RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3820478-big-spender-biden-to-blame-for-inflation-and-coming-debt-ceiling-brawl/

In just two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, our national debt has grown by $3.8 trillion. Beginning in 1929, it took the U.S. Treasury 61 years to accumulate that much borrowing.

Yet Biden has the temerity to call Republicans “fiscally demented.” 

The fight over raising the debt ceiling is just beginning, and already the embattled president is insulting those who oppose his reckless spending, which is, as I write this, crashing our economy. It will get worse — the downturn and the name-calling. 

President Biden tossed trillions in unnecessary COVID-19 relief onto a fast-recovering economy, punching up inflation to 40-year highs as too many dollars chased too few goods.   

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reckons Biden has added $4.8 trillion to our deficits through executive actions and legislation. This is in addition to our normal spending.

Meanwhile, no one – including many Republicans – has been minding the store. 

Now we see the beginning of the recession that the Federal Reserve deems necessary to drive down inflation. Retail sales, housing and manufacturing have turned down. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said unemployment must go up and growth must go down in order to reach the central bank’s 2 percent official inflation target.   

We are, in effect, about to pay for Joe Biden’s largesse — with people losing their jobs and businesses going under. When our nation’s biggest banks set aside billions to cover expected loan losses, as they just did at the end of the year, it is because they expect companies to default on loans and people to get into trouble financially. This is not an act of God; this is because our leaders spent too much money.   

https://www.frontpagemag.com/never-mind-mishandling-classified-documents-is-no-big-deal/

Leftist abuses go through three steps.

1. Denial – It never happened

2. Bargaining – Even if it happened, it was very different

3. Acceptance – It’s no big deal and everyone does it

Here’s CNN hitting the third stage with Garagegate.

Washington’s little secret: ‘Spillage’ of classified information is a common occurrence – CNN

Remember that thing we were screaming our heads off about? It’s actually nothing to be outraged about.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/20/trump-warns-republicans-in-congress-not-to-cut-social-security-or-medicare-n1663562

Donald Trump has pretty good political instincts. He wouldn’t have been elected president without them. So when the former president issues a stark warning about the political consequences of Republicans advocating for cuts in Social Security and Medicare in the coming debt-limit battle, the GOP might do well to listen.

When it comes to old-age benefits, no good has ever come from advocating cuts in Social Security and/or Medicare. They’re not called the “third rail of politics” for nothing.

“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” Trump said in a video that was previewed by Politico on Friday. “Cut waste, fraud, and abuse everywhere that we can find it, and there is plenty of it… But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security. Don’t destroy it.”

According to Politico, Trump suggested “targeting foreign aid, cracking down on migration, ending ‘left-wing gender programs from our military,’ and end ‘billions being spent on climate extremism.’”

Trump’s position is entirely consistent with his past positions on entitlement reform: let the Democrats take the lead. But Democrats say there’s nothing wrong with either program that a little tweaking wouldn’t cure: raising the retirement age (again), increasing Medicare premiums, cutting payments to doctors and hospitals — all the usual half-baked fixes that have only delayed the inevitable.

When the GAO declares that both Social Security and Medicare are on an “unsustainable” path, no amount of “tweaking” by Congress will save those programs. Medicare is set to run out of cash by the end of this decade, while the Social Security trust fund will be drained by 2035. Both of those programs will end without massive intervention by Congress.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/2023-started-off-on-the-wrong-foot-for-this-rookie-officer/

Imagine starting a job and having quite simply the worst day you possibly can. A customer comes in and completely berates you while you’re learning the ropes; a boss ends up chewing out employees over lackluster performance; or something simply goes wrong with the business itself, such as uncontrollable weather conditions.

Well, that’s all child’s play compared to what Paul went through. Paul is a rookie New York Police Department officer that was getting his start on the force on New Year’s Eve. That’s right, probably one of the busiest days you could ever expect. Especially when you’re patrolling around Times Square, one of the most iconic places you can be to celebrate 2023.

But then something hit unexpectedly that threw Paul’s world into turmoil. While working alongside two other officers around 9:30 PM, a 19-year old “radicalized” Islamic extremist struck.

What’s more, he struck with an unusual weapon – a machete. Not a firearm or a knife, but rather a dangerous, sharp weapon that can really do some damage. And boy, did it. Paul ended up receiving a large laceration, as well as a skull fracture. What’s more, even after a fellow officer fired upon him, the suspect actually injured them with a laceration as well.

The suspect was taken into custody, and, thankfully, Paul and the other officer are recovering from their wounds. But I totally feel for this kid, mainly because no one deserves to have a first day like that. An argument over a traffic infraction, sure. Even an altercation in which they need to arrest someone. But an all-out attack? With a machete?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-wests-last-chance/

Those who make a business of projecting trends often neglect the acceleration factor.  The march of history may be usefully described as “slowly” followed by “suddenly.” Yet we are rarely prepared for those times when history seems to “speed up,” and decades of change are compressed into years or even months.  We assume that current trends will continue, and we are surprised when they don’t.

An excellent book on the subject is Tony Blankley’s The West’s Last Chance.  Blankley, a nationally syndicated columnist who served President Reagan as a speechwriter and senior policy adviser, began the book with an overview of sudden changes in the course of history:  the conquests of Alexander the Great, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, and the Nazi’s rapid takeover of much of Europe.

He then made the case that we are on the brink of another historical reversal of massive proportions—namely, the takeover of Europe by Islam. He suggested that the takeover would be accomplished through demographic changes rather than war and he further suggested that Europeans would mount little resistance to it.

According to Blankley, the lack of resistance would have its source in the fact that demographic changes move slowly and are thus less noticeable.  One can see that an attacking army ought to be resisted, but the threat of rising birth rates seems a much less urgent matter.

Moreover, for much of the world the pre- 9/11 decades were a time of relative calm.  For one thing, the differences between the West and the Soviet Union had been patched up. The liberal elites claimed that it was merely a case of mutual misunderstanding.   The solution to most problems, it was asserted, was to understand the “other.” The best way to do that was to practice “political correctness”—a non-judgmental approach to political and social issues. Ironically, political correctness was the prelude to the highly judgmental ideology of “woke.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/has_covid_backlash_sparked_a_movement.html

Friends of freedom generally agree about four points:

(1) Protections for expansive individual liberty and respect for limited government are essential for the promotion of human rights, self-determination, and prosperity.

(2) Over the course of American history, the U.S. government has strayed far beyond the original limitations of its enumerated powers as set forth in the Constitution.

(3) Globalism, international government, plutocracy, rule by “elite” experts, unchecked bureaucracy, and the steady erosion of inalienable rights all work to maximize the power of centralized authority while minimizing the power of individual citizens.

(4) The most important conflict raging today is between individual liberty and coercive State control.

Where defenders of liberty disagree is in their assessment of the future.  Some believe that so much ground has now been lost in humanity’s centuries-long struggle for freedom that centralized government control over each individual is all but certain.  Technology’s rapid intrusion into the private sphere, the exponential expansion of the national security surveillance State, the rise of government-directed mass censorship, the successful efforts of multinational corporations and banks to influence national government directives, and the Intelligence Community’s vast programs for manipulating public opinion on a global scale all lend support to this admittedly pessimistic point of view.  

On the other hand, there are those who see the ebb and flow of human liberty as a natural occurrence, technology as a set of instruments that can just as ably expand freedom as curtail it (conquerors and liberators use the same weapons, after all), and encroaching totalitarianism as a necessary precursor for sparking popular revolt.  From this vantage point, the darker things get, the more likely real change is afoot.  I fall into this latter camp, and I will repeat a couple truths I hold dear: (1) before any system can be overhauled, there must first be a revolutionary shift in social consciousness, and (2) transformational change often occurs when people least expect it.  

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/19/d-c-journalist-proves-biden-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong-by-assuming-he-did-absolutely-nothing-wrong/

Missing classified documents are only a problem when a president that the bureaucracy doesn’t like has them.

If the entire news media, plus Biden’s vindictive Justice Department, hadn’t put the country through months of insanity over the petty “confidential documents” drama at Mar-a-Lago, Biden’s own scandal of having illegally retained government material when he was a private citizen would be a pretty boring affair.

But they didn’t. They decided to get cute and make this a criminal matter. Now they get the same treatment.

Wait! they claim in unison. This is different! Biden did the right thing and Trump did the wrong thing!

Admittedly, that’s a totally fair and obvious point when you start with the assumption that over the six years Biden was in wrongful possession of government secrets, the material just sat there, untouched and unread (and make the concurrent assumption that the same wasn’t true of the Trump documents). They simply gathered dust, month by month, sound asleep in office drawers and garage boxes, forgotten by Biden, time, and the federal bureaucracy. Then, when one fateful day Biden’s lawyers happened upon the documents, they immediately dialed the National Archives for a swift transfer to the proper authorities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/01/19/the-super-shady-coverup-of-the-paul-pelosi-story-is-worse-than-you-thought-n1663357

Remember when the Paul Pelosi story was big news for a while, then weird things started coming out, and then suddenly everyone stopped talking about it?

Yeah, I do.

Back in October, the story came, and Democrats pounced on it, pushing the narrative that some deranged Trumpster had broken into the Pelosi home and attacked the husband of the then-House Speaker in some politically motivated MAGA attack. Of course, it was soon revealed that the attack was most definitely not a Trump supporter — but actually a left-leaning supporter of Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ causes, as well as a nudist activist who reportedly struggled with drug abuse. Oops.

But it gets weirder. It was initially reported that when the police came, the attacker was wearing nothing but his underwear — which was later retracted. There was a report that there was a third unnamed individual who let the police in — which was later retracted. Then there was the report that detailed how Pelosi opened the door for the police before returning to the interior of his home to reengage his attacker — which was later retracted, and NBC News reporter Miguel Almaguer got suspended for reporting it — even though his report matched details recorded in court documents. As the story lingered, we were left with questions than answers, and yet three key pieces of evidence — Pelosi’s 911 call, the police body cam footage, and Capitol Police security footage — have not been released.

https://www.thefp.com/p/americas-police-exodus?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last year, Brian Lande, an officer in the Richmond, Calif., police department, had to draw his gun to stop two drunk men from clobbering each other to death with metal rods.

In 2015, he threatened deadly force to stop a fight between two more drunk men. One was armed with a hatchet. Another, with a wrench. 

On another occasion, he drew his firearm to arrest a man hopping a backyard fence, fleeing the scene of a burglary.

None of these was remarkable in Richmond, a working-class city just east of San Francisco that’s notorious for its drive-by shootings, break-ins, carjackings, and countless petty crimes.

When I asked Lande if he often had to unholster his gun—a standard-issue Glock 17—he told me he’d done it so many times that “they all bleed into each other.” 

Luckily, he’s never had to pull the trigger.

But things could easily have gone south. If a suspect had made a suspicious move or pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a gun—it happens more than you’d think—he would have had less than a quarter of a second to make the most awful decision of his life: whether to kill another human being. 

“You’re in an incredibly inauspicious situation,” Lande told me. “The chance of making a good faith mistake is high.”

What that means is that if you’re a cop, you’ve got to be confident that if a tragedy occurs—if a life is taken that should not have been taken—your chief, your city council, the powers that be will at least treat you fairly, hear you out, and ensure that justice is served.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/the_poisoning_of_america.html

It’s time for a new drug strategy. The Biden Administration’s harm reduction strategy isn’t working. America is in its worst drug abuse crisis in over a century. According to the CDC,  over 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, and almost 950,000 have died since 1999; figures for 2022 show a slight decline in overdose deaths over the previous year. The leading killer is illicit fentanyl — a synthetic opioid so powerful that two milligrams can kill you. Fentanyl and methamphetamine come from Mexico; their chemicals come from China. Drug cartels make fentanyl and add it to heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and counterfeit prescription drugs. The fake drugs look like Xanax, Adderall, and other prescription drugs but are laced with fentanyl. It’s easy to buy drugs on the Internet and social media. Young people buy “Xanax” and die from fentanyl poisoning. Yet, there is no outrage from our leaders.             

New York had the heroin and crack epidemics of the 70s and 80s. The response was more enforcement and treatment, and it worked for a while. But since then, the drug problem has progressively worsened; drug enforcement and treatment are not priorities for our politicians and government leaders. All aspects of the drug problem have been given a low priority since the mid-90s. Our society tolerates illicit drug use and has legalized marijuana use. Drug traffickers exploit modern technology to their advantage, but the U.S. government lags behind. We suffer the consequences of three decades or more of failed and inconsistent strategies coupled with permissive attitudes toward drug use.           

The Biden administration’s drug strategy isn’t working, and there is no urgency to address the problem. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on TV to tell Americans what their government was doing about the drug problem. He announced the first National Drug Control Strategy, which contained substantial resource increases and a solid commitment to enforcement and treatment. He said, “[drugs are] the greatest threat facing our nation today.” The current administration rarely mentions the drug crisis. One can barely walk the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities without stepping over addicts, discarded syringes, and crack pipes. Violence in our major cities is often driven by drug-gang conflict. Such human misery is unacceptable in the wealthiest country on earth.

What is our current drug strategy for China and Mexico? These countries are not cooperative and cite America’s drug appetite as the problem — they are not wrong. U.S. border enforcement officials are overwhelmed by the flood of undocumented migrants and cannot focus on drugs smuggled over the border.

Here are recommendations to save American lives.