RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/president_trump_s_magic_show_begins.html

If you’ve ever played speed chess, then you can appreciate what President Trump is about to do to “official” Washington.  This won’t be like 2017, when the president did everything he could to work amicably with House and Senate Republicans.  This time, you either get on the “Trump Train” or kindly throw yourself from the back car.  There’s no time to waste, and the president won’t be slowing down for stragglers.  

After his first election, President Trump arrived in D.C. with Republican majorities in Congress, too.  He expected that the people who had promised to repeal Obamacare for seven years would have a legislative package ready for him to sign into law.  He expected that Republicans who had campaigned on securing the border for four decades would be prepared to do what it takes to achieve that goal for the American people.  His expectations were met with the disappointing reality of squishy Republican backbones and Uniparty backstabbing.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed President Trump which of his potential nominees would get Republican support (McConnell’s wife, for instance, would have no problem winning confirmation), House Speaker Paul Ryan told him that there was just no money to build a border wall (because Ryan had already spent trillions supporting Barack Obama’s policy agenda).  Both Republicans took turns publicly laughing at Trump for arriving in D.C. with the misguided belief that the work of government could be anything other than slow.  McConnell and Ryan wasted most of President Trump’s first year in office bickering about how best to dismantle Obamacare before finally throwing up their hands in feigned exasperation after Senator John McCain saved the Democrats’ costly expansion of government-directed medicine with his final “screw you” vote. 

On the other hand, McConnell and Ryan took the Russia collusion hoax very seriously.  Although Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, and numerous other coup-plotters inside the Intelligence Community had created that fantasy as a mechanism for illegally spying on candidate Trump before his election and as a mechanism for overthrowing President Trump after his inauguration, congressional Republicans treated the matter as if it deserved their utmost attention.  McConnell and Ryan both knew that the allegations against Trump were ridiculous, but they eagerly assisted Democrats in their efforts to paint the president as a Russian spy.  Why?  Because holding Trump’s fate in their hands gave them power over his presidency. 

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/farewell-to-the-rising-american-electorate

At one point in the initial rollout of Harris’s campaign, there was much happy (joyful?) talk of getting the band back together—the return of the mighty Obama coalition. The “rising American electorate” would have its revenge on Trump, the Republicans, and their retrograde supporters from declining demographics.

That’s not exactly how it worked out. Instead, Trump won every swing state and the election, carried the national popular vote and made dramatic headway among key demographics that were supposed to buoy the rising American electorate. In short, the rising American electorate didn’t rise, it crashed.

As Democrats dig out from their debacle, it’s important for them to understand just how far away they now are from the salad days of the Obama coalition. In 12 short years, they have lost two of three elections to Donald Trump and huge chunks of support from key demographics, including most of their rising constituencies. They need to face the uncomfortable fact that not only did the Obama coalition not come back, it’s likely never coming back. It’s time for a new coalitional strategy—a strategy that starts with rebuilding their support among working-class Americans of all races and forcefully jettisoning all the political baggage that is preventing them from doing so.

Here are data that illustrate the scale of decline since Obama vanquished Mitt Romney in 2012. For this exercise, I use the Catalist data from 2012, the best retrospective data available, and compare it to the demographic group estimates from AP VoteCast, the best 2024 election data currently available. (It would be preferable to use 2024 Catalist data for this comparison but their data are not yet available.)

https://www.frontpagemag.com/newsom-wants-to-be-the-leader-of-the-resistance/

California is ready to fight,” Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

But the fight had already been lost in California as state residents rose up against his radical policies. The aspiring leader of the resistance against a new Trump administration is facing his own resistance.

On Election Day, almost 70% of Californians voted for Proposition 36 in spite of Newsom.

“I was wondering what state I’m living in,” Gov. Newsom had complained about a poll showing that Prop 36, a proposition to make crime illegal again, was far ahead. “the public clearly has a different point of view.”

The public’s point of view in California was closer to Trump’s than Newsom’s.

The vast majority of Californians had rejected Gov. Newsom’s attempts to block, undermine, sabotage and campaign against the proposition criminalizing theft and locking up criminals. They ignored his complaints that locking up criminals would lead to “mass incarceration”.

After Election Day, Gov. Newsom is doubling down with an “emergency special session” to fight the newly elected Trump administration and “safeguard California values” by protecting illegal aliens, abortion and green fraud.

The Democrat state government that had tried to outlaw memes also promised to protect “civil liberties”. A federal judge had slapped down the meme ban and who accused it of stifling “the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate”.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/id-take-tulsis-record-in-syria-over-the-cias/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth

I sometimes wonder what “liberalism” the defenders of the liberal world order have in mind when the subject comes to Tulsi Gabbard. Appalled by radical Islam after 9/11, Gabbard volunteered to serve in the Hawaii National Guard, deploying to Iraq in 2004 and 2005 in a medical unit. She completed officer training at Alabama Military Academy, then served overseas in Kuwait. In 2020, she transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.

You might think that people who claim to respect the troops so much might hesitate before calling someone with this kind of record a foreign asset or even accusing her of being a foreign agent. You would be wrong.

Since this summer, she has been given the dreaded “quadruple S” status by the TSA — meaning she is being tracked at excruciating expense across every flight she takes — and is subjected to a far more invasive form of search reserved for active terror suspects. This status, for an active Army reservist and officer?

Even the more conventional case against her has some obvious holes. Noah Rothman writes:

She bought wholesale the utterly baseless line retailed by Moscow that Russia and its vassal state were the only countries committed to fighting ISIS. In contrast, she maintained, the United States was helping prop up radical elements within Syria’s anti-Assad rebels (the Assad regime took a hands-off approach to ISIS and even purchased its own oil from the terrorist group while it subdued the more moderate insurgents in places like Homs and Aleppo).

To my knowledge, Gabbard has not repudiated those positions. They cannot be described as “anti-war,” as so many of her boosters would like to claim, because she deploys them in support of war — Syria’s wars, Russia’s wars, and the terrorists’ wars, just not America’s wars.[Emphasis added.]

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/15/one-month-in-and-the-govt-is-already-257-billion-in-the-red-doge-has-a-lot-of-work-to-do/

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would head the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That same day, the Treasury Department released a report showing why this effort is so desperately needed.

In his announcement, Trump said that he’s assigned the two to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” It will, he said, “become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time.”

At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in late October, Musk, when asked how much he thought he could “rip out of this $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget,” said: “Well, I think we could do at least $2 trillion.”

Washington insiders scoffed at the entire idea of a “government efficiency” department or that these two government outsiders could somehow find $2 trillion to cut.

The truth is a Manhattan Project-level effort will be needed to restore a semblance of fiscal responsibility to the federal government.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-trumps-foolish-futile-matt-gaetz-ag-nomination/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=first

I’m as stunned as anyone that President-elect Trump has nominated Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) for attorney general, reminding everyone of Trump’s propensity to step on his own good publicity and provoke needless fights that undermine his ability to accomplish things the country needs done. That said, I suspect Nathan Wade would have a better chance of getting confirmed to run the Justice Department than Gaetz does, so I don’t see the point in wasting a lot of time discussing this.

I’m not going to dwell further on the sex-trafficking investigation in which Gaetz was implicated but never charged. I wrote about it at the time. The feds couldn’t make the case and he’s presumed innocent. As Luther related early this year, it’s been reported that Gaetz’s ridiculous, solipsistic move to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) was payback for the latter’s role in an ongoing ethics probe of Gaetz. The congressman has denied any wrongdoing. Nothing has been established, so I’m not going to repeat mere allegations at this point. I imagine we’re about to hear a lot more about them in the coming weeks, and become better informed about whether there’s fire under the smoke.

In that regard, the president-elect has done his eccentric protégé no favors.

I also don’t see much use in going down the rabbit hole of whether, as the rabidly anti-Trump, highly irregular House January 6 committee claimed, Gaetz was among a group of GOP Congress critters who broached the subject of a pardon following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. I thought it was underhanded of the committee to imply that people were guilty of crimes — potentially including crimes of violence — based on speculation about pardons, particularly when Trump didn’t grant such pardons. A pardon is not necessarily an admission of guilt — something to bear in mind in an era of lawfare, when politicized actors weaponize investigative processes against their adversaries mainly for the purpose of humiliating and bankrupting them.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/diversifying-doulas-hhs-spends-hundreds?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“Equity” concept appears 829 times in Department’s 2025 budget request, reaching academia, bureaucrats, researchers and care providers.

The private sector is learning the hard — and costly — way that much of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion model is discriminatory and subject to expensive litigation. That has corporations “quietly altering” their approach, according to the Associated Press.

While federal agencies have also faced a mountain of legal challenges, the Biden administration has nevertheless pressed on with the President’s commitment to a “whole of government” DEI effort.

The Department of Health and Human Services — with a budget surpassed only by the Pentagon — employs 294 DEI staffers at an annual cost of $38.7 MILLION.

That’s doesn’t even include another $29.4 million in payroll for seven Offices of Minority Health embedded within various HHS agencies!

While their roles are dedicated to DEI, related efforts have permeated through virtually every area of the department.

Variations of the term “equity” appear an astonishing 829 times in the department’s 2025 budget request to Congress, impacting hundreds of millions of dollars of spending programs.

Resulting funds pour out across the country to achieve equity and “justice” in public health — to Black churches recruited to push vaccinations; to universities for hiring diverse researchers; and to special outreach for anyone from criminals, to the LGBTQ+ community, to the indigenous, and…doulas??

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-work-to-restore-our-republic-is-just-beginning/

Just as the Founders intended, the American people have used their First Amendment rights and freedom to vote, and rebuked the Democrats for their political malfeasance and hubris. So definitive has been the message that the Donks are now devouring one another over who or what is to blame for the debacle. Of course, they’re avoiding the real causes of their political disaster––their long leftist project to “fundamentally transform America,” as Barack Obama infamously put it.

But we shouldn’t take this entertaining autophagy to mean we still don’t have a lot of hard work to do in order to solidify and strengthen our battered Constitutional order. Remember, tyranny never surrenders power easily.

The first order of business obviously rests with President Trump. He’s already made a good start by naming his campaign manager, Susan Wiles, his Chief of Staff. Her brilliant management of the campaign bespeaks the skills and temperament needed for the huge task of staffing the federal government with the right people who can repair the damage done over the past four years.

To do that, Trump must staff federal agencies and his cabinet not just with the competent and ethical, but also patriots and Constitutionalists rather than technocrats, opportunists, and feral careerists. The issue isn’t just partisanship, but the very nature of large-scale government bureaucracies that are not accountable to the citizens. Such institutions are vulnerable to “professional deformation”: the institution’s legitimate function displaced by its own self-serving narrative, which exists to determine hiring and promotion, and is prone to fossilization into received wisdom––that is, the proverbial “box” we’re supposed to think outside of.

https://www.declassified.live/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=8t06w&next=

The New York Times today confirmed Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors plan to resign before Donald Trump takes office in January. In what must have been a painful article to write, Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, two reliable mouthpieces for the Department of Justice, said Smith’s office is “drawing up its plan for how to end the cases” against the incoming president. It is also unclear whether Smith will file a confidential report summarizing the special counsels’ work, a requirement under the DOJ special counsel rules.

Smith further “finds himself on the defensive,” according to the Times, as House Republicans prepare to investigate the investigators. “Republican lawmakers told Justice Department officials who had worked on the Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators,” Barrett and Thrush wrote. “That is a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.”