RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18772/jewish-democratic-council

This organization — the Jewish Democratic Council — is misnamed. It recruits members and solicits money based on false advertising. It promotes itself as comprised of pro-Israel Jews. But the reality is that its leadership consists mainly of progressive Democrats who just happen to be Jewish. For them Israel, Iran and anti-Semitism are peripheral issues.

That is increasingly true of many Democratic Jewish voters who prioritize other concerns over Israel, over the growing threat of anti-Semitism from the hard left and hard right, and over other issues that directly affect the Jewish people.

[T]hey obviously do not want to hear the perspective of this Jewish Democrat, because the organization is more united behind social policy issues — abortion, gun control, the environment and the Supreme Court — than they are about Israel. I was told by two people who attended the event that the word “Israel” was never even mentioned….

I shake my head in frustration at why so many left-wing Jewish Democrats are willing to abandon Israel and continue to vote blindly for their grandparents’ Democratic Party without demanding that it marginalize its anti-Israel extremists.

We have no loyalty to the current Democrat Party, just as many of its most prominent officials seem to have no loyalty to so many of their Jewish supporters. We certainly should have no loyalty to organizations such as the Jewish Democratic Council that hides its true priorities behind the misleading label “Jewish.” There is nothing Jewish about their agenda, which is to elect Democrats regardless of their views on issues of direct concern to the Jewish community and Israel.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Victory in the Cold War provided the U.S. a peace dividend that lasted ten years, until the attack on 9/11. U.S. defense spending, as a percent of GDP, declined from 5.6% in 1990 to 3.1% in 2000. It peaked in 2010 at 4.9% but fell to 3.7% in 2020. (In comparison, during the Vietnam war defense spending exceeded 9%.) But history did not end with end of the Cold War, evil did not vanish, and people did not become kinder and gentler. While the United States and the West gloated in victory and let their defense systems erode, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, expanded their defense budgets.

But it is not just spending that is the problem. A smarter and more focused military means commitment on the part of the people and their representatives in Congress. While the U.S. developed technical leadership in social media platforms and video games, it fell behind China and Russia in military technologies. The U.S. graduates about 70,000 engineers each year, which compares to Russia and China, together, graduating ten times that number. The fate of Bell Labs, once known as “the idea factory,” is indicative of our technological decline. As a division of AT&T, and partnering with the U.S. government, it was responsible for world-changing technologies, from the transistor to the laser. Now it is owned by Nokia, a Finnish company. DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) annual budget remained flat in constant dollars over the past twenty-five years, despite significant advances in technology.

Today’s military has embraced wokeism. Soldiers, sailors and airmen are taught to be gender sensitive, to be sure to use the right pronouns. They are instructed in Critical Race Theory and told our nation is systemically racist. In appealing to activists, the military is alienating those most likely to serve.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/03/why-we-lost-trust-in-the-expert-class/

For years, European policy makers had assured the world that the relatively rapid “transition” to “green” energy was the world’s preordained future—regardless of the costs. 

Accordingly, many European Union governments followed the advice of green experts. They eagerly shut down coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants to transition immediately to “renewable energy.” 

Most citizens were afraid to object that in cloudy, cold Germany solar panels were not viable methods of electrical generation—especially in comparison to the country’s vast coal deposits and its large, model nuclear power industry. 

As a result, German government officials warn that this winter, in 19th-century fashion, families will have to burn wood—the dirtiest of modern fuels—to endure the cold. And there is further talk of “warm rooms,” where like pre-civilizational tribal people, the elderly will bunch together within a designated heated room to keep alive. 

Sri Lanka may be the first modern nation to adopt deliberate policies that have led to mass hunger and bankruptcy. The government for a variety of reasons listened to foreign advocates of back-to-nature organic farming, specifically outright abandonment of highly effective synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. 

The result was endemic crop failure. Cash crops for export failed. Widespread hunger followed. Without foreign exchange, it became impossible to import key staples like food and fuel. 

Sri Lanka once had a per capita income twice that of nearby India. Now it cannot feed or fuel itself. 

Unfortunately, its incompetent government trusted radical environmental advisors, many of them foreign experts. Sri Lanka believed it could become the woke darling of the “Environmental, Social, Governance” movement, and that way draw in unlimited Western woke investment. 

Instead, it has embraced a policy of national suicide. 

Recently, a group of 55 distinguished pro-administration economists assured us that Joe Biden’s massive borrowing and new entitlements agenda were not inflationary. In September 2021, these economists with 14 Nobel prize winners among them declared that Biden’s inflationary policies would actually “ease” inflation. 

Last month, inflation spiked to an annualized rate of 9.1 percent. None of these “blue-chip” economists have offered any apologies for lending their prestige to convince Americans of the absurd: that inflating the money supply, spiking new government spending, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates artificially low would not cause inflation. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/04/in-battle-of-red-vs-blue-states-red-states-are-winning-handily/

In the state-level struggle for the future of America, there can be little doubt: The Red State model of free markets, low taxes, and minimal regulation is beating the daylights out of the Blue State model of top-down control, high taxes, and pervasive nanny-state regulation. But will it last?

The Wall Street Journal, deploying data from the center-left Brookings Institution, last month reported that Blue states, those governed by Democrats, were still 1.3 million jobs short of where they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. Red states, those led by Republicans, had managed to add 350,000 jobs.

A big reason for the disparity is the fact that millions fled Blue states during COVID.

“Forty-six million people moved to a different ZIP Code in the year through February 2022, the most in any 12-month period in records going back to 2010,” the Journal wrote. And most of them moved from Blue to Red states, with Florida, Texas, and North Carolina the biggest gainers, while California, New York, and Illinois lost the most.

Big, blue cities, in particular, lost huge numbers of people as soaring crime, sidewalk homeless encampments, COVID lockdowns, high taxes, and miserably underperforming schools made once-beautiful metropolises unlivable for many.