RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21475/cryptocurrency-digital-gold-monopoly-money

As Jack and his beanstalk can tell you, there are no magic beans. Unfortunately, those who believe cryptocurrency is their ticket to enormous wealth or financial security will soon find out that they, too, have no magic beans. What they may have is Monopoly money.

With that in mind, it needs to be said that recent actions to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve opens the door to potentially serious issues.

Equally chilling is the vulnerability of cryptocurrency to hackers. Media reports reveal that North Korean hackers recently stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from Bybit, described as the world’s second-largest crypto exchange. One can probably assume those hackers were operating under instructions from their government.

Perhaps the larger issue is that there is no “there” there when discussing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At the core of a digital currency’s existence is only an algorithmic ledger. Yet it reflects the same dynamics that have historically created speculative bubbles that leave investors stunned and broke.

Consider the Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Dutch tulip bulb prices reached extraordinary heights before collapsing dramatically. Like a cryptocurrency, it featured “value” largely driven by certified scarcity and speculative trading.

A similar bubble occurred in 1720, when Britain’s publicly traded South Sea Company speculated on emerging South American trade opportunities. The eventual collapse of that pursuit was so widespread that it actually damaged the entire British economy. However, one needn’t travel back centuries to chronicle the cycle of grand promises that went up in smoke.

The dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s saw internet companies with limited revenue but rosy visions attract massive investment before the market crashed. Coming even closer to our current crypto era, there was the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2007. Complex financial instruments obscured underlying risks to investors who were chasing illusionary profits until it all collapsed.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/17/what-are-the-lefts-solutions-for-the-problems-they-created/

The Wall Street Journal has consistently criticized Trump’s economic policies, particularly his ongoing “trade war” with Canada, over the past several weeks. And certainly, the tensions are regrettable. Trump’s trolling of the insufferable Justin Trudeau, with talk of Canada becoming the “51st state,” perhaps only galvanized the Canadian left. It unfortunately may ensure that the only real hope for a Canadian return to normality, the election of Pierre Poilievre, may be lost.

That said, does the WSJ truly believe that the current $1.7 trillion budget deficit stacked on top of $36 trillion in national debt and an annual $1 trillion trade deficit are sustainable in any fashion? Do they believe any Republican president would have survived the midterms if he cut or “reformed” Social Security? If so, consult the fate of the recommendations of left-wing Barack Obama’s 2010 Simpson-Bowles commission (“The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”).

DOGE, the effort to demand either symmetrical or no tariffs, closing the border, the rare minerals agreement, etc., are all controversial, even desperate efforts to stave off insolvency.

NAFTA was sold on the promise of trade equilibriums, eventually leading to no tariffs and rough parity. Yet Canada currently runs a $60 billion surplus largely because of its energy sales and selective tariffs on U.S. agriculture and some manufactured goods. That sum might be tolerable from a friend and not worth the acrimony, even with the present massive trade and budget deficits—if it had occurred in isolation.

But it did not. The Canadian surplus is force multiplied by its chronic refusal to spend a measly 2 percent of its GDP on defense. Canada could have easily offered a partnership with the U.S. to explore joint missile defense or shared Arctic Ocean naval patrols with a new fleet of Canadian and American icebreakers.

But it did nothing of the sort.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-linked-cair-got-over-7200000-in-taxpayer-money/

Nihad Awad, the cofounder and longtime executive director of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has plenty of reasons to be happy. He notoriously said that the October 7 jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis made him “happy,” and now it has been revealed that he has over seven million other reasons for a smile to break out on his taciturn, creepy face: that’s the amount of taxpayer funds his sinister organization has received, despite its links to one of the most evil groups on the planet.

The New York Post reported the appalling news on Friday: “According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.”

The “chapter” that the Post mentions is CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, which appears to have gotten hold of the money in some irregular way: “In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint” that IAN has sent to the Justice Department.

The Post explains that “the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.” The complaint stated: “These sub grants from CAIR-CA to CAIR chapters raise serious legal concerns about whether CAIR simply shifted more money to itself.”

The fact that CAIR-Greater Los Angeles got the money instead of CAIR-CA is actually only a small part of the problem. Why is CAIR getting any money to resettle “impoverished immigrants in California” at all? CAIR claims to be “America’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.” It adds, improbably, that it works to “protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/03/16/obama-tried-doge-n2653882

A resurfaced 2011 video reveals former President Barack Obama launching a “Campaign to Cut Waste,” strikingly similar to the current Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to eliminate government inefficiency. In the video, Obama emphasizes the need to reduce wasteful spending, highlighting the appointment of former President Joe Biden to lead the effort, saying that “nobody messes with Joe.” This initiative aimed to increase government accountability, reduce unnecessary costs, and promote fiscal responsibility echoes what the Trump administration is currently trying to do.

Elon Musk recently shared a 2011 video featuring Obama promoting his initiative, “Campaign to Cut Waste,” which closely resembles the efforts Musk’s DOGE program is currently undertaking. In the video, Obama highlights his efforts to eliminate government waste, pointing out unnecessary federal programs and absurd taxpayer-funded projects, such as an online fan page for a folk music group composed of Forest Rangers.

“Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit requires some tough decision. And that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about. But what should be easy is getting rid of the pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn’t benefit anybody,” Obama said in the resurfaced video.

“Obama sounds exactly like DOGE!!” Musk wrote on X. 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/tariffs-good-trump-china

Donald Trump is back—and so is the tariff. “It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it?” the president quipped before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday—so beautiful that he referenced tariffs 17 more times in his address. In the short time since his second inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump has imposed—and sometimes walked back or temporarily suspended—tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico, and declared a policy of tit-for-tat “reciprocity” or retaliation for any foreign tariffs on American exports that are higher than U.S. tariffs on imports. And he has justified tariffs with multiple rationales, ranging from protecting or reshoring defense-critical American industries to pressuring America’s neighbors to take action to reduce the cross-border flow of illegal immigrants and drugs like fentanyl. In fact, he told members of Congress, tariffs were “about protecting the soul of our country.”

The chaotic and inconsistent nature of Trump’s second-term policy to date can be criticized. But when it comes to tariffs as a tool of economic statecraft in general, the gap between establishment rhetoric and actual government practice is big enough to drive a Chinese EV through.

The audiences of the dying legacy media are told that the tariff is a destructive policy revived by politicians like Trump who fail to understand elementary economics, which teaches that free trade benefits all sides all the time everywhere, with no exceptions. But from North America to Europe to Asia, developed countries are ignoring mainstream economists and their amen corner in the subsidized libertarian think tank world and slapping tariffs onto imports in favored industries like electric vehicles and renewable energy. Governments are resorting to tariffs and industrial policy, not because their prime ministers and presidents flunked Econ 101, but because they do not want their economies deindustrialized by a flood of low-priced, state-subsidized Chinese imports.

The Chinese import threat is why Canada has levied a 100% tariff on imported Chinese EVs, along with a 25% surtax on Chinese steel and Chinese aluminum. The European Union has slapped electric vehicles made in China with tariffs ranging from 7.8% to 35.3%, on top of the standard European tariff of 10% for imported automobiles. India imposes tariffs of 70%-100% on imported electric vehicles from China and other countries.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-arrest-columbia-deport-hamas

Manhattan is home to one less terror-supporter.

On Saturday, immigration enforcement agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian national with U.S. permanent resident status, and removed him to a detention facility in Louisiana. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson explained that Khalil’s arrest, in coordination with the State Department, was made “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism” and because Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” A hearing is set for Wednesday after a federal judge blocked Khalil’s deportation on Monday—but the White House has doubled down on its intent to deport him.

Khalil was arrested at his Columbia University-owned apartment, near the school where he’s spent much of the last year and a half as a student leading pro-Hamas demonstrations. He has been a ringleader of the anti-Semitic activity that has kept Columbia in lockdown, and has helped escalate disorder at its sister school, Barnard College.

Khalil’s removal offers a lesson that the free world has been reluctant to learn since the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel: sometimes expulsion is the best solution. This is especially true for those who commit the kinds of anonymous violence that have characterized the anti-Israel movement at Columbia and Barnard, and which Khalil, as a leader of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has helped propel.

Khalil has been candid about his commitment to make Columbia uninhabitable until the university denounces Israel. “As long as Columbia continues to invest and to benefit from Israeli apartheid, the students will continue to resist,” he declared. At Columbia, that “resist[ance]” has involved everything from erecting encampments on school property to directing death wishes at Zionists to storming Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and taking maintenance staff hostage.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/13/the-demowhigs-race-to-extinction/

Once upon a time, there was an esteemed American political party called the Whig Party. It was one of the two great American political parties of its time. It stood alongside the Democratic Party in the mid-19th century and produced four U.S. presidents: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore. It also enjoyed the membership of other eminent American political leaders, like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Seward, and John Quincy Adams. Notwithstanding these great achievements, however, the Whig Party managed to destroy itself and was dissolved in 1854, just 21 years after its founding. Could today’s Democratic Party be on the same path to extinction as the Whigs?

It certainly seems that today’s Democratic Party’s “brain trust,” such as it is, is either utterly hapless or has a conservative mole within its ranks deliberately engineering the destruction of the party through the incomprehensible stances it is taking. Given that political conservatives, of which I count myself, are historically terrible at devising Machiavellian tactics against their opponents, I’m guessing there is no mole. Democrats are simply foundering in the wake of a force of nature called Donald Trump, who is simply brilliant at tapping into the sentiments of the majority of the American people and turning his political opponents’ weaknesses against themselves.

To be fair, Trump is benefiting from Democratic policy positions that, on almost every issue, are 180 degrees out of phase with most of the American people and with common sense.

Beginning with the administration of Barack Hussein Obama—that inscrutable, rising-out-of-nowhere community organizer, whose background is still largely a mystery to most of us—the Democratic Party began to take positions on matters of public policy that were real head-scratchers.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/03/the_escalating_leftist_violence_against_conservatives_from_trump_and_musk_on_down.html

The news lately has been filled with stories of the escalating violence against conservatives. We already saw it last year with the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, but it’s now spread to Musk, Vance, and conservatives generally. As with the blasphemous song a so-called “transgender” person sang at the Bernie rally, I can’t say I’m surprised. Some things are predictable, and leftist violence, especially when you’ve driven your supporters insane, is especially predictable.  

I don’t need to rehash the Butler assassination attempt that Trump survived by a millisecond and millimeter. Nor do I need to remind you about the wannabe assassin at Mar-a-Lago.

But for the left, two missed assassination attempts aren’t a sign of societal breakdown; they’re a sign of failure, which needs to be remedied. So it was that a UCLA professor (that is, a man making his money on the public dime) is urging the military to engage in a violent coup against President Trump.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21465/manhattan-project-for-fusion-energy

Tariffs, Ukraine, DOGE, the budget, NATO, the Middle East; the headlines are dominated by daily issues that demand our attention, but they also serve to distract us from the strategic issues that will determine who will be the dominant superpower during the remaining years of 21st Century.

So, it should come as no surprise that China is currently investing billions of dollars to create unlimited power by seeking to conquer the challenging technology of fusion power.

Media reports suggest that Beijing is investing anywhere between $1 billion and $1.5 billion annually into fusion research. One Washington energy insider told the press, “…What’s more important than the number, it’s actually how fast they’re doing this.”

Equally telling is one report, which observed that China’s patents on crucial aspects of fusion technology are more than any other country, including our own.

China’s pursuit of unlimited energy is not just about powering cities and electric vehicles. The most major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) will come about when one country’s computers have access to unlimited power. The country that can lead in AI development will become the next global superpower.

Americans understand the threat. It is important to revisit a national survey recently conducted by President Donald J. Trump’s pollster, McLaughlin & Associates. A significant majority of citizens recognize the danger and want Washington to safeguard our future by investing in fusion energy.

Trump has much on his plate, but the poll revealed that three-in-five voters are concerned that China’s fusion energy leadership could place America’s leadership in jeopardy. The issue should receive the funding priority from Washington that it demands.