RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/26/the-switcheroos-of-the-two-parties/

Our two parties have both changed, and that explains why one will win, and one lose in the midterm elections.

The old Democrats have faded away after being overwhelmed by radicals and socialists.

Moderates who once embraced Bill Clinton’s opportunistic “third way” are now either irrelevant or nonexistent.

Once considered too wacky and socialist to be taken seriously, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the performance-art “squad,” the radicals of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her hard progressive wing are today’s Democratic Party kingpins.

The alienating radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter often serve as the new party’s shock troops on the streets. They opportunistically appear to push the party to embrace no-bail laws, defunding the police, and the destruction of the fossil fuel industry. 

Since none of those positions poll even close to 50 percent with the public, the Democrats routinely either slur their opponents as racists, nativists, and climate denialists or obsess on another Trump psychodrama distraction from the Russia collusion hoax to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

What “blue dog” centrists are left in the Democratic Party either keep mum or, like Tulsi Gabbard, flee in disgust. 

Donald Trump also recalibrated the Republican Party and helped to turn it into a nationalist-populist movement that would rather win rudely than lose politely. The MAGA agenda pushed Jacksonian deterrence rather than unpopular nation-building abroad. It finally focused on fair rather than just free trade.  Republicans now unite in demanding only legal immigration and promoting domestic investment rather than globalist outsourcing and offshoring. 

In response, many of the old Bush-Romney country-club wing left in disgust. Others licked their wounds as fanatical NeverTrump something or others. 

Both parties have also been radically changed by additional issues of class, race, and wealth. 

Compare the income profiles of voters, whether by ZIP codes or congressional districts. A once lunch-bucket carrying, union member Democratic Party has become the enclave of three key constituencies. 

First, there is the subsidized and often inner-city poor. 

Second, the meat of the party, is the upscale, bicoastal professional and suburban credentialed classes. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/26/the-economy-will-never-prosper-under-biden-heres-why/

Voters who think that putting Republicans in control of the House and Senate will make a big difference for the economy are in for a rude awakening. President Joe Biden has unleashed the regulatory Leviathan. Lawmakers will be hard-pressed to stop the damage.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) just this morning released its hugely valuable report called “10,000 Commandments,” which is a compendium of the regulatory state. In it, CEI Vice President for Policy Clyde Wayne Crews lays out the terrible truth about Biden’s regulatory zeal.

The first thing you have to understand about federal regulation is how massive it already is, with compliance costs that total more than $1.9 trillion a year.  

That’s bigger than Canada’s entire GDP. It’s bigger, in fact, than all but seven nations in the world. It works out to almost $15,000 per household.

And it is growing at a ferocious pace. From 1995 to last year, regulators issued a total of 114,821 new rules.

The cost of complying with this mountain of mandates is on top of the $6.3 trillion the feds spent this year, which means the true cost of government equals roughly a third of the nation’s economy.

Some Republican presidents have tried to whittle this down, but Democratic administrations always come into office well prepared to reinvigorate regulators.