RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/27/biden-tells-an-absurd-whopper-claims-average-price-of-gas-was-5-00-when-he-took-office/

Joe Biden was caught telling a ridiculous, easily disproven lie during a speech on the CHIPS Act in Syracuse, New York, on Thursday, claiming the price of gasoline was “over five dollars” when he took office, when it was actually only $2.39.

“The most common price of gas in America is $3.39 down from over five dollars when I took office,” Biden told the audience. “We need to keep making that progress by having energy companies bring down the cost of a gallon of gas that reflects the cost of paying for a barrel of oil.”

According to Fox Business, “the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the week ending on Jan. 25, 2021, shortly after Biden took office, was $2.39,” and “the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline didn’t reach $5.00 until June 2022, well over a year after Biden took office.”

The current national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is actually $3.76, over 30 cents more than Biden claimed Thursday, Fox Business reported.

Upon taking office, Biden immediately halted construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have delivered up to 700,000 barrels of oil per day into the U.S. from Canada. He also put hurdles in front of oil companies, increasing regulations for oil and gas leases, froze new drilling permits and stopped leases on federal lands.

He ran his whole campaign on destroying the energy industry, and prices started going up almost immediately after he entered office.

During the same speech, Biden also claimed  that “the price of inflation is down.”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/27/publishing-professionals-we-must-censor-amy-coney-barrett-to-save-free-speech/

More than 350 literary workers—agents, editors, publicists, and writers—have signed an open letter demanding Penguin Random House drop publication of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s upcoming book. It should be noted, that there are some legitimate editors on the list, but many signees –-“Leslie” and editorial interns and so on –- are not exactly Nan Talese. And yet, the document, brimming with nonsensical, contradictory, confusingly reasoned claims, is a useful window into the increasingly authoritarian mindset of the cultural American left.

The letter argues that Random House has a duty to stop the publication of ACB’s book to save free speech. “This is not just a book that we disagree with, and we are not calling for censorship,” says the letter, titled “We Dissent.” “We cannot stand idly by while our industry misuses free speech to destroy our rights.” It quotes British leftist David Puttnam, who contends that the media has a duty to “balance freedom of expression with wider moral and social responsibilities.”

That’s the rub, of course: who gets to decide the contours of the “wider moral and social responsibilities” and the “misuses” of free speech? Even if we formed a consensus on those alleged duties, one of the reasons (real) liberals treat speech as a neutral principle is to protect dissent and challenge conventional wisdom. Rationalizing censorship as a means of protecting people from harmful ideas is as old as censorship itself.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-gift-hillary-clinton-needs-for-her-75th-birthday/

“The best gift Hilary Clinton could give herself — and the rest of us — on her 75th birthday would be to remove herself from public life.”

Today is Hillary Clinton’s 75th birthday, as Luther noted. Earlier this week, the former first lady, U.S. senator, secretary of state, and current not-president celebrated with “about 100 of her top donors and longtime supporters at the St. Regis in New York to talk about her future,” Teddy Schleifer of Puck reported. No, she won’t be running for anything. But she is thinking about her legacy. So “she has been pitching donors on a new philanthropic entity called the Hillary Rodham Clinton Leadership Project,” according to Schleifer. He continues:

The new Clinton initiative will both highlight what Clinton has already done, particularly for women around the world, and serve as a new home for Clinton to talk about her own philanthropic work going forward—on democracy, global health and leadership development.

So Hillary spent her birthday figuring out how to profit from the same brand-driven, elite-level arbitrage that she and her husband have depended on ever since the end of his presidency. (And before that presidency’s end.) Points for consistency, I guess. What certain people and institutions see in Hillary, so much so that they continue to pointlessly reward and elevate her — as a paragon of “leadership!” — well after her political utility has expired, is beyond me.

When it seemed likely that she would become president, all those donations to the “Clinton Global Initiative” — since dried up — at least made a crude political sense, even as they were the quintessence of modern elite corruption. A President Hillary — just typing the words suffices to make one shudder, especially this close to Halloween — would be someone you’d want to have exchanged favors with. But failed-candidate Hillary? The one who spends her days stewing about the past and engaging in the same kind of election denialism she condemns when it comes from the other side? What’s the point?

Indeed, the best present Hilary Clinton could give herself on her 75th birthday would be to remove herself from public life. She should spend her remaining years in pleasant quietude, being with her grandchildren, going on walks, and tinkering with powered-exoskeleton builds. Her retirement would double as a welcome gift for the rest of us.