. That report assumed that the laws in place at the end of President Donald Trump’s term remained in effect for the next decade. So, it serves as a baseline against which we can measure the impact of Biden’s policies.

Here’s what the numbers show:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-leftist-ideologies-always-fail/

I want to discuss, in the brief space I have, the roots of modern Leftist philosophy, and why they believe government and force are the essentials to a more perfect society. There is an inherent contradiction in their system which would nullify it, but the Leftist’s fundamental understanding of human nature is in error, and thus any arrangement based on it is doomed to failure. And has.

Modern leftism has an interesting history, but one I cannot fully elucidate here. Though it has predecessors (Locke, Helvetius), its current manifestation is rooted in Darwinian materialism (one foundation of Marxism). According to this hypothesis, humans evolved, naturally and by chance, from “lower” forms of life. Pure, undiluted Darwinism, thus pure leftism, is atheistic—no God created or controlled the process. That means human beings are nothing more than blobs of matter in motion. The only difference between you and a cockroach is a different configuration of molecules, and that’s totally by chance. You can no more help being a human than a cockroach can help being a cockroach. There is, of course, some verity to this.

However, since humans are nothing but groups of molecules in motion, we can react only to whatever environmental forces surround us. There is no freedom of choice in such a system. And no free will implies we are not responsible for what we do. Criminals aren’t guilty of “crimes”; it isn’t their fault, they respond exclusively to environmental factors. Also, poverty has been said to be a root cause of crime. Thus, by changing the environment (a “war on poverty”), human behavior can be modified. Put an apple tree in an environment of good water, soil, sunshine, etc., and bigger, tastier, juicier apples will be produced. The apples have no “choice” in the matter, they only respond to their surroundings. Since humans are, like apples, only molecules formed, by chance, into what we are, then, like apples, we will react only to whatever external stimuli we receive. People thus aren’t “good” or “bad” except as their environment dictates.

Leftist intellectuals believe that humans (especially them) have evolved to the point where they can control the evolutionary process, if only we will give them power. They will create a Utopia, by good laws and education, so that everybody can be in a “good” environment and respond accordingly.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/to_leftists_great_disappointment_the_doj_did_not_indict_matt_gaetz.html

After an investigation lasting almost two years, the DOJ couldn’t make the case that a prominent member MAGA conservative was a sex predator.

At the end of March 2021, leftists were ecstatic: At the recommendation of the FBI, the DOJ was investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz, an enthusiastic, fearless member of the House’s Freedom Caucus, for sex trafficking based on an alleged relationship with a teenage girl. Interestingly, Gaetz never seemed fazed by the allegations—and now we know why: There was nothing there. Even the hyper-politicized DOJ has conceded that it cannot pursue him for sex trafficking.

On March 30, 2021, Democrats got one of the most exciting pieces of news ever: The New York Times broke the story that the Department of Justice, while Trump was still in office, had started investigating Matt Gaetz for sex trafficking a 17-year-old over state borders. More accurately, he was accused of having had a relationship with her and paying for her travel with him:

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2023/02/16/destroying-meritocracy-is-deadly-n1670988

A recent epidemic of airline near misses deserves both attention and reflection.

In mid-December, a San Francisco-bound United Airlines Boeing 777-200 airliner, just a little over a minute after taking off from Maui, Hawaii, suddenly dived. It lost more than half its altitude and came within 800 feet of crashing into the Pacific Ocean before pulling up.

About a month later, an American Airlines jet crossed the runway at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport just as a Delta Air Lines plane was accelerating for takeoff. The two aircraft nearly collided.

Then in February, a FedEx cargo jet at the Austin, Texas airport just missed crashing into a Southwest Airlines airliner by a mere 100 feet.

The same month an American Airlines Airbus A321 was being towed out of the gate at Los Angeles International airport, and smashed into a bus carrying passengers between terminals, injuring five.

Related: Buttigieg on Biden’s Mental Fitness: ‘I’m Glad To Have a President Who Can Ride a Bicycle’

These near and actual accidents come amid a general landscape of aviation chaos.

After Christmas, Southwest Airlines simply canceled 71 percent of its flights. It blamed staff shortages due to storms. The airline seemed incapable of ensuring enough of their pilots, attendants, crews, and airport staff could get to work.

The Federal Aviation Administration in January canceled all flight departures from the United States for two hours due a computer safety system collapse. Thousands of additional flights were canceled, many for over 24 hours.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/16/the-newsom-nuisance/

With a classified document scandal encircling him like a vulture waiting on a wounded animal to succumb to its injuries, Joe Biden’s chances to be a presidential candidate next year are closing in on nil. So who will be the Democrats’ flagship candidate? The smart money says it will be the foolish Gavin Newsom.

The California governor wouldn’t be the only candidate, of course. A lineup for the primaries is likely to include, at the least, current vice president and former U.S. senator from California Kamala Harris, as well as previous candidates Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Even former First Lady Michelle Obama appears in the betting lines.

The clear favorite, though, a year before the primaries, has to be Newsom. He has the backing, the teeth, the hair, the Hollywood glam – and 54 electoral votes.

What he doesn’t have is any good reason whatsoever to be president. He does, though, have a lot of good ones not to be. He is California’s Governor, not America’s Governor, a title better suited for Florida’s Ron DeSantis.

While perfectly cast in the role as the chief executive of California, and adored in blue states on both coasts, and a few in the middle, Newsom’s appeal to red America will be less indifference than outright contempt. He is everything that those voters dislike.

https://stephenrittenberg.substack.com/p/utopian-thinking-ii-the-assault-on?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=auto_share&r=2k6p0

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool

_ George Orwell

           In our previous essay we noted the universality of utopian yearnings, the longing for a perfect world where all conflict, pain, suffering and death would be eliminated. All would dwell happily in the Garden of Eden, or Heaven on Earth-Utopia. As psychoanalysts we noted the way this yearning constitutes a regressive pull back to the earliest phase of human development, the stage when the baby and its needs reign supreme. The longing for perfect bliss in a perfect world is so strong that some of the most gifted and intelligent among us have succumbed to its siren call. Even Lionel Trilling, perhaps the greatest literary critic and social observer of the twentieth century was briefly drawn to the utopian promise of Communism in the 1930’s.

Stalin’s brutal show trials disillusioned him and in the mid 1940’s he wrote a novel, Middle of the Journey, about the lure and the disillusion. The narrator, John Laskell, an intellectual and stand in for the author, is what was known in those days as a “fellow traveler.” All his friends were either Communist party members or strong sympathizers. At the height of his intellectual powers Laskell falls ill and nearly dies. He starts thinking about the reality of his biological self and the questions his near death raises. He muses about the limits death imposes. He searches for meaning not in utopian politics but in his own individual life. He remembers a woman he loved who died young before their personal relationship could grow. Personal loss, the body’s fragility, limits, begin to feel inevitable.

His close friends, ardent Communists refuse to talk with him about the spiritual and psychological questions his illness raises. He annoys them because death is not personal for them; their friendship is not personal. Rather he is a comrade member of a great revolutionary movement. He notices and is troubled that they aren’t really interested in his uniquely individual experience, but rather in him as a member of a class in the vanguard of the coming new world.

They particularly do not want to hear him say that his period of withdrawal from the world into his illness and recovery had its pleasurable aspect. He liked being cared for and in fact enjoyed contemplating a beautiful rose in his sick room, instead of mulling over the plight of the masses. Trilling places biological reality against utopian longings. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/paula-bolyard/2023/02/14/important-takeaways-from-ohio-govs-train-derailment-briefing-including-a-shocking-revelation-n1670610

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine took to the podium on Tuesday to update reporters and citizens about the devastating train derailment in E. Palestine, Ohio, on February 3. The small town has been reeling in the wake of the derailment and subsequent controlled burn of dangerous chemicals days after the wreck.

One of the most astounding revelations from the press conference (watch below) was that the train was not classified as carrying hazardous chemicals.

“I learned today from the PUCO [Public Utilities Council of Ohio] that this train was not considered a high hazardous material train,” DeWine said. As a result, the railroad was not required to notify anyone in Ohio about what the train was carrying.

“Even though some rail cars did have hazardous material on board, and while most of them did not, that’s why it was not categorized as a high hazardous material train,” said DeWine. “Frankly, if this is true, and I’m told it’s true, this is absurd. And we need to look at this. And Congress needs to take a look at how these things are handled. We should know when we are trains carrying hazardous materials that are going through the state of Ohio.” The governor called on Congress to investigate the matter and make changes to the law if necessary.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/15/as-inflation-continues-to-roar-why-do-biden-powell-and-yellen-still-have-jobs/

Almost exactly two years ago today, the New York Times ran an article headlined: “Biden and Fed Leave 1970s Inflation Fears Behind.”

That story has not aged well. Neither have the troika of ideologues and imbeciles behind the rebirth of ‘70s-era inflation.

On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that prices climbed 0.5% in January, which is up from December’s 0.1% hike. Prices were up 6.4% over the year before, which is higher than economists had been predicting and comes amid warnings that inflationary pressures are building again.

This all comes one week after President Biden reassured the nation that “here at home, inflation is coming down.”

And it comes two years after the New York Times reported how Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell were all in agreement that spending $1.9 trillion to stimulate an economy that was already roaring back from the COVID lockdowns would not set off an inflationary spiral.

“Administration and Fed officials argue that workers not getting enough stimulus help is a larger concern than potential spikes in consumer prices,” the Times wrote on February 15, 2021.

The story quotes Yellen saying “I have spent many years studying inflation and worrying about inflation. But we face a huge economic challenge here and tremendous suffering in the country. We have got to address that. That’s the biggest risk.”

The Times notes that Powell gave a speech in which he pushed back on the idea that Biden’s spending splurge combined with easy money when the economy was roaring back from the COVID lockdowns would spark inflation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/christine-wilson-resigns-federal-trade-commission-lina-khan-ftc-87328998?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is breaking sundry regulatory norms in her rush to remake modern antitrust law, as commissioner Christine Wilson details nearby in explaining her resignation. Ms. Khan’s norm-busting ironically may make the FTC more vulnerable to legal challenges that eventually weaken its powers.

President Biden first broke political norms by installing Ms. Khan as FTC Chair immediately after the Senate confirmed her by a 69-28 vote to serve on the commission. It’s customary for a President when nominating members to independent agencies to announce at the same time if they will serve as chair. Mr. Biden didn’t.

The Chair has considerable power to control hiring, direct investigations and set the agenda. Many Senate Republicans might have opposed Ms. Khan as Chair because of her long record agitating to replace the antitrust consumer-welfare standard that Robert Bork helped develop in the 1970s.

***

After her elevation, Ms. Khan quickly expanded her power. On a series of 3-2 votes, Democratic commissioners supplanted the agency’s chief administrative law judge who had long presided over fact-finding and rule-making. They also scrapped a requirement for a commission majority vote before staff can launch an investigation.

She then abused an obscure voting rule in the autumn of 2021 to let former Democratic commissioner Rohit Chopra cast pivotal votes even after he had left the agency to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These “zombie” votes allowed Mr. Chopra to break the agency’s then 2-2 partisan split, including on a major shift in merger policy.