RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/progressive-cities-population-decline-census-bureau-chicago-new-york-san-francisco-e803562c?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Population loss from big cities slowed last year, the Census Bureau reported last week. Was it trying to bury the lead? The bigger news is how Covid lockdowns, crime and the rising cost of living are causing an exodus from big progressive cities.

According to the latest Census data, New York City lost 468,297 people between April 2020 and July 2022, about 5.3% of its population. That’s more people than live in the city of Miami (449,514). Other big losers include Chicago (81,313), Los Angeles (76,529) and San Francisco (65,522). San Francisco lost a larger share of its population (7.5%) than any other major city.

Population decline in these cities slowed but notably didn’t reverse in 2022 after lockdowns were lifted. City leaders blame remote work, but can you blame workers for not returning to offices when they face high taxes, high housing costs and declining public order? Chicago logged 41% more crimes last year than in 2021, and crime is up 43% so this year.

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy recently revealed that his wife was the victim of a carjacking in broad daylight in Chicago. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin last year cited Chicago’s crime surge as the reason he moved his hedge fund to Miami, after first considering New York City. One colleague had been punched by “some random lunatic” in the head, he noted. Another had been robbed at gunpoint.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/soros_is_a_lifelong_antisemite.html

George Soros is one of the strangest persons ever to achieve both power and celebrity, in my opinion. Because he is genetically Jewish, any public criticism of Soros is instantly followed by attack-dog howling by the leftist media, because Soros pays for many of the radical shock troops of the Democratic Party, and he uses that power to protect his public reputation.

But you can read Soros on himself very clearly, and he is quite willing to confess to actions that would make normal people feel suicidal shame and guilt.

The most famous story is told by Soros himself about his early experiences in Budapest, where he grew up in “an anti-semitic secular family” of Jewish origins. Soros’ birth name was “Schwartz” (“black” in German), not an unusual name, but he changed it to Soros, which sounds like a pun on the Yiddish term for trouble and pain, “tsores.”

That word reminds us of the English word “sorrows” as in Handel’s Messiah, which describes Jesus as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

According to his autobiography, George Soros made his first fortune as a young man in Budapest by selling the (stolen) furniture of Jewish families who were deported to the death camps by the Nazis and their Hungarian allies. Soros makes no secret of the fact that he hates Jews, as his father did before him. He also hates the land of Israel, which is often seen to be the only good thing to emerge from the genocide of the Jews by Hitler and the Nazis.

Elon Musk is therefore not wrong to say that Soros “hates humanity,” as shown by Soros’s life-long pursuit of the destruction of the United States and its most precious values.

Today, Soros may be closer to his goal than ever before, given our Swamp Coup against constitutional government in the United States.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/51_people_who_should_never_have_clearances_again.html

As a member of the United States Intelligence Community since I was 22 years old, I’ve had, at minimum, a secret security clearance for the better part of 17 years now. I’ve always taken this responsibility seriously, as while working in intelligence, I’ve seen firsthand the disastrous consequences of intelligence falling into the wrong hands, whether it’s a leak on our own side leading to the death of soldiers or information we’ve received because we convinced our enemies to pass data to us that resulted in successful military and law enforcement operations both in the U.S. and abroad.

Getting a clearance is not an easy process, as most folks will attest. Clearances are given only to those who hold a job that requires one (either military or government service, almost exclusively). The process can take anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the type of clearance. I’ve provided this preamble to ensure that readers understand that I do not make my argument lightly. I know the hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-hours that go into investigating, adjudicating, and processing security clearances.

The 51 Intelligence Community professionals who signed a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop showed “signs of Russian disinformation” should have their clearances immediately revoked and their access to classified information severed and never again restored. Their blatant disregard for the proper process through which an intelligence investigation is conducted, as well as for national security matters in general, is ground to terminate their clearances immediately.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/19/release-the-manifesto/

On March 27, a transgender lunatic named Audrey Hale shot up a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, who tragically killed three adults and three children before being neutralized by well-trained Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers, was a 28-year-old biological female who had “transitioned” to a public-facing male “gender identity.” Nashville police also confirmed that the shooter once attended the school herself.

Based simply on those established facts, one might offer a reasonably educated guess as to the likely motive of this horrific school shooting: a one-time Christian seems to have spurned the faith of her upbringing, adopted a vogue new worldview that is in irreconcilable tension with Christianity, and lashed out in one final kamikaze act to vindicate her new paganism and vanquish the foes of her youth. 

The reasonable guess, in short, was—and remains—that this was an ideologically motivated anti-Christian hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism. The veracity of that guess was only bolstered by the revelation, which recently resurfaced on Twitter, that at some point during the murderous rampage, the shooter took precious time to divert from the school, scurry over to the adjacent church, and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass figure of Adam—that is, Adam from Genesis.

Let’s think this one over: Why, exactly, would a transgender former student of a Christian school return to that school to murder innocent Christian children and shoot up a stained-glass representation of no less symbolic a biblical figure than Adam himself? We don’t necessarily need Sherlock Holmes on the case to figure this one out.

In fact, shortly after the slaughter at The Covenant School, Nashville police revealed that the murderer had, in an act all too common in this gruesome genre, left behind a manifesto. But that manifesto has thus far never seen the light of day. In the days following the massacre, as Joe Biden and national Democrats stopped mourning the murdered Christian children and began pleading not to blame the “transgender community” at large, some transgender activists even took to social media to not-so-subtly threaten Nashville police against releasing the manifesto: “Don’t release it, or else.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/05/19/weekend-parting-shot-dems-bring-their-usual-level-of-dignity-to-the-house-hearing-n1696732

In case you missed it, on Thursday, the hearing for the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government happened. And of course, the Democrat legislators who are perfectly comfortable with going after corruption, as long as there is an “R” involved, were on hand to ask questions. Ah, the pageantry! The buffoonery! The baboonery! It was all there for the world to see.

Among the donkeys who rode the Clown Car Express across the screens for C-SPAN and other outlets was Representative Linda Sanchez (D-Calif./Karen). If that name sounds familiar, you may remember Ms. Sanchez as the person who flipped off the Republicans at the congressional baseball game. While managing to keep her hands to herself yesterday, she somehow found a way to embarrass herself even more with a single inquiry. Sanchez was questioning FBI whistleblower Marcus Allen. One may argue that the wheels came off as soon as Sanchez opened her mouth.

It wasn’t bad enough that she stepped on a rake. It’s that she kept stepping on one after another. She knew she had the wrong Marcus Allen, but the harridan just couldn’t excuse herself and yield her time. She just kept talking and talking, hoping that she might find someplace to land. As loathsome and uncouth as she is, even I started to feel sorry for her. She talked her way right off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote. But perhaps Barney Fife said it best: “You’re a regular clown, you are. Why don’t you put a red light on your nose and go in the circus?”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gorsuch-condemns-the-breathtaking-use-of-emergency-powers-during-covid/

Justice Neil Gorsuch has penned a passionate polemic against the emergency powers that were widely used during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that while they may have solved some problems, they created many others.

Gorsuch’s statement came in the Supreme Court’s final word on the effort of a group of states to challenge the end of Title 42, which allowed migrants to be expelled on public-health grounds. Last December, the conservative justices blocked the administration from lifting Title 42 and scheduled oral arguments. However, the justices removed the case from the argument calendar in February after the Biden administration announced it planned to end the Covid-19 national emergency. The justices closed the book on the case Thursday, days after Title 42 expired.

Gorsuch dissented in December and was relieved at the Supreme Court’s decision to render the case moot. He wrote that he does not discount the concerns of states like Arizona, a party in the case, about what is happening at the border. However, he said, “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.”

According to Gorsuch, the states attempted “to manipulate our docket to prolong an emergency decree designed for one crisis in order to address an entirely different one,” adding that the Court took a serious misstep in granting certiorari in December.

But for the justice, Title 42 was only one part of a much larger problem of emergency powers being misused.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-5-17-what-are-the-three-worst-things-you-could-possibly-imagine-the-federal-government-of-president-ever-doing

The recurring themes at this blog all concern one or another badly misguided government policy that ends up being counter-productive or even greatly destructive of the welfare of the people. Examples include: undermining a functioning energy system in a delusional attempt to control the weather; spending vast sums on “anti-poverty” programs that never reduce poverty even a little; or indoctrinating young children and university students with idiotic and failed Marxist dogma.

All of these themes (and many others that I have covered) are individually important, even very important, measured by potential harm to the well-being of the people. But, however bad government actions in each of these areas may have been, there are even worse things that the government and/or the President can do.

So let’s step back from the news of the day, and consider in the abstract what could be the very worst possible things that the federal government or the President might do. Granted, that category could include things highly unlikely to be tried, like commandeering the military to execute a coup installing the President as dictator, or having the military drop nuclear bombs on U.S. cities. So I’ll impose as a condition to today’s challenge that we limit ourselves to things that a President or bureaucracy might actually try. Still, to qualify for the category of “very worst,” the potential actions must go beyond things that merely immiserate and impoverish the people — which after all could be reversed by a subsequent Congress and President — and reach the level of undermining the entire basis for our republic.

With the stated limitations, here are the three worst possible things that I can think of that the government or President might try:

The forces of law enforcement and national security could be enlisted into the political process on behalf of one political party, to undermine the ability of any opposition ever to win an election.

The President and/or his family could take massive payments from major geopolitical adversary powers, thus essentially making the President a paid agent of the nation’s adversaries.

The President or members of the government could engage in explicit efforts to foment racial strife based on false accusations.

I solicit any ideas that readers may have for things that may be even worse than the ones I have enumerated. But these are the three worst that I can think of.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/18/fbi-dropped-probes-into-claims-clinton-accepted-foreign-bribes/

The FBI had at least four open criminal investigations into Hillary and Bill Clinton that were suddenly dropped in the months before the 2016 presidential election, special counsel John Durham’s recently released report shows.

The bombshell report released by Durham — which concluded that the bureau’s probe into former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” — also shed light on the quashed probes.

The feds had been looking into claims that foreign countries and other individuals were trying to influence the Clintons through donations to their namesake non-profit and Hillary’s presidential campaign.

Three of the FBI’s four investigations that were launched in early 2016 were looking into allegations that the Clinton Foundation has a hub of “criminal activity.”

Those federal probes originated from field offices in Little Rock, Arkansas, Washington, DC and New York — all of which opened audits into the charity as Hillary was in the midst of her presidential run.

The Little Rock and New York offices were investigating a claim that an outside commercial industry “likely engaged a federal public official in a flow of benefits scheme, namely, large monetary contributions were made to a non-profit, under both direct and indirect control of the federal public official, in exchange for favorable government action and/or influence,” according to the Durham report.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-john-durham-report-robert-mueller-donald-trump-russia-collusion-bf7023c8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Special counsel John Durham’s report on the Russia collusion fiasco deserves more attention than it is getting, and its critics are dismissing it for one big reason: The 306 pages describe the great failure of original special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mr. Mueller was named special counsel in May 2017, after Democrats and media claimed Donald Trump fired FBI director Jim Comey to stop the bureau’s investigation into the Russia collusion tale. Mr. Mueller hunted for evidence that Mr. Trump was a Russian mole but couldn’t find it. Now the Durham report makes clear that the Mueller team failed to investigate how the collusion probe began as a dirty trick by the Clinton campaign and how the FBI went along for the ride.

The report includes evidence that those engaged in the FBI’s initial Crossfire Hurricane probe and Democratic attorneys used their positions on the Mueller investigating team to cover up the FBI mess. Among Mr. Mueller’s initial hires were FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI analyst Brian Auten and FBI lawyer Lisa Page—all at the epicenter of the Crossfire fiasco.

Of Mr. Mueller’s 18 attorneys, several worked in the Obama Justice Department during the Crossfire probe, including Andrew Weissmann—a highly partisan Democrat who attended Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election night party. They had a strong incentive to hide the truth.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-fbi-trump-durham-report?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

For the last seven years, conventional wisdom has told us a singular story about the FBI and Hillary Clinton. That story had a clear headline: the FBI was out to get her. 

Let’s go back to 2016, when the FBI was investigating both major presidential candidates in the run-up to the election. 

At the time, the bureau was looking into Donald Trump’s campaign’s ties to Russia as well as Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

In July of 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that no charges would be brought against the Democratic nominee. Then, eleven days before the election, he said that in light of new information having surfaced, the Clinton investigation had been reopened. Finally, on November 6, two days before Election Day, Comey announced that the matter was closed—again.

To this day, Democrats remain convinced that Comey’s second to last announcement—which, we can all agree, was ham-handed—cast a pall over the campaign, tipping the scales in favor of the Republican nominee.

It’s a neat story. But it’s only half of it.

That’s the big reveal in Special Counsel John Durham’s 306-page Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns, which came out late last week. 

If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect Clinton’s campaign while launching a full investigation into Trump’s campaign on the thinnest of pretexts. In other words, the FBI was not really the Clinton campaign’s persecutor, as so many insisted over the past few years, as much as its protector.

“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the Durham report observes, referring to the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, “reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.”