RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-keystone-pipeline-kill-11611184519?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden issued a blizzard of executive orders on his first day in office, including a diktat to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. This is a slap at Canada, and it sends a message to investors that playing by U.S. rules provides no immunity from arbitrary political whim.

TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) has been stuck in the quicksand of American politics for more than a decade. A 2004 executive order requires the State Department to approve cross-border projects. In 2008 TC applied for a permit to transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude per day from the Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted. Shipping bitumen by rail or tanker would result in 28% to 42% higher CO2 emissions and more leaks. No matter. President Obama in 2015 rejected the permit as an oblation to the Paris Climate accords.

President Trump gave the right of way, but legal challenges by anti-fossil fuel groups marooned the pipeline and ran out the clock on the Trump years. Now Mr. Biden is yanking Keystone’s permit and rejoining the Paris agreement. Neither action will matter to the climate.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/21/trumps-top-10-triumphs-a-final-look-at-a-remarkable-presidency/

President Donald Trump became an ex-president on Wednesday, as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. We wish him nothing but the best. But before we let Trump go, we thought we’d review some of his biggest accomplishments while in office. We call them “triumphs,” because they were all big achievements executed against great odds.

More than any other president of recent memory, Trump fought hard for average working Americans. And contrary to the epithets thrown at him by his far-left detractors in the Democratic Party, his policies helped low-income and minority Americans most of all.

We believe – we hope – that Trump’s post-presidential career and reputation will resemble President Ronald Reagan’s. For those old enough to remember, Reagan also was called every vile name in the book, from “senile” to “fascist” and everything between. Yet, today, in retrospect, his presidency shines as a beacon in our nation’s history.

Given the at-times unhinged nature of the criticism directed at Trump’s presidency by the left and Republican “never-Trumpers,” Trump’s performance in just four years was nothing short of remarkable. He promulgated dozens, if not hundreds, of successful policies that other presidents talked about, but never secured.

He reached so many we can’t highlight all of them. But here are 10 that we believe stand out — and that future presidents (are you listening, Joe Biden?) would be foolish to reverse or overturn:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/trumps_farewell_speech_and_the_enduring_movement_he_sparked.html

The radical left and treacherous Republicans are giddy over their success in getting rid of Donald Trump with their fraudulent overthrow of his landslide election and tarnishing his legacy with unwarranted blame for the Capitol breach.  Now they are turning their satanic wrath on the personal destruction of Trump’s nearly 74 million supporters.

Weak-kneed Republicans who rode the coattails of Trump to their own victories have now jumped ship, some saying that he created his own demise.  Highly critical, these Judases contend that Trump has been a failure as president in their attempt to undermine his many accomplishments while in office.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/19/the-make-believe-election/

Joe Biden is to be inaugurated Wednesday. Twenty-five thousand soldiers have been brought in to make sure there is no more funny business, and the Biden Administration reportedly has asked that guard units be vetted to weed out possibly dangerous Trump supporters. The inaugural parade was turned into a virtual event over fears that it might attract more pro-Trump than pro-Biden Americans. We have arrived at a very peculiar place, considering that this is the inauguration of the man who supposedly won more votes than any man in history.

Marco Travaglio, who may be Italy’s most influential journalist, was asked in a recent Italian TV interview what Biden’s victory meant. He said, “For us, what changes is that the U.S. will become more interventionist, while under Trump it had been more isolationist. In my opinion, with Biden we will have more wars than we had with Trump, who, being an isolationist, didn’t care about the world.”

The reporter, clearly displeased with this answer, pressed Travaglio further: “Aren’t you as happy about his victory as everyone—as most people are?”

“If I were an American I would be happy,” Travaglio replied. “As a European, I believe we had more to gain with Trump because Trump took his hands off the world. Indeed, strange things happened under Trump. There was peace between the Koreas, there were unique agreements between Israel and some of the Arab states, there was, let’s not call it peace, let’s say a small cooling, even if the war continues in Afghanistan . . . ”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/20/stabbing-hectors-corpse/

In Homer’s epic Iliad, the Greek hero Achilles finally kills his hated archenemy, the often trash-talking Trojan warrior, Hector. 

After Hector dies, once frightened but now gloating Greek soldiers encircle and cowardly stab his limp corpse. 

Achilles even ties the ankles of the dead Hector to his chariot and in fits of mindless rage drags him around the walls of Troy. 

Homer then brilliantly shows how Achilles’ vindictive excess ensures sympathy even for the once-braggart Hector. Eventually, the adolescent Achilles relents, grows up, allows Hector to be buried, and accepts the tragic nature of a common humanity. 

If Democrats and the Left had wished to reinvigorate the Trump legacy, they could have done no better than unleashing their unhinged and often repulsive hatred of the last two weeks.   

The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson recently boasted, “There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.”   

What method does Robinson advocate for the required mind-rinsing of these millions? The Chinese, Soviet, or North-Korean model? 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/capturing-false-flag-joseph-hippolito/

Since Jan. 6, when hundreds of protesters breached Capitol security as Congress certified Joe Biden’s ostensible Presidential victory, the prevailing narrative blamed President Donald Trump and his supporters for the subsequent mayhem.

But as facts come to light, a different picture emerges.

Evidence suggests that Antifa staged the breach to discredit Trump and his supporters. Trump’s opponents then would manipulate the disorder to justify another impeachment attempt and repress his supporters further.

In the ensuing bedlam, however, federal agents who penetrated Antifa took valuable information — including a laptop belonging to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House.

Antifa’s own infiltration of Trump’s supporters would fit its modus operandi, as this flier for a planned riot before Election Day clearly illustrates:

“Antifa Comrades! On Nov. 4, don’t forget to disguise yourselves as Patriots/Trump supporters: Wear MAGA hats, USA flags, 3%er insignia. A convincing police uniform is even better!

“This way, police and patriots responding to us won’t know who their enemies are, and the onlookers and the media will think there are Trump supporters rioting. So it’s harder to turn popular opinion against us.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/free-speech-essence-political-freedom-bruce-thornton/

Last week Big Tech and social media plutocrats colluded to silence Donald Trump and conservatives by driving them from the virtual town square, and by silencing rival sites like Parler. Even some leaders in Europe, which restricts speech and has nothing like our First Amendment, criticized this assault on freedom of speech.

We are living in a time that as Orwell put it, requires us to restate the obvious about the critical role free speech has played in political freedom for 2500 years.

As miraculous as the creation of consensual, law-based rule by citizens was in ancient Greece during the 7th century B.C., extending citizen rights to the non-elite masses, as Athens did a few centuries later, was truly transformational. Never before had the common people anywhere been given the political freedom and power to participate in deliberations over policy, vote in an assembly, and serve in the offices that managed the state––privileges once the possession of aristocratic or plutocratic elites.

Free speech was the sine qua non of such a political order, for its governing procedures took place orally in the public, open spaces of the city. As the philosopher Democritus said, “Freedom of speech is the sign of freedom.” To participate politically, one had to be assured that there would be no repercussions or punishment for speaking one’s mind. But less well known is the role that diversity played in institutionalizing free speech.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/thank-you-mr-president-john-perazzo/

As America says goodbye to President Trump, Democrats are doing what they do best: pushing forward, to the very last moment, with their four-year crusade to discredit, smear, and punish one of history’s truly great presidents. Having never given Mr. Trump so much as a moment of respite from their relentless torrent of defamatory lies, they have firmly secured their place in history as the pettiest, most lawless tyrants ever to defile our nation’s political landscape. Thus, it remains for the many millions of Americans who, with sober hearts and minds, are able to discern the monumental good that this president has done for the United States, to lay bare the magnitude of his accomplishments. Toward that end, let us examine his remarkable record.