RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-biden-teams-disastrous-performance-on-disaster-relief/

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been promoted to the position of senior adviser to the president while continuing to serve as press secretary for the remainder of President Biden’s term. Ms. Jean-Pierre proved once again during her October 7th White House press briefing why the most accurate title for her service to the Biden-Harris administration is Chief Propaganda Officer. She resorted to the Biden-Harris administration’s customary accusation of “misinformation” when asked why the Biden administration is providing additional money to Lebanon while North Carolina residents in need are not getting enough federal disaster relief in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Ms. Jean-Pierre charged that the question asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy was premised on misinformation:

PETER DOOCY: President Biden is fond of saying, “Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.” If he has money for people in Lebanon right now without Congress having to come back, what does it say about his values — there’s not enough money right now for people in North Carolina who need it. That’s not misinformation.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Wait, no it is, your whole premise of the question is misinformation, sir. Yes, it is…the way you’re asking me the question is misinformation. There is money that we are allocating to the impacted areas, and there’s money there to help people who truly need it. There are survivors who need the funding — who need the funding, and it’s there.

PETER DOOCY: You can’t call a question that you don’t like “misinformation.”

The Biden-Harris administration believes that it can do so by weaponizing the words “misinformation/disinformation” to discredit and even censor any information that contradicts their party line. Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior members of the administration are beating the “misinformation” drum while spreading misinformation of their own. Contrary to their claims that the hard-hit communities in western North Carolina are getting all the federal resources they need, folks on the ground who are suffering say otherwise. North Carolina residents have been without adequate basic necessities, such as food, water, shelter, and means of communication, for too long. They have been relying primarily on volunteers and each other to deal with the destruction left behind by Hurricane Helene.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of the hurricane season, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Moreover, as of October 6th, only nine percent of FEMA staff members were available to deal with Hurricane Milton or any other natural disaster to come, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing cited by the New York Times.

Yet despite all this, Vice President Kamala Harris proudly announced that her administration is sending nearly $157 million in additional assistance to Lebanon to meet the “essential needs” of the Lebanese people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21004/lebanon-aid-hurricane-helene

“To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon… This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.” — Vice President Kamala Harris, X.com, October 5, 2024.

$385 million for an Islamic terrorist state.

$20 million to Hurricane Helene survivors.

According to Joe Biden, there’s just no money for hurricane victims.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is running out of money. (And not because it blew through $1.4 billion on illegal aliens, that’s dangerous misinformation.)

While there’s not enough money for hurricane victims in America, after Israel took out Hezbollah Islamic terrorist leaders, Vice President Kamala Harris announced on October 5:

“The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there.

“To that end, the United States will provide nearly $157 million in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict. This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to over $385 million.”

$385 million for an Islamic terrorist state.

But there’s a bold press release out at FEMA declaring that the “Biden-Harris Administration Provides More Than $20 Million to Hurricane Helene Survivors, Ongoing Search and Rescue Operations Continue in North Carolina”.

$20 million to Hurricane Helene survivors.

$157 million to Hezbollah.

Those Hezbollah votes in Dearborn, Michigan don’t come cheap.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-danger-of-the-secularist-sensibility/

Last week, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times asking the question, “What were Hamas’s leaders hoping for, and what are Iran’s leaders seeking to achieve?” The answer began with a conversation that revealed the central problem with the West’s understanding of Islamic jihadism, one that still vitiates our foreign policy and plans for dealing with Muslim aggressors: our modernist inability to take religion seriously.

“What the Israeli military and political establishment failed to understand,” Gantz writes, “in part, was the extent to which Hamas was driven by the goal of waging religious war. ‘The intel was there, but I underestimated the jihadi component of Hamas’s and Sinwar’s calculus,’ a senior Israel Defense Forces intelligence commander told me early in the war, referring to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader.”

This mistake in divining the motives of militant Islam marks the U.S. conflict with Iran and its revolution and “goal of waging religious war.” For example, in 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran to direct the revolution, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, as David Farber reported, in a meeting with Carter “soft-pedaled the specific threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ to American interests.” Brzezinski also viewed the revolution with Western eyes. The religious revolution would falter, he argued, and require secular technocrats and experts, which would dilute and marginalize the clerics.

In an even greater failure of imagination and projection of Western principles, Brzezinski advised that the U.S. should “pursue relations with individual Muslim countries on the basis of shared interests, but our emphasis on moral as well as material values, our support for a world of diversity, and our commitment to social justice should place us in a strong position to deepen our dialogue with the Muslim world.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-lessons-of-october-9

October 7, 2023, was a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. It was also the festival of Shmini Atzeret. The following day, October 8, was Simchat Torah, another holiday on which observant Jews are forbidden from using electronics. (In Israel, the two holidays are celebrated together in one day, while outside the Holy Land they are split in two.) Consequently, it was not until after nightfall on October 8, here in New York, that I and many of my fellow Jews could take stock of the horrors that Hamas had inflicted in Israel’s south.

By then, the story on the home front had already shifted from one abomination to another. In the hours and days following the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli civilians—while babies, Holocaust survivors, and American citizens were being kidnapped and secreted through tunnels in Gaza—thousands of people took to the streets of cities throughout the West to celebrate these atrocities. These demonstrators—wrongly called “protesters,” since Israel’s military response had not yet begun—expressed support for the destruction of Israel “by any means necessary.” This is old news by now, yet it still shocks the conscience.

Many Jews and decent American citizens were horrified and confused by these displays, which have only escalated over time. They remain horrified by the thought that so many people who live among us—some citizens, even—would kick Jews and Israeli Americans while they were down. The dominant moral idea of our age presents itself in terms of concern for the downtrodden: those vulnerable or in pain receive deference and space to grieve, while others must refrain from “punching down.”

On October 8, 2023, we Jews thought, consistent with this ethos, that our pain and vulnerability would invite sympathy and solidarity. By the time daylight had broken on October 9, however, we realized we were wrong. We could no longer deny that weakness only emboldened those who hate us. Our blood was in the water, and our enemies took that as a sign to attack. To those who believe that Jews should leave Israel and “go back to Poland,” as we have gotten used to hearing, our pain is a sign that they are succeeding in their efforts to make our lives miserable until they get what they want. These are old-school bullies in progressive attire.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/10/hilarious_job_numbers_from_the_bureau_of_labor.html

“And remember: recently, the Department of Labor said it overestimated jobs by 881,000 in a year.  It is sad when so many trust government numbers when they are so consistently wrong.”

As the media campaign so vigorously for Democrats and cheer how great the Biden-Harris policies have been, suddenly, the Department of Labor comes out with an unemployment report that blows away expectations. 

Biden and Harris were out bragging as a significant number of people still can’t pay their bills without running up new debt or going delinquent on the debt they already had. 

Supposedly, 254,000 jobs were created in September.  Isn’t that amazing, that this report came out one month before the election? 

Of course, the media gave the headline number and never got into the details.

Here is one important detail: government jobs showed a gain of 785,000 because of the second biggest seasonal adjustment on record.  (It is easy to manipulate numbers when you have “seasonal adjustments.”)  This would mean that private-sector employment declined 531,000 with seasonal adjustments.  I would say that is not too much to brag about.  Somehow, the voters don’t get to see that number, but they know that the economy has sucked the past four years because they can’t pay their bills. 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/07/we-are-in-need-of-renaissance-people/

The songwriter, actor, country/western singer, musician, U.S. Army veteran, helicopter pilot, accomplished rugby player and boxer, Rhodes scholar, Pomona College and University of Oxford degreed, and summa cum laude literature graduate, Kris Kristofferson, recently died at 88.

Americans may have known him best for writing smash hits like “Me and Bobby McGee” and “For the Good Times,” his wide-ranging, star-acting roles in A Star is Born and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, his numerous solo albums, especially with then-spouse and singer Rita Coolidge, and the country group super-quartet he formed with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.

In other words, Kristofferson was a rare Renaissance man who could do it all in an age of increasingly narrow specialization and expertise.

At certain times throughout history at particular locales, we have seen such singular people from all walks of life.

Classical Athens produced polymaths like Aristotle—tutor to Alexander the Great, logician, student of music, art, and literature, educator, think-tank founder, biologist, philosopher, and scientist. Later Greeks like Archimedes and Ptolemy, as men of action, mastered six or seven disciplines and applied their abstract knowledge in ways that made life easier for those around them.

The late Roman Republic was another cauldron of multitalented geniuses. It produced the brilliant stylist, historian, politician, and consummate general Julius Caesar, as well as his republican archrival Cicero—politician, philosopher, orator, master stylist, lawyer, and provincial governor.

Turn-of-the-century Victorian Great Britain produced giants like Winston Churchill—prime minister, statesman, essayist, historian, orator, strategist, and wartime veteran. As Britain’s war leader, between May 10, 1940, and June 22, 1941, he, almost alone, resisted the Axis powers and prevented Adolf Hitler from winning the war.

https://dianebederman.com/what-is-the-meaning-of-freedom/

Freedom is defined by Merriam Webster as the quality or state of being free, such as: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action: liberation from slavery or from the power of another: boldness of conception or execution.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived a lovely life. Everything was given to them. There was one demand – do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve was seduced by the serpent, she ate of the fruit and convinced Adam to taste the apple and he lied to God.

And so ended Paradise.

I suggest that there is within us a desire to go back to the Garden, where we are cared for, protected. I think it is much like a child, no matter the age, wanting his mommy in times of trouble – a desire to go back to the womb – where it is safe. Fear leads us to submit and when government promotes fear, too many bend the knee and give up their freedom in order to be cared for.

Aung San Suu Kyi: “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”

But we live in a world where we must make decisions. In the West, we have free will-because the West is rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and in that Bible we are taught that all life is sacred, we all have equal intrinsic value and we have free will. “If humans are free then they need a free society within which to exercise that freedom(p120). Free will is not found in countries not based on the teachings of that Bible.

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/10/05/three-years-ago-harris-was-put-in-charge-of-the-425-billion-internet-for-all-plan-where-is-it-n4933097

We should be used to the idea by now that the Biden administration does not exist in the same time frame of the universe as the rest of us. You might recall the $7.5 billion set aside in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to build 500,000 EV charging stations across the country. As of June, exactly eight charging stations had been built.

Amazingly, in that same Act, Congress authorized the Commerce Department to create an “Internet For All” scheme, which was supposed to bring broadband internet to everyone in America at an affordable price by 2030.

“It is going to help our kids and our business to succeed in the 21st century,” Biden said in his address on April 29, 2021. “I’m asking the vice president to lead this effort because I know it will get done.”

How’s that “broadband for all” rollout working out for ya, Kamala?

Would it surprise you to discover that not a single customer has been hooked up to broadband internet under the program in three and a half years?

“The program has collapsed under the weight of red tape imposed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,” said Americans for Tax Reform in August. “NTIA required states to submit multiple rounds of dense paperwork to even qualify for the funds they were given by Congress and has only recently started approving state plans for how to spend the money.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/10/the_usaf_goes_woke.html

Who is General Charles “CQ” Brown? He’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So what? What does that have to do with anything? He’s also arguably more woke and dangerous to America’s national security than thankfully retired General “White Rage” Milley.  

Brown disgraced himself and his uniform during, and in support of, the Black Lives Matter race riots by releasing a video in which he ‘seemed to barely contain his rage’ while ranting ‘that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution ‘that I’ve sworn my adult life to support and defend’ have not always delivered ‘liberty and equality’ to all.’

Serving military members, particularly general officers, aren’t supposed to support rioters or engage in politics. A white servicemember doing that—Brown is black—would have been dishonorably discharged. Brown was promoted. Under Democrats/socialist/communists (D/s/cs), useful functionaries fail upwards.

Brown is one of the foremost proponents of DEI, which he has imposed on the USAF with a vengeance. His policies are paying dividends beyond diversity, equity and inclusion, like running the Air Force short of thousands of pilots. That’s only a part of the serious recruiting problems our military is experiencing.

Our civilian and military “leaders” blame the recruiting crisis on any and everything but their DEI lunacy. That’s necessary for officers seeking promotion.

Traditionally, our military academies and ROTC programs seek the finest scholar-athletes they can find. Particularly for pilots, candidates highly proficient in STEM disciplines are highly sought after. DEI ensures the USAF won’t get those kinds of candidates.

The Center To Advance Security in America filed a FOIA request with the Air Force in 2023, seeking documents to prove Brown’s DEI focus, but as one might imagine, was stonewalled until recently. 

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-a-time-of-war?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

When we planned this episode of Honestly, I thought we would be looking back at the past year from a slightly quieter vantage point. We were going to release it on October 7. But quiet is the last thing happening in the Middle East right now. The war that Iran outsourced to its proxies since October 7, 2023 has now become a war explicitly between Iran and Israel.

Hours before I sat down with Douglas Murray in New York City, Iran launched over 100 ballistic missiles toward Israel. As Israel’s 9 million citizens huddled in bomb shelters, a handful of them made a direct impact. For a lot of Americans, it still feels like a faraway war. But it is not.

There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil. This is one of them. This is a war between Israel and Iran. But it’s also a war between civilization and barbarism. That was true some 360 days ago. And it’s even more true today. And yet this testing moment has been met with alarming moral confusion.

Consider a few examples from the last week. At the United Nations, 12 countries, including the U.S., presented a plan for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon without mentioning the word Hezbollah. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted, “Our country is funding this bloodbath,” minutes after Israel assassinated the leader of the most fearsome terrorist army on the planet, Hassan Nasrallah, who, The New York Times described as “beloved,” “a towering figure” and “a powerful orator.” Here in New York, students chanted for an intifada moments after the Jewish community memorialized six civilian hostages murdered by Hamas. At Yale this week, students chanted, “From Gaza to Beirut, all martyrs we salute.” That’s just a few examples from the past week.

No one I know understands the moral urgency of this moment better than Douglas Murray. Douglas isn’t Jewish. He has no Israeli family members, although I know a lot of Israeli families who consider him an adoptive family member. And it is Douglas, more than almost anyone in the world, who has articulated the stakes of this war with the moral clarity it requires.

Douglas’s work as a reporter has taken him to Iraq, North Korea, northern Nigeria, Ukraine, and most recently, of course, to Israel, where he has become a celebrity. When you walk down the streets of Tel Aviv with Douglas Murray, it’s like being with The Beatles. He’s also the best-selling author of seven books, a regular contributor at the New York Post, National Review, and most importantly, at The Free Press, where he writes the beloved Sunday column, Things Worth Remembering. There is just no one I would rather be sitting with as we watch the Middle East and, really, the world transformed before our eyes.