RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-extremely-gleeful-extremely-dark?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Brian Thompson, the fifty-year-old CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down on the street in New York Wednesday, in what appears to be a carefully planned and utterly cold-blooded assassination. I say appears because the shooting was captured on video: The killer, masked and dressed in black, steps out from behind a parked car as Thompson passes. A moment later, Thompson stumbles, falls, and doesn’t get up.

It is terrible to watch—and yet, even this literal snuff film is less disturbing than the various critics and commentators, many of them self-described progressive empaths who preach compassion for the marginalized and hashtag their posts with “#BeKind,” who are treating this real murder of a real person as though it were the emotionally cathartic climax of a John Wick movie—the part where the archetypal villain gets his just deserts. The police later revealed that the bullets fired at Thompson had the industry terms deny, defend, and depose written on them—a cinematic detail that only further encouraged the notion that he was killed as vengeance for UnitedHealthcare’s misdeeds.

The online reaction has been extremely gleeful and extremely dark: “My thoughts and prayers are on hold pending prior authorization,” reads one representative (and massively upvoted) comment on a New York Times Facebook story about the murder. Taylor Lorenz, recently of The Washington Post, wrote, “and they wonder why we want these executives dead” on Bluesky before cross-posting the name and photo of Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO Kim Keck to her accounts on multiple platforms (along with a cheeky suggestion that her followers engage in “very peaceful letter writing campaigns” against murderous insurance execs).

In a viral X post, Columbia University professor Anthony Zenkus—whose profile describes him as an “anti-violence” “trauma expert”—quipped, “Today, we mourn the death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunned down. . . wait, I’m sorry—today we mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/05/scoop-biden-regime-quietly-revokes-veterans-hiring-preference-for-civil-service-jobs/

“A source from the U.S. Air Force told American Greatness: “This is government-wide hiring ramped up like never before seen. They are literally packing the federal workforce with as many loyalists and subversives as they can. Worst of all, they think it is their duty to do so.”He added: “Since DEI is getting pettifogged rather harshly (and rightly so) this is yet another way they can worm into the bureaucracy—at the expense of veterans.”The source told American Greatness that “veterans are being cast aside for this new workforce (wokeforce).”

The Biden regime has quietly revoked the veterans hiring preference for civil service jobs and promotions, which since the 1944 Veterans Act gave eligible veterans preference over others for appointments in federal civil service selection, a memorandum obtained by American Greatness shows.

The goal of the veterans’ preference law was to “provide a uniform method by which qualified veterans [could] receive special consideration for federal employment,” according to Military.com.

By law, veterans who are disabled or who served on active duty during certain specified time periods or in military campaigns are entitled to preference over non-veterans both in hiring from competitive lists and in retention during reductions in force.

New guidelines from the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service (DCPAS) now stipulate that “veterans’ preference should be considered on an equal basis as other qualified candidates.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21179/trump-punish-woke-universities

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that Donald Trump will make good on his vow to defund educational institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

That is why Trump’s scorched-earth approach is so necessary, even as it is being denounced by the same people who are responsible for creating or perpetuating the current mess as too extreme or even needed at all.

More to the point, it will mean that policing antisemitism on campus will be shifted away from the ineffectual Title VI complaints overseen federal education bureaucrats, to a campaign of lawsuits conducted not just by groups like the Deborah Project (valuable though they may be) but by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with all of the vast resources at its command. In this manner, a message can be sent that will likely motivate the vast majority of college administrations to discard DEI and the tolerance of hate for Jews that accompanies it.

Instead of expressing horror at his determination to enact real change, fair-minded Americans of all faiths and in both major political parties should be rooting for him to keep his word and to do everything he promised to punish colleges and universities, in addition to any other entity that promotes the sort of woke hate that has made life for Jewish students and anyone else who dissents against the new secular orthodoxy so difficult.

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that Donald Trump will make good on his vow to defund educational institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

Occidental College seemingly waved the white flag last week in its efforts to defend itself against charges of tolerating antisemitism on its Los Angeles campus. The school agreed to a “sweeping settlement” with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that acknowledged the ongoing hardships, harassment and discrimination faced by Jewish students since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Occidental’s apathy to all this, which was little different from what has been happening at dozens if not hundreds of other American institutions of higher learning, violated its obligations to prohibit such discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/democrats-can-thank-themselves-for-the-preemptive-pardon-histrionics/

It’s not Kash Patel’s schtick that puts them in jeopardy. It’s that they took their shot at Trump, missed, and now have to worry about the oldest rule in politics.

President Biden is enmeshed in a pardon scandal of his own making. So what are Democrats and their media allies doing? What they always do: They’re blaming Trump.

At Politico on Wednesday, Jonathan Martin reported that the Biden-Harris White House is spun up over President-elect Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to replace Chris Wray as FBI director. “Patel,” Martin stresses, “has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.” Against the backdrop of Trump’s fiery campaign riffs against his nemeses — the House January 6 Committee, Democratic prosecutors, et al. — we are supposed to believe it’s the Patel nomination that triggered President Biden to grant his son a pardon with a breathtaking eleven-year immunity bath. Moreover, the Patel pick apparently has the president and his advisers “carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons” to Trump’s enemies — even though they’ve “committed no crimes.”

Just two weeks ago, I observed that the eleven-week interregnum between the November election and Inauguration Day on January 20 was the season for histrionics. If you’re already exhausted, there are still more than five weeks to go. If you’re like me, you’re more bent out of shape by the “golden at-bat” proposal, the latest evidence that MLB’s anarchist commissioner Rob Manfred is bent on destroying the national pastime. The proposal is so ludicrous that even my pal, the closet baseball progressive Rich Lowry, is outraged!

Remember, I’ve argued that Trump must end lawfare — and have thus endeared myself to the MAGA warriors, . . . just as I’ve endeared myself over the past four years to apologists for progressive Democratic prosecutors and congressional Trump obsessives, who exploited the public’s investigative authorities (to say nothing of the mountain of taxpayer dollars) to pursue their partisan vendettas. I am also on record — and will be again come Saturday — urging that the president’s unilateral pardon power is an anachronism that ought to be repealed by a constitutional amendment. So, please, don’t take me to be urging either more lawfare or more pardons.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/06/can-elon-and-vivek-lead-us-to-a-more-efficient-government/

Once Donald Trump is inaugurated as our 47th U.S. president, Tesla, SpaceX, and X/Twitter CEO Elon Musk will likely head a Department of Government Efficiency commission (DOGE). Teaming up with tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, this dynamic duo will focus on “drastic reforms” targeting “the entire federal government.”

Already there is talk that Musk and Ramaswamy have identified work-at-home policies for federal workers in an effort to trim $2 billion of bloat from the budget. One area they are targeting is waste at the Veterans Administration.

You might not support the movement to “transition” our country to electric vehicles. But you must be impressed with the sheer determination and sense of urgency Elon Musk applied to his vision of building EVs to scale as he did with Tesla. Similarly, Musk brought the U.S. space program back into existence with similar single-mindedness, having achieved 100 successful year-to-date space missions in 2024 with more to come.

A core aspect of his approach to development and production was found in his recent biography, a five-step process that he refers to as “the algorithm.”

Question every requirement. Never accept a requirement that came from a department or committee.

Delete any process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back 10 percent of them, you didn’t delete enough.

Simplify and optimize. This should come right after Step 2. Do not simplify and optimize a process that should not exist.

Accelerate cycle time. Every procedure can be sped up.

Automate. This comes last. Do not automate until all requirements have been questioned, processes have been deleted, everything has been simplified, and procedures have been sped up.

Imagine if these five steps were applied to reforming the U.S. government. It would probably look a lot like what Musk achieved with X/Twitter. Less than two years after Musk acquired the company, it operates today with 80 percent fewer employees and is much more productive, accurate, timely, and ideologically balanced.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/gunman-shot-kindergarteners-in-california-for-palestine/

Two kindergarteners were critically wounded when Glenn Litton, a monster with a long criminal record and apparent delusions, tricked his way into the school and then opened fire in a small California town.

Glenn Litton lied to gain access to the Feather River Seventh-Day Adventists school by claiming to be the grandfather of a prospective student before opening fire on the children.

The gunman wrote in a note that the shootings of children were “carried out countermeasure in necessitated response to America’s involvement with genocide and oppression of Palestinians along with attacks towards Yemen.”

The media emphasizes that Litton was mentally ill and I’m sure his sense of reality was probably none too grounded, but the note also makes it clear that he had been feeding off pro-terrorist propaganda on social media probably supplemented by media coverage.

Even apart from his recent support for Islamic terrorism, Litton was a poster boy for California’s revolving door criminal justice system.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2024/12/05/new-poll-all-of-trumps-nominees-are-viewed-more-favorably-than-unfavorably-n2648647

With Washington, DC consumed with controversy of a handful of Trump nominees, the American public is looking…pretty comfortable with what they’re seeing from the presidential transition.  We noted strong polling on this front before Thanksgiving, and the trend appears to be continuing.  Donald Trump’s overall favorability has pulled even at 48-48, whereas both his defeated rival and the current incumbent underwater by double digits.  You’ll see that recent Gallup data in the graphic embedded below.  As for the transition, a sizable majority (52/38) approves, with literally every single Trump nominee polling with more support than opposition — both according to Morning Consult:

One of Trump’s most embattled picks, Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth, is above water by single digits, with the public splitting almost into thirds on his nomination: Support, oppose, and don’t know.  Hegseth is facing a series of allegations against him and responded in a Wall Street Journal op/ed yesterday.  An excerpt:

I’ve been through a lot: combat tours, job changes, divorces and family challenges. (Yes, I love my mom very much, and she loves me.) I have always led with honesty, integrity and passion. Tragically, many veterans never find the purpose for their next chapter and succumb to the bottle, depression or, worst of all, suicide. I understand what they are facing—because I’ve lived it. But by the grace of God, I took another path. My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has renewed and restored my life. I am saved by his grace. The press is peddling anonymous story after anonymous story, all meant to smear me and tear me down. It’s a textbook manufactured media takedown.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/06/we-were-100-right-elect-joe-biden-hell-be-the-worst-president-in-u-s-history/

Editor’s note: Now that Joe Biden’s disastrous term as president is coming to an inglorious end, we thought it worth reminding readers that we predicted his failed presidency more than four years ago. Even we are surprised by how prescient we were. Every single item on our list came true.  The only thing we missed is that he would end his presidency by betraying his own party and all his sycophants in the media with a get-out-of-jail-free card for his miscreant son. Unfortunately, all the elites and pundits who gaslit the country about Biden will continue to be feted and fattened, while we do the hard and unglamorous work of telling the unvarnished truth. Below is our Oct. 20, 2020, editorial.

Elect Joe Biden: He’ll Be The Worst President In U.S. History

October 20, 2020

Ranking modern presidents, from first to worst, is an entirely subjective matter. That said, we’re quite sure Joe Biden will be, if elected, the most destructive president of our lifetimes if not of all time.

At I&I we tend to look at Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama as being the worst presidents from our lifetimes. Carter saw himself as the caretaker of the country’s inevitable decline rather than someone who would lift it from its malaise. Obama managed the worst economic recovery in our post-war history, allowed ISIS to grow into a terrorist power, and rolled over for Iran’s mullahs. His was the most divisive presidency of modern times. If this nation is on the brink of another civil war, as some suggest we are, it’s because he set the tone for the bitter separation we see today among Americans.

At least Carter led the deregulation of the airline, trucking, and rail industries, and in his 1978 State of the Union address acknowledged “we really need to realize that there is a limit to the role and the function of government.”

Biden would neither do nor say any such thing.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/05/what-the-trump-nominees-have-not-done-and-will-not-do/

Deflated by the resounding November defeat, the left now believes it can magically rebound by destroying Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees.

Many of Trump’s picks are well outside the usual Washington, DC/New York political, media, and corporate nexus.

But that is precisely the point—to insert reformers into a bloated, incompetent, and weaponized government who are not part of it.

Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is already drawing severe criticism.

His furious enemies cannot go after his resume, since he has spent a lifetime in private, congressional, and executive billets, both in investigations and intelligence.

Instead, they claim he is too vindictive and does not reflect the ethos of the FBI.

But what will Patel not do as the new director?

He will not serially lie under oath to federal investigators as did interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a current Patel critic.

He will not forge an FBI court affidavit, as did convicted felon and agency lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.

He will not claim amnesia 245 times under congressional oath to evade embarrassing admissions as did former Director James Comey.

He will not partner with a foreign national to collect dirt and subvert a presidential campaign as the FBI did with Christopher Steele in 2016.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/the-end-of-a-scam/

Biden was never a wonderful guy, and definitely not the savior of democracy, no matter what his media supporters said.

How appropriate that the Biden presidency is ending with an act of self-dealing that he and his allies insisted, with great righteousness, would never happen.

Joe Biden was always a scam, and his pardon of his son Hunter Biden is just the latest evidence.

No one should have believed Biden’s flagrant lie that he wouldn’t pardon Hunter for his tax and gun crimes and other potential wrongdoing.

The president has a long record of dishonesty, about his own biography (which blew up his first presidential campaign in 1988) and especially about the family influence-peddling business that was at the root of Hunter’s tax evasion — the president’s son wouldn’t have had any money to evade taxes on if it weren’t for all the foreign largesse.

Every politician ends up shading the truth somewhere along the line, and it was going to be awkward for President Biden to admit that he might pardon his son. When asked about the possibility, though, the president could have said “No comment” or “I’m not going to discuss a hypothetical.”

Instead, he flatly denied it, and his allies wove his denial into a narrative about Biden’s abiding commitment to our system of justice. He was “a president living the rule of law” (MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann) and “a true American who believes in democracy and the way the system is supposed to work” (Joy Behar of The View). Etc., etc.

Now Biden has made all the people who issued these stirring testimonials look like naïfs and hacks.

Their mistake was attributing any grandeur to Joe Biden. He has made a long, undistinguished career of being a middling politician from a small Democratic state and had just enough staying power to become president when he was already a has-been.

In sizing up Biden and Trump, the Democrat’s media supporters could have paraphrased the famous bumper sticker from a 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election featuring two unpalatable choices: “Vote for the unimpressive hack — it’s important.”

Instead, they felt compelled to create an illusory Biden, an epic figure whose amazing personal qualities made him an indispensable buttress of our institutions and norms.

Biden was puffed up into a world-historical figure who had saved American democracy by winning one election against Donald Trump, who, of course, simply came right back to win another against Biden’s chosen successor, Kamala Harris.