RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/20/joe-biden-puts-humpty-dumpty-to-shame/

‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ — Humpty Dumpty, ‘Through the Looking Glass‘

Last week, the Biden administration tried to convince the public that inflation was a thing of the past and the southern border was secure. Before that, the president attempted to redefine inflation. It’s been a running theme of this administration, one Joe Biden never gets called on because the press is too busy accepting whatever meaning he chooses.

So here, as a reader service, is a collection of how Humpty Dumpty Biden is choosing what words will mean.

“Zero Percent:” Last week Biden stood behind his presidential podium and declared that “we received news that our economy had 0% inflation in the month of July — 0%.” In a statement, he went further, saying “overall, prices have been essentially flat in our country these last two months: that is welcome news for American families.”

That depends on what 0% means. Food prices were up 1.1% in July and 0.8% in August. Housing costs climbed a total of 1.3% over those months. Medical care was up 1.2%. The only reason the overall inflation rate didn’t climb in July and August was because of a sharp drop in gasoline prices. That’s little comfort to those trying to put food on the table or pay rent.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18924/schumer-manchin-backroom-deal

Washington is a city that thrives on secrets. That is a good thing over at the CIA but it is a very bad thing when Congressional politics are practiced in the dark, far from public scrutiny and for purposes that could unravel our nation’s democracy.

No surprise then that published reports reveal seething lawmaker anger over the closed door deal cut between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Senator Joseph Manchin that will allow the White House to acquire and dispense some $700 billion dollars as it sees fit through the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”

“We don’t know what [the substance of their deal]… is. They haven’t released the text, they don’t give us the detailed explanation,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was quoted in the Washington insider publication, The Hill.

The Senator continued, “So, I don’t know how you could ask people to vote for something they don’t know what it is.”

What we do know is that the Biden Administration will be offered the opportunity to channel money – huge amounts of money – to selected programs, agencies, and election districts throughout the nation at a time when Congressional campaigning is reaching its peak.

Some would wonder if Facebook multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg could spend close to a half billion dollars to boost Democratic candidates during the Trump-Biden race just imagine what $700 billion in taxpayer monies could accomplish in the hands of the White House.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Webster’s defines common sense as “sound and prudent judgement, based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.” Lucretia Peabody Hale’s The Peterkin Papers provides fictions best (and most amusing) examples of common sense – with the “Lady from Philadelphia” offering obvious solutions to what seem insurmountable obstacles to the Peterkin family.

A year ago, I wrote an essay regretting the loss of common sense in the political realm: “Common Sense – Where has it Gone?” (September 29, 2021). It was a lament, without answer.

Now, three disparate events remind me that common sense remains AWOL: First, I have been re-reading a 1999 collection of essays by Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates. The book speaks to the loss of common sense in political, social, and cultural realms. Second, Queen Elizabeth’s death was a reminder of the importance of personal traits like common sense, stability, tradition, and personal virtue, which Western culture has replaced with silliness, variability, ignorance, and social virtues. And third, a eulogy for Common Sense was recently sent me. I had seen it before, but it is worth re-reading.

Sowell’s book, published in 1999, was prophetic, as conditions he then wrote about remain with us – racism, declines in education standards, hyperbole over man-caused climate change, the advocacy for socialism and the criticism of capitalism in the West, and political extremism. Sowell is a realist who relies on facts and who cares little for sentiment. His observations reflect his intolerance for the idiocy of most politicians. In an essay titled “From Marxism to the Market,” he wrote: “The rhetoric of socialism may be inspiring, but the actual record is dismal.” In another, “The Multiculturalism Cult,” he wrote of how real people around the world do not “celebrate diversity;” they “pick and choose which of their own cultural features they want to keep and which they want to dump…” In a third, “Life is Culturally Biased,” he noted: “As limited human beings, we must make our choices among the alternatives actually available.” A fourth essay, “Anti-Elitism in Education:” “…you cannot let everyone go to Stuyvesant (where Sowell went in the late 1940s) without its ceasing to be the kind of school that makes them want to go there.” That the problems he wrote of so long ago have only worsened is a sad commentary on our social, cultural, and political life.