RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/02/the-biden-inflation-octopus/

The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms. 

This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.  

The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.  

First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed. 

Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.  

The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad. 

Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/idiots_of_high_culture.html

I recently saw the headline in a Classical Music website: “Cardiff Philharmonic removes Tchaikovsky from programme in light of Russian invasion of Ukraine.”  Oh, poor Pyotr Ilyich, he has been dead for almost 130 years, but he turns out to be guilty of the Russian fascism of the 21st century. He was hit by the Russian aggression as if by a ricocheting bullet.

A wave of hatred to Russian culture has rolled over the planet like a tsunami.  All over the world, cultural idiots are removing from their programs works by the great composers Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff and canceling performances by musicians, singers and dancers who had the misfortune to come from the USSR or Russia.

The conformist idiots who run the culture business try their best to portray themselves as “more Catholic than the Pope” when it comes to shunning all things Russian. They fired Valery Gergiev, the head conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra; the manager of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Peter Gelb, banned the prim donna Anna Netrebko when she refused to publicly condemn Putin. Gergiev and Netrebko spend most of their time in the Western countries, but they are still the Russian citizens, having deep roots there, so it’s painful and even dangerous for them to publicly condemn the Russian invasion, especially given the vindictive nature of the present-day Kremlin czar. Not everyone has the courage or desperation to do this.

It’s easy to be a hero and judge others from the comfort of New York or Munich. I could understand if they were fired for publicly supporting the aggression, but firing them for remaining silent?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-biden-nominee-supreme-court-violent-crime-democrats-racial-identity-affirmative-action-racism-clarenc-thomas-11646769193?mod=opinion_major_pos7

Joe Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Mr. Biden accused Bush of putting racial identity ahead of qualifications: “Had Thomas been white, he never would have been nominated. The only reason he’s on the court is because he’s black.” Now the shoe is on the other foot.

If Sen. Biden could only speculate about the Thomas nomination, no such speculation is needed concerning President Biden’s choice of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer. Two years ago, while running for president, Mr. Biden announced that his first nominee to the court would be a black woman. No whites (or men) need apply.

Later this year, the Supreme Court will consider a case involving the use of race in college admissions. The focus will be on whether these policies are compatible with the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and with federal statutes that explicitly ban racial discrimination. Still, the dubious legality of racial double standards—clear to anyone who believes that words mean what they say—is only one of the problems with affirmative action. Racial preferences also serve to diminish black achievement. They allow others to take credit for black accomplishments, and they imply that black upward mobility can’t or won’t occur without officially sanctioned favoritism.

When Elizabeth Warren ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012 and was accused of identifying as Native American to bolster her academic career, she became indignant. “I got what I got because of the work I’ve done,” she told the Boston Globe. In other words, she responded the way any self-respecting woman would respond to accusations that she was less qualified but hired anyway for diversity reasons. Liberal proponents of affirmative action tell blacks that there is no shame in being hired based on their skin color, but why are black overachievers like Justice Thomas or Judge Jackson expected to be any less self-respecting than Sen. Warren?

The reality is that blacks were advancing at a faster clip, both educationally and economically, before the implementation of affirmative action policies in the 1970s. At best, racial preferences continued a pre-existing trend. In the 1940s and ’50s, the poverty rate fell further for blacks than for whites. In the 1960s, black household income doubled. The postwar economic boom lifted all groups, but blacks especially. A similar phenomenon occurred to a lesser extent in the pre-pandemic economy under Donald Trump, when black wages rose faster than white wages, and black unemployment and poverty reached record lows. Apparently, blacks need tight labor markets more than they need a woke president.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-joe-bidens-inflation-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-prices-bureau-of-labor-statistics-11646952656?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Inflation keeps rising, and working Americans are paying the price in falling real incomes. That’s the bad news from Thursday’s consumer-price index report for February, and the White House can’t blame Vladimir Putin for this one, though it’s trying.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said prices rose 0.8% in the month, the fastest rate in four months. That’s 7.9% over the last 12 months, and 8.4% over the last three months. In other words, inflation is accelerating.

The inflation surge was driven by rising costs for gasoline, food and shelter (imputed rents). But the price increases were also broad-based, suggesting that the psychology of rising prices has set in with businesses and consumers. The price of services (not counting energy services) rose 0.5% for the month. Remember when inflation was supposedly caused by supply-chain shortfalls for goods?

Well, services aren’t goods. Transportation costs rose 1.4%, and shelter jumped by 0.5%. The latter are likely to keep rising because they usually trail housing costs (which aren’t directly part of the consumer-price index).