RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/the_best_or_the_worst_of_times.html

Now that Christmas Day has passed, I have put down my beloved copy of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and picked up his masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities.  As I have argued before, that novel’s opening sentence perfectly captures the contradictions of our time:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

And you thought that I struggled to locate a terminal period for some of my longest sentences!  In Dickens’s defense, it is one hell of a sentence!  It is also a sophisticated description of the tumultuous events that accompany transformative eras such as our own — what many have come to regard as a “Fourth Turning,” when crisis and social upheaval dominate life for a generation.  

Will we be able to “Make America Great Again”?  Will this be the beginning of a new American “Golden Age,” as President Trump suggests?  Or will we soon endure economic collapse and war the likes of which none of us has ever seen?  As 2024 comes to an end, it is fair to say that uncertainty is only accelerating and that the prospects for peace and prosperity are running neck and neck with their opposites.  

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21251/trumpmaganomics

The new economic policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump promise to include his campaign pledge to “Make America Great Again.” Just a few months ago, commentators were assessing that the Biden administration’s greatest ambition was “managing America’s decline.” What a difference a day makes: November 5, 2024. Trump, a businessman, appears to have a good grasp of most domestic and foreign policy issues that greet him at the stable door. He has already been overflowing with ideas — such as refusing to allow a hostile Communist China to control the Panama Canal, as it presently does; and aligning more closely with Greenland and Canada to provide the northern hemisphere a stronger foothold to safeguard its security and prosperity and that of the Free World.

In securing America’s financial future, Trump’s maganomic policies appear to turn on three points:

Making American not just energy independent again, but energy dominant. Making use of the “liquid gold” America has under the ground would not only enable Americans to buy just about everything at a lower cost than, as now, unnecessarily relying on expensive imported oil for manufacturing and for transporting goods and oneself. Using American energy could at the same time undercut the price of oil exported by America’s adversaries, such as Russia, Venezuela and Iran, and make them less able to conduct wars and other mischief.
Offering generous tax and other incentives, and removing obsolete regulations, to ignite the economy’s “animal spirits” so that more companies would relocate to America. Once again, “Made in America” would become the hallmark of excellence, affordability and abundance. What other country protects its businesses, workers and investments more comprehensively than the United States? The country is not just a haven for jobs and productivity, but also ensures that America will no longer naively misplace its trust in countries that intend to replace the current world order and, at whim, potentially deprive Americans of medicine, computer chips, and other necessities.
Lowering taxes for everyone while trimming excess fat from unwarranted expenses. This plan does not of course mean depriving the less fortunate of their safety net or demolishing social security. What the plan does mean is that Americans will be able to keep more of their hard-earned money to decide themselves how they would prefer to spend it. At least US citizens would know that the taxes thy are compelled to pay would fund projects they actually want or need, instead of vaporizing for “shrimp on treadmills,” “hamster fights” or more than $1trillion each year – greater than the entire proposed US defense budget of $849.8 billion — just to pay interest on the more than $36 trillion national debt. The US government, according to CNBC, each year wastes more than $247 billion, adding that “The problems mainly stem from the way our government tries to solve an issue, according to critics,” and quoting Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/no-circular-firing-squads-this-time-republicans/

We’re starting to see the results of the November election in a variety of ways, both within our movement and among the enemy. Look, folks, we’re dealing with human beings. That means we’re dealing with human nature. And human nature never changes. We’re just as susceptible to its vagaries on the right as they are on the left. That means we’re going to fight among ourselves within the newly formed Trump coalition. That means people on our side are going to jockey for power, positions, prestige, and, of course, money. As far as the other side, despite the fact they are alien lizard people, they’re going to do what human beings tend to do. They will retreat to doing what’s comfortable, even if it isn’t the most effective tactic. We need to take advantage of that.

Human nature could end up handicapping us. Human nature could also end up handing us victories. We’ve got to be smart. We’ve got to be objective. We’ve got to think through what we’re doing to minimize our internal conflict and maximize the chaos on the other side. Are we doing that? The wackiness about the continuing resolution last week was an example of what we face. On our side, we have a very narrow majority which empowers dissenting individuals far out of proportion to their numbers. We’re also trying to navigate the reality that this is Donald Trump’s party and not the same GOP we grew up in. He’s the loudest voice, but he’s not the absolute dictator. There are incentives and rewards both for following him and defying him – as well as risks. How we manage our new coalition is the question. Our new coalition is not just conservatives. We conservatives make up a big chunk of it, but it’s also populists, anti-war folks who reject the old foreign policy consensus, as well as RFK granola/crunchy Make America Healthy Again types. Organized labor has an unprecedented presence too. Our Trump coalition is a new thing, a potentially unstable thing. We’re going to have growing pains.

This new coalition is unstable both because of competing interests and the fact that it hasn’t yet developed the institutional structures that minimize the disruption caused by internal disagreements. Let’s look at what happened with the continuing resolution. At one time, the Republicans were supposedly the budget-cutting party. They were the fiscal sanity folks, the deficit hawks. There’s still that faction in our coalition. But there’s another part of our coalition that really doesn’t care about debt that much. Donald Trump did not come into office as a budget cutter. Though he wants to see DOGE streamline the government and cut regulations, he did not get elected by promising to take a meat cleaver to America’s finances. In fact, he took entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and all the rest, which are the majority of our spending, completely off the table. So, you can see the problem. We’ve got both budget hawks and budget doves inside our tent. And that conflict has to be resolved.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21247/nuclear-fusion

As dreams of renewable green energy fade, along with electric car batteries that freeze in winter, explode in summer and cannot conveniently take you as far as you might want to go without a long refill that may or may not be available, and with windmills and solar panels that are dependent upon wind and sun when there might be much of either, the future keeps looking better and better for long-lasting, totally clean nuclear fusion energy – if and when it can be developed. Increasingly, people are starting to see nuclear fusion as the wave of the future for both affordable energy and “saving the planet” from being overrun by pollutants.

One small reactor in your car could enable it to travel for “a million kilometers” – quite different from trying to find a charging station while crossing a desert.

The good news is that entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Sam Altman are already exploring how to capture this new magic fuel so that it can be put to use immediately. To that end, they are reportedly building small nuclear reactors in Nevada.

The bad news is that Communist China is developing them, already using them to fuse atoms at unimaginably high temperatures inside a device called a tokamak. They have been working in fusion atoms for energy this way for years while continuing to open at least two “dirty” coal plants every week, evidently just make sure they have their bases covered while they perfect nuclear fusion for commercial use.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/biden-commutes-sentences-capital-punishment-death-penalty

In the latest in a series of shameful closing acts, President Joe Biden on Sunday night commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 murderers on federal death row.

Biden’s midnight decision spared the lives of all but the three most notorious capital inmates: the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, the Emmanuel AME Church shooter, and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber.

In his statement on the commutations, Biden said he was “more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” It’s clear, then, that he only stopped short of a blanket commutation because of the backlash that would have come with pardoning these three mass murderers.

Make no mistake: Biden’s choice to spare the remaining 37 murderers is a moral travesty. In so doing, the lame duck president has once again shown that he is more beholden to progressive dogmas than to the pursuit of justice.

That’s obvious when you look at the killers Biden spared. Take Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., who murdered a family of four in cold blood, including three-year-old Luis Damian Escobedo and four-year-old Luis Julian Escobedo. Or consider Jorge Avila-Torrez, who murdered eight-year-old Laura Hobbs and nine-year-old Krystal Tobias in 2005. Avila-Torrez then joined the Marines, strangled U.S. Navy petty officer Amanda Jean Snell to death, and abducted and assaulted two more women before finally being apprehended.

Nine of those with commuted sentences were on death row for killing other people in prison. If capital punishment is not an option for such offenses, then there is no deterrence for prison homicides—and therefore no guarantee of safety for the incarcerated.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fetterman-comes-out-for-common-sense-again/

It used to be taken for granted on both sides of the aisle that once the presidential election was over, the country should unite behind the president, whoever he was, and support him for the good of the nation. Disagreements would begin almost immediately, of course, but there used to be what was generally known as a “honeymoon period,” during which politicians of both parties paid tribute to the national unity by wishing the new chief executive all success. But that was in an earlier, less fractious age; now, Sen. John Fetterman (D-But Sane), has landed in hot water with the left for stating what used to be a commonplace sentiment.

Fox News reported Sunday that Fetterman “says he hopes President-elect Trump is successful, and spoke out against those who feel otherwise.” Every senator should be saying the same thing, but Fetterman was one of the few Democrats, if not the only one, to dare to state publicly that Bad Orange Man shouldn’t fall on his face and end up behind bars, or worse, before his term of office is up.

“I’m not rooting against him,” Fetterman said sensibly; after all, if the president fails, the nation suffers, so what American should be wishing for that? “If you’re rooting against the president,” Fetterman continued, “you are rooting against the nation. And I’m not ever going to be where I want a president to fail. So, country first. I know that’s become maybe like a cliche, but it happens to be true.”

Leftists were predictably enraged. Over at Bluesky, where the hard-left can let its freak flag fly without having to put up with the benighted, hateful, and evil ones who dare to dissent from their crystal-clear vision of what constitutes truth and righteousness, our moral superiors were giving full vent to their tolerance and broad-mindedness. “Fetterman,” said one, “is a giant moron.” Another waxed eloquent: “F**king Fetterman can f**k off. There. I said it. I love being able to use the F word here. And f**king Fetterman deserves it. F**king traitor.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/luigi-mangione-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson

On the morning of December 4, 2024, in midtown Manhattan, a masked male snuck up behind the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company, and pumped three bullets into the executive’s back and leg. Brian Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two, was pronounced dead a few minutes later.

Celebrations of the murder broke out on social media almost as soon as the killing was reported. The unknown assailant had provided a public service by taking out a leader in a predatory and heartless industry, the killer’s fans asserted. The jubilation grew in fervor as each newly released surveillance video confirmed the original impression that the killer, still at large, was young and handsome.

Once an arrest was made, the lionization of the suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, reached a frenzy. “Luigi”—always “Luigi”—was the “hot assassin.” Merchandise featuring his image and phrases from a handwritten manifesto he had carried with him sprung up on Amazon. A video projection of Mangione’s face was cheered at a rock concert in Boston. A crowdsourced defense fund quickly swelled with donations. Wanted posters appeared in Manhattan with pictures of other corporate CEOs. The names and salaries of health-care executives were posted on line. Private citizens who had helped with the manhunt were vilified as snitches; police officers involved in arresting Mangione received threats.

To the mainstream media, the question posed by this episode was obvious: Why are Americans so angry at health-insurance companies? And so reporters and opinion columnists got to work limning a portrait of the health-care industry—its profits, the salaries of its executives—and fleshing out the animus against it.

The only relevant question in the wake of the Thompson murder, however, is: What has gone wrong with Americans’ moral compass that so many could cheer the extrajudicial killing of an innocent man? That question has not been deemed worthy of exploring.

When the high fives for the assassin started appearing on the web, some observers dismissed that support as a minor emanation from the fever swamps of social media, where anonymity and the desire for a following push users to rhetorical extremes.

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28292/mama-make-america-moral-again

 goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Every day I read chilling statistical reports on the escalating violent crime in America––murder, rape, robbery, assault. The staggering increase is horrifying, but what is most alarming to me is the percentage of young people who accept criminality as a societal solution. The Hill posted a stunning article online December 17, 2024, titled, “Shock poll: 41 percent of young voters find killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO acceptable” written by Filip Timotija. Why is this so?

The alarming decline of morality that is convulsing America today is the consequence of the globalist elite, and its relentless replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate. The separation of Church and State that our Founding Fathers institutionalized as protection against a state religion has been exploited and perverted to allow the insertion of Marxist principles, indoctrination, and ideology to be practiced as a state religion inside America.

Primary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation have embraced American Marxism and its amoral foundation which advances its ends justify the means for the greater good principle. There is no individualism or individual morality in Marxism, only rules to follow that advance the collective. It is precisely this amoral Marxist narrative that has separated young Americans from the morality and protection of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indoctrinated young Americans have not understood the formulaic consequences of the ends justify the means principle that can and will be used against them, the moment their usefulness expires.

Marxism is a collectivist replacement ideology that has been funded, fomented, and weaponized by the globalist elite to shatter the Judeo-Christian morality and the individualism it protects. The amoral tenets of the woke Marxist narrative, including Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) that affect education, medicine, law, investment, and corporate governance, are designed to collapse the Judeo-Christian morality and infrastructure of the United States––and they have been wildly successful. The evidence is reflected in the stupefying statistic reported in The Hill article, “A poll found 41% of adults under 30 consider the killing of Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson acceptable.” Additionally, “Since Thompson was shot, first in the back and then again as he fell to the ground, a number of social media posts from people saying they do not have sympathy for his death have gained popularity.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-corrupt-pardon-of-death-row-inmates/

Last week, as we covered here, the Biden Justice Department filed a death penalty charge against Luigi Mangione, the alleged cold-blooded killer of health insurance executive Brian Thompson. Mangione was already facing state murder charges for the murder committed on a Manhattan street. The only reason to pile on a capital charge — for an administration that both says it philosophically opposes the death penalty and has imposed a moratorium on executions since President Biden entered office in January 2021 — was to grab headlines in a case that had riveted public attention.

And now, just days later, Biden has cynically commuted the sentences of almost all remaining federal death row inmates — 37 of the 40 — so that none of those defendants will be executed.

I say “cynically” because this is the game Biden and Democrats in power play with capital punishment, which is broadly popular nationally but reviled by their party’s progressive base. For public consumption, in murder cases that enrage voters, they take on the mantle of capital punishment’s reluctant champions. Thus did the Obama-Biden Justice Department indict Dzokhar Tsarnaev on death charges when he and his brother bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013 — notwithstanding that Obama, like Biden, had imposed a moratorium on executions. And when a Democrat-appointee-dominated First Circuit appellate court irrationally reversed the death sentence endorsed by the Boston federal jury, the Biden Justice Department appealed and convinced the Supreme Court to reinstate it.

But that was out of one side of the administration’s mouth. On the other side, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were assuring their political base not to pay any mind to these theatrics because, after all, they weren’t going to allow anyone to be executed.

And, naturally, Tsarnaev is one of the three death row inmates whose sentence Biden did not commute — the others are Dylann Roof, the white racist who in 2015 murdered black worshipers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and against whom the Obama-Biden Justice Department sought the death penalty despite its claimed constitutional qualms; and Robert D. Bowers, the Jew-hating murderer who killed worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, and against whom the Biden Justice Department decided to proceed with death penalty charges in 2023.

The Democrats’ death penalty cynicism aside, this is a corrupt invocation of the pardon power — I should say, yet another corrupt invocation — by Biden.