RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/25/despite-recent-good-news-the-public-remains-sour-on-the-economy-ii-tipp-poll-finds/

Inflation may have moderated, and the economy is showing signs of healthy growth, but the public remains deeply concerned about both, according to the latest I&I/TIPP poll.

The poll found that fully 80% of those surveyed by I&I/TIPP say they are either “very” (45%) or “somewhat” (35%) concerned about inflation. Just 17% say they are not concerned. That’s despite the fact that inflation has averaged just 2.6% this year – which is significantly lower than any year under the Biden administration – and came in lower than expected in July.

And while the economy grew a healthy 3% in the second quarter – which was better than expected – only 38% say the economy is improving, and more than three quarters (76%) say they are concerned about an economic slowdown or recession in the next 12 months.

The latest I&I/TIPP poll asked a series of questions to gauge the public’s views about whether the economy is in a recession, if it’s improving, concerns about inflation, whether their wages are keeping pace with prices, and the top three economic issues facing the economy. The national online I&I/TIPP Poll was taken by 1,362 voters from July 30-Aug. 1, and has a margin of error of is +/-2.7 percentage points.

The results show that most Americans remain highly troubled about the cost of living and are concerned about the near-term trajectory of the economy.

Concerns about inflation, for example, cross all ideological and demographic boundaries. While 90% of Democrats say they are concerned about inflation over the next 12 months, so are 71% of Republicans and 79% of independents. In fact, concern about inflation topped 70% in every one of the dozen demographic categories the I&I/TIPP Poll tracks.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/24/trumps-whirlwind-week-peace-talks-d-c-cleanup-and-a-cbo-win/

A week ago, I was writing about Donald Trump’s summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to talk about ending Russia’s war with Ukraine. A few days before that, I wrote about the Trump administration’s announcement that it would conduct a thorough “internal review” of the Smithsonian Institution and its vast network of museums, research centers, and related activities. It turns out that when Trump ordered the elimination of DEI initiatives, he meant it. In recent years, the Smithsonian has gradually morphed from an institution for the “increase & diffusion of knowledge among men” into a woke repository of progressive, anti-American shibboleths. Among other things, the colonoscopy-like review will counter the pervasive assumption that the history of the United States is tantamount to a history of oppression.

Last Monday, Trump quickly made good on his promise in Alaska to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, when he assembled the heads of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the European Union, and NATO at the White House to talk with Zelensky. It was an extraordinary event. Alas, “intransigence” seems to be Putin’s—or is it Zelensky’s?—middle name, so peace in that deadly conflict (total casualties have topped one million) continues to be elusive, despite Trump’s heroic efforts.

That disappointment has not stymied Trump. Instead, he took his peace agenda to Washington, D.C., putting the city under federal control—it had withered under home rule since 1973—and calling in the National Guard to help the Metropolitan Police reestablish order, aesthetic as well as legal. Homeless encampments were disassembled, grass is being replanted, and the law is being enforced. The results were nearly instantaneous. CNN put it this way: “Trump’s DC takeover produces moderate drop in crime—and huge spike in immigration arrests.”

A reporter for Fox was more forthright. “DC just had a murder-free week, and yes, Dems, Trump did that.” “As of Wednesday afternoon,” we read, “the nation’s capital has had no murders for seven days, something that had not been achieved since March and something I can find no recent record of in summer months when the murder rate is typically at its highest.”

And it’s not just murder, according to the local police union. Robbery dropped 46% in the week after the takeover, carjackings were down a whopping 83%, and violent crime was down 22%. Who could possibly argue against that?

Ask CNN.

Tariffs were supposed to be the stupid Trump idea that was going to eviscerate the stock market and crash the U.S. economy. A couple of days ago, Canada joined the long list of countries to drop its retaliatory tariffs in order to curry favor with Trump. Friday, the DOW logged an 840-point gain, closing above 45,600.

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/08/21/after-decades-of-scandals-hillary-finally-faces-a-ticket-she-cant-dodge-n4942909

The Long Drive Without a Ticket

Some drivers tempt fate for years, rolling through stop signs, cruising above the speed limit, and coasting through red lights, yet still never see flashing lights in their rearview mirrors. 

That describes Hillary Clinton’s story. 

From the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas to the corridors of Washington, she has been navigating the political arena, driving in the wrong direction on one-way streets, avoiding being pulled over, yet never receiving a ticket.

She’s muddied the waters by generating swirls of “stuff,” sometimes not so thick, other times so thick that a fork could remain vertical in the water.

Suddenly, an ethics complaint in Arkansas over her law license might lead to her finally getting pulled over after decades of FA; she might finally receive a dose, no matter how light, of FO.

1970s-1980s: Early Deals, Early Questions

At the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s career began with promise and power, establishing a reputation as a capable lawyer and a future first lady of the state. Yet the seeds of controversy began sprouting in soil well fertilized by bulls.

Want to make an easy $100,000 from a $1,000? Follow the example of Hillary, who turned that $1,000 into $100,000 with an investment in cattle futures within a year. How? Who knows, economists and traders were stumped, calling it statistically implausible for a rookie to achieve such a feat.

Clinton’s friends in the commodities market were suspected of smoothing the path for success, yet regulators turned a blind eye, while Hillary referred to it as a shrewd investment and moved on.

Meanwhile, both Clintons embarked on the Whitewater Development Corporation, where allegations of cronyism and political manipulation marred a land deal. The project had collapsed by the time investigators began reviewing records in the 1990s.

Hillary’s billing records, “missing” for two years, magically appeared in the White House residence after a subpoena. No charges, license suspensions, legal rebukes, simply another warning instead of receiving a moving violation.

Hillary walked into the 1990s with the same unblemished professional record and license, and critics called it a case of déjà vu. 

The cop, parked behind the billboard, clocked her speed and sat there, finishing his donut.

1990s: Whitewater, Travelgate, and the “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”

Bill Clinton moved into the White House with Hillary’s controversies following close behind. Whitewater escalated from a state-level issue into a national one, with hearings in Congress followed by extensive media coverage. Hillary’s role at the Rose Law Firm came under further scrutiny, as her professional work overlapped with her land ventures. Despite all the suspicions, nothing could be proved, neither intent nor personal gain.

The court of public opinion bruised her reputation, which remained intact.

Then came Travelgate, the abrupt firing of seven White House Travel Office employees in 1993, which raised alarms about cronyism. Critics determined that Hillary directed the purge to install loyalists. Investigations suggested that her fingerprints were present, but that was where it ended, with her denying wrongdoing, and the matter faded again.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trumps-smithsonian-restoration/

The Left has been wringing its hands this past week after Trump recently ordered a “comprehensive internal review” of several Smithsonian museums to ensure that the 178-year-old institution, captured by the Left, removes its relentless anti-American propaganda and provides some balance in its exhibitions and materials.

In an Aug. 12 letter from the White House to the Smithsonian’s woke chief, Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III, the White House stated:

As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.

The review is to help the administration “support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.”

The letter cited one of Trump’s executive orders from March, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which bluntly called out the Left’s “revisionist movement… to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light” – especially as manifested at the Smithsonian. That E.O. noted that the museum complex had, “in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

The ”recent years” under which that influence grew happen to coincide with the tenure of Lonnie G. Bunch III, who took over as the Secretary of the Smithsonian in 2019. Prior to that, he was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which is nearly exclusively focused on the legacy of slavery, with exhibits such as “In Slavery’s Wake,” “Slavery and Freedom,” and “Make Good the Promise.”

You may remember that it was also in 2019 that the Smithsonian collaborated with the New York Times on its historical revisionist 1619 Project, which falsely asserts that the United States’ founding was grounded not in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, but in racism and enslavement.

And then there was the 2020 controversy over a racist “whiteness” chart displayed in an online portal at Bunch’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, a chart that identified such traits as hard work and rational thought as being “white.” An accompanying graphic stated, in part,

White dominant culture, or whiteness, refers to the ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time and are now considered standard practices in the United States.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/22/the-light-shines-on-another-obama-scandal/

Weren’t we assured that Barack Obama went “into and out of office with not a whiff of scandal”? Yes we were. Former Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen told us so, as did many others. But it wasn’t true. There are many, the most recent a claim that Obama, and then Joe Biden, pressured bank executives to deny services to conservatives. It’s a serious charge that, like the Russia hoax, makes Watergate look like a sandbox squabble.

Here’s what we’ve learned: Acccording to Fox Business, major bank executives said “they were under pressure by the Obama and Biden administrations to deny services to individuals and businesses for political reasons.”

One executive said the “pressures were very, very real. When your regulator gives you a suggestion, it’s not a suggestion, it’s an order. The political stuff is very real, those pressures are real.”

This is known as “political debanking” and is “the involuntary termination of banking services to individuals and organizations based on their political or religious views,” says Todd J. Zywicki, a professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, who further “argues that access to financial services is a prerequisite for exercising constitutional rights.”

Zywicki’s March paper “traces the rise of political debanking from the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point, which targeted disfavored industries under the guise of ‘reputation risk.’” It was expanded under Biden administration, during which “Melania Trump and Michael Flynn faced account closures for their political stances.”

Other “high-profile cases” included “the cancellation of accounts tied to Donald Trump Jr.’s events and the National Committee for Religious Freedom,” and “illustrate a growing weaponization of the financial system to suppress dissent.” 

Operation Choke Point was a creation of the Obama Justice Department. Its mission was “to ‘choke out’ companies the administration considers a ‘high risk’ or otherwise objectionable, despite the fact that they are legal businesses,” says a House Oversight Committee report. “The goal of the initiative is to deny these merchants access to the banking and payments networks that every business needs to survive.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/08/russiagate_dismantling_the_democrats_hoax.html

At the long-anticipated U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15, President Trump stressed that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was well aware that his country had not interfered in the 2016 election. This unexpected remark amid talks on Ukraine war settlement referred to a massive legal work conducted by the intelligence community aimed at exposing that “treasonous conspiracy.”

That is, in mid-July this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed that the so-called Russiagate investigation was politically motivated and inspired by the Democrat party, particularly the outgoing Obama administration in late 2016. The disclosures reinforced suspicions long held but never conclusively substantiated: the Russia-interference claim was not merely flawed but deliberately constructed to undermine Trump’s presidency.

Russiagate in a Nutshell

On January 6, 2017—just days before Donald Trump’s inauguration—the U.S. intelligence community released a new assessment concluding that “Russia interfered in the election to favor Trump.” This statement reversed six months of prior assessments, which indicated there had been no recorded foreign meddling through cyber operations.

The strong claim had a profound and long-lasting impact. It is not just about Trump’s first term being severely obstructed. Many of his top-tier supporters were “canceled,” some of them sent to jail under false “evidence.” Trump himself suffered massive reputational damage that had almost buried his political career. Overall, the meddling accusation campaign resulted in better electoral positions for the Democrat party during the 2018 and 2020 elections.

Besides, Russiagate prompted some anti-interference bills to be passed by Congress. Many of them included sanctions on Russia and other adversaries of the U.S. which led to higher tensions with Moscow, Iran, and China. Some pundits say this plot could have triggered numerous wars, including hostilities in Ukraine.

Moreover, the accusations led to a long-lasting investigation by the FBI and other agencies, which cost American taxpayers a hefty pile of money. The initial FBI investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, transformed into Special Counsel Mueller’s probe, and it damaged the federal budget for some $35 million. Durham’s subsequent probe cost some $7 million, and other congressional investigations expenses up to $5 million.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/education-and-wealth-trump-all-identity-politics/

One of the strangest and dysfunctional ideas in our society has been “identity politics.” This creation sprang from Cultural Communism’s exploitation of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society’s federal legislation and agencies’ redistribution of taxpayer money. The purpose was to keep the newly franchised black citizens mired as victims still oppressed by racist whites, and to make blacks political clients of the Democrat left, a project launched in the U.S. by Stalin decades earlier.

The effort was a success if measured by the subsequent predictability of black voters’ loyalty to Democrats. They have remained loyal despite a lack of reciprocation by the Dems. For example, look at black politicians who have ignored the persistent scandal of black-on-black violent crime. The current Democrat assault on the police and efforts to reduce fighting crime is disproportionately dangerous for “black lives,” who don’t “matter” to Dems as much as we’ve been told.

After the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow law, savvier American leftists knew that the improvement in black lives starting in the 1920s and increasing in the postwar period, and the growing distaste for racism, would create difficulty for the Democrat left’s plan to capture black votes.

So, they continued to treat blacks as victims, thus creating a reliable constituency. In fact, the black vote has gone Democratic for decades until Trump’s second presidential election achieved the highest number of black voters by any modern Republican candidate.

In addition, either unknown or indifferent to the moral hazards when the Dems started federal redistribution of Great Society funds in the Sixties, the plan actually worsened black lives. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley catalogued the earlier decades of improvement, as well as the decline after the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society programs, and their malign moral hazard of the federal dole that worsened black lives:

Between 1890 and 1940, for example, black marriage rates in the U.S. were higher than white marriage rates. In the 1940s and ’50s, black labor-participation rates exceeded those of whites; black incomes grew much faster than white incomes; and the black poverty rate fell by 40 percentage points. Between 1940 and 1970—that is, during Jim Crow and prior to the era of affirmative action—the number of blacks in middle-class professions quadrupled. In other words, racial gaps were narrowing. Steady progress was being made. Blacks today hear plenty about what they can’t achieve due to the legacy of slavery and not enough about what they did in fact achieve notwithstanding hundreds of years in bondage followed by decades of legal segregation.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/21/what-is-the-democrat-alternative-to-trump/

The Pavlovian Left goes berserk at the mere prospect of each new Trump initiative.

Its escalating reactive venom and hysteria are calibrated to the success of Trump’s latest policy.

Yet the new hard-left Democratic Party offers no counter-agenda to explain its furor.

Still less do Democrats attempt bipartisan efforts to craft shared legislation.

Take foreign policy.

Democrat senators trashed the recent Trump-Putin Alaskan summit as a failure. Then they became depressed when, just days later, an entourage of European leaders and President Zelensky of Ukraine suddenly flew to the White House.

The Euros praised Trump for offering some sort of negotiated pathway to peace after over three years of war and some 1.5 million dead, wounded, missing, and captured on both sides—on Europe’s doorstep.

So why did Democrats object to such negotiations by Trump?

Was the reason that no such thing occurred during the Biden administration, when Putin invaded Ukraine, after his earlier invasions during the Obama era?

What is the left’s alternate plan? The old Biden idea of supplying Ukraine with enough money and arms to keep fighting and dying, but with no path to either victory or a negotiated peace?

Would they prefer a fourth, fifth, or sixth year of war, or an additional one million casualties?

The more Trump pressed almost all NATO members to pay their promised two percent of GDP on defense, the more Democrats grew irate over Trump’s overseas influence.

NATO members now want to raise defense spending to five percent of GDP and gush that Trump is “Daddy.”

Democrats steamed at that, since Europeans are supposed to hate Trump, not admire him for rebooting NATO.

Would they prefer the old, disarmed NATO?

Under the Biden administration, over 10 million illegal aliens flooded the country, sometimes 10,000 a day at the southern border.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/18/gavin-newsom-the-chameleon-who-destroyed-california/

Gavin Newsom may be saddled with an awful record. But the California governor is rapidly emerging as a leading bet – even a frontrunner in some polls – in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. How is this possible?

The simple answer is that Newsom might be the ultimate candidate for the attention-deficient generation. He is a political chameleon who changes positions compulsively – not according to facts, but to whatever best seems to fit the national mood. We witnessed this after last year’s presidential election, when he began ‘bro-washing’ his slick image with some cringe-worthy appearances on podcasts. One of these even included an embrace of gun ownership – a surprise to many of his supporters who had voted for him on the basis of his strong anti-gun record.

Newsom follows what may be charitably described as a flexible ideology. He flip-flops even on his core issues, such as climate change. Newsom, an avid supporter of Net Zero, basically fell on his knees before Big Oil in April, when two companies announced they were shutting their Californian oil refineries as a result of oppressive green regulations.

Newsom has proven equally slippery on woke social issues. In recent years, he made California a ‘refuge’ for transgender children, supporting the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy on minors. Indeed, these policies were central to Newsom’s assaults on rival states Texas and Florida. But he shocked trans activists in March by admitting that having biological males compete with women was ‘unfair’. Clearly, he had sensed which way the political wind was blowing.

Now, the chameleon has changed his colours once again. After trying to appeal to MAGA voters in the aftermath of Trump’s November victory, he is back leading the ‘Resistance’. Last week, he promised to redraw California’s congressional districts to the advantage of Democrats. In June, as US federal agents targeted undocumented immigrants in California, Newsom accused Trump of a ‘brazen abuse of power’. Like all aspiring Democrats, he regularly denounces Trump as a fascist.

But Newsom has an even bigger, more vulnerable Achilles’ heel than his shifting political positions. It is the undeniable economic and social decline he has overseen as governor of California.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/nigerian-leftist-calls-for-a-new-constitution-for-america/

A Nigerian immigrant and a German publishing company teamed up to call for the destruction of America and a new Constitution.

In the name of ‘democracy’.

Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris both ran (and lost) on ‘democracy’ and the media branded Trump’s victories as defeats for ‘democracy’. This may seem confusing for those who think democracy means ‘one man, one vote’, but for the Left, democracy means that they win, democratic power means they wield it and anything that threatens their hegemony is a ‘threat to democracy’. When they talk about saving democracy, they really mean working to eliminate it.

So in this Orwellian landscape, calls for democracy are about the scariest things around.

Moderates see election defeats as a setback while extremists see them as an opportunity to radicalize a shocked base into accepting their radical plans. Did Kamala lose in 2024? That’s because we just don’t have enough “democracy”. What does democracy look like?

Osita Nwanevu, a writer at the New Republic, a formerly liberal turned leftist magazine bought in succession by a Facebook founder and banking fortune heir, has a big idea in his book, ‘The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding’, but it’s really the same old idea of smashing the existing system and replacing it with whatever will expand the power of the Left and then calling that totalitarian farce of insider ‘stakeholders’ democracy.

In Nwanevu’s native Nigeria, efforts at ‘democracy’ melted down into a civil war in which millions died. By his account, Nwanevu’s father seemingly fought on the Biafran side. Nigeria’s ‘democratic’ elections routinely begin and end with violence. And Osita Nwanevu thinks that the answer for America is for the Left to stage its own coup and construct a new Constitution.