RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/17/two-words-describe-bidens-presidency-reckless-endangerment/

This week we’ve been treated to three government reports that all point in the same direction: Disaster.

Interest payments are through the roof. Real wages continue to fall. And a record number of illegals crossed the border.

That’s just the domestic news. As of this writing, Americans are being held hostage by Iran-supported Hamas terrorists who killed nearly two dozen other Americans when they invaded Israel. Our military forces face increasing Iranian-sponsored attacks in Iraq and Syria. While President Joe Biden lets Iran off the sanctions hook for another four months.

The worry isn’t just whether Biden – the architect of these disasters – will be voted out of office next year. It’s whether the U.S. can survive until then.

Start with the terrible news on the home front. On Monday, the Treasury Department released its monthly financial report, and it was alarming. In October alone, the government made $76 billion in net interest payments – a 77% increase from a year ago and a 153% jump from two years ago.

The Treasury report projects that gross interest payments will top $1 trillion this fiscal year. That will be more than we plan to spend on defense, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or any non-defense domestic discretionary program. And that’s if all goes well, which it rarely does.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/15/opinion/as-he-hosts-chinas-xi-biden-delivers-pitiful-2024-reelection-platitudes-that-republicans-cant-seem-to-beat/

It took the arrival of a Chinese dictator for San Francisco to finally clean the filth off the streets — at least temporarily.

Sure, they had to erect cages around the sidewalks to keep them clear until President Xi Jinping leaves California, but better to be seen as a prison than a pigpen.

It’s all theater, of course.

The Chinese and other Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders know that after the facelift, San Francisco will revert to a feces-encrusted slum, as the zombies are released from wherever they have been hidden.

Everyone has seen the videos of addicts bent double in suspended animation or zonked out on the ground among the used needles and human excrement.

TikTok algorithms make sure those videos are seen.

Ahead of Xi’s visit, Chinese media outlets had great sport trashing San Francisco as “garbage city,” “ruined city,” “fallen city” and a “total failure.”

Apart from being an avoidable tragedy, America’s deadly drug crisis makes us an international laughingstock, the marker of a civilization on the fast track to hell.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/the_catastrophic_death_of_fairness.html

Some social psychologists believe that humans are biologically wired to seek “fair” relationships with others.  Some theologians believe that the soul’s capacity for distinguishing right from wrong leads a moral person toward the same result.  Whether genetically or spiritually inclined to prefer fair outcomes, we humans are not comfortable around those who cheat and prosper from duplicity.  Cheating is ugly and therefore despised.

Systemic cheating, however, now dominates Western life.  Elevating “diversity for diversity’s sake” over all other metrics for gauging achievement has reduced merit and hard work to second-class virtues.  Rewarding illegal aliens with amnesty has cheapened the sacrifices of those lawful immigrants who have struggled to integrate into their new home countries.  Allowing delusional men to dominate women’s sports has cheated female athletes of a fair playing field for pursuing excellence.  In ways big and small, “woke” governments, corporations, and academic institutions cheat Western citizens of the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their own labors.

Of course, systemic cheating is disguised in language that sounds noble.  “Woke” Marxists use “fairness” jiujitsu to force disingenuous and unprincipled change. 

Unfairly promoting a less talented person over a more talented person because of his respective skin colors is celebrated as a victory for “diversity” — a reminder that in the twenty-first century, racists are still obsessed with how a person looks at the expense of what thoughts occupy his mind.  Without any public debates or votes, governments have replaced “equal treatment under the law” with “equitable” redistribution — or, in layman’s terms, “special treatment under the law” — so that certain classes of people can benefit at the expense of others.  

In an amazing instance of Orwellian “doublespeak,” the State categorizes those classes that are unfairly rewarded as “underprivileged” and the people against whom it discriminates as “privileged.”  Never in human history have people with “privilege” felt so marginalized.  All this cheating is done for the stated purpose of “including” many different kinds of people, but it depends entirely on “excluding” people to obtain fraudulently manufactured and prejudiced results.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/still-delusional-after-all-these-years/

Recently Barack Obama opined on Israel’s war with Hamas, and predictably reprised all the received wisdom that our politicians on both sides of the aisles have indulged since 9/11. One comment in particular evoked one of the more dangerous takes on the conflict with modern jihadism––that this venerable doctrine of Islam is some sort of heresy or extremism that doesn’t represent Muslims worldwide.

In the context of the current war with Hamas, according to ABC news, Obama said of Israel’s campaign,  “‘There are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did,’ Obama said, making the distinction between Palestinians who live in Gaza and the militant group Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.”

We’ll pass over the mendacious euphemism “the militant group Hamas,” and the implication that the accurate description “terrorist organization” is merely a prejudiced slur by U.S. security agencies. More important is Obama’s variation on the cringing and dishonest phrase “nothing to do with what Islam,” an echo of the Western apologists after 9/11 who regularly chanted this lie.

The use of this duplicitous formula transcends political party. After 9/11, the Bush administration no doubt thought that such rhetorical distortions would pacify Muslims and show them that we’re “not at war with Islam.”  Verbal preemptive cringes abounded in Bush’s speeches, such as the following: “Our enemy [al Qaeda] doesn’t follow the great traditions of Islam. They’ve hijacked a great religion . . . All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true face of Islam . . . It’s a faith based upon love not hate.”

Anybody even vaguely familiar with traditional Islamic doctrine and history knows that this flabby ecumenicalism is at best well-meaning wishful thinking, at worst a talking-point for malignant apologists. Listen to Ibn Khaldun (d.1406), one of Islam’s most significant and revered historians and philosophers: “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” So too, Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), another important Muslim theorist of jihad: “Since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought.” Are these titans of Islamic thought “hijackers” or “heretics”?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-executive-branch-anonymous-letter-joe-biden-israel-ceasefire-gaza-hamas-f22374d0?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Biden has been learning lately what life is like for Republican Presidents. Parts of the deep state, to borrow a phrase, are revolting in opposition to his support for Israel against the Hamas terrorists responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre.

News reports say that no fewer than 500 appointees and staff from 40 agencies, including the National Security Council and the Justice Department, have sent Mr. Biden a letter demanding that he call for a cease-fire and “de-escalation” between Israel and Hamas: “Americans do not want the U.S. military to be drawn into another costly and senseless war in the Middle East.” The signatories are bravely anonymous.

The same is true of more than 1,000 employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development, who have reportedly signed a similar letter. “We believe,” it says, “that further catastrophic loss of human life can only be avoided if the United States Government calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.” The letter adds that its backers are withholding their names out of “concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs.”

https://dianebederman.com/if-trump-had-been-president-october-7-2023/

If Trump had been President of the USA on October 7, 2023, there would never have been the October 7 Massacre of 1200 Jews in Israel, and the taking of more than 220 hostages: Israelis and from many other countries. And there would be no talk today about a possible Middle East war or God forbid WWIII. Then again, the elites across America love war. Trump didn’t.

If Trump had been President, Iran would have been a mere shell of itself. A country living in poverty where the women freedom fighters would have encouraged the men to fight back and get rid of the evil Khamenei. Iran would have been poor because Trump placed sanctions on her and stopped the sale of oil; the source of billions of dollars in income; particularly to China. China is principally responsible for keeping the Iranian regime in business through oil purchases that have totaled more than $80 billion since President Biden assumed office in January 2021 to September 2023. Iran exported nearly 1.4 million barrels of oil per day in October, sustaining its average for 2023. This is up 80% from the 775,000 barrels per day Iran averaged under the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy, according to United Against Nuclear Iran, the group of former U.S. Ambassador Mark Wallace and Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose Tanker Tracker generates the best public data we have.

Iran would have been on her knees with Trump as President. There would never have been money to buy armaments for Hamas or Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And now the Biden administration is considering a sanctions waiver on Iran that would free up 10 billion dollars.

“Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran’s hands.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-food-insecurity-lie/

President Joe Biden says 24 million Americans “suffer from food insecurity!”

News anchors were shocked that there is “food insecurity in the richest country in the world!” ABC hosts turned “insecurity” into “hunger.”

But in my new video, Rachel Sheffield, who researches welfare policy at the Heritage Foundation, explains, “Food insecurity is not the same thing as hunger. It just means that they had to rely on cheaper foods, store-brand alternatives … or reduce variety.”

Really? The alarm about “food insecurity” is based on that? Well, yes. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in its fine print, admits that “for most food-insecure households, the inadequacies were in the form of reduced quality and variety of food rather than insufficient quantity.”

“They always want to create a crisis,” I say to Sheffield.

“Government programs want to keep themselves going,” she replies.

She’s talking about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; the Women, Infants and Children program; the National School Lunch Program and the other constantly growing handouts that make up America’s welfare system.

The biggest effect of these handouts is to harm the people they want to help. They harm people by making them dependent on government.

Before government’s War on Poverty began, Americans were steadily lifting themselves out of poverty. Year after year, the number of people living below the poverty line dropped.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/tell-the-truth-about-law-enforcement-and-crime

Public safety has been destroyed in many American cities because of an idea. That idea holds that any law-enforcement activity that has a disparate impact on black criminals is racist. Disparate impact is why many police departments have dismantled gang databases and antigun task forces, why they have given up on public-order enforcement, and why they have all but eliminated car stops. It is why “progressive” district attorneys have stopped prosecuting trespassing, shoplifting, fare evasion, and resisting arrest, why bail is being eliminated, and why judges let repeat offenders back on the street. Disparate impact is the reason that chain stores like Starbucks and Walgreens would rather close high-loss outlets than accost thieves.

Until the disparate-impact conceit is demolished, permanently restoring law and order will be impossible. Any short-term gains from renewed enforcement will remain vulnerable to the charge that they have come at the expense of racial equity. Conservatives can call for re-policing all they want. Unless they explicitly discredit the idea that incarcerating black criminals is racist, however, Democratic politicians and policymakers will be able to use disparate rates of stops and arrests to roll back constitutional crime control whenever they have the power to do so.

Only a president has the national reach to engage this most difficult of all “conversations about race.” If the next president does not have the fortitude to do so personally, his attorney general should assume the responsibility. The next AG should lay out in a national speech the dilemma facing law enforcement: in order to save black lives, police officers will have to stop and arrest black criminals in numbers greatly disproportionate to the black share of the population. He should give the victimization facts: black juveniles were shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles since the George Floyd race riots; blacks between the ages of ten and 24 were killed in gun homicide at 24 times the rate of whites in that age cohort. Those black victims are not being gunned down by America’s alleged white supremacists or by the police; they are being gunned down by other blacks, at rates equally disproportionate to the black population share. Providing justice to those black victims will require putting more black criminals in prison.