RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/still-suicidal-and-surreal/

Since the Democrats’ shellacking at the polls on November 5, the party has been undergoing a fractious discussion about what went wrong. A whole roster of the usual suspects has been mooted, including neglect of the working class. But that accurate assessment still doesn’t get that the problem is leftism per se, not bad candidates, polling, tactics, or whatever, no more than New Coke failed for those reasons. It was just a bad product.

Take Vermont Socialist, er, Independent Bernie Sanders’s scolding of his party: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. . . .  And they’re right.”

We know what Sanders means: “changing” to a full socialist planned economy managed by the state, rather than the over-regulated hybrid we now have. But those features of our dirigiste economy have created conditions, dysfunctions, and moral hazards––the tax, spend, print, borrow, hyper-regulate, and redistribute money that during the Biden-Harris administration unleashed inflation and wage stagnation that drove voters, including traditional Democrat constituencies, to vote for Trump.

Nor is the problem that “real” socialism has “never been tried.” History is littered with attempts to create a successful socialist or communist economy, and every one we know of has failed––not because it wasn’t properly managed or had a bad “messaging strategy,” but because unlike free-market capitalism, it has been predicated on unreal assumptions about human nature and motivation, as well as ignoring the power of freedom and choice.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/trump_s_arctic_policy_is_no_folly.html

On Sunday, December 22, President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his desire for America to take control of Greenland, saying it is an “absolute necessity.” The very next day, Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, said the autonomous island, part of the Danish kingdom, was not for sale. But Trump’s plan—like that of William H. Seward, who, as secretary of state, oversaw the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867—is not without tremendous geopolitical advantage to America.

It’s all about gaining greater American control over the Arctic, where Russia and China are cooperating to build a strong presence. Fears that such cooperation will extend to include North Korea and Iran are not unfounded. Many pundits believe that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have aligned themselves into a new Axis of Evil. According to Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation, they are in “expansionist mode,” seeking “much more land and power” and “coordinating their efforts to benefit each country’s goals.”

However, the immediate worries for America are from the Sino-Russian efforts, which have significantly expanded over the past decade. China’s northernmost point is 13 degrees of latitude from the Arctic Circle—that’s 1,443 km or roughly 900 miles. Yet, in 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping audaciously proclaimed China a “near-Arctic state,” launched an “Arctic strategy,” and resolved to make his country a “polar power.”

Cut to 2024. In July, four Chinese and Russian strategic bombers, all taking off for the first time from an airbase in northeast Russia, flew over the Chukchi and Bering Seas. In October, Chinese and Russian coast guard fleets conducted their first joint patrol of the Arctic. These forays followed joint naval exercises in the Bering Strait in 2022 and 2023. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding on maritime law enforcement in 2023.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/08/fear-of-a-name-why-are-the-media-and-law-enforcement-afraid-to-call-terror-what-it-is/

Shamsud-Din Jabbar posted videos declaring his support for ISIS and drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd in New Orleans. By so clearly associating his murderous rampage with a recognized terrorist group, Jabbar could not have intended more clearly for the incident to be a terrorist attack. In response, FBI assistant special agent in charge Althea Duncan said at a press conference, “This is not a terrorist event… simply improvised explosive devices.”

The Washington Post’s headline was, “Truck rams New Orleans crowd,” and only mentioned ISIS ties in the second subheading. NPR, NBC, and ABC all ran articles about the attack without using the words “terror,” “Islamic,” or “Islamism,” opting not to specify exactly what sort of “attack” it was.

Evidently, law enforcement, in addition to the press, is fearful of naming the problem. The FBI did later state in a press release that it was investigating the incident as a “terrorist attack,” but they should never have hesitated to call it such. Fear of calling terrorism what it is is extremely problematic in and of itself and draws a strong parallel to the Harry Potter series.

For most of the Harry Potter series, very few characters aside from Harry can bring themselves to even say the name of the most dangerous wizard of all time—Voldemort—not unlike the small number of politicians and law enforcement spokespeople who call radical Islam and terrorism what they are. Even Harry’s professors who teach defense and employees of the Ministry of Magic, the governing body in Harry’s world, generally can’t bring themselves to say Voldemort’s name, at least above a whisper. But as Harry’s friend Hermione so wisely puts it, “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mr-attorney-general-how-many-capitol-riot-murder-charges-did-you-bring/

Illustrating yet again that Democrats haven’t come to grips with why they lost the election and what Americans think of their politicization of law enforcement, here’s Biden attorney general Merrick Garland today, emoting on the fifth anniversary of the Capitol riot:

On this day, four years ago, police officers were brutally assaulted while bravely defending the United States Capitol. They were punched, tackled, tased, and attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin. Today, I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.

Let’s stipulate that Garland is quite right to castigate all who punched, tackled, tased, chemically attacked, or otherwise assaulted police officers. There is chatter in the air about pardons of the rioters; I don’t know what President-elect Trump plans to do upon taking office, but it would be a profound mistake — one his administration would come to regret — if he grants clemency to people convicted of assaulting cops (or, for that matter, damaging property). As we’ve covered here extensively for five years, it was ridiculous for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people on misdemeanor charges of parading and the like — the kind of charges DOJ would ordinarily never file but that the Biden Justice Department, under Garland’s leadership, prosecuted in a patently political effort to inflate the Capitol riot (aka “The Insurrection”), condemnable as it was on its own terms, as if it were a 9/11-scale terrorist attack.

To repeat for the umpteenth time, no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot. The fact that Garland, federal bureaucrats, and police officials have tried to exaggerate the perils of the riot, and in so doing – and occasionally in grappling with insurance claims involving loved ones of cops who tragically committed suicide after the riot – have claimed police were killed due to the events of that day, does not make it so.

We all know this; but don’t take my word for it.

It is a serious felony violation of federal law to murder a federal officer in the line of duty. It is punishable by death or life imprisonment. Federal laws that the Justice Department enforces also severely punish conspiracies and attempts to murder federal officers who were carrying out their official duties. By a recent count, Garland’s Department of Justice filed charges against nearly 1,600 people in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Not a single charge of murder of a federal officer, nor conspiracy or attempt to murder a federal officer, was alleged by DOJ.