RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4371449-bidenomics-is-a-flop-and-america-knows-it/

“Wages for workers are up!”  

That was the sunny news delivered by President Biden at a recent campaign stop. Is it true? Not really. Though real wages have finally trended slightly higher, Americans are still underwater since Biden entered the Oval Office.  

The Biden camp may have dropped talking up “Bidenomics,” but the spiel’s half-truths and tone deafness live on.  

The Biden reelection campaign is still trying to sell its economic policies to skeptical voters, even as a recent Wall Street Journal shows that “Only 23% of voters say Biden’s policies have helped them personally, while 53% say they have been hurt by the president’s agenda.” Biden’s pitch hasn’t worked, isn’t working and won’t work. But, they aren’t giving up.   

Joe Biden is unhappy about his poll numbers — as well he should be. They are historically terrible; the only person those low grades could possibly please is Jimmy Carter, who no longer sets the benchmark for most unpopular president ever. According to Real Clear Politics, Biden’s average approval rating across all polls stands at 40.5 percent; that compares with44.5 percent for Donald Trump at the same point in his presidency, 46.5 percent for Barack Obama and 58 percent for George W. Bush.   

Biden apparently laid into his team before Thanksgiving, demanding his aides do something to improve his standing. The upshot is yet another salvo from the White House about the wonders of Bidenomics, including the usual rewriting of history about what a catastrophe Joe Biden faced as he took office in January 2021.  

In a campaign event just recently, Biden claimed, “You know, when we started, the … economy was reeling.” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that myth in a briefing a few days ago, saying the economy “was in a tailspin.” It was not; in the quarter he took office, the recovering economy grew 6 percent, unemployment was dropping sharplyand annualized inflation stood at 1.4 percent.   

The president’s pitch rests largely on dishonest or misleading data, as is the case when Jean-Pierre touts the number of new business start-ups and applications as a sign that Bidenomics is working. As it happens, there was a big surge in new business applications — during Donald Trump’s presidency.   

When Trump took office, in January 2017, monthly new business applications totaled 263,878; in December 2020, his last month, applications — at the height of the COVID panic — amounted to 349,734, an increase of 32.5 percent. So far in Joe Biden’s presidency, applications have actually dropped slightly, from 486,082 recorded in January 2021 to 464,838 last month. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scholars-say-they-were-plagiarized-by-claudine-gay-ignored-by-harvard-investigation/

Harvard and its president Claudine Gay are doing damage control amid an ongoing plagiarism scandal, with the embattled leader requesting even more corrections to her past work, this time her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation — the foundation of her academic career.

But the total of seven corrections requested so far still leaves dozens of other instances of potential plagiarism unresolved. And scholars who believe their work was plagiarized have told National Review that they were never contacted by Harvard as part of its investigation into Gay’s academic work.

For instance, it does not appear that any of the corrections will address portions of Gay’s doctoral dissertation drawing heavily from the work of Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain, in some cases reproducing her writing word for word without citation.

Swain — who has been outspoken about her feelings on the plagiarism scandal — told National Review that she is concerned by Harvard’s response to the revelations of its president’s academic-integrity issues. She feels that the university should have reached out to her and the other scholars both as a professional courtesy, to inform them their work may have been plagiarized, and as part of their fact-finding effort to determine the extent of Gay’s transgressions, since they’re the foremost experts on their own work.

“I have a problem with the way Harvard has reacted to the entire situation, because it seems like — with the assistance of some of their professors and other elites — they’re trying to redefine what is plagiarism,” Swain said, “and they’re making the argument that there are different levels and, by extension, that some of it is acceptable. That is a problem for higher education in America.”

A number of experts and academics contacted by National Review said that the examples of potential plagiarism that have been flagged are serious, and the large number of instances suggests a pattern.

Lee Jussim, a social psychologist and distinguished professor at Rutgers University, said he’s “never seen anything like” the plagiarism scandal involving Gay.

“I can tell you, I expelled a student from my lab when I first got to Rutgers who I caught doing something not all that different — probably less — than what she has done,” he said.

T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE

NOT A CREATURE WAS STIRRING, NOT EVEN A MOUSE.

I MUSED WITH REGRETS AND TREPIDATION

AT THE PARLOUS STATE OF OUR BELOVED NATION.

CORRUPTION STALKS THE BIDEN CLAN

BUT THE MEDIA PROTECTS THE FAILING MAN.

ISRAEL WAS ATTACKED WITH GENOCIDAL REFRAINS

IGNORED BY ANTI-SEMITES WITH FECAL BRAINS.

QATAR FUNDS THE HATRED STUDENTS UTTER

COGNOSCENTI PRONOUNCE THAT NATION AS “GUTTER.”

OUR BORDERS NO LONGER CONTAIN AN INVASION

OF UNDOCUMENTED MILLIONS WITH LEGAL EVASION.

OUR MILITARY INDULGES WOKE POLICIES WITHOUT SENSE

WHILE OUR ENEMIES PREPARE FOR A MAJOR OFFENSE.

SUDDENLY THERE AROSE SUCH A JOYFUL CLATTER

I RUSHED TO THE WINDOW TO SEE WHAT WAS THE MATTER.

IT WAS A BRIGADE OF CITIZENS SAYING “ENOUGH!”

TO PROGRESSIVE POLICIES THEY WOULD REBUFF.

ON ELECTION DAY THEY WILL PROCLAIM THEIR NOS

TO BETRAYING ALLIES AND KOW-TOWING TO FOES.

NO TO QUOTAS INSTEAD OF MERIT AND GRADES.

NO TO 1619 PROJECT, DEI AND WOKE CHARADES.

NO TO LOCKDOWNS AND CLOSING OF SCHOOLS.

NO TO HEALTH CZARS THAT TAKE US FOR FOOLS.

NO TO FOREIGN FUNDING IN HIGHER EDUCATION.

NO TO OPEN BORDERS AND UNFETTERED IMMIGRATION.

NO TO SURVEILLANCE AND DICTATS FROM CAPITOL HILL.

NO TO FOREIGN OIL FOR ENERGY- DRILL, BABY, DRILL.

THEY HOISTED A BANNER FOR ALL TO SEE.

SPORTING THE WORDS ‘DON’T TREAD ON ME.”

OFF THEY MARCHED INTO THE NIGHT

THEIR GPS PATH FROM LEFT TO RIGHT.

SO, WITH A DOLLOP OF OPTIMISM AND A TAD OF CHEER

I WISH YOU ALL HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.

RUTH KING

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/21/will-partisan-lawfare-destroy-trump/

Trump Derangement Syndrome became Orwellian with the recent ruling of the Colorado Supreme Court.

It approved the erasure of Trump from the Republican primary ballot in Colorado, by invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

That ossified clause was intended to bar any ante-bellum federal officials who joined the Confederacy from again holding federal offices after 1865.

In no way is Trump’s conduct on January 6 comparable to calling for secession, much less prompting a Civil War that cost the country 700,000 lives.

An “insurrectionist” president does not address unarmed protestors with qualifiers like, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

How also can one be guilty of insurrection without ever being indicted for such a supposed crime, much less convicted of it? 

And the more we learn about January 6, all the more it appears to have been a spontaneous riot, more buffoonish in nature than conspiratorial.

No one has explained the mysterious, politicized January 6 refusal of the Speaker of the House to order a reinforcement of the Capitol police.

Or the FBI stonewalling about its informants in the crowd.

Or the revealing admissions of New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg (“a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol”).

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/21/are-you-better-off-than-you-were-four-christmases-ago/

Jill Biden’s creepy video, featuring a troupe of tap dancers showing off the garish Christmas decorations in the White House, prompted one journalist to comment that they are “really going for the Hunger Games as this year’s Christmas theme.”

While they’re prancing around in the capital, out in the districts everyone else is struggling to pay the sky-high cost of this festive season.

Haven’t bought a Christmas tree yet? It will cost you about 10% more than last year, which is on top of the 10% increase the year before, and 10% the year before that.

The American Christmas Tree Association found that 78% of consumers are concerned about inflation this year.

Want to serve ham for family and friends this holiday? Ham prices are up 16% compared with Christmas 2020.

If you’re traveling, you’ll pay 18% more for airfare and 45% more for gasoline than you did in 2020.

Those Christmas lights decorating the house? Your electric bill will be 24% higher. If you’re sending Christmas cards, stationery costs are up 27% under Biden.

At least drowning your sorrows in alcohol is getting less expensive.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-have-they-done/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

The only thing reassuring about the Colorado supreme court’s 4–3 decision disqualifying Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s presidential ballots is the horror it inspired. Trump fans, Trump critics, and Trump adversaries alike recoiled. Even if they didn’t look askance at the dubious legal rationale that prevailed in this court, the assault it represents on the civic compact proved too much for even some of Trump’s most indefatigable opponents to defend.

That’s a modest silver lining. It will prove no comfort as the decision’s political reverberations unfold. The sense that unelected functionaries and professional bureaucrats have dedicated themselves to the effort to steal from Republicans their agency by simply ruling Trump out of the political process isn’t exclusive only to the MAGA movement’s true believers. GOP voters across the Republican spectrum increasingly believe that, to one extent or another. They will expound on that concern to anyone willing to listen. Anyone would rebel against such an imperious intervention into affairs as intimate as their vote. Americans, in particular, are disinclined to just sit back and take that sort of peremptory imposition.

Even if this sentiment was just a heuristic that folks who don’t spend their free time reading charging documents used to navigate the criminal allegations against Trump, it’s an understandable (if wrong) cognitive shortcut. When it comes to the Colorado case, however, the allegation is well-founded. The logic to which Minnesota’s supreme court appealed when it rejected a similar effort to bar Trump from the ballot, citing the 14th Amendment’s restrictions on candidates who “engaged in” insurrection, is unassailable.

https://www.thefp.com/p/colorado-court-trump-2024-peter-meijer-democracy?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

For years, we’ve been told that Donald Trump is a worse-than-Hitler threat to democracy and that those who opposed him—leading Democrats, the courts, Noam Chomsky, Michael Avenatti, Rachel Maddow, the hosts of The View, even old Twitter—were just trying to protect it. It’s odd then to now be told that the best way to save democracy is by banning Trump from the ballot.

That’s what happened in Colorado yesterday, when the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a 4–3 decision that former president Donald Trump—currently the most popular presidential candidate—was disqualified from appearing on Colorado ballots for the 2024 presidential election. 

The decision—perhaps the most extra-constitutional act by a high court in my lifetime—is astonishing on every level. 

First, the reasoning:

The Colorado court did it by reinvigorating Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which reads in part that “no person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States” who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Those words were written in 1866, less than a year after the Civil War ended, a war in which over 300,000 Union soldiers died to keep America united, in order to bar many former Confederate officials from serving in government.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/lincoln-memorial-steps-vandalized-with-free-gaza-graffiti-red-paint/ar-AA1lNZIn

“National Park Service conservators have begun the process of removing the paint this morning, though it may take multiple treatments over several days to remove all of it,” Park Police added. “The steps on the west side of the Reflecting Pool are closed to visitors while the conservation work takes place.” 

It is not immediately clear who was behind the incident.

Dozens of anti-Israel protesters were arrested on Tuesday after staging an illegal rally inside the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., an act led by activist Linda Sarsour, according to reports. 

Last Monday, a protest calling for a cease-fire led to over 40 arrests at the Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Fox5 DC reported. 

The pro-Palestinian protesters were illegally demonstrating inside the Congressional space, according to authorities. 

Just after 10 a.m., a Capitol spokesperson told Fox 5 that the demonstrators arrived, with one man even climbing a statue in the atrium, before being charged with resisting arrest. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-new-ebonics-movement-and-the-elimination-of-whiteness/

The Back to Ebonics movement has been around for a couple of decades. It gained some traction in the seventies during the era when everything Black was pronounced as beautiful. Emerging from the ugliness of segregation and Jim Crow laws which did see the systemic evisceration of the dignity of Black individuals, the Black is Beautiful slogan was understandable from the standpoint of psychological preservation. Ebonics—the Black Vernacular that is believed to capture the unique and singular way many Blacks speak—was regarded by many as a means of also protecting the dignity of Black self-expression.

Few in academia, or in mainstream society for that matter, took the Ebonics movement very seriously. Everyone knew that if any Black person wanted—at minimum—a job as a hotel receptionist, a customer service agent in a call center, or a clerk in a retail store, he or she would need to speak standard English. The latter was the lingua franca of business and commerce, and that was not about to change. If Blacks aspired to achieve economic parity with their compatriots, then they would have to become bilingual.

Lately, the Back to Ebonics movement has morphed into a devoutly nasty and pernicious new form. It has transmogrified into a hegemonic call to replace standard English as the norm. It regards requiring Black students to use standard English as anti-Black linguistic racism. Blacks required to speak standard English are believed to experience violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization. The leader of this movement, a Black professor at the University of Michigan by the name of April Baker-Bell, has sponsored a document to abolish what she calls “White Mainstream English.” She believes that Black students who are forced to write their papers in mainstream English are victims of Anti-Black Racism.