RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/03/this-generation-of-kids-wont-do-better-than-parents-ii-tipp-poll/

Parents in America, as elsewhere, traditionally have been concerned with one big thing when it comes to their children: That their kids’ lives should be better than the preceding generation’s. And for decades, that optimism was a given. But now, people are not so sure, a new I&I/TIPP Poll suggests.

Based on a growing body of evidence, both from the news and from a spate of recent studies and research, America’s parents, grandparents, teachers and others who make up the adult world today share a deep angst over how well their kids will do in the future.

To find out how pervasive this feeling is, the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,365 adults, taken from March 29-31, asked Americans a straightforward question: “How likely do you think today’s youth will have a better life than their parents?”

Of those responding, just 43% answered that it was likely that today’s kids would have better lives, with 21% saying it was “very likely” and 22% saying “somewhat likely.” And 8% said they weren’t sure.

Meanwhile, 49% took the more pessimistic view, calling it “unlikely” that today’s kids would do better than their parents. That includes 33% who said “somewhat” unlikely and 16% who said “very” unlikely.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/02/john-fetterman-gives-an-interview-and-well-n1683842

Pennsylvania is a critical state: Population over 12 million and 20 electoral votes. The media’s obfuscation of Senator Fetterman’s ability to serve is outrageous…..rsk

EXCERPTS

John Fetterman, who was released from Walter Reed hospital this week, gave an interview to CBS’s Sunday Morning anchor Jane Pauley two days before his discharge. The interview is a classic example of how the liberal media is attempting to portray Fetterman as a hero, despite his misleading voters about his fitness to serve in the U.S. Senate, because he sought treatment for depression.

“Initially, I was open to giving John Fetterman the benefit of the doubt and considered the possibility that the clip shared on Twitter had been edited for brevity’s sake. However, my curiosity led me to watch the full interview, and to my surprise, I noticed similar quick cuts scattered throughout the conversation.

While it’s understandable that Fetterman may want to present himself as capable and articulate, it is also important to acknowledge and address the challenges that he is still facing, and it is disingenuous of the media to try to conceal that. Fetterman’s poll numbers took a hit after his debate with Oz because the debate was broadcast live without the benefit of being repackaged for the audience.

For sure, there were portions where Fetterman was coherent for a sentence or two, but has he really improved since October? How can we know for sure when CBS clearly removed portions where Fetterman likely struggled to communicate and perhaps gave him multiple opportunities to say what he meant to say until it sounded good? We don’t know, but after watching the interview, I am suspicious of what CBS didn’t want us to see.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2023/04/02/how-anti-white-discrimination-undermines-our-culture-and-citizenship-n1683935

American and Canadian institutions — business, education, military, medical, legal, and government — have all intentionally instituted systemic discrimination against white citizens who are increasingly treated as villains or excluded entirely.

In the past, when the democratic norm of respect for the majority was taken for granted, white citizens, who make up strong majorities in both countries — 60% in the U.S. and 70% in Canada — did not suffer from racial discrimination. But with the adoption of the Marxist model of society, in which there is an oppressor class of villains and an innocent victim class, whites have been cast as the villains to be legitimately attacked and thwarted.

Today, the discrimination against racial minorities in the past is no longer seen as justification for equalizing rights so that all enjoy equal citizenship and equal opportunity but as justification for flipping the racial hierarchy and giving minorities rights and benefits which are forbidden to white citizens.

I can report this firsthand from universities, where I taught for fifty years. For a couple of decades at least, there was a double standard, with preference given to minority racial applicants over more academically accomplished white and Asian applicants. This of course was institutionalized in the U.S. by “affirmative action,” transformed from President Kennedy’s insistence on equal treatment to President Johnson’s preferential treatment.

Today universities in Canada and the U.S. do not just favor certain minority races but systemically exclude other races, particularly whites, from fellowship support and from jobs as professors and administrators. It would be easy to offer hundreds of examples (see them listed on the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship website at safs.ca), but this one from the University of Ottawa illustrates the pattern:

Job Number: J0223-1057 Job Type: Tenure-track Job Category: Academic Faculty: Faculty of Social Science Department: Political Studies Union: The Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (APUO)

The hiring for this position will be done in accordance with the University’s initiatives to combat systemic racial discrimination as announced by the University President in January 2021, which aim among other things, to remedy the under-representation of racialized peoples and Indigenous peoples within the ranks of its faculty members. In order to strengthen the diversity of the School of Political Studies, only qualified applications from racialized or Indigenous peoples will be considered and evaluated for the position. (emphasis added)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19552/bring-down-trump

The indictment of former President Donald Trump is just the latest maneuver by many in the United States to distort elections.

The tactic appears reminiscent of Soviet secret police head Lavrentiy Beria’s: “Show me the man, and I will find you the crime.”

“[I]t is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it. It is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.” — Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, New York Sun, March 15, 2023.

In the 2020 presidential election, under the pretext of Covid, election laws in many states were changed — illegally, some by not going through state legislatures, as required by the Constitution. There was also a series of maneuvers — including the federal government and 51 former intelligence officers knowingly suppressing media reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop — that cast legitimate suspicion, regardless of what the almost unanimous mainstream media said, on the outcome.

After President Trump, on January 6, 2021, called on his supporters to demonstrate “peacefully and patriotically,” in front of the Capitol Building, some skeptical and disappointed demonstrators — perhaps again with the intervention of the FBI — became disorderly. Politicians and the media did not hesitate to compare the events of that day to 9/11 attacks and Pearl Harbor. The only person unfortunately killed at the demonstration was an unarmed demonstrator, shot by a policeman. The federal government refused to release 14,000 hours of footage, presumably in an attempt at a cover-up. Trump was subjected to the absurd procedure of a second impeachment to remove him from office — even though he was no longer president. Finally, he was banned from Twitter and Facebook, which had been so useful to him in 2016 to bypass a hostile media.

Moreover, despite the efforts of many politicians and journalists to protect Biden, the new Republican-dominated House of Representatives has uncovered bank records showing “payments made to President Joe Biden’s son from a Chinese Communist Party-linked company,” as well as “showing Biden family members received more than $1 million from a Chinese energy company after passing through the account of a family associate,” [including] “an unknown bank account identified as ‘Biden.'”

Trump’s indictment, a humiliating “perp walk,” and the possible incarceration of a former president, serve as useful diversions to prevent the public from seeing evidence of a current commander-in-chief who has been questioned as being compromised.

No abuses will be spared Trump, or any other Republican who might run for president in 2024. It seems as if many in America, in what appears an escalating wish for authoritarian power are ready for all maneuvers to not let American voters choose their president democratically in 2024.

The indictment of former President Donald Trump is just the latest maneuver by many in the United States to distort elections.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-biden-bailout-of-blue-states-and-cities-rhode-island-california-pension-liability-underwater-rates-svb-5033c1e5?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate hike paired with the continuing bank panic is causing credit conditions to tighten. State and local governments could be the next sinking ships that Washington gets called on to rescue.

More than a decade of near-zero rates allowed state and local governments to borrow cheaply. At the same time, the Fed’s quantitative easing inflated asset values and prompted pension funds chasing high returns to pile into riskier higher-yielding investments. Now that the music has stopped, the bills for years’ worth of monetary exuberance are coming due.

The balance-sheet risks for mismanaged states and municipalities have been hiding in plain sight just as they were at Silicon Valley Bank. Continued financial-market turmoil and a prolonged economic downturn could cause some pension funds to collapse and cities to declare bankruptcy. Taxpayers will invariably wind up on the hook for politicians’ bad financial bets.

Local government economic-development projects are already growing more expensive and less attractive to private investors owing to rising rates. Consider the $124 million minor-league soccer stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., set to receive about $60 million in state tax credits, federal Covid aid and public debt. Construction started over the winter, but the project’s developer is struggling to raise money to complete it as credit conditions tighten. That means taxpayers could wind up paying more of the costs, which explains Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee’s outburst at the central bank last week.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/01/banana-time-for-the-rule-of-law/

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera published The Joke, his first novel, in 1967. It traces the fortunes of Ludvik, a young student, after his politically correct girlfriend shows the Communist authorities a postcard he had written to her as a joke: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.” As a result of this whimsy, Ludvik finds himself expelled from the Communist Party, the university, and is eventually conscripted to work in the mines. 

That’s the way things are in totalitarian societies. No jokes allowed, especially not jokes told at the expense of the regime. 

Thus it is that North Korea banned sarcasm and irony. 

Poor Ludvik suffered for his joke. But he got off easy compared to Douglass Mackey, a social media “influencer” who wrote under the pen name “Ricky Vaughn.” 

During the 2016 election cycle, Mackey/Vaughn posted a funny meme urging Hillary voters to “avoid the line and vote from home” by texting “Hillary” to a certain number. 

Who would be stupid enough to fall for such a joke? No one. But his satire was effective enough to get him banned from the pre-Elon Musk era Twitter. And the feds thought—or said they thought—that it was part of a “plot to disenfranchise black and women voters.” I guess that shows you what they think of black and women voters. 

It sounds stupid. It is stupid. But Mackey was charged with a felony and on Friday was convicted in the Eastern District of New York. He faces up to 10 years in jail for (as an official announcement crows) “his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”