RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/04/memo-to-trump-get-focused-on-the-economy-before-its-too-late/

Conservatives have been positively giddy with the whirlwind of activity out of the White House over the past five weeks. But if President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress don’t start focusing on the economy, the excitement will be short-lived.

Not only are there worrisome signs of an economic slowdown, but the public is growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as a lack of attention to pocketbook issues on Trump’s part. Republican lawmakers are making matters worse by dawdling on extending Trump’s tax cuts, which is causing businesses to hold off on big investments. This is a lethal combination.

The latest sign the economy continues to struggle comes from the GDPNow, produced by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, which projects GDP growth for each quarter based on currently available data, and changes as those data roll in. Data released on Monday caused a sharp downgrade in GDPNow forecast to -2.8% for the quarter, from -1.5% last Friday.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Confidence Index dropped sharply in February and “pessimism about the future returned,” according to the Conference Board.

The latest I&I/TIPP poll finds that 76% of those surveyed are concerned about an economic slowdown, with 45% saying they are “very concerned.” And 82% are troubled about inflation.

(We will have a complete report Wednesday on the poll’s findings.)

In other words, we are not out of the woods yet.

Here’s the worrisome part.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

                                                                                                                               Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Australian author & art critic

 “Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”

         Measure for Measure William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

As the two epigraphs infer, doubt is personal. In her Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, the American poet wrote “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” On the other hand, in The Selected Letters of Tennessee Wiliams, the playwright is quoted: “I don’t believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work…”

Doubt, including self-doubt, and skepticism are not synonymous but are related. Doubt can be defined as uncertainty regarding one’s abilities (as Lucio infers). It also serves as questioning one’s judgement (as Robert Hughes suggests). It is intuitive, reflecting a lack of knowledge, as Thomas wanted proof of Jesus’ resurrection. On the other hand, a skeptic is one with an open mind who questions the truth of something stated or alleged, or at least who defers judgement until more facts are available.

This is not to argue that belief in one’s self is uncommon. When a youth, I was not skeptical about much and had few self-doubts. Many of us were raised on the American folktale, The Little Engine that Could. Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly, expressed a similar sentiment: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” All good advice, so long as it does not morph into cockiness, arrogance, or conceit. As I grew older, I read and thought more, I became more skeptical. I recall, when a teenager, the president of a brokerage firm who told me that the longer he worked in the business the less he felt he knew about finance.

https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/5169877-musk-loyalty-attacks-mccarthyism/amp/

This month, 75 years ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) gave his infamous speech denouncing disloyal Americans working at the highest levels of our government. It was the defining moment for what became known as McCarthyism, which attacked citizens as dangerous and disloyal influences in government.

Some of us have criticized the rising “rage rhetoric” for years, including that of President Trump and Democratic leaders, denouncing opponents as traitors and enemies of the state.

In the 2024 election, the traditional red state-blue state firewalls again collapsed, as they had in 2016. The response among Democrats has been to unleash a type of new Red Scare, questioning the loyalty of those who are supporting or working with the Trump administration in carrying out his promised reforms.

Elon Musk is the designated disloyal American for many on the left. That rage has reached virtual hysteria on ABC’s “The View.” This is the same show before the election on which hosts warned that, if Trump were elected, journalists and homosexuals would be rounded up and “disappeared.”

After the election, democracy seemed to stubbornly hang on, so the hosts had to resort to attacking as disloyal anyone joining the government or supporting Trump’s policies. 

This week, co-host Joy Behar followed many others in questioning Musk’s loyalty and attacking him over being a naturalized American citizen: “The guy was not born in this country, who was born under apartheid in South Africa. So, [he] has that mentality going on. He was pro-Apartheid, as I understand it.”

Behar was then forced, perhaps by panicked ABC lawyers, to walk back the comment — such retractions having become a regular feature on “The View“. What came out was the type of jumbled confusion that results when you interrupt a lunatic on the metro in mid-rave.

Behar stated: “I’m getting some flack because I said that Musk was pro-apartheid. I don’t really know for sure if he was … He was around at that time, but maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t—he might have been a young guy, too. So, don’t be suing me, okay Elon?”

This anti-immigrant attack on Musk, however, has worked its way into many Democrats’ talking points, even though their party had previously claimed to defend immigrants against racist Republicans seeking to close the Southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/03/who-really-politicized-the-pentagon/

Is the era of rounding up government or academic “experts” to declare their support or opposition to ongoing controversies over?

Public declarations by Anthony Fauci and his associates to follow their “expertise” or “science” did not work out well and persuaded few.

Recall the 1,200 partisan healthcare “professionals” of June 2020 who flipped to assure us that it was mysteriously now medically OK to break quarantines—but only if to publicly protest during the post-George Floyd unrest.

Do we remember the “70 arms control and nuclear experts?” In 2015, they were collected by Obama subordinates to convince America to embrace the flawed administration’s so-called Iran Deal.

In 2021, “Seventeen recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences” assured there would follow no inflation from the Biden administration’s massive borrowing and spending.

Hyperinflation followed.

Most recently, five former Secretaries of Defense—William Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, and Lloyd Austin—co-authored a public letter to Congress. They blasted the Trump administration’s dismissals from command of several generals—including the current chairman of the joint chiefs, General C. Q. Brown Jr.

They argued that such firings were political and thus would weaken the military and depress recruitment. As a result, they demanded congressional investigations.

Oversight of anything in government is always welcomed. But there are a number of inconsistencies in the letter that unfortunately diminish the force of its argument.

First, firing generals is hardly new. Many presidents have relieved commanding officers—even wartime combat theater commanders—without much, if any, explanation.

Consider just one recent pre-Trump presidency—the tenure of Barack Obama. He fired Gen. David McKiernan as commander of all American troops in Afghanistan. And he did so without much explanation.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/10-bad-takeaways-from-the-zelenskyy-blow-up/

1. Zelenskyy does not grasp—or deliberately ignores—the bitter truth: those with whom he feels most affinity (Western globalists, the American Left, the Europeans) have little power in 2025 to help him. And those with whom he obviously does not like or seeks to embarrass (cf. his Scranton, Penn. campaign-like visit in September 2024) alone have the power to save him. For his own sake, I hope he is not being “briefed” by the Obama-Clinton-Biden gang to confront Trump, given their interests are not really Ukraine’s as they feign.

2. Zelenskyy acts as if his agendas and ours are identical. So, he keeps insisting that he is fighting for us despite our two-ocean-distance that he mocks. We do have many shared interests with Ukraine, but not all by any means: Trump wants to “reset” with Russia and triangulate it against China. He seeks to avoid a 1962 DEFCON 2-like crisis over a proxy showdown in proximity to a nuclear rival. And he sincerely wants to end the deadlocked Stalingrad slaughterhouse for everyone’s sake.

3. The Europeans (and Canada) are now talking loudly of a new muscular antithesis, independent of the U.S. Promises, promises—given that would require Europeans to prune back their social welfare state, frack, use nuclear, stop the green obsessions, and spend 3-5 percent of their GDP on defense. The U.S. does not just pay 16 percent of NATO’s budget but also puts up with asymmetrical tariffs that result in a European Union trade surplus of $160 billion, plays the world cop patrolling sea-lanes and deterring terrorists and rogues states that otherwise might interrupt Europe’s commercial networks abroad, as well as de facto including Europe under a nuclear umbrella of 6,500 nukes.

4. Zelenskyy must know that all of the once deal-stopping issues to peace have been de facto settled: Ukraine is now better armed than most NATO nations, but will not be in NATO; and no president has or will ever supply Ukraine with the armed wherewithal to take back the Donbass and Crimea. So, the only two issues are a) how far will Putin be willing to withdraw to his 2022 borders and b) how will he be deterred? The first is answered by a commercial sector/tripwire, joint Ukrainian-US-Europe resource development corridor in Eastern Ukraine, coupled with a Korea-like DMZ; the second by the fact that Putin unlike his 2008 and 2014 invasions has now lost a million dead and wounded to a Ukraine that will remain thusly armed.

5. What are Zelenskyy’s alternatives without much U.S. help—wait for a return of the Democrats to the White House in four years? Hope for a rearmed Europe? Pray for a Democratic House and a 3rd Vindman-like engineered Trump impeachment? Or swallow his pride, return to the White House, sign the rare-earth minerals deal, invite in the Euros (are they seriously willing to patrol a DMZ?), and hope Trump can warn Putin, as he did successfully between 2017-21, not to dare try it again?