RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/still-suicidal-and-surreal/

Since the Democrats’ shellacking at the polls on November 5, the party has been undergoing a fractious discussion about what went wrong. A whole roster of the usual suspects has been mooted, including neglect of the working class. But that accurate assessment still doesn’t get that the problem is leftism per se, not bad candidates, polling, tactics, or whatever, no more than New Coke failed for those reasons. It was just a bad product.

Take Vermont Socialist, er, Independent Bernie Sanders’s scolding of his party: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. . . .  And they’re right.”

We know what Sanders means: “changing” to a full socialist planned economy managed by the state, rather than the over-regulated hybrid we now have. But those features of our dirigiste economy have created conditions, dysfunctions, and moral hazards––the tax, spend, print, borrow, hyper-regulate, and redistribute money that during the Biden-Harris administration unleashed inflation and wage stagnation that drove voters, including traditional Democrat constituencies, to vote for Trump.

Nor is the problem that “real” socialism has “never been tried.” History is littered with attempts to create a successful socialist or communist economy, and every one we know of has failed––not because it wasn’t properly managed or had a bad “messaging strategy,” but because unlike free-market capitalism, it has been predicated on unreal assumptions about human nature and motivation, as well as ignoring the power of freedom and choice.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/trump_s_arctic_policy_is_no_folly.html

On Sunday, December 22, President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his desire for America to take control of Greenland, saying it is an “absolute necessity.” The very next day, Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, said the autonomous island, part of the Danish kingdom, was not for sale. But Trump’s plan—like that of William H. Seward, who, as secretary of state, oversaw the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867—is not without tremendous geopolitical advantage to America.

It’s all about gaining greater American control over the Arctic, where Russia and China are cooperating to build a strong presence. Fears that such cooperation will extend to include North Korea and Iran are not unfounded. Many pundits believe that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have aligned themselves into a new Axis of Evil. According to Merrill Matthews of the Institute for Policy Innovation, they are in “expansionist mode,” seeking “much more land and power” and “coordinating their efforts to benefit each country’s goals.”

However, the immediate worries for America are from the Sino-Russian efforts, which have significantly expanded over the past decade. China’s northernmost point is 13 degrees of latitude from the Arctic Circle—that’s 1,443 km or roughly 900 miles. Yet, in 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping audaciously proclaimed China a “near-Arctic state,” launched an “Arctic strategy,” and resolved to make his country a “polar power.”

Cut to 2024. In July, four Chinese and Russian strategic bombers, all taking off for the first time from an airbase in northeast Russia, flew over the Chukchi and Bering Seas. In October, Chinese and Russian coast guard fleets conducted their first joint patrol of the Arctic. These forays followed joint naval exercises in the Bering Strait in 2022 and 2023. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding on maritime law enforcement in 2023.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/08/fear-of-a-name-why-are-the-media-and-law-enforcement-afraid-to-call-terror-what-it-is/

Shamsud-Din Jabbar posted videos declaring his support for ISIS and drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd in New Orleans. By so clearly associating his murderous rampage with a recognized terrorist group, Jabbar could not have intended more clearly for the incident to be a terrorist attack. In response, FBI assistant special agent in charge Althea Duncan said at a press conference, “This is not a terrorist event… simply improvised explosive devices.”

The Washington Post’s headline was, “Truck rams New Orleans crowd,” and only mentioned ISIS ties in the second subheading. NPR, NBC, and ABC all ran articles about the attack without using the words “terror,” “Islamic,” or “Islamism,” opting not to specify exactly what sort of “attack” it was.

Evidently, law enforcement, in addition to the press, is fearful of naming the problem. The FBI did later state in a press release that it was investigating the incident as a “terrorist attack,” but they should never have hesitated to call it such. Fear of calling terrorism what it is is extremely problematic in and of itself and draws a strong parallel to the Harry Potter series.

For most of the Harry Potter series, very few characters aside from Harry can bring themselves to even say the name of the most dangerous wizard of all time—Voldemort—not unlike the small number of politicians and law enforcement spokespeople who call radical Islam and terrorism what they are. Even Harry’s professors who teach defense and employees of the Ministry of Magic, the governing body in Harry’s world, generally can’t bring themselves to say Voldemort’s name, at least above a whisper. But as Harry’s friend Hermione so wisely puts it, “Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mr-attorney-general-how-many-capitol-riot-murder-charges-did-you-bring/

Illustrating yet again that Democrats haven’t come to grips with why they lost the election and what Americans think of their politicization of law enforcement, here’s Biden attorney general Merrick Garland today, emoting on the fifth anniversary of the Capitol riot:

On this day, four years ago, police officers were brutally assaulted while bravely defending the United States Capitol. They were punched, tackled, tased, and attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin. Today, I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.

Let’s stipulate that Garland is quite right to castigate all who punched, tackled, tased, chemically attacked, or otherwise assaulted police officers. There is chatter in the air about pardons of the rioters; I don’t know what President-elect Trump plans to do upon taking office, but it would be a profound mistake — one his administration would come to regret — if he grants clemency to people convicted of assaulting cops (or, for that matter, damaging property). As we’ve covered here extensively for five years, it was ridiculous for the Justice Department to prosecute hundreds of people on misdemeanor charges of parading and the like — the kind of charges DOJ would ordinarily never file but that the Biden Justice Department, under Garland’s leadership, prosecuted in a patently political effort to inflate the Capitol riot (aka “The Insurrection”), condemnable as it was on its own terms, as if it were a 9/11-scale terrorist attack.

To repeat for the umpteenth time, no police officers died in the line of duty during the Capitol riot. The fact that Garland, federal bureaucrats, and police officials have tried to exaggerate the perils of the riot, and in so doing – and occasionally in grappling with insurance claims involving loved ones of cops who tragically committed suicide after the riot – have claimed police were killed due to the events of that day, does not make it so.

We all know this; but don’t take my word for it.

It is a serious felony violation of federal law to murder a federal officer in the line of duty. It is punishable by death or life imprisonment. Federal laws that the Justice Department enforces also severely punish conspiracies and attempts to murder federal officers who were carrying out their official duties. By a recent count, Garland’s Department of Justice filed charges against nearly 1,600 people in connection with the events of January 6, 2021. Not a single charge of murder of a federal officer, nor conspiracy or attempt to murder a federal officer, was alleged by DOJ.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/07/bidens-terrible-legacy-a-tsunami-of-growth-killing-regulations/

On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed a raft of executive orders, one of which we said was “almost entirely overlooked but could easily end up having the biggest impact.”

Turns out we were right.

The executive order – “Modernizing Regulatory Review” – would, we predicted, “unleash the regulatory state with a ferocity never before seen in this country.”

With this one executive order, Biden shows that he’s intent on giving regulators carte blanche to impose massive new rules on businesses and households, on virtually anything and everything they do, regardless of costs. There’s little else Biden has done so far that will have as wide-ranging an impact.

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews explains, that order “undermined the crucial watchdog mission of the White House Office of Management and Budget,” which had served as a check on the administrative state. “The federal government’s sole watchdog … has been transformed into a cheerleader for regulation.”

The CEI publishes the definitive guide to federal regulation each year, called “10,000 Commandments.”

Last week, the Federal Register, which is the repository of Washington’s rules and regulations, provided the latest evidence that Biden let regulators off the chain.

The 2024 Federal Register weighed in at 107,262 pages – the most in history and a 45% increase from Biden’s first year in office.

Last year, alone, Biden finalized 3,248 rules, of which 343 were deemed “significant,” meaning they added more than $200 million in compliance costs.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3278083/trump-sentencing-bs-conclusion-to-bs-hush-money-case/

This Friday, though, Trump will have to put aside his work to attend, either in person or virtually, his sentencing in the Manhattan criminal prosecution in which he was convicted of falsifying business records. The case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, was widely viewed as the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Trump by elected Democratic prosecutors and the Biden administration. For one thing, the charges, questionable as they were, were misdemeanors, past the statute of limitations, which Bragg inflated into felonies by alleging that Trump falsified records in a plot to steal the 2016 presidential election, which Bragg did not have the authority to police.

Even anti-Trump commentators were baffled by the case. “When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind the indictment remained remarkably unclear,” Quinta Jurecic, an editor of the journal Lawfare, from the liberal Brookings Institution, wrote last April. “Now, a year later, with the trial finally underway … the charges against Trump still have an oddly inchoate quality.” To add to Trump’s problems, the case was presided over by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who, in 2020, violated New York’s rules of judicial conduct to make a small donation to the Biden campaign.

Nevertheless, as the other cases against Trump fell by the wayside — the two federal prosecutions brought by special counsel Jack Smith were bogged down in litigation, and the Georgia case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was sunk by prosecutorial misconduct — the Bragg case stayed on track. Anti-Trumpers came to support the case because they saw it as the only chance to get Trump before the 2024 election. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21274/trump-canada-panama-canal-greenland

Trump is once again being true to his America-First convictions.
[Trump’s] question to Trudeau was pointed, and remains unanswered: “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?”
Trump explained that the Panama Canal “was given to Panama and to the people of Panama, but it has provisions, you gotta treat us fairly and they haven’t treated us fairly.”
There’s the bottom line: if the United States doesn’t control the Panama Canal and Greenland, China or Russia likely will, and the consequences could be severe both for the American economy and for national security.
President-elect Donald Trump recently said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control, and that the US should buy Greenland from Denmark. If the United States doesn’t control the Panama Canal and Greenland, China or Russia likely will, and the consequences could be severe both for the American economy and for national security. Pictured: An aerial view of ships passing the Pedro Miguel locks in the Panama Canal, in May 2023. (Photo by iStock/Getty Images)

First, President-elect Donald Trump tweaked Canada’s far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about becoming governor of the 51st state of the United States of America. Then he said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control. Make that the 52nd state. And now, are you ready for a 53rd state? Last month, Trump renewed a call he made during his first term: that the United States should buy Greenland from Denmark. Could the man possibly be serious?

Maybe not. The left’s propaganda arm, also known as the mainstream media, loves to portray Trump and his supporters as angry, bitter, ignorant people lashing out against the people who know better what’s good for them. Trump has never gotten credit for his sense of humor, despite the fact that he is easily the funniest man to occupy the White House since Ronald Reagan, and may even surpass the Gipper.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/03/why-europe-and-america-need-each-other/

European elites are greeting the incoming Trump administration with something less than enthusiasm. The UK has sent an ambassador to Washington with a well-expressed disdain for the returning US president. Le Monde, a French publication not known for its pro-American sympathies, called Trump’s election ‘the nail in [the] coffin’ for the US as a ‘democratic model’ for the world. The Guardian, predictably, has called for Europeans to fight to preserve the continent’s welfare and climate regime.

Some seem to think that Trump’s return is the spur Europe needs to finally stand on its own two feet. But they need to recognise, as was the case during the Second World War and the Cold War, that only a strong alliance between Europe and the US offers any hope of resisting the rise of an authoritarian bloc, this time grouped around China.

There are hopeful signs. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, ties between Europe, Canada and the US have been strengthened. There is some promise in an incipient alliance between North America and India, Japan and Australia. But Europe cannot expect the US to bear the strategic burden itself.

Trump’s insistence that Europe rearm makes sense at a time when the continent is facing immediate threats, most immediately in the Red Sea and Ukraine. Today, almost all European countries outside the UK, Greece and the Baltic states do not spend more than two per cent of their GDP on defence, while the US spends roughly 3.5 per cent.

Although there is an isolationist tendency among MAGA activists, most US voters are in favour of expanding America’s ‘global presence’. In a reinvigorated alliance, Europe has much to offer in terms of production and expertise, particularly given the sad state of the US military industry, as evidenced by shortages of materials to send to allies like Ukraine, Taiwan or Israel.

A similar imperative exists in the economic sphere. Europeans have long prided themselves on producing a stronger, more equitable economy than the military-oriented Americans. Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe as a determinative third force in the world economy. This is no longer the case. It’s basically a choice between China and the US.

Europeans might once have hoped that the euro could replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But after last decade’s euro crisis, and with serious economic problems hitting the likes of France, this now looks like a fantasy. The dollar, despite attempts by China and some developing countries to supplant it, still accounts for close to 60 per cent of all foreign currency reserves and almost 90 per cent of all foreign exchange transactions.

Trump’s tariff threats may seem irrational and self-destructive. But the end of unrestrained free trade, without some sense of reciprocity, has long seemed inevitable. It has died amid a trade regime that helped cause the loss of over 3.7million jobs in the US alone. Living standards across the deindustrialising West have worsened, particularly for the middle class, while Europe has endured a decade of stagnation.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/05/the-hydra-of-government-how-the-global-engagement-center-lives-on-through-rebranding/

If you visit the State Department’s website for the Global Engagement Center, you will read that “The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024.”

Not really.

As has been often observed, the nearest thing to immortality this side of the pearly gates is a government initiative. I have noted in this space and elsewhere that the innocuous-sounding “Global Engagement Center” was actually (in Vivek Ramaswamy’s accurate summary) a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.” According to its mission statement, the GEC was supposed to be focused on “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” I thoughtfully added the italics to the word “foreign.”

The point is that the GEC—like the State Department as a whole (like, indeed, the CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup that makes up our “intelligence” services tout court)—is supposed to be focused outward: on foreign threats. Thanks in part to reporting by people like Matt Taibbi, we know that much of our government has been weaponized against the American people, at least against those of whom the regime disapproves. On issues ranging from COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop, Taibbi has shown that “every corner of government”—“the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD,  . . . even the CIA”—has leaned on virtually all social and traditional media companies to toe the approved government line. The GEC has played a small but not insignificant role in this clandestine effort to monitor opinion and suppress entities and individuals emitting “Wrongthink” (what George Orwell called “Crimethink”).

Item: Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government. The Washington Examiner made the list. So did RealClearPolitics, Reason, The New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax, and many conservative entities. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.

Funding for the GEC was in the original 1500-page obscenity that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had the temerity to bring to his colleagues as a “continuing resolution” last month. That monstrosity instantly drew some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserved, not least from Elon Musk, whose fingers got a workout on the platform formerly known as Twitter. A 120-page, slimmed-down version of the bill was hastily cobbled together minus the GEC funding and other objectionable features (a raise for the legislators, for example). That passed, and so a putative “government shutdown” was avoided.

There was modified joy over this seeming victory. The fact that funding for the GEC was cut was one of the principal goads to celebration. Here at last was proof that a bad government activity could actually be zeroed out. No money, no activity.