RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/08/335926/

In 1939, the American novelist Ernest Vincent Wright self-published the 50,000-word novel Gadsby, a lipogram in which the letter “e” does not appear. Since “e” is the most common letter in English, producing a sustained work that is e-less is a tricky thing to do.

You might be asking yourself, “Then why do it? Isn’t it just a pointless exercise?”

Well, is writing a sonnet a pointless exercise? That has plenty of constraints, too, if it is to be a proper sonnet.

But to move from the literary to the political realm, I suspect that writing a novel—or perhaps I should say, “a work”—without the fifth, you know—is akin to writing about Elon Musk’s dust-up with Donald Trump without using, oh no, “bromance.”

In part, it’s a matter of nausea avoidance. If I read another headline with that silly neologism, I might just scream.

So I am going to avoid it here (and, no, I haven’t used the word; I have merely mentioned it).

The amusing aspect of this little drama is that it revolves around the Mr. Etna-like eruption of knowing commentary by people who know nothing about Trump, Musk, their relationship, or what really precipitated their break—if, that is, there really has been a break and not just a bit of calculated theater.

About all that, I know exactly as much as you do, which is to say, nothing.

No one would describe what has happened—or, rather, what is happening still—between them as a personal example of the stately quadrille, the movement of European alliances in the eighteenth century that danced to tunes established by the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). That set concluded with the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756, in which Austria changed partners from Britain to France, while Prussia linked arms with Britain.

To read what some in the commentariat have been writing, you might conclude that the Musk-Dump-Trump routine was a world historical event worthy of analysis by Talleyrand or Henry Kissinger.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“Tit for Tat: The infliction of an injury or insult in return for one that one has suffered,” Oxford English Dictionary. Wikipedia: “It is an alteration of tip for tap ‘blow for blow,’ first recorded in 1558.”

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States on January 20, 2017 I suspect he was as surprised to be there as anyone. He had been a successful real estate developer, and for thirteen years he hosted “The Apprentice,” a successful reality TV series. But he had never run for political office. As a businessman, he donated to both Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s campaigns in 1980. His political affiliations have changed: a Manhattan Republican in the 1980s; member of the Reform Party in 1999; a Democrat in 2001; and back to a Republican in 2009. By some, he will always be criticized for his changing political affiliations and his out-spoken manner. But he was democratically elected President.

For those who make their living in politics, Donald Trump’s success was a threat. His victory was incredulous to Republicans in the primaries and to Democrats in the general election. How could this “orange-haired” man who garbles the English language have won? How could an interloper beat them at their own game?

America is a different place than it was a generation or two ago. Civility has declined; anti-social and unethical behavior have increased; and violence has become more common and, worse, acceptable. Scam phone calls have risen by over 20% in each of the last five years. In 2023, the United States Capital Police (USCP) investigated 8,008 threats against members of Congress. A disturbing number of young Leftists cheered on the two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, as well as the attacks on Tesla dealerships. Anti-Semitism has increased, On May 21 a young Jewish couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Four days later, in Boulder, Colorado, a man shouted, “Free Palestine,” as he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators, injuring fifteen men and women, as they marched in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/06/will-trump-weaken-washingtons-power-to-tax/

It’s obvious that Donald Trump is a different president. His divergence from the norm manifests itself in various ways. He’s even broached the possibility of eliminating the Internal Revenue Service. Count us among the tens if not hundreds of millions of Americans who wish him godspeed if he chooses dissolve this truly abusive agency.

Trump’s IRS commissioner nominee Billy Long, whose appointment passed another hurdle Tuesday, might give us a little more insight into Trump’s plans for the IRS. Long, a former Republican House member from Missouri, cosponsored more than a decade ago a bill that would abolish the IRS and enact a national sales tax administered primarily by the states.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed in February that Trump wants “to abolish the Internal Revenue Service.” The president also ordered halted the hiring of 87,000 new IRS employees the Biden administration wanted to sic on Americans.

During the second Obama term, ABC News noted that the “IRS has long history of political dirty tricks,” with presidents using “the agency as a weapon against political enemies.” The story ever-so-lightly touched on the administration’s targeting of conservative groups that opposed Barack Obama’s policies. In this particular instance of corruption, “the former president used the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS to delay or deny the approval of tax-exempt status for more than 100 new organizations between 2010 and 2012,” explains taxpayer advocate Dan Pilla

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/05/musks-outbursts-reveal-a-deeper-rift-in-maga/

The deepening split between Elon Musk and the Trump administration speaks to broader divisions within an increasingly shell-shocked GOP. Musk, who left the White House only last week, has since denounced Donald Trump’s hodgepodge budget bill – the so-called Big Beautiful Bill – as a ‘disgusting abomination’, as it will add almost $4 trillion to the federal deficit. He had previously called Trump’s pro-tariff chief trade adviser, Peter Navarro, a ‘moron’, reflecting the gulf between the populists and the oligarchs in the MAGA coalition. Oligarchs, whatever their party, do not favour tariffs, curbing immigration or raising taxes on themselves.

It turns out that this incoherence, married to one-man rule under Trump, has consequences. MAGA is a coalition based largely on a shared detestation of the ‘progressive’ agenda, but it has little else in common. It includes people concerned about free speech and anti-Semitism, as well as Christian humanists. And it also contains deeply troubling elements that appeal to a stew of authoritarian, nativist, racist and anti-Semitic ideas – tropes long peddled and platformed by Trump supporters such as the pro-monarchist Curtis Yarvin and the ubiquitous, ever-ugly Tucker Carlson.

Not surprisingly, the broader base that elected Trump is now fracturing into its constituent parts. This is not to say that there has been a shift to the self-righteous and rightfully ignored ‘Never Trumpers’ in the GOP. Nor have Republicans suddenly embraced the leftist meme that Trump is a ‘fascist’ with a plan. He is nothing of the sort: lacking any real ideology or disciplined movement capable of advancing a particular programme.

In essence, Trump is a grifting narcissist with a keen sense of how to take advantage of the sustained imbecility of his opponents. But there is no fixed core to Trumpism – only impulses more expected from a toddler with ADHD than a presidential administration. He may have been a builder in his past career, but he appears clueless when it comes to constructing a clear policy agenda beyond revanchism and grift.

This incoherence is now undermining his own coalition. The tariff blitzkrieg, for instance, could be seen as justified in response to the undoubted mercantilism of Canada, the EU and, above all, China. Yet instead of leading to concessions from other countries, the chaotic rollout of the tariffs has the potential to paralyse large swathes of the US economy, including the all-important auto industry – winning few allies beyond a handful of labour-union leaders, many of whom will probably never support him anyway.

One can feel the wheels coming off, as many of the key constituencies that elected both Trump and the GOP Congress resist his impetuosity and persistent dishonesty. Like most political movements, MAGA is a fragile alliance of groups that often have little in common – and in some cases, loathe each other. This is already evident in the widening chasm between Trump’s tech bros, who favour cutting government spending and care chiefly about personal enrichment, and the working- and middle-class voters who twice put him in the White House.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/06/04/not-even-democrat-experts-cant-defend-nationwide-injunctions-n4940456

During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the abuse of nationwide injunctions yesterday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) took direct aim at University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw, wife of MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. What followed wasn’t just a pointed exchange; it was a complete intellectual beatdown. Of course, that’s what always happens with Kennedy. 

Shaw, invited by Democrats as an expert, quickly found herself exposed as a partisan hack, stammering and backpedaling while Kennedy dismantled her credibility piece by piece.

Kennedy confronted Shaw over her inconsistent views on universal injunctions — condemning them when used against Democrats, then suddenly embracing them under President Trump. He called out her hypocrisy with surgical precision, even mocking her sudden fondness for these rulings as if they now “taste like pumpkin pie.” It was a masterclass in exposing the left’s double standards, and Democrats are probably wishing they’d picked a different witness.

But Kennedy wasn’t the only one who made mincemeat out of Shaw.

Sen. Josh Hawley also took his turn, and it was just as brutal. After Shaw began offering a vague, academic defense of her shifting views, Hawley went straight for the jugular.

“So long as it is a Democrat president in office, then we should have no nationwide injunctions,” Hawley said. “If it’s a Republican president, then this is absolutely fine, warranted, and called for.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/long-tds/

Trump Derangement Syndrome has riled and roiled our politics for a decade, and its only achievement has been sending Donald Trump back to the White House for a second term, and for now marginalizing the Democrats, whose approval ratings are stuck in the mid-twenties. Worse for the Dems, their loss in November was what Barack Obama called a “shellacking,” only more so.

They lost the popular vote and both houses of Congress, as well as significant numbers of the Democrats’ usually reliable constituencies. Voters also repudiated the Dems’ dangerous “woke” policies that failured to protect the border from invasion; fight crime and prosecute criminals; conduct a foreign policy that put America’s national security and interests first; stop culture-war enormities like biological males colonizing women’s sports and locker rooms; reform their tax-spend-borrow-redistribute economic policies; cease and desist from trans propaganda invading our primary schools, and to arrest, charge, try, and punished privileged protestors in Ivy League schools chanting their support for genocide, assaulting Jews, and other antisemitic offenses.

All those patently preposterous policies are inimical, if not fatal, to our Constitutional, Judeo-Christian, and Greco-Roman traditions, as well as abandoning both reason and common sense––and don’t forget the ridiculous lies they told about both Trump’s “fascism,” and Joe Biden’s cognitive decay.

Given this electoral disaster that followed Trump Derangement Syndrome, you’d think that the Dems and Petainist Rhinos would give up and instead focus on the issues angering and worrying voters, as Trump did. But OC TDS sufferers just can’t help themselves. Their social status, inflated amour propre, and lucrative political establishment are too precious. The Rhinos in particular can never forgive Trump for crashing their political guild party and perks.

A particularly incoherent example appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. Novelist Mark Helprin’s topic is an important one: the long history of bipartisan assaults on our Constitutional order and its foundational principles. And much of Helprin’s comments comprise bipartisan censures, except when he feels compelled to single out Trump and indulge hoary TDS clichés culled from ten years of anti-Trump invective, and festooned with a specious moral equivalence of the two parties.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/05/the-cbo-isnt-partisan-its-just-incompetent/

When the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill would boost deficits and throw millions off insurance rolls, it was treated as gospel truth.

The CBO is, after all, a “non-partisan” agency, staffed by just-the-facts-ma’am budget and economic experts who don’t have any axes to grind.

Maybe that’s true. But it’s not partisan bias that is the problem. It’s the CBO’s terrible track record when it comes to predicting the impact of tax and health care policies.

By the CBO’s accounting, the House reconciliation bill would cut tax revenue by $3.7 trillion and cut spending by $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years, resulting in deficits that are $2.4 trillion larger than they’d otherwise be.

To make matters worse, the proposed Medicaid spending cuts would throw nearly 11 million people off insurance rolls, according to the CBO.

That combination just happens to make for the perfect Democratic talking point – “Republicans want to cut taxes for the rich at the expense of the poor!!” – which is why its new forecasts are front-page news. And when the White House suggested that the CBO’s projections were biased, the mainstream press rushed to the CBO’s defense.

But wait a second. These are 10-year projections. They are based on a raft of assumptions about incredibly complicated systems.

So, the important question is, just how good is the Congressional Budget Office at making such predictions?

The answers are easily found, although you’d never know it based on the media’s total lack of interest.

https://lizpeek.com/daily-rant/the-lefts-war-on-elon-musk-a-campaign-of-smears-and-slander/

Elon Musk is apparently now fair game, open to any kind of vicious accusations and ad hominem attacks. ALWAYS described as “the world’s richest man”, as though that’s a bad thing instead of an extraordinary achievement, the Left goes after Musk because they’re afraid of slamming Trump.

Last week Jamie Raskin, a senior Democrat congressman from Maryland posted this on X (owned by Musk!):

“This ketamine, ecstasy and mushroom-using government contractor, the richest person in the world, sacked thousands of excellent government workers, caused the deaths of thousands of poor children in foreign lands, stole Americans’ data and destroyed government services but he did pick up billions more in government contracts while he was in town!”

Ignore the preposterous notion that Musk’s businesses need more government contracts and the drug-use issue, which surfaced in a hit piece by the NY Times using – guess what – anonymous sources!!! (I know you’re shocked). It’s the accusation that Musk “caused the deaths of thousands of poor children in foreign lands” that is appalling, as it is almost certainly not true.

Incredibly, David Brooks, a respected writer at the NY Times, echoed what I would consider a slanderous remark in an interview on PBS, naturally, saying “So far, 55,000 adults have died of AIDS in the four months since Trump was elected; 6,000 children are dead because of what DOGE did. That’s just PEPFAR, the HIV. You add them all up, that’s 300,000 dead, and we’re four months in. You add that all up and accumulate that over four years the number of dead grows very high.”

What did Musk and DOGE do? They uncovered shocking amounts of corruption and wasteful spending at USAID, and cut some programs. Reports of children dying almost immediately followed, though if you read those accounts carefully you will find the accusations mostly made by people who have lost their jobs and their funding. They are angry, and working to convince the gullible anti-Musk press that he is evil incarnate.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/04/the-trump-hating-lefts-worst-nightmare-things-really-are-looking-up/

The economy appears to be booming, consumer confidence is rising, inflation is coming in lower, and job growth higher, than expected. Normally, we’d all be celebrating good news like this. But not when Donald Trump is sitting in the White House. Then it must be ignored or explained away.

Ever since Trump took office, we’ve been treated to a steady diet of doomsaying. His tariffs would fuel inflation. He was driving the economy toward a recession. When the Commerce Department reported a slight contraction in the first quarter – so slight that future revisions could show that the economy expanded in the first three months – the same cast of characters started shouting “See, we told you so!”

But then the data started coming in, and suddenly those voices went silent. Why? Because it’s all been “unexpected” good news.

On Monday, for example, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank updated its GDPNow forecast – which projects quarterly economic growth in real time based on ongoing data releases. The current “nowcast,” as it’s called, shows growth in the second quarter of 4.6%, which is up from the 3.8% growth figure released last week.

The latest Consumer Price Index shows inflation in April was just 2.3%, marking the third consecutive monthly decline under Trump, and hitting a low not seen since February 2021, which, for those keeping score, was the month before Joe Biden went on his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” spendathon.

The monthly jobs report for April came in higher than expected, with the creation of 177,000 jobs, after the March report came in significantly higher than expected. Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a “surprising” increase in the number of job openings.