RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/26901/in-a-world-obsessed-with-feelings-whose-feelings

lindagoudsmit.com goudsmit.pundicity.com 

In a society that eliminates meritocracy by shifting its metrics from achievement to feelings, whose feelings actually matter? Let’s find out.

Competence is the mother of self-esteem. We know this is true by simply observing the delight of young children as they learn to dress themselves, feed themselves, or sound out their first words and realize they can read! Each achievement increases the child’s competence and enhances his developing sense of self. Achievement makes little Johnny feel proud of himself and good about himself. Let’s consider what incentivizes competence and achievement, and what doesn’t. Let’s also consider the motivations for incentivizing competence and the motivations for discouraging it.

If you want to know the motive, look at the result. What made America great was its cultural roots in meritocracy. Our society awarded achievement with upward mobility. It was called the American Dream, and America was the land where dreams came true. In every sector of society, little Johnny was encouraged to become an independent, autonomous, rational adult, capable of living a life of ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. In other words, little Johnny was encouraged to grow up and perpetuate the American dream. Not anymore.

In the past, each of little Johnny’s achievements were rewarded with praise when he was a little boy. As he grew older he earned grades in school that marked his achievement. Then he competed in sports with friends, and games with family. His grades were awarded certificates of achievement or advanced placement. His sports achievements were awarded with trophies, and wins in family games were rewarded with more praise.

The competitions all served to incentivize achievement. As Johnny got older he competed for jobs and for advancement. Winning and losing were part of everyone’s private and public life. Meritocracy was society’s infrastructure, rooted in achievement. Those who lost were encourage to try harder, work harder, study more, and try again. In the 1970s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports announcer Jim McKay, immortalized the words, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/

Here’s a roundup of the DOJ deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

Amid calls from former President Donald Trump to “defund” the partisan Department of Justice and FBI, which treats its friends above the law and its enemies below it, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the agencies.

But a review of the agencies’ track records shows them to be indefensible. Here are 19 times Democrats and DOJ politicized the rule of law, deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

1. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes

House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday after a whistleblower revealed the agency is targeting Catholic parishes.

In February, former Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin reported.

Jordan’s letter to Wray Tuesday said the FBI sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’”

2. FBI Targeted Parents for Domestic Terrorism

Weeks before the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, in which parental rights in education were the centerpiece of Republican campaigns, the FBI deployed counterterrorism resources on parents who raised issues at school board meetings. Parents identified as extremists by FBI activists were labeled with “threat tags” under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s guidance. Whistleblower documents suggest Garland lied about the scandal when testifying before the House Judiciary Committee that October.

In March, the committee published an interim report on the debacle concluding the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” to crack down on parents as terrorists.

Garland has refused lawmakers’ demands to repeal the controversial memorandum, according to the committee.

3. Crossfire Hurricane

The campaign to impeach former President Donald Trump began well before his 2017 inauguration.

Deep-state officials within the FBI concocted plans known as Crossfire Hurricane to frame Trump as a Russian agent after the Republican businessman secured the GOP presidential nomination. Within four months of Trump’s first term, a special counsel was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. After the more than two-year special counsel investigation run entirely by Democrats with unlimited resources, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team found not one person, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Kremlin.

4. Hillary’s Emails

While the DOJ investigated the Trump campaign in 2016, the agency gave cover to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her private email server scandal.

The FBI told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power reviewed Clinton’s emails improperly stored on a private server. According to a report from the DOJ inspector general in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-axon-v-ftc-sec-v-cochran-administrative-state-federal-court-elena-kagan-43f6b20?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Supreme Court on Friday dealt the administrative state another blow with a 9-0 decision holding that individuals and businesses harpooned by an independent agency don’t have to suffer a torturous government adjudication to challenge its constitutionality in federal court (Axon Enterprise v. FTC and SEC v. Cochran).

The private litigants in these cases want to challenge Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission actions on grounds that the agencies are unconstitutionally structured. But the discrete question before the Court was whether they had to run through the agencies’ long and costly administrative process before they could go to federal court.

The government claimed they did, but a unanimous Court disagreed. In the controlling opinion, Justice Elena Kagan explained that both parties in the two cases allege they are “‘being subjected’ to ‘unconstitutional agency authority’—a ‘proceeding by an unaccountable [administrative law judge].’”

“This Court has made clear that it is ‘a here-and-now injury,’” she writes, citing its Seila Law (2020) precedent. “And—here is the rub—it is impossible to remedy once the proceeding is over, which is when appellate review kicks in.” Judicial review after cases are adjudicated by the government “would come too late to be meaningful.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/tragic-trans-battle-of-the-brands/

Consumers across the country were bewildered last week when Budweiser and Nike waddled into the transgender debate.

Inexplicably, in less than a week, both the King of Beers and the athletic apparel behemoth dubbed trans activist Dylan Mulvaney the new face of their respective brands. 

It doesn’t take a marketing executive to spot that this probably isn’t a winning sales strategy. 

But the knee-jerk response among most people is: What the heck is going on in corporate America?

What the heck is going on in this country? 

Sure, it’s a fast-track for a CEO to virtue signal and curry social status and power.

But that’s only a piece of the story. 

This is just the latest episode of a mystifying trend in corporate culture.

I wrote an entire book, “Woke, Inc.,” about it, but there’s a more complex dimension that deserves an exploration of its own: the ESG movement in capital markets.

I expose this trend in my sequel “Capitalist Punishment” later this month (that’s not a plug, that’s a promise). 

Here’s how the game works: The world’s largest asset managers use your retirement funds, 401(k) accounts and investment dollars to pressure US companies to adopt political agendas that most Americans did not and would not vote for at the ballot box.

This isn’t a theoretical idea or a conspiracy theory. It’s a plain description of reality. 

Chevron buckles 

Take what happened at Chevron in 2021: A Dutch nonprofit founded by a former refrigerator salesman who wanted to fight climate change submitted a shareholder resolution demanding that Chevron reduce “Scope 3 emissions.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s website defines those as emissions that are “the result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization, but that the organization indirectly impacts in its value chain,” including employee commuting, leased assets and downstream use of products by customers. 

This is a completely senseless decision for an American oil company to make — it’s like asking McDonald’s to take responsibility for reducing the body weight of adults who eat Big Macs, without asking the consumer to share any semblance of responsibility. 

Chevron’s board initially recommended to shareholders against adopting the proposal.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/13/ex-biden-official-sam-brinton-accepts-plea-deal-in-las-vegas-luggage-theft/

The former Biden administration official accused in two separate stolen-luggage cases in different states was ordered to pay one of their victims back — but given no jail time — Tuesday after they pleaded no contest to the bizarre theft.

Samuel Brinton, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, was given a 180-day suspended jail sentence for lifting a woman’s suitcase from Las Vegas‘ Harry Reid International Airport in July 2022, according to court records obtained by Fox 5.

As part of the plea deal, Brinton was charged with a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

A judge ordered them to pay $3,670.74 in restitution for the stolen luggage, which contained pricey jewelry, clothing and makeup.

The 35-year-old was caught on surveillance footage wearing a white T-shirt with a large rainbow-colored atomic nuclear symbol design — that Brinton was also caught wearing in an Instagram photo they posted later that day.

The 35-year-old was working as the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy when they committed the fashion crime, but has since been fired.

Brinton still faces felony charges in a similar case that alleges they struck again two months after the incident during a trip to Minnesota from Washington, DC.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tourist-terror-turns-ten/

April 15 will mark ten years since Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev targeted the Boston Marathon with explosive devices that killed Lingzi Lu, 23, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Martin Richard, only eight years old.  The powerful pressure-cooker bombs also wounded more than 250 at the crowded annual event.

Police killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a shootout and captured younger brother Dzhokhar. His death sentence was overturned in 2020 and reinstated in 2022. This January, Tsarnaev made another bid to have his death sentence overturned, and Dzhokhar, 29, has to like his chances.  That invites a review of how the bombers got to Boston in the first place.

In April of 2002, Anzor Tsarnaev arrived in the USA on a tourist visa with sons Tamerlan, 15, and Dzhokhar, only eight at the time. The family gained asylum and Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen on September 11, 2012, despite security concerns. In 2011, the Russian government warned the FBI that the Tsarnaevs had ties to Chechen terrorists.

More than a year before the bombing, Tamerlan traveled back and forth from Dagestan for terror training. He should have been stopped at JFK airport but his name had been misspelled in a security database. The FBI did conduct an investigation of Tamerlan but closed the probe in June of 2011, after finding “no links to terrorism.” As Bostonians and people across the country may recall, the FBI committed a similar lapse in 2009.

The bureau knew that U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing Americans. The FBI dropped the probe and on November 5, 2009, Hasan murdered 13 Americans and wounded more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, yelling “Allahu akbar” as he fired. Pvt. Francheska Velez was pregnant, so the death count should be 14. Despite the carnage, the lessons of Fort Hood went unlearned.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/the_west_declares_war_on_itself.html

For Americans who cherish self-government, free speech, and personal liberty, the reality of today’s America is jolting.  How can Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Barack Obama’s FBI, and an assortment of sordid Intelligence Community actors conspire to frame Donald Trump as a Russian spy in a veritable coup d’état without suffering any legal consequences?  How can the IRS target Americans for their political viewpoints and be rewarded with bigger budgets and more armed agents?  How can the FBI illegally spy on a presidential campaign, target parents concerned over the content of their children’s public education, and label half of America “extremists,” and not be disbanded?  

How can the Department of (in)Justice seek to punish Americans’ speech and religious faith as impermissible expressions of “hate” and deprive Americans of their Second Amendment protections without being immediately defunded as a threat to the Bill of Rights?  How can the State Department lecture regimes around the world about violently quelling political dissent and violating human rights when thousands of Americans who protested for fair elections have been persecuted as “insurrectionists,” denied impartial justice, and imprisoned for having “incorrect” beliefs?  These are not the actions of any “free” nation and are shockingly antithetical to America’s foundations in liberty.

From this perspective, it seems apparent that the American government has not so quietly declared war on the American people.  Why?  Because it has abandoned any effort at preserving the qualities of its charter that once distinguished the American system as “exceptional” from all others — chiefly its constitutional framework empowering individual citizens and states while severely limiting centralized authority from ever infringing Americans’ inalienable rights and liberties.  This idea — that legitimate political power can arise only from the people — had been an invaluable guardrail for keeping governing excesses, if not outright tyranny, in check.  The steady erosion of this principle over the last century and its replacement with the age-old fallacy that “might makes right” have squandered American exceptionalism and invited tyranny to return through the front door.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2023/04/13/the-biden-crime-family-was-all-in-on-gain-of-function-research-n1686944

Remember when Hunter Biden tagged along on Joe’s trip to China in 2013? Photographers captured the moment when Hunter followed his dad and daughter Finnegan down the stairs of Air Force Two. The Obama White House produced a fawning video about it (watch it below). It was a trip that would pay millions in dividends for what some people call “The Biden Crime Family.”

On that Asian tour, Vice President Biden held a four-and-a-half hour-long meeting with Chinese President Xi that was mostly off the record. He also visited Japan and South Korea. The trip was in December 2013.

Hunter’s visage wasn’t featured in the vast majority of the coverage. But they needed only one look to ask, “What was Hunter doing on this trip?” It turns out, he was off doing deals, trading on his dad’s name, and making millions for the family.

Eleven months after that trip, the big deals started happening. In October 2014, Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) became an investor in a Silicon Valley company called Metabiota, which does business with China, the Pentagon, and Ukraine. The company, which predicts pandemics and tries to “prevent proactively the spread of diseases” for “companies, governments, and livestock producers,” has ties to the World Economic Forum (Davos) through its founder, virologist Nathan Wolfe, who has been selected by WEF as an up-and-coming leader. Eventually, Biden’s RSTP would own a 13.4% stake in Metabiota.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/14/will-latest-revelations-of-corruption-get-biden-impeached/

With each day, it seems, we hear something new about how President Joe Biden and his ever-eager son, Hunter, used the power of Biden’s various political offices to make money for the Biden family. If even half of the allegations are true, Biden’s in big trouble. Will that make him think twice about running for a second term in 2024?

American voters are a thick-skinned lot, and know pretty much that many politicians are scoundrels. But Biden is a different breed.

His family has, for years, received mysterious piles of money — we’re talking millions of dollars here — from questionable overseas sources, including Chinese Communist-linked executives, Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin and huge sums from Ukraine and its giant Burisma energy company.

The latest revelation is just stunning.

Turns out that Hunter, with no real experience at all in the energy business, was asked to join Ukraine-based Burisma’s board of directors on April 18, 2014 — the same month that President Barack Obama made Biden his “point man” on Ukraine, then in the midst of a growing conflict with Russia.

A mere three days after Hunter joined Burisma’s board, Vice President Biden high-tailed it to Ukraine on an “official” trip to push ”medium- and long-term strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.”

Did it work? You bet. “According to Burisma’s website, it ramped up production from 100 million cubic meters in 2010 to 1.3 billion cubic meters in 2018 – when it generated revenues of at least $400 million,” the Daily Mail reports.

For sitting on Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden and his business partner and former Yale classmate, Devon Archer, each scored $83,333 a month for “consulting services” paid to their consulting firm, Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, from April 2014 to November 2015.

This wasn’t the only payment they received from questionable Eastern European sources. While the media later spun its wheels with unproved and outright bogus claims of Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, a Senate investigation noted Biden’s hands were in Russia’s pockets for real.

“On Feb. 14, 2014, (Elena) Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a ‘Consultancy Agreement,’ ” a Senate report said.