RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/michelle_admits_she_couldnt_stand_barry.html

While promoting her self-help book The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times, during a “cross-generational” conversation in Atlanta, Michelle Obama shared deep thoughts with a panel moderated by American radio personality, rapper, singer, actress, and toady Angie Martinez.  

The star-studded, “powerful” women of color on the panel also included singer, actress, and television personality Kelly Rowland; Beyoncé’s mama, Tina “Knowles” Lawson; vitiligo spokesperson/model Winnie Harlow; and H.E.R., AKA Gabi Wilson, a singer, songwriter, musician, and actress.

In The Light We Carry, Michelle Obama penned a chapter entitled “Partnering Well.”  Based on decades of Michelle Obama’s unstinting extension of political compromise, racial conciliation, and partisan collegiality, she now must feel qualified to counsel others on how to get along with those they secretly hate.  This time, the always relatable Michelle chose to make her point by shedding “light” on her love/hate partnership with husband Barack.

Much to everyone’s surprise, soft and embraceable Michelle admitted that for more than a decade, she “couldn’t stand” her spouse.  From 1992 until 2002, while Barry was strategizing his passage from a community activist to ruler of the world, Michelle was silently aiming her death stare at someone other than Trump.

One must admit that it is impressive how Michelle manages to paint herself as the victim of whatever circumstance she happens to find herself in.  Furthermore — not that this is a competition — it’s been many years since Barack Obama graced the world stage with his awesomeness.  Yet, unlike Michelle, there are hundreds of millions of Americans who still “can’t stand” him.

As an outspoken activist, Michelle has built her reputation on perpetual scorekeeping.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-blueprint-for-a-genocide-of-existence/

A new breed of zealots has forged fourth-wave feminism, and it’s far more rabidly anti-family, anti-male, and anti-civilization than previous iterations of the ideological movement. You’d think because of its petty maliciousness and deranged radicalism, its appeal would be narrowly limited to the faculty lounges of liberal arts colleges. Yet since the inception of the #MeToo movement, the crazed foot soldiers of fourth-wave feminism managed not only to take their worldview mainstream, but also to put a headlock on the commanding heights of American culture.

This is as impressive as it is terrifying. These new nihilists are seething with toxic femininity, and the further spread of their noxious sentiment could likely spell the death of our country as we know it. Increasingly prevalent is their practice of exploiting female agency and identity to wage a blanket attack on society and men, to abolish the labor market, and to advocate for the end of the family. They are achieving these goals while simultaneously promulgating the idea that the family is by nature nefarious, and that female advancement can only come through the wholesale annihilation of heteronormative constructs of capitalism, work, and the family. The destructive consequences for relationships at every level of society—from the basic couple to the community to the nation—will be vast and irreparable.

In Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, feminist philosopher Sophie Lewis writes: “[But] I can’t wait to see what comes after the family. I also know I probably won’t live to see whatever it is. Still, I hope it happens, and I hope it is a glorious and abundant nothing.”

Lewis is convinced that the concept of family is a cancerous blight on existence and that nothing should replace it. Starting with the premise that capitalism is bad because it is coterminous with patriarchy, white supremacy, and a world that mandates work and privatizes care, her communist utopian vision would see a world in which mothering is queered, and traditional motherhood is abolished.

America is fighting a major international war, says the author. Yet, the country does not really know it. Moreover, the war is being waged on a multitude of distinct fronts—both internal and external. The United States is wholly unprepared to fight a unified battle. Threat analyst Kenneth Abramowitz carefully takes us through the first step—recognition. He then ushers readers into the bold realm of mounting a multifaceted defense that will save America as a Democracy with the capacity to continually improve and thrive.

The monumental life of Benjamin Rush, medical pioneer and one of our most provocative and unsung Founding Fathers
 
By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. As the new republic coalesced, he became a visionary writer and reformer; a medical pioneer whose insights and reforms revolutionized the treatment of mental illness; an opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender; an adviser to, and often the physician of, America’s first leaders; and “the American Hippocrates.” Rush reveals his singular life and towering legacy, installing him in the pantheon of our wisest and boldest Founding Fathers.
 
Praise for Rush
 
“Entertaining . . . Benjamin Rush has been undeservedly forgotten. In medicine . . . [and] as a political thinker, he was brilliant.”—The New Yorker
 
“Superb . . . reminds us eloquently, abundantly, what a brilliant, original man Benjamin Rush was, and how his contributions to . . . the United States continue to bless us all.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Perceptive . . . [a] readable reassessment of Rush’s remarkable career.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“An amazing life and a fascinating book.”—CBS This Morning

“Fried makes the case, in this comprehensive and fascinating biography, that renaissance man Benjamin Rush merits more attention. . . . Fried portrays Rush as a complex, flawed person and not just a list of accomplishments; . . . a testament to the authorial thoroughness and insight that will keep readers engaged until the last page.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[An] extraordinary and underappreciated man is reinstated to his rightful place in the canon of civilizational advancement in Rush. . . . Had I read Fried’s Rush before the year’s end, it would have crowned my favorite books of 2018 . . . [a] superb biography.”—Brain Pickings

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-most-dangerous-president-in-american-history/

Prior to Joe Biden’s ascension to the White House in early 2021, it would have been difficult for many American patriots to believe that a worse president than Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama could sit in the Oval Office. Then Biden wasted no time proving those patriots wrong. From Day One he has been such an unmitigated disaster for the country that only 19% of Americans said in a poll last Sunday that they want Biden to run again in 2024. A July poll revealed that only 13% of Americans believe the country is on the right track. Apparently few believe that Biden is building back better, much less making America great again.

His incompetence (or conversely, his competence in carrying out a destructive agenda) has done more than just bring the country to the brink of a failed state after only half a term, though; it also has endangered Americans in many ways, and its legacy will continue to do so for generations. Indeed, bestselling author Nick Adams, in his new book from Post Hill Press, labels Joe Biden The Most Dangerous President in History.

https://quillette.com/2022/12/08/how-do-they-know-this/

“If you take one point away from Bad Data it should be that the vast majority of statistics are estimates, some of them are very rough estimates, and statisticians are constrained by limited resources and bounded knowledge. It is not a crisis. Outright fraud is rare, but when confronted with an impressive statistic, especially when it seems surprising, it is worth asking, “How do they know this?” Very often the answer will be that they don’t really know it at all.”

A review of Bad Data by Georgina Sturge, 288 pages, The Bridge Street Press (November 2022)

H.G. Wells once predicted that “statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write.” It was a slight exaggeration, but in an age of big data in which governments pride themselves on being “evidence-based” and “guided by the science,” an understanding of where facts and figures come from is important if you want to think clearly.

Georgina Sturge works in the House of Commons Library where she furnishes UK MPs with statistics. If Bad Data is any guide, she also provides them with caveats and other words of caution, which are ignored. This informative, reasoned, and apolitical book offers a string of examples to show that statistics are not always what they seem. Some statistics are rigged for political reasons. Others are inherently flawed. Some are close to guesswork. Even crucial variables such as Gross National Income and life expectancy are shrouded in more uncertainty than you might think. We don’t really know how many people live in Britain legally, let alone illegally. The number of people who are living in poverty varies enormously depending on how you measure it.

Crime and unemployment are hugely important to voters and therefore susceptible to manipulation by the authorities. England and Wales have data on recorded crime stretching back to 1857, but most crimes are not reported to the police and even when they are reported they are not necessarily recorded by police officers. Setting the police targets to reduce crime creates incentives for the police to allow possible crimes to go unrecorded. This has happened so much in Britain since the 1990s that the UK Statistics Agency stripped the recorded crime figures of their “national statistics” status in 2014.

https://www.jns.org/theodor-herzl-diaries-republished-in-ambitious-new-undertaking/

“Today, Theodor Herzl is best known for his beard, not his books,” laments Gil Troy, editor of “The Zionist Writings of Theodor Herzl,” in his introductory essay to a new edition of Herzl’s diaries.

Troy, a professor of history at Canada’s McGill University now living in Israel, wants to make Zionism’s founders come alive for the next generation. His latest effort is a three-volume collection of Herzl’s writings.

The brainchild behind the series is Matthew Miller, owner of Koren Publishers, a Jerusalem publishing house producing mainly religious texts. Drawing inspiration from the Library of America, a publisher of notable American classics and historical works, Miller decided to create a Library of the Jewish People to bring together the best writings from Jewish history in the fields of religion, the arts and politics.

“The Zionist Writings” are the first titles in that ambitious effort. They include a fairly comprehensive collection of Herzl’s diaries and other works, including his play “The New Ghetto” (1894), of which Herzl biographer Alex Bein said, “Herzl completed his inner return to his people”; Herzl’s 1896 manifesto “The Jewish State“; and important essays, like “The Menorah“ (1897), showing how, through Zionism, Herzl reconnected with his Judaism.

The series uses translations from the original German made by historian Harry Zohn in the 1960s. Other works, like “The New Ghetto,” are newly translated by Uri Bollag.

“Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.”—The Hollywood Reporter

In this gripping narrative, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. During World War II, the German army used the towering Colditz Castle to hold the most defiant Allied prisoners. For four years, these prisoners of the castle tested its walls and its guards with ingenious escape attempts that would become legend.

But as Macintyre shows, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape. Its population represented a society in miniature, full of heroes and traitors, class conflicts and secret alliances, and the full range of human joy and despair. In Macintyre’s telling, Colditz’s most famous names—like the indomitable Pat Reid—share glory with lesser known but equally remarkable characters like Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America’s oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; and Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture covert escape aids for POWs.

Prisoners of the Castle traces the war’s arc from within Colditz’s stone walls, where the stakes rose as Hitler’s war machine faltered and the men feared that liberation would not come soon enough to spare them a grisly fate at the hands of the Nazis. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.