RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/13/gavin-newsoms-weird-idea-of-freedom/

In a run-up to what is likely to be a 2024 presidential bid, California Governor Gavin Newsom hit upon the bizarre idea of boasting in commercials that California is America’s true “free” state. 

Part of his ad campaign is to attack Florida—currently run by Newsom’s possible rival, Governor Ron DeSantis. 

Yet, with the most burdensome regulations and high tax rates, Newsom’s California is arguably the most unfree state in the union.

In return for these steep costs, the state’s public institutions, infrastructure, and services are among the country’s worst. 

California’s once-vaunted freeway system is near the bottom of all state comparisons. California’s Highway 99, which runs the length of the Central Valley, is one of the deadliest roads in America based on miles driven. 

Over half the nation’s homeless crowd the state’s major cities. One-third of America’s welfare recipients have flooded into the state. A fifth of the resident population lives below the poverty line. Well over a quarter of Golden State residents were not born in the United States. 

California public school test scores consistently fall among the bottom 10 states. San Francisco has the highest per capita property crime rate in the country. 

The recently recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and his soon to be recalled Los Angeles counterpart George Gascón have nearly ruined their cities. Both are iconic of multibillionaire George Soros’ nationwide efforts to undermine the entire criminal justice system. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/14/cataloguing-bidens-ineptitude-on-inflation/

When the latest government report on inflation came out on Wednesday, showing that it had hit another grim milestone in June of 9.1%, President Joe Biden told the public not to worry.

That figure, he said, “is out of date.” Prices for key components of the Consumer Price Index have eased so far in July, he said. Besides, he said, inflation is higher “in many countries (in Europe) than in America.”

The public would do well to ignore anything Biden says about inflation, given his horrible track record when it comes to this topic. Since prices started their upward climb in March 2021, Biden has by turns claimed that it was the result of a booming economy, that it was temporary, that it was the result of supply chain bottlenecks, and most recently that Vladimir Putin is to blame.

When not making fact-free claims like those, Biden simply lies. Take his oft-repeated claim that Europeans have it far worse on inflation. Even Newsweek magazine felt obliged to conclude in its fact check “that Biden’s statement that U.S. inflation is the ‘lowest of almost every major nation’ is largely inaccurate.”

We don’t expect readers to simply take our word for it that Biden has been out to lunch on inflation. So we assembled a handy chart showing the annualized rate of inflation each month since January 2020. It matches up that record with statements Biden made about inflation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/13/inflation-rose-9point1percent-in-june-even-mor

The consumer price index increased 9.1% from a year ago in June, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate.
Excluding food and energy, core CPI rose 5.9%, compared with the 5.7% estimate.
Costs surged for gasoline, groceries, rent and dental care.
Adjusted for inflation, workers’ hourly wages fell 1% during the month and are down 3.6% from a year ago.

Shoppers paid sharply higher prices for a variety of goods in June as inflation kept its hold on a slowing U.S. economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The consumer price index, a broad measure of everyday goods and services related to the cost of living, soared 9.1% from a year ago, above the 8.8% Dow Jones estimate. That marked the fastest pace for inflation going back to November 1981.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI increased 5.9%, compared with the 5.7% estimate. Core inflation peaked at 6.5% in March and has been nudging down since.

On a monthly basis, headline CPI rose 1.3% and core CPI was up 0.7%, compared to respective estimates of 1.1% and 0.5%.

Taken together, the numbers seemed to counter the narrative that inflation may be peaking, as the gains were based across a variety of categories.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/13/the-left-is-doing-its-best-to-make-self-defense-a-crime/

A fearless citizen with the will and means to defend himself is a threat to left-wing bureaucrats who want to boss him around.

The same left-wing prosecutors who let rioting run rampant and let repeat offenders out on low bail also want to make it difficult for you to defend yourself.

We don’t yet know all the details about an apparent fatal stabbing of an agitated man by bodega clerk Jose Alba in New York City last week, but we do know that the clerk was quickly charged with murder and initially held at Rikers Island on $250,000 bail while video surveillance seems to indicate he likely acted in self-defense. Surveillance videos show the unnamed girlfriend of Austin Simon, the man Alba killed who had a history of felony arrests and was out on parole, becoming upset with Alba when her card was declined and threatening to “bring my n– down here and he gonna f-ck you up.”

Another video shows Simon walking behind the counter to Alba, shoving him, and getting in his face before Alba stood up and appeared to try to walk past Simon, at which point the two wrestled until Alba eventually stabbed the other man. “I don’t want a problem,” Alba told Simon when he walked in, according to the New York Post. Further footage appears to show the girlfriend pulling out a knife of her own and slashing Alba, although she has not been charged.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/12/liz-cheney-epitomizes-never-trumpers-betrayal-of-our-nation/

Like the rest of the Never Trumpers, Rep. Liz Cheney’s campaign is about destroying the GOP, not ‘saving’ it.

Liz Cheney may be enjoying being treated like a heroine by the leftist corporate media that demonized her father and family for decades, but she hasn’t completely lost touch with reality.

The Never Trump turncoat not only became a key leader of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s McCarthyite show trial of Donald Trump under the guise of investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol Riot, but has also been masquerading as that sham’s ranking member. But she’s aware that being the principal star of the Democrat’s prime time television show has made her the object of near universal hostility from Republican voters. That’s doubly true in her family’s home state of Wyoming, where her defeat in the upcoming August primary has more or less been ensured by Trump’s popularity and conservatives’ hostility to those who seem to think demonizing GOP voters is a viable political strategy.

With polls showing her as far as 30 points behind primary challenger Harriet Hageman, Cheney knows that she’s going to need something of a miracle in order to hold onto the congressional seat she first parachuted into on the basis of her famous family name in 2016. That’s why she’s done the logical thing to save her political hide and is appealing to members of the party that she effectively joined last year to carry on her vendetta against Trump. With a considerable campaign war chest (largely raised from Democrats and ancien regime Republicans), her campaign is principally concerned with an effort to convince Wyoming Democrats to change their registration and vote for her in the August primary.

In doing so, she’s essentially given up on the dubious effort to convince Republicans that her participation in the Jan. 6 Committee inquisition is a matter of saving the honor of the GOP. Few if any actual Republican voters ever bought that line. Most understand that her decisions have everything to do with the ongoing pique of the GOP establishment about losing control of a party that they once ruled, while giving little thought to the desires or interests of their voters.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/12/the-chekhovs-gun-of-political-intimidation/

“If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
— Anton Chekhov

An attempt to accost Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at Morton’s Steakhouse, a popular D.C. hangout, made national news last week. The move represented a mobile continuation of the tactic of targeting conservative justices outside their homes.

The targeting of Kavanaugh was led by antifa-aligned protest group Shutdown D.C., which has drawn attention in recent years for advocating the targeted protesting of political opponents. The group has since escalated by tweeting out a bounty for information about the location of conservative justices and posting flyers similarly offering money in exchange for facilitating harassment.

In response to the ongoing targeted abuse of judges, the head of security for the Supreme Court wrote a letter to Virginia and Maryland governors urging them to take action using existing state and local laws. Governors Larry Hogan and Glenn Youngkin (both Republicans) had previously written a joint letter to Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland asking the Department of Justice to enforce federal laws prohibiting the targeted intimidation of judges. Youngkin had also asked local county government officials to provide additional security for the homes of justices, but was given short shrift by the overwhelmingly Democratic county board of supervisors.

Meanwhile, Shutdown D.C. continues to operate openly and unapologetically.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/the_lefts_obsession_with_transgenderism_is_barbaric.html

How to explain the Democrat party’s obsession with transgenderism, with shoving it down the throats of every American, from ages five and up?  

It’s inexplicable.  

Does every registered Democrat support confusing small children with gender identity indoctrination?  That can’t be true.  

But school districts across the country are using books about all manner of sexual issues, including pornography, topics way beyond the grasp of small children.  And they are using those books without parents’ knowledge.  When parents discover these books and object, they are threatened.  Grooming, a word that once applied to other cultures or the worst sadists, grooming young children for sex with adults, now applies to public schools in America with the full support of American Democrats in Congress.

No sentient person can legitimately, in good conscience, believe that the gender of an infant should be excluded from birth certificates or that it is fair for athletes born male to compete against girls because they identify as female. This is putting an end to women in sports. 

The Biden administration is particularly preoccupied with the “plight” of trans people, as if they are a significant proportion of the population.  They are not.  They are about 0.6% according to the CDC.  And for that 0.6%, people are cancelled, fired from their jobs, banned from Twitter, et al if they use a wrong pronoun or make a comment deemed transphobic.  It’s all surreal.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/new-york-citys-assault-on-self-defense/

Alvin Bragg, one of the contemptible squad of George Soros-backed urban district attorneys who stormed into office vowing to radically rework the justice system, is proving as good as his word. New York City’s historic crime problem, which was under control as recently as three years ago, is continuing to get worse as the first-year New York County DA sends all of the wrong signals. His latest outrage is to charge a Manhattan bodega worker with murder after he defended himself against an attacker.

Bodegas — small grocery stores strongly associated with hard-working immigrants — can be dangerous places, particularly at night, and police can be slow to respond. Yet the city has for decades made it almost impossible to obtain a license to legally carry a firearm. Jose Alba, a 61-year-old U.S. citizen who emigrated from the Dominican Republic and works at the Blue Moon store on upper Broadway in Harlem, had a knife behind the counter, and was forced to use it against Austin Simon, 35. Simon entered the store in a rage after Simon’s girlfriend tried to buy a bag of chips with an EBT card and the card was declined. As shown in surveillance radio, Simon stormed behind the register and attacked Alba. Alba then stabbed Simon at least five times, fatally, at which point the girlfriend attacked and stabbed the bodega worker. (She hasn’t been charged at all.)

Alba clearly acted in self-defense and should have been charged with nothing. Moreover, Simon was a career criminal who had at least eight prior arrests on such charges as assault and robbery, and was on parole for assaulting a police officer. Yet Bragg brought the harshest imaginable charge against Alba, second-degree murder, and initially held him on an excessive bail of $250,000, which was reduced to $50,000 after a community outcry. Bodega workers and the New York Post have taken up Alba’s case as a cause celèbre, and because there is no recall mechanism in the state to threaten Bragg’s job, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin has renewed his vows to simply remove Bragg from office on grounds, by now well-supported, that Bragg is not applying the law. Even a (failed) Democratic candidate for governor and member of Congress, Representative Tom Suozzi, has supported this unusual maneuver.